Progress the human species with psychology & knowledge
This article is mostly about using psychology and philosophy to improve and evolve the human species, genuinely being progressive. As-well as psychology it also includes other forms of knowledge and understandings. The types of societal improvements I’m talking about are, reducing conflicts, prejudices and divisions between groups of people in-order to actually progress humanity.
Learning to see and differentiate between the subjective and objective is important if progress is to be made. As-well as psychology, I will also be looking into certain laws of distribution. These laws are not limited to our civilization; these laws also produce patterns that can be seen in nature, the solar system, galaxy and the universe as a whole.
At the moment things seem to be regressing, not progressing. There are current conflicts going on in the world, which are only happening due to a basic lack of understanding of human nature, psychology and biology, and also of how the universe actually seems to work.
Inequality
Inequality is a huge problem for a society. In the social sciences one of the strongest correlations is that between inequality/relative poverty and violet criminality, particularly with young men. It can lead to riots and violent/serious crime in general, potentially leading to the destabilizing of a society. This is information that those in power, such as politicians should be aware of before making any major structural changes to a society.
There is something very important that needs to be understood about inequality, about how and why it happens. Some people believe capitalism is the cause of inequality, which was the belief of Karl Marx and the motivation for socialism. However there is a far deeper reason for inequality. See Pareto distribution and Price’s law.
Collectivism vs Individualism
Do we judge people primarily by their group identity, for example their nationality, race, religious belief or gender? Or is the individual identity primary? The 20th century was the bloodiest century in human history. The three biggest culprits of that century were Hitler, Stalin and Mao. These were not all on the same side of the political spectrum, however they do have something in common, they were radical collectivists. Collectivists put the group identity first; they don’t believe in the individual, this type of thinking can be used in part to justify genocide, by judging and even punishing others based on their group identity.
In the west, individualism has been the dominant way to look at others. However currently there seems to be a rise in the collectivist approach, identity politics is being played by far left leaning politician’s and much of the main stream media, even many celebrities are contributing to it. If you combine collectivism with inequality, identity/race related riots and crime is far more likely to happen.
Cognitive Issues
Cognitive issues, distortions and biases are incredibly common. These distortions and biases materialize due to quick thinking and judgement’s, rather than deep or critical thinking. Two of the most common examples of this is, confirmation bias and black and white thinking. Most people are completely unaware of these thinking issues. This type of investigation should be made mandatory in our schools and universities.
Personality Psychology
There have been some very interesting developments in the world of personality psychology. The five factor model, or big five traits is a scientific model of personality, and shows strong connections to political views and personality traits. The big five traits are largely if not entirely believed to be biological traits, which determines a great many things about ourselves. Personally I believe there has been some revolutionary discoveries in this field, which should also be taught in our educational institutions.
The five factor model helps us to focus on the individual over the group, or collective. It brings to light that there is far more variability to people within a group, groups like race, rather than between those groups (between races). Focusing on individual differences is perhaps the key to eliminating or reducing various sorts of discrimination and prejudices.
