What is the purpose of human progress?

[iwakar]

Is there an endgame?

Or is it merely a consequence, a byproduct of our <sentience, intelligence level, or insert trait or motivation here>?

 

[á´…eparted]

I see it as a by product and consequence of being alive.

All organisms have an innate hard-wired drive to survive, going all the way back to single celled organisms. Since there is a simple innate drive to survive, and help others survive (as we are a social species), purpose is going to be artificial, and there will be multiple answers, most of which would be valid and individually determined. I regard it as a fine and good thing to do, because since we are alive, and we didn't choose to exist, we might as well make the best of it for ourselves, as well as others (since they in turn help us back and we're better off with more of us helping). What's the point to living a crappy life? (rhetorical).

As such, the end game is to make the best of our existence and others around you (since they help you too).

 

[SpankyMcFly]

"People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves." Ernest Becker

Life expands in an unknown direction and with an unknown 'purpose'.

 

[Cellmold]

It fur finden ah purposs.

 

[Amargith]

I'd like to think it's to minimise suffering and go from scraping by and surviving to actually thriving. That, and we have an insatiable thirst for understanding the world around us.

 

[Kullervo]

Is there an endgame?

Or is it merely a consequence, a byproduct of our <sentience, intelligence level, or insert trait or motivation here>?

I am cynical that humanity is actually progressing at all anymore. Some kind of catastrophic world war triggered by lack of food, water, a pandemic and/or mass migration seems to be our most likely future. Permit me to enjoy the dying embers of a once great civilisation.

I cannot know for sure if there is a purpose to human progress because it is one of those fundamentally unanswerable questions. The kind that INTPs with severe halitosis are aroused by. But I would like in my heart to believe there is, though then again if that is true, it sure as hell is a pretty shitty one.

 

[Lark]

Is there an endgame?

Or is it merely a consequence, a byproduct of our <sentience, intelligence level, or insert trait or motivation here>?

I dont believe in the progressive idea, the linear movement of history away from the imperfect and towards the perfect, I think its fatally conceited and about people in the present imagining they are better than people in the past, which for the most part is patently false, I'm pretty well educated for my age but I'm not producing fine writing like Erasmus or Moore, not even Smith, Hume or any of their US equivalents.

That is to say I dont believe that it is happening. I think its a fine enough idea. The idea of "the world to come" which was not a post-apocalyptic state of bliss instituted by divine intervention originally, nor was it particularly an ethno-nationalist idea of becoming the dominant tribe, but a utopian stage in human history believed to have its advent once everyone grasped some fundamental truths. I'm talking largely about the Judeo-Christian-Platonic tradition that I hail from probably. It was taken up in turn by every movement for change since, liberals, then socialists etc. etc. Marx is just as millenial as anything in the book of James or book of revelation/apocalypse.

Personally I think progress ought to be about reverence for life and by extension the permanent relief of avoidable suffering and expansion of freedom to its absolute limits, properly understood I dont think there's a contradiction between the two, I know that freedom for the sadist means maximising avoidable suffering for their targets but sadists themselves arent free, they're in the grip of compulsions and losers as a consequence, postponing their own suffering, kicking the can down the road, for a bit until inevitably it comes back on them.

 

[Lark]

I am cynical that humanity is actually progressing at all anymore. Some kind of catastrophic world war triggered by lack of food, water, a pandemic and/or mass migration seems to be our most likely future. Permit me to enjoy the dying embers of a once great civilisation.

I cannot know for sure if there is a purpose to human progress because it is one of those fundamentally unanswerable questions. The kind that INTPs with severe halitosis are aroused by. But I would like in my heart to believe there is, though then again if that is true, it sure as hell is a pretty shitty one.

I've come to believe that there's a hard core element out there that wants to spread this word. Its not accidential.

And they must be and will be overthrown.

Because. This is who we are.

 

[Lark]

I'd like to think it's to minimise suffering and go from scraping by and surviving to actually thriving. That, and we have an insatiable thirst for understanding the world around us.

Its easily dismissed but I think there's truth in the saying about the "God shaped hole", without being anything like a religious feature Hellboy 2 begins with mankind having a "hole" it can not fill and this makes mankind the villain of the piece, to begin with, it becomes the dark elves or faye or whatever but originally its mankind and for that "hole" business.

Now there are atheistic, granted they are non-theistic most of the time, versions of the God shaped hole, Erich Fromm seemed to think of God as an anthropomorphic projection of a universal man/humanism, a conscious/unconscious solution to a conscious/unconscious existential quandry, and I think that works fine, or could work fine, for anyone who cant deal with the prospect or possibility of a supernatural or metaphysical aspect to existence/reality what so ever.

 

[Amargith]

Its easily dismissed but I think there's truth in the saying about the "God shaped hole", without being anything like a religious feature Hellboy 2 begins with mankind having a "hole" it can not fill and this makes mankind the villain of the piece, to begin with, it becomes the dark elves or faye or whatever but originally its mankind and for that "hole" business.

Now there are atheistic, granted they are non-theistic most of the time, versions of the God shaped hole, Erich Fromm seemed to think of God as an anthropomorphic projection of a universal man/humanism, a conscious/unconscious solution to a conscious/unconscious existential quandry, and I think that works fine, or could work fine, for anyone who cant deal with the prospect or possibility of a supernatural or metaphysical aspect to existence/reality what so ever.

I honestly came from a more 'scientific' angle - from the ethological perspective. There's a difference for every species between surviving and hardship, and thriving. Each species strives to survive, but if they can, they will gladly opt for thriving.


We're no different.

 

[indra]

I'd like to think it's to minimise suffering and go from scraping by and surviving to actually thriving. That, and we have an insatiable thirst for understanding the world around us.

Shortest ENFP answer ever.

 

[Bush]

It's innate. Striving for progress is a byproduct that we're wired to believe has an end result, so that we don't see it as a mere byproduct.

Well played, nature. Well played.

 

[great_bay]

...

 

[GIjade]

Is there an endgame?

Or is it merely a consequence, a byproduct of our <sentience, intelligence level, or insert trait or motivation here>?

Yeah, I wonder about that too. I mean, it doesn't make any sense really, we're all just gonna die in the end anyway.

 

[iwakar]

Yeah, I wonder about that too. I mean, it doesn't make any sense really, we're all just gonna die in the end anyway.

Does immortality cherry-top our hierarchy of needs? Maybe it does.

We already know a longgame is in our genes irrespective of our conscious will.

Is there ever really dissonance between what we choose to do and what we're meant to do? Well, what's the significance of our evolutionary changes thus far?

 

[GIjade]

Does immortality cherry-top our hierarchy of needs? Maybe it does.

We already know a longgame is in our genes irrespective of our conscious will.

I really don't know what either of these things mean. Is it some sort of code?

Anyway, human progress and everything that goes with that would make a hell of a lot more sense if we were immortal beings. Existence itself would make sense.

 

[iwakar]

I really don't know what either of these things mean. Is it some sort of code?

Bummer. Nope.

 

[Poki]

It's to improve our life. Somewhere along the way people have defined what "improve" is as if its the same for everyone.

 

[Forever]

[MENTION=179]iwakar[/MENTION]

So had you found "the" answer. Would it have had satisfied you?

 

[jixmixfix]

Is there an endgame?

Or is it merely a consequence, a byproduct of our <sentience, intelligence level, or insert trait or motivation here>?

To survive and evolve.