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full egoism (quokk.au)
submitted 5 days ago by Deceptichum@quokk.au to c/mop@quokk.au
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[-] njordomir@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I wouldn't do any of that. I just need everyone to give me unlimited power with no takebacksies.

/s

Seriously though, this makes me think of Xunzi, Mencius, and their differing views of human nature. A short excerpt for the unfamiliar:

Xunzi's writings respond to dozens of thinkers, often naming and criticizing them directly. His well-known notion that "Human nature is evil" has led many commentators to place him opposite to Mencius, who believed human nature was intrinsically good. Both saw education and ritual as key to self-cultivation, which for Xunzi could circumvent one's naturally foul nature. Xunzi's definition of both concepts was loose, encouraging lifelong education and applied ritual to every aspect of life


Xunzi thought it was the structures of authority that help make us from evil selfish people into a civil society. On the contrary, Mencius felt like it was society that corrupts our intrinsically good nature.

Where do you fall?

[-] PugJesus@piefed.social 1 points 4 days ago

If I say 'neither', will I get called out for being roadkill? I'm more 'nurture' than 'nature' on what on a man is.

People generally pursue their own interests. Their interests include the welfare of others, and their own feelings wrt empathy and the like, not just traditionally 'selfish' interests. The purpose of government is to restrict that pursuit. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. Almost always it's contentious. As a non-anarchist, I feel very strongly that the restriction of that pursuit is especially historically, but still also contemporarily, a net good from a utilitarian and virtue ethics standpoint.

Without a means of imposing conflict resolution on parties which will not compromise to a satisfactory degree with one another, conflict intensifies and escalates. It's exactly this 'ungoverned' condition which leads to the rise of 'honor societies' wherein offenses must be met with irrational escalation, because rational escalation is, ironically, irrational in the face of an inability to guarantee retaliatory capacity.

No government thus makes men worse than their natures, I believe, precisely because we are rational and social animals. The rise of state societies is simply the rules-oriented application of tribal/familial governance to populations where unrelated individuals cannot avoid interacting. When a social unit exceeds the amount in which stable groups of related elders have enough influence to create consensus, strict tribal/familial governance is no longer possible.

Bad government also makes men worse than their natures. The worst governments, arguably, can be worse than even the most chaotic absence of governance, because it has much more room to 'cultivate' specific flaws, like servility or bigotry.

this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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