Why Can't Everyone Just Agree With Me?

The problem with the world is not that there is too much hatred and killing; the problem is that there is too much love and salvation.  [I say this more in cynical jest than in any heartfelt seriousness.]  We like to think that if we could all just get along and stop exploiting one another, then everything would be fine.  We like to think that universal love is the answer, but this only works if you change all people and all cultures to agree with you.


I think the philosophical question boils down to this: do you want people to be happy, or do you want people to "be fruitful and multiply"?  Why do we have to choose?  Because being fruitful and multiplying leads to billions and billions of people working hard all their lives, striving to raise their children and hopefully acheive a reasonable standard of living.  In order to coexist and survive, these billions and billions become increasingly plugged in to impersonal work environments designed to milk economic value from their minds and bodies.
But can't we learn to be happy and enjoy our economic roles?  My answer is no: you can't teach a monkey calculus, and even the most plastic minds will snap when stretched too far.  Just as we can not live healthily eating a steady diet of white rice, we can not live happily doing nothing but trying to earn a buck.


What does this have to do with the world having too much love and salvation?  Well, love and salvation are values of group cooperation.  When we artificially impose cooperation through governments and religions, we get larger and larger groups, and we get further and further mired into our soul-crushing economic roles.

So, the cynical conclusion to this line of thinking is that having tight in-groups (strong cultural identities) might result in more killing and hatred toward outside groups, slower, zero, or negative economic growth, slower, zero, or negative improvements to health and standards of living, but result in individual lives that are not dominated by a monoculture of economic progress.

[I jest, cynically, with this half-baked criticism...]