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Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

What you're describing here (ironically) is unironically the basis for Western political thought.

What I'm referring to here is idealism [1]. Whether it's European colonial powers or the US, the basis for foreign intervention is, quite simply, that we are the Good Guys. Why? Because we're the Good Guys. Even slavery was justified in Christianity by converting the heathen and saving their immortal souls, a fundamentally idealistic argument.

What's the alternative? Materialism [2], the premise of which is that there is not anything metaphysical that defines "goodness". Rather, you are the product of your material circumstances. There is a constant feedback loop if you affecting your material surroundsina and those surroundings affect you.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

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This has been proven wrong again and again. My grandparents were subsistence farmers. They had much less material wealth than any working class American and the vast majority of unhoused Americans. Yet, I can assure you that back then they were much more satisfied with life than the vast majority of working class and unhoused americans today. Second point, no amount of material wealth can compensate for severe mental illness. When people have severe mental illness, medical interventions must be performed against their diminished "free will." For those of you of American descent ask your parents or grand parents how their grand parents lived. I am certain you will be shocked at their extreme poverty and general hopefulness. Conclusion: once basic needs are met, the perception of "material" is more important than the material.

woosh

nobody said happiness was proportional to dollars

My great grandparents could buy enough land to feed themselves for the equivalent of a few months salary. And they could live in whatever size building they wanted on it. Some amount of agency is a requirement for happiness, and when you have it you can be satisfied living under a rock.

> This has been proven wrong again and again

[does not offer evidence]

> Yet, I can assure you ... they were much more satisfied with life than the vast majority of working class and unhoused americans today

How do you know this? How is this convincing to this audience?

> no amount of material wealth can compensate for severe mental illness

Are you asserting that mental illness occurred at lower rates in the past?

> I am certain you will be shocked at their extreme poverty and general hopefulness

There is no shortage of writing from the Great Depression expressing great hopelessness. The generation was popularly called the Lost Generation for decades by writers of the time.

We cannot conclusively know the overall happiness level of humanity at any time before the Industrial Revolution. But we can use general proxies, such as starvation rates, violent deaths, and child mortality. Those metrics have, by all knowable measures, improved by an order of magnitude after the Industrial Revolution when compared to all previous history.

I believe that happiness comes from being content, at least as a basis.

As long as person's basic needs are met and they are covered in the case of an emergency (for example, not going bankrupt because of cancer) they can be happy.

The barrier though is other people who make you unhappy. Your friends or family can cause you to compare your wealth to others.

The news and politicians can make you feel unhappy by telling you things are worse than they used to be and/or theyre getting worse.

Media can show you things you don't have and worse make you feel as though you would be happier, more excited, or more relaxed if you had these things.

Even though it's possible to ignore this, it's extremely difficult. We aren't as strong as we think when it comes to negative emotions.

It's one thing to analyze the world with this lens, which is perfectly fine, as long as it's part of a bigger analysis. But materialist views have never stopped the boot. Materialist political ideology has produced some of the finest jack boots history has seen.

Hey, that's because _their_ materialistic view is faulty . _Our_ materialistic is perfect. Now, if only i have the power...

i personally find presenting a black and white "it's either one way or the other" perspective to be problematic.

yes, materialism and cause and effect etc. etc. agreed on that. it is a thing. interestingly though, as people sit static and just work on becoming more aware of that feedback loop you mentioned it can lead to people trying to not be so much of an arsehole -- through refraining from doing a thing -- because they can see their part in causing things to happen in the world. and that's not just limited to immediate surroundings. i know that i affect everything with every action i do (or do not do).

idealism becomes useful at that point. it can provide people with a set of loose guidelines on how to "not be an arsehole" aka how to not affect everything in a way that's going to cause problems.

the problems come when people do idealism without being aware of that materialistic feedback loop. they're usually doing it out of rule based dogma based on tribalism. sometimes it's "we're better than you are" or sometimes it's "outsiders are not welcome".

caveat: this is all just my personal experience, but i think it would scale if enough people became aware that their actions matter and have profound consequences, so try to not be an arsehole to anyone today

> What you're describing here (ironically) is unironically the basis for Western political thought.

It's not just "western" political thought if such a thing even exists. It's political thought.

For example, Japan's stated goal in ww2 was to liberate asia from european invaders. They portrayed themselves as the good guys. The liberators. That's true for every empire and war in history, "western" or "eastern" or "northern" or "southern". It was always the self-proclaimed "good guys" fighting self-proclaimed "good guys". The winner gets to keep the "good guy" handle while the loser gets assigned the "bad guy" handle.

Had japan won ww2, that's how history would have taught ww2. Instead, japan lost and the US won and hence we get to claim to be the good guys while japan does not.

Whilst either side can claim to be "good guys", it's important to look at the behaviours exhibited. Obviously, Germany had the concentration camps and Japan brutally tortured prisoners of war, so it does seem quite clear that one side had more respect for human dignity than the other. However, the U.S. did round up Japanese people, but it hardly compares to the atrocities of the Nazis.

Nowadays however, we have the USA rounding up non-white people and putting them in brutal concentration camps (it's not a prison if there's no due process) whilst openly murdering opposition in the streets whilst Germany is acting as a trusted and stable partner. It's not the country, but the monsters that may be put in charge by a misled population.

> Obviously, Germany had the concentration camps and Japan brutally tortured prisoners of war

And the "good guys" firebombed tens of millions innocent civilians and nuked cities. Not to mention the mass rapes, starvation, etc.

> However, the U.S. did round up Japanese people, but it hardly compares to the atrocities of the Nazis.

You are right. The nazis never nuked anyone.

>And the "good guys" firebombed tens of millions innocent civilians and nuked cities. Not to mention the mass rapes, starvation, etc.

This is factually true. It is bizarre how this is downvoted. Its like people can't live in a world where the victors were less than perfect, or that acknowledging war crimes from one party is equivalent to saying the other parties are good.

People even invented a fashionable buzzword for this evil way of thinking: whataboutism.

Marxism, a materialist ideology, is western political thought as well.

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