Apologism vs Meliorism

[Varaj]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meliorism

Which do you see yourself more as?

I lean towards Meliorism.

[The Winslow]

I'm a pessimist meliorist -- I believe that humans can, and should, "improve the world" (what this means exactly could be a whole topic in and of itself); but that they're too dumb and short-sighted to succeed over an extended length of time.

[Dr_Avalanche]

Fundamentalistic meliorist...

[Harry]

Without a nifty tongue in cheek optional choice web based test, I can't be positively certain, but there is a good chance I stand on the side of meliorism.

[Hatter]

Fundamentalistic meliorist...

Militant Meliorist.


Ok, not really, but quite firmly meliorist.

[panther.jd]

Meliorism

[Dacke]

Meliorism.

This, by the way, is one of the most one-sided polls I've seen around these parts.

[AZRogue]

I suppose I lean towards meliorism, though not enough to choose it on the poll. I'm more of a case by case individual, I suppose.

I think humans should always strive to improve the world around them and things shouldn't be left alone just because "that's how it's always been." I don't think that progress, however, is always helpful, or even necessary, and usually cringe at the idea of progress (change, to be more accurate) for its own sake.

For instance, at the medical practice where I work (yeah, still the same one), roughly half of the chronic medications our patients take are to help with symptoms caused by their other medications. More often than we'd like to admit, the original symptoms are not as severe or as threatening to the patient's quality of life as the symptoms we eventually cause through treatment.

But it's like 3am here so all of that may make no sense.

[Eliezer]

Damn, I'm for stem cell research, genetic encoding of our babies to eliminate inheritable diseases, and manipulation of the human genome to improve desirable traits so as to more directly control our evolutionary path.

Natural selection is great, but nothing wrong with helping it along.

I'm also a social Darwinist in that I believe ideas, cultures, religions etc all fall prey to natural laws and the most successful idea and cultures will propagate more successfully and the less successful ideas will not. That has to be coupled with biological Darwinism: i.e. a culture may have better ideas, but if it neglects biological reproduction, a biologically more successful culture may win by sheer numbers.

So I am Darwinian Meliorist.

[The Winslow]

and usually cringe at the idea of progress (change, to be more accurate) for its own sake.

That's a big part of my pessimism. Especially in the social and political domains. Everytime I hear economists gleefully saying what can be sumed up with "let's get rid of those outdated ideas from the 60's and embrace the progress embodied by the ideas from the 20's that led to the 1929 crisis and the second World War" I wonder if my definition of progress is really the same as the others.

[AZRogue]

That's a big part of my pessimism. Especially in the social and political domains. Everytime I hear economists gleefully saying what can be sumed up with "let's get rid of those outdated ideas from the 60's and embrace the progress embodied by the ideas from the 20's that led to the 1929 crisis and the second World War" I wonder if my definition of progress is really the same as the others.

I couldn't agree more.