poverty

[Fragony]

Bit of a detour, but people should be learned how to grow bananas. Bananas are nutrition-bombs, have an insane output per tree, and need little care. Screw grain, grow bananas.

Just saved humanity.

[Idaho]

Bananas need a lot of water though.

[Fragony]

Bananas need a lot of water though.

Dig it up, and for a change actually maintain the instalations. It's perfectly possible.

[caravel]

You can't just grow plantain anywhere. If you could, it would have been happening long ago...

Avocados, for example, originate in the America's but they also grow well in southern Africa. Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes are also much more versatile - which is why they're also found everywhere (including North Africa). Plantain however is a tropical plant, it needs rich dark, fertile soil, plenty of water, a constant temperature and shelter (think "rainforest"). You cannot just irrigate a strip of desert and grow plantain. This is why plantains mostly grow in south eastern Asia, south and central America, and sub Saharan and central Africa...

[Fragony]

You can't just grow plantain anywhere. If you could, it would have been happening long ago...

Avocados, for example, originate in the America's but they also grow well in southern Africa. Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes are also much more versatile - which is why they're also found everywhere (including North Africa). Plantain however is a tropical plant, it needs rich dark, fertile soil, plenty of water, a constant temperature and shelter (think "rainforest"). You cannot just irrigate a strip of desert and grow plantain. This is why plantains mostly grow in south eastern Asia, south and central America, and sub Saharan and central Africa...

Potatoes need a lot of space, and are very labour intensive. It's perfectly possible to grow banana's instead. Over here you can get 5 for a euro, that is not because of farming handouts but just because it's really easy. They got all the fibres and vitamines you could possibly want. Growing grains is a lot harder, you need to rotate land every year if you don't nurse the soil, banana trees will however always keep giving. Perfect.

[The Stranger]

War is not a political invention.

makes it worse then i suppose, if the people of caring and compassionate nature invented war and not these powerlusted politicians who ofcourse arent really people :P

[TinCow]

There are no moral imperatives to do anything, as morality itself is subjective and cannot be the basis of any universal rule. However, there is self-interest to help others escape poverty. Poverty is the leading cause of violence in the world, from crime to terrorism to war. Reducing poverty will make everyone safer, and thus it is in our collective interests to do so.

[The Stranger]

Potatoes need a lot of space, and are very labour intensive. It's perfectly possible to grow banana's instead. Over here you can get 5 for a euro, that is not because of farming handouts but just because it's really easy. They got all the fibres and vitamines you could possibly want. Growing grains is a lot harder, you need to rotate land every year if you don't nurse the soil, banana trees will however always keep giving. Perfect.

but...but... i dont like bananas :S

[Sir Moody]

Poor word choice. Let me rephrase my point.

"If people were naturally caring and compassionate, there would be no violence between nations or individuals."

If you take this statement as true then:
Sasaki's point of humans being naturally caring and compassionate is wrong because there is war and violence between people.

If you take this statement as false then:
You can't make the opposite but similarly encompassing argument that if humans were not naturally compassionate, no one would ask the OP's question on morality.

Humans are all naturally caring and compassionate - we are also all naturally aggressive and violent

its a stupid statement really - what it means is that every Human who isn't "damaged" (read mentally healthy) is able to be caring and compassionate - it doesn't mean they actually will be

[caravel]

Potatoes need a lot of space, and are very labour intensive.

Potatoes are no more labour intensive than any other crop - that's a myth. In fact plantains could be said to be more labour intensive as people have to pick them by hand... I'm not sure about the space, but potatoes can be grown fairly densely and are heavy croppers. Potatoes are also more robust and can be stored for much longer...

It's perfectly possible to grow banana's instead.

As I said above - it's not. In e.g. Sudan it's perfectly possible to grow potatoes sweet potatoes, yams, etc - it's not possible to grow bananas on the same land with the same amount of water and the same climate.

Over here you can get 5 for a euro, that is not because of farming handouts but just because it's really easy.

Yes, it's easy enough when you're in a part of the world with the right soil, climate... etc... cheap labour also helps to keep costs down.

Growing grains is a lot harder, you need to rotate land every year if you don't nurse the soil, banana trees will however always keep giving. Perfect.

Growing grains is easier if the soil/climate is right for grains and wrong for bananas...

[The Stranger]

hmm bananas are way more delicate than grain or potatoes indeed :P i hate bananas.

[Fragony]

There are no moral imperatives to do anything, as morality itself is subjective and cannot be the basis of any universal rule. However, there is self-interest to help others escape poverty. Poverty is the leading cause of violence in the world, from crime to terrorism to war. Reducing poverty will make everyone safer, and thus it is in our collective interests to do so.

There's a sharp edge to that, overpopulation might be a worse deal. Just being a jerk it has nothing to do with how I actually act.

[The Stranger]

but rich people get less kids than poor people actually because rich people have a carreer so usually they get kids late and more as a toy, to save their marriage or as a token of their love while poor people need to get kids as a garantuee that they have someone that will care for them when they are old and/or unable.

[Ironside]

There's a sharp edge to that, overpopulation might be a worse deal. Just being a jerk it has nothing to do with how I actually act.

Overpopulation is best dealt with increasing living standards, rights for women and access to contraceptives. Poverty right above the starvation line seems to worsen it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Humans are all naturally caring and compassionate - we are also all naturally aggressive and violent

its a stupid statement really - what it means is that every Human who isn't "damaged" (read mentally healthy) is able to be caring and compassionate - it doesn't mean they actually will be

Exactly. So in a civilization with people living together, you experience individuals acting either way to the benefit or detriment of the society as a whole. This of course necessitates the question that Sasaki rejects, "Is this action moral?" as we deal with the diversity of actions and consequences that people undertake.

There must be social rules to have a coherent society, since there must be rules it comes naturally that we ask what these rules should be and evaluate why rules are the way they are.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

If people were caring and compassionate by nature than politicians would never have come up with the idea of war.

Do you see how ridiculous of a statement that is?

Are you saying that if we were all sociopaths, we would be sitting around asking ourselves if we had a moral imperitive to act selflessly and compassionately? Of course not. That's like saying we would be sitting around asking ourselves if the sky was really blue or not even if we were all color blind.

Any argument you make for why it is good help other people is going to have as bedrock an appeal to peoples intuitions and instincts regarding compassion and altruism.The whole "do we have a moral imperitive to help end world poverty?" thing is kind of a dangerous gimmick. It tries to side step all the extremely important questions of how we do it and what's the best way to do it, and appeal straight to peoples unwillingness to callously say "we don't have to do anything". It's so blatant that it generally backfires and people say just that, which I don't think is a good thing. And the whole attitude is part of a general moralistic attitude towards reform where the idea is that what's really important is being in the right, having good intentions, and not so much the method. This is one of the worst of human vices.

Exactly. So in a civilization with people living together, you experience individuals acting either way to the benefit or detriment of the society as a whole. This of course necessitates the question that Sasaki rejects, "Is this action moral?" as we deal with the diversity of actions and consequences that people undertake.

There are people who act like you describe here. They look at actions and consequences etc for everything and ask themselves questions about it and try and figure the benefits and detriments etc. They are mentally ill and unable to care for themselves because they can spend hours spinning wheels like that and not get anywhere. Unconscious emotional tipping points, preferences, and aversions are an essential part of our ability to think and reason, especially about morality. There is far too much going on and it's very messy; no system can be true.

There must be social rules to have a coherent society, since there must be rules it comes naturally that we ask what these rules should be and evaluate why rules are the way they are.

Do you think we have a coherent society based on social rules?

[Montmorency]

There are people who act like you describe here. They look at actions and consequences etc for everything and ask themselves questions about it and try and figure the benefits and detriments etc. They are mentally ill and unable to care for themselves because they can spend hours spinning wheels like that and not get anywhere. Unconscious emotional tipping points, preferences, and aversions are an essential part of our ability to think and reason, especially about morality.

Are you referring to this in particular?

Do you think we have a coherent society based on social rules?

Clearly. Or are you making the point that the coherence is not 'perfect'?