Tuesday, February 09, 2016

[nhodhguj] Love and parasites

A social movement convinces people to hate less and be kind to each other more.  Parasites come to exist, taking advantage of kindness to manipulate, control, and abuse.  Is this inevitable?

A human instinct to feel uncomfortable about only taking kindness and never returning it might prevent parasitical behavior.  However, this instinct can be subverted by deep social divisions: if the parasite regards the host with tremendous contempt, then he or she can justify continuing taking and never giving forever.  There is a Catch-22 here of course: the purpose of the social movement might have been to repair these social divisions.  It is perhaps a picture of social evolution: society -- its social divisions -- evolves to protect itself, to maintain the status quo, even from onslaughts of kindness.

Improvements in technology could make a kindness policy of "Trust, but verify" more practical.

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