Confession: I haven't the slightest interest in my genetic ancestry or where my ancestors came from or what they did.
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I'm proud of the humans who, bit by agonizing bit, found moral principles more advanced than "might makes right", and who did the hard labor of centuries to craft societies who were just a little more kind and gentle than the ones that came before.
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And most of all, I'm proud of the apes (or pseudo-apes), my most glorious ancestors. The animals who somehow found a way to be a little more than animals. What a task that was. What a labor of millennia.
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We humans are not fallen beings. We did not fall from grace. We climbed upward from the muck. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was not sin - it was the whole damn point. Eating it was the only thing worth doing.
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(That sounds profound but actually I read it in a cheesy 1980s sci-fi book: https://www.amazon.com/Uplift-War-Saga-Book/dp/0553279718 …)
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And of course, there's so much left to do. There is so much farther to go. We're still animals, brutalizing each other and scrabbling for a living out of the unforgiving dirt. Our ignorance still dwarfs our knowledge. Our petty selfishness still dwarfs our kindness.
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But even though there's so much farther to go, I'm proud of how far we've come. Against all the odds. Against a Universe of random death and entropy that had it in for us every step of the way. Those aren't just my ancestors. They're yours too. And you should be proud. (end)
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Where did you get this idea from?
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David Brin books.
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PTSD being the natural condition doesn’t sound plausible to me. Having traumatic memories, sure, but not to the point of causing daily dysfunction. That wouldn’t be adaptive.
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Any further reading on PTSD as “the natural and natural human condition”? A quick google search isn’t bringing anything up
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I'm gonna need a citation on that.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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