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I look at it like a rolling wheel. The outside might change, it's environment and context and such might change, but there are core and immutable, unchangeable truths that exist, the wheel itself. I also like this analogy because I believe we are headed to a destination of sorts, or at the very least are on some kind of journey.
The systems may change, his position relative to them may change, his philosophy and thinking may change as a result of that position and context, but at the core there is man. We're working with the same hardware as men 3000 years ago. It's just a different environment. People like to convince themselves that they're good people. The truth is that most people aren't good people, and that isn't a failing at all, it's just the natural state of man. This isnt judgement or criticism but testament to what we have accomplished, the prosperity we have sowed and the base of security we have built. The reality is that if you were starving to death, there was no hope of short or long term relief, and opportunity presented itself to you in the form of another human being, the outcome determining your survival, you would more than likely take it.
At a base level we are all savages, this is where we all came from. It's easy to be a good person when that's beneficial to you but the absolute truth is that most people are not good people, they've just never been forced by circumstance or situation to be anything else but that. Again, testament to the society we have built and how far we have come as human beings. However it has instilled a hubris in modern man that we have evolved past base tribalism and violent coercion, that we are different. Nothing has changed but circumstance, and when that reverts, and where it has already, this is abundantly clear.