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/lit/ - Literature

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21409044 No.21409044 [Reply] [Original]

>people are naturally good
>but society (i.e a large group of people) is evil

>> No.21409053

>>21409044
>people in their natural state are good (man who has seen no evidence of how people behave in their natural state)

>> No.21409058

>>21409044
That seems to echo the bible quote (?) that the heart does not desire what the eye cannot see

>> No.21409062
File: 42 KB, 476x485, voltaire.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
21409062

"I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves."

>> No.21409070
File: 229 KB, 500x653, i-wish-i-loved-the-human-race-i-wish-i-55763286.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
21409070

>> No.21409075

>>21409044
ah, finally, natural state!
AHHHHH FUCKING TIGER STOP EATING MY KIDS

>> No.21409081

>>21409044
What a retard, Locke and Hobbes are better (though still meh)

>> No.21409087

>>21409044
It's called a phase transition sweaty

>> No.21409118

>>21409044
Dostoyevsky says something similar somewhere, that in order to love men you must be away from them and it rings true

>> No.21409125

Hahahaha. So fucking retarded.

>> No.21409135

>>21409044
yeah
it's easy to be good when there is nobody to be mean to

>> No.21409165

>>21409044
>people are naturally good
>but society (i.e a large group of people) is evil
That's funny, because I actually read Rousseau's Discourses + Social Contract and hardly got any of that at all from it. Rousseau never praised humanity's primordial origins as "good", as in, we ought to return to it. Rather, he tried to prove that civilization, as the conquest of nature, inevitably degenerates in the long-term without nature's inherent ability to sort right from wrong. Obviously, this didn't sit well in progressive French salons, and folks like Voltaire have been seething ever since. It blows my mind that people are still peddling fifth-hand smears from the Enlightenment 200+ years later instead of engaging with ideas as they were written, which are more relevant now than ever in our technocratic age. Rousseau could be a familiar, if not eccentric, regular in the roster of any reactionary illiberal thinker. But this lingering stigma has managed to block that from happening.

>> No.21409173

>>21409165
the quote says society. You can have society without civilization, I agree that civilization had bat effects on humanity

>> No.21409197

>>21409165
He's been turned into a meme like the french revolution.

>> No.21409228

>>21409173
>You can have society without civilization, I agree that civilization had bat effects on humanity
Implying pre-civilization society didn’t have bad effects on humanity. Crippled guys and elderly were being murdered back then because they were being seen as burden. Women’ roles were being reduced only on gathering food and caring for children. However men were busy Ooga booga making confrontation with other groups and hunting big animals. Only after agricultural revolution, men had more leisure time to think to construct a metaphysical concept to protect the weak.

>> No.21409236

>>21409070
That's an interesting poem.

>> No.21409336

>>21409228
>men had more leisure time to think to construct a metaphysical concept to protect the weak
implying this is anything but a bad thing.

>> No.21409666

>>21409070
What barbarous shit is shit? Stay in your island, doot doot

>> No.21409795

>people are naturally good
>but society (i.e a large group of people) is also good
t. Jean Jaques Blessall

>> No.21410230

>>21409165
This is the correct interpretation. Rousseau is based

>> No.21410239

>>21409044
>>people are naturally good
>>but society (i.e a large group of people) is evil
Yeah look Rousseau I enjoyed Conan too, but you can't just take it as a given.

>> No.21410334

>>21409062
Spitting facts

>> No.21410401
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21410401

>>21409044
Why do people think that you can make some kind of huge, sweeping metaphysical statement like this with no justification? Why should I take this serious seriously? I am not arguing whether you are right or wrong. I'm saying that such a massive claim is this can't simply be stated in some gay little two sentence soundbite like this and expect to be taken seriously. Where is your epistemological justification for how this is known? Where have you even defined what is "good" and what is "evil" and what is this "natural state"? What are the "evils" that corrupt them and where does this society come from?
I'm sick of these stupid little quotes that expect you to just nod and say "Yep that sounds about right." Well I'm not going to play along. I won't simply concede the point to you like this. If you want to convince me, you are going to have to work for it.

>> No.21410413

>>21410401
>with no justification?
Pretty sure it was in a book anon. I don't think he just publisher a two line pamphlet or something.

>> No.21410423

>>21409165
HOLY BASED

>> No.21410436

>>21410401
That's not a real quote. It's a retarded paraphrase of a meme (yet unfortunately predominant) interpretation of Rousseau by Rousseau's pro-Enlightenment critics.

>> No.21410439

>>21410423
Can you just talk like a normal human for once? What does "holy based" even mean?

>> No.21410526

>>21410439
It's an expression of surprise and extreme approval. Acting stupid doesn't make you look smart pretentious faggot.

>> No.21410603

>>21409165
Finally, someone who has also actually read Rousseau. Despite all of his influence, he is one of the most misunderstood and maligned philosophers. Tradlarpers blame him for "muh enlightenment", Liberals blame him for "muh tyranny/fascism", and Music critics hate him because "muh Rameau".

>> No.21410666

>>21409053
I have met people who are great when interacting one on one but turn into an overcompensating mess the moment more people are introduced. The involvement of society means that there's a pressure to be on higher status. A lone person doesnt need to worry about status and only has his conscience to guide his decision making

>> No.21410691

>>21410666
what the fuck are you talking about, humanity's natural state is as a social species.

>> No.21410698

>>21410691
Don't be ridiculous.
The true place of the ant is found only in himself. The anthill debases him.

>> No.21410781

>>21410698
Oh boy here we go. I can already see how this is going to play out with the simpletons on here. One side is going to say this is cringe Ayn Rand/Jordan Peterson tier individualism and then the other side is going to call them a bunch of cringe Marxist collectivists and the whole thing will devolve into boring mediocre IQ political crap.
Maybe with this post we can all save ourselves the time and simply not get into all that.

>> No.21410795

>>21410691
>humanity's natural state is as a social species
how true is this, really?

>> No.21411576

>>21409044
People, and society, are naturally all evil

>> No.21411835

>>21410698
this is cringe Ayn Rand/Jordan Peterson tier individualism

>> No.21411844

>>21409044
Not exactly what he said. Was more speaking that institutions corrupt people not "large swathes" of people. You misread.

>> No.21411850
File: 27 KB, 499x481, srsly.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
21411850

>>21409044
>people are naturally good
>naturally good people create evil societies
>mfw you all failed a basic logic test

>> No.21411852

>>21409062
I don't really take much stock in this cretin because he never actually formulated a valid response to the book in question and just layered his system in a thick coat of irony and jokes. Candide is just one giant tome of ad hominems

>> No.21411864

>>21411850
That's not necessarily logical.

>> No.21412067

>>21409336
Yes, it absolutely can be a good thing. Many of the great welfare-benefitting ideas, especially technological ideas, have been created by people who, in some way or another, had a weak constitution or would not have had a prized place in a strength-based, primitive society. In fact, the concept of “weak” versus “strong” is muddled and relative in many ways. A person with powerful problem solving skills and bigger picture thinking ability may be the person to lead a tribe or nation, but in other ways may be weak or unable to defend themselves. It is impossible to definitively judge a member of a group as weak when the whole purpose of taking care of them is to make them strong/self-sufficient/productive, implying a lack of intrinsic strength or weakness.

>> No.21412072

>>21411835
>cringe Ayn Rand/Jordan Peterson tier individualism
Your qualifiers are unnecessary.

>> No.21412078

>>21410795
It is one of the fundamental tendencies separating us from non-organization species. A theorized critical difference in behavior between humans and Neanderthals was a more extensive network of material exchange and a tendency to create more complex, richer social networks.

I think, in this case, the very fact of our society throughout all of history drifting towards efficient communication for the benefit of resource exchange and conflict prevention/declaration is evidence enough of this tendency. Now, is this an a priori quality of humans? Well what even could be an a priori quality, since all human tendencies are dependent upon the nature of our environment and, in all cases, better chances of survival necessitates communication and resource exchange.

>> No.21412084

>>21412067
I wrote a piece on this concept but with a slightly different perspective.

>> No.21412184

>>21409070
"...and curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid GIT"

>> No.21412230

>>21409044
yes
interacting with people 1-on-1 is fun, interacting with groups is shit. (unless they're autists where you're really doing a series of 1-on-1 interactions pretending to be a group)

>> No.21412239

>>21412078
>presuming that Rousseau's Savage Man referred to Cro-Magnons and not a more primordial form of human
ngmi

>> No.21412265 [DELETED] 

>>21409062
What if Voltaire had gone to Canada in search of savages?

>> No.21412287

>>21411850
>If a runner runs faster, he can win the race.
>If all the runners run faster, they don't all win the race
>mfw you all failed a basic logic test

>> No.21412318

>>21409062
kek goteem

>> No.21412698

>>21409044
feral niggers in their natural state rape monkeys as a right of passage
and infants to cure aids

>Society is le bad
>natural man is le good

>> No.21412744

This is just a restating of ancient cynicism

>> No.21412768

>>21409165
>/lit/ anon actually reads
Wtf bros this is not supposed to happen

>> No.21412773

>>21411835
>this is cringe Ayn Rand/Jordan Peterson tier individualism

t. cringe Marxist collectivist