Human regression

The past few centuries witness the remarkable progress humans have achieved in science, education and many other fields.
Are there any fields in which humans regress?

The increase in obesity, drug dependency and ISIS come to mind. Not all change is progress.

idea_steed said:

The past few centuries witness the remarkable progress humans have achieved in science, education and many other fields.
Are there any fields in which humans regress?

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We seem to be in politics and to an extent in economic policies.

ttwtt78640 said:

The increase in obesity, drug dependency and ISIS come to mind. Not all change is progress.

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And then there is the difficulty of deciding what is progress. For example I would see the decline of religious belief in most of the civilised world as progress; others would disagree.

There is no certainty that civilisation itself will survive. To a Roman in 300 it would have seemed a certainty that his civilisation would survive in Europe into the indefinite future but within a couple of hundred years it was gone.

I see no change in human nature. We still have murder, rape, wars, abuse, and humans preying on each other to roughly the same extent we always have. I do see advances in science, but such advances have not affected human proclivity to do the same things we've always done.

idea_steed said:

The past few centuries witness the remarkable progress humans have achieved in science, education and many other fields.
Are there any fields in which humans regress?

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War, population control, environmental processes, ethical boundaries, etc.

idea_steed said:

The past few centuries witness the remarkable progress humans have achieved in science, education and many other fields.
Are there any fields in which humans regress?

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Well, it's not exactly a "field" but one characteristic that humans have regressed in is that of self-reliance and progressed toward is dependency.
So then you might say that indicates a "field" in which many humans have begun to excel is politics.

bubbabgone said:

Well, it's not exactly a "field" but one characteristic that humans have regressed in is that of self-reliance and progressed toward is dependency.
So then you might say that indicates a "field" in which

many humans have begun to excel is politics.

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Politics is kind of like hiring a hit man to do your dirty work for you. I'm feeling pretty cynical today. I think I'll go and abuse some lumber - saw it up into little pieces and that kind of thing. I'll feel better after that.

idea_steed said:

The past few centuries witness the remarkable progress humans have achieved in science, education and many other fields.
Are there any fields in which humans regress?

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Original Thought, becoming a thing of the past for many.

idea_steed said:

The past few centuries witness the remarkable progress humans have achieved in science, education and many other fields.

Are there any fields in which humans regress?

Click to expand...

All fields of academia end up with regress pressures from one field and only one... politics.

You name it, politics harms it. I'll cite a few examples.

Only politics has the weight to curb the proper application of economic theory, and we see it time and time again from both left and right leaning politicians where economic principles are discarded for political goals. Anyone really think our bubble and pop consumer debt economic model is based on sound economic principles, or was it politics?

Only politics can muster the argument to reject environmental and climate sciences. The truth is the climate of the planet is always in shift in some direction with plenty of influences on getting warmer or getting colder. While we do not know everything there is to know about climates, we know enough to suggest that there is no climate sweet spot were we can obtain a fixed point and call that controllable indefinitely. Politics on the other hand can argue both climate panic to the point of suggesting economic crashing solutions and also total climate denial were people actually believe we have little to no impact on our surroundings.

Only politics can take systems of belief and turn them into social control mechanisms, pitting people of various systems of belief or even no belief against one another. Standing for policy that is essentially division oriented with the pure intention of taking segments of society and isolating them at best from governance or punishing them at worst using the will of government. Only through politics can a system of belief be turned into a weapon causing human sufferings and losses. Only through politics can we literally elect people because they share beliefs that the Earth is all of 6000 years old, or that evolution and science are all "lies from the pit of hell."

Really think about this... what is the one consistent factor that holds humanity back from advancement? It is the effort of division and control, and that is a requirement in politics that ends up human regressing in pressure.

Moral regression occupies my thoughts. It'd be narrow-minded to assert that concepts of virtue's goodness and vice's badness were never perverted in human history, but contemporary ridicule of virtue and celebration of vice have both reached ghastly proportions.

humbolt said:

I see no change in human nature. We still have murder, rape, wars, abuse, and humans preying on each other to roughly the same extent we always have. I do see advances in science, but such advances have not affected human proclivity to do the same things we've always done.

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I beg to differ; they facilitated it.

DaveFagan said:

War, population control, environmental processes, ethical boundaries, etc.

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Wars are less often, I have to remind you.

Gaztopian said:

I beg to differ; they facilitated it.

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Obviously one can say that. How we use the tools at our disposal reflects both the good we are capable of and the bad we routinely demonstrate.

idea_steed said:

Wars are less often, I have to remind you.

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Less often than what, changing one's underwear?

idea_steed said:

Wars are less often, I have to remind you.

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Wars are business in our age. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Ukraine, Phillipines, Lebanon, Palestine, etc. Economic wars may be equally devastating, for example, the Western banking bloc vs. the rest of the World for World hegemony.

The exponentially growing increase in the dependence by the individual upon government support rather than dependence upon one's self with limited assistance from a loyal and close-knit family, as well as the almost universal proclivity to blame others for your own situation and the unfounded expectation for others to change your situation.

A perfect example is the emergence of Bernie Sanders as not just a viable candidate for President, but one that has an enormous group of supporters. This is evidence of a paradigm shift in the United States, where just 60 years ago admitting you were a Socialist would get you ostracized from society, to the present where our society is actually debating the "benefits" of a Socialist government, while Socialist governments around the world are either collapsing or drawing back due to economic failure.

All that is regressive, not progressive as many who support it like to call it, IMHO. Read my sig.

Regression? Not really. New problems? Yeah, as there always will be.

ttwtt78640 said:

The increase in obesity, drug dependency and ISIS come to mind. Not all change is progress.

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Obesity's not really a regression; it's a new problem all together. Humans in any other era didn't have the opportunity to get so fat.

Drug dependency is not new, nor is there significant evidence it's increased, nor is it even limited to humans.

Stuff like ISIS has also been a constant throughout history. Crusades, anyone? As bad as ISIS is, they're actually far less harmful than some terrorism cults of yore (and similarly, war in general is far less deadly than it was).