: It's interesting how many people seem to believe that the way people behave today is somehow different from the way people acted decades, hundreds, or thousands of years ago, as if greed, envy, obtuseness, stupidity, goofiness, apathy, outrage over injustice, and all are somehow solely modern things or are somehow worse now than ever before in human history.
The only thing different is technology.
The first time I read the Illiad, that was what struck me, that people then were EXACTLY the same as people now.
I think we change, I hope we improve, but it does not happen fast.
@ceorl: Human behavior, like history, is cyclical for the most part. Humans repeat themselves over time because humans forget, or they think they're going to reinvent the wheel, change a technique for doing something in re: behavior and society. And all they do it change the technique, not the behavior. Human nature remains the same. Human drives and emotions remain the same, which is the key. Humanity cannot be perfected, only self-vigilantly managed, which requires consistent effort and is...
You're right, there is no perfection. We probably wouldn't like it anyway.
Over short time spans, like recorded human history, our species has changed little.
Plus, we have cultural and social mechanisms to encourage us to stay as we are.
Yet it only took 50 thousand years or so to derive dogs from wolves. *not advocating eugenics btw*
I think our nature can change, but the timespans are huge, and we are unwilling, and we may not have that much time anyway.
@ceorl : ...not only unfashionable but deeply, deeply unpopular.