You saw it, I saw it. Reality, summarized.
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Bingo: The narrative that our "base" instincts are something terrible to be overcome appears to represent the world view where things created by man are superior to natural things, imagining that we ourselves are something outside of, and greater than, the natural world.
And the world view where our "base" instincts are all wonderful and should be pursued at all times is the world view of pure hedonism and savagery. Its the one that hippies, sluts, and niggers live in every day.
Controlling and channeling our instincts is what makes man man and not monkey, and allowed us to create everything great that we are.
This is exactly right. ACP's original post is wrong because it is about more than seeking higher cause, but he is right in recognizing the hedonist class. It is also important what you choose to look to and why. But the hedonists absolutely are failing the humanity test.
now that's a novel concept; finding a compromise between our base instincts and our higher selves. (for the record, I'm not being sarcastic.)
It makes sense on another level, because this country was founded on compromise. The Articles of Confederation were an unqualified failure, so the Continental Congress got to work, hammering out a new agreement, arguing and no doubt nearly coming to blows, but working out a compromise everybody could agree upon, even if reluctantly.
Hell, even the Declaration of Independence was signed when it became clear that the Crown was uninterested in hearing the Colonists out and instead demanded they be crushed under booted heel.
You are still in thrall to your public education indoctrination. The Articles of Confederation were not a failure. In fact, they worked perfectly to prevent federal power from encroaching on state sovereignty. The central power supporters didn't like that so that illegally wiped them out and started over. And I say illegally because the Articles had no provisions for legal dissolution.
It's the difference between our instincts which teach us how to live in the natural world and our ability to adapt to the artificial world which we have created. I'm convinced that "base" instincts get a bad rap largely because people tend to self-destruct if they can't find a way to adapt, but that really puts an onus on us to make sure the world we pursue is as unintrusive as possible, which leads me to have a very huge problem with the way some people are trying to alter every facet of human life through the use of technology.
the world wars really fucked a lotta people up. there was this attitude that through technological advancement, humanity would transcend our frailties, and well...nothing is ever that simple, but a lot of people couldn't accept that, so they swung in the other direction, basically deciding humanity was too sick to survive in its current form (see dadaism in art as an example). we're not on the third or forth generation of people bent on either transforming humanity or wiping it out entirely.