late night thoughts

It is a common paradigm to see the hard sciences as being much more complex and difficult than the social sciences. Now, it is true that empirical hard science data is more easily falsifiable than the knowledge claims backed up by normative evidence that underly much of our beliefs about human society. However, this nebulosity also has the effect that our normative political and social cultures take longer to develop and evolve. They stand on the decaying shoulder bones of intellectual giants. Philosophers, thinkers, and artists of every stripe drive this process, which unapologetically rumbles forward as slow but as forcefully as a glacier. Now, I see much of the suffering and dissatisfaction of sentient beings, and humans in particular, as not being prima facie due to arbitrary wantoness which is isolated from any external factors of causation. Upon closer analysis, it becomes clear that scarcity in the metaphysical environment create scenarios where sentient beings end up doing things due to their innate physical and psychological limits and/or are forced to make decisions where some of their ends are acheived and some are not. If people were able to see all of their desired ends achieved at all times, maliciousness would be greatly reduced but not eliminated. It would not be totally gone due to humans' insufficient cognition to have a complete understanding of the physical world and the factors that cause ethical decisions to be based on the considerations they are. What's more-there would still be unease as although needs are being met in the present, one must still think, which requires effort and dealing with uncertainity, about what one would like in the future. The takeaway, however, is that if natural diasasters didn't happen, our bodies could withstand starvation, sickness and social isolation at will without any discomfort or indeed any externalities, and people moved away from the belief that it is right to coerce each other simply because they can, and so on, the decisions and emotions that cause us to do things that, for better or worse, harm fellow humans-such as hating outgroups and acting in defense of ones life and social standing aggressively would be greatly diminished. Societies and individuals can easily reach near consensuses on certain actions being wrong, for example forced labor. However, often the same societies can tolerate actions that violate this same principle, such as the mass use of coerced, virtually unpaid prisoner labor in the US today. We have the capacity to act cruelly, and the Universe just shrugs its shoulders. No cosmic force intervened to stop the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge or the Catholic Inquisition. We also have the ability to introspect and do so in radical ways, however, and this introspection over time causes collosal changes. Entire causes of suffering can be eliminated from human memory in at least parts of the world. What's pertinent is the question of what is valuable and desirable ethically.