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C00002 00002	Some grim facts
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Some grim facts

death is final.  It turns out that this doesn't prevent enjoying life,
but it would be better if life were longer, and we'd really like
immortality.

The heat death or else a collapse of the universe seems inevitable.
Humanity as a whole can enjoy life knowing that it is ultimately
doomed just as an individual can.

Less cosmic

It appears that people, especially young men, have a tendency to
hatred and violence.  Depending on culture, this results in raids
on neighboring tribes, in crime, in motorcycle gangs,
in hazing, in terrorism on behalf
of causes, or just bad manners on behalf of causes.  Some degree
of suppression seems to be necessary to prevent murder.  Civilization
is not the most likely outcome if people are brought up "naturally".
Civilization has developed and come to dominate the world,
because a community with internal peace
is stronger than a disorganized society.  Without constant effort,
it can degenerate in many ways.

It can get worse.  While this isn't the best society, a random
change is likely to make it worse.

In the past societies have destroyed themselves because the
ruling classes, or maybe their youth, have not known when they
were well off and adopted violent or other socially destructive
causes.  We miss this today, because Marxism likes to interpret
the cause as revolt of the lower classes, but often the lower
classes were not involved at all or only in the later part of
the collapse, acting in the earlier stages like part of the
machinery.  Societies which are not dependent on exploiting
a lower class may still collapse.  Maybe the only long term
solution is for some group to escape the earth and breed themselves
for intelligence or other good qualities.  (It seems that intelligence
may be enough to keep violence at a low enough level so that it
doesn't destroy society).

At the turn of the century, the eugenicists worried that intelligence
was being bred out of humanity, because the stupid reproduce faster
than the intelligent.  They may have been right though the effect
may have been masked by the existence of an enormous reservoir of
suppressed talent in the lower classes.  With greater equality of
opportunity, this talent may have been revealed, rewarded by success
and sterilized by adopting the low reproduction rate of the upper
classes.  Perhaps the current dumber freshman classes represent the
genetic disaster finally showing itself.

It may be supposed that the traditional Jewish society strongly
selected for intelligence by letting the smart become rabbis with
large families.  The commercial life coupled with oppression may
also have selected for intelligence.  Meanwhile the traditional
Catholic society of Europe selected for stupidity by making the
smart into celibate priests and nuns.  Present Jewish life probably
selects for stupidity except among the extremely orthodox.

A society that strongly selected for ability and intelligence might
be rather unpleasant for the majority.  The extreme is one in which
the successful have many wives and children and the unsuccessful none.

The feminist upsurge may have been enhanced by the practice of using
masculinizing hormones to prevent miscarriages.  This produces more
aggressive children of both sexes according to recently (1981) reported
experiments.