{"id":1025,"date":"2019-01-06T01:07:28","date_gmt":"2019-01-06T01:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=1025"},"modified":"2019-01-06T01:07:28","modified_gmt":"2019-01-06T01:07:28","slug":"eukolosdyskolos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/06\/eukolosdyskolos\/","title":{"rendered":"Eukolos\/Dyskolos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img width='200' height='142' border='0' hspace='5' align='right' src='\/~totl\/skywritings\/uploads\/malthus.jpg' alt='' \/>Hard to say whether \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/hungarianspectrum.org\/2016\/07\/30\/the-u-s-presidential-election-in-the-pro-government-hungarian-media\/#comments\">dottoressa<\/a>\u201d is just a fatalist\/pessimist or a closet Turul triumphalist. His\/her\/its\/their admirer \u201ce-2016\u201d certainly sounds more like a TT (or should we add the T for Trump too, or our fourth T-word)?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, malign self-interest has a long arm, but without donning <a href=\"http:\/\/192.168.62.113\/~totl\/skywritings\/index.php?\/archives\/184-Angels-Rising-Or-Tobacco-Company-Apologetics.html\">Pinker\u2019s rose-tinted specs<\/a>, slavery is now mostly outlawed; the subjugation of women is on the decline; rape, violence, torture, homicide and genocide are widely condemned and even sometimes punished. The absolute number of human-inflicted horrors is still increasing, but their proportion is decreasing (at least if we count only human victims), so if civilization can master population control, maybe even absolute wrongs will one day begin to shrink.<\/p>\n<p>The day is long, and human nature is raw and savage, but the evidence is at least as supportive for positive developments as negative ones, even in the area of human rights and governance.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, fatalism is self-fulfilling. <a href=\"http:\/\/192.168.62.113\/~totl\/skywritings\/index.php?\/archives\/292-Humanitarianism-and-Pascals-Wager.html\">With Pascal, we have to wager<\/a> that a good outcome is at least possible.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/a\/ae\/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hard to say whether \u201cdottoressa\u201d is just a fatalist\/pessimist or a closet Turul triumphalist. His\/her\/its\/their admirer \u201ce-2016\u201d certainly sounds more like a TT (or should we add the T for Trump too, or our fourth T-word)? Yes, malign self-interest has a long arm, but without donning Pinker\u2019s rose-tinted specs, slavery is now mostly outlawed; the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/06\/eukolosdyskolos\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Eukolos\/Dyskolos&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}