What if you could erase one aspect of mankind?

[Onegigapwn]

I would get rid of false senses of superiority.

I only jest.

I can't imagine mankind on any other path than the one it's on now. over thousands of years society has slowly creeped forward on a course of failures and mistakes and prejudice but also with triumphs, innovation, strength and acceptance. People die and suffer to slowly but surely change humanity. Humanity should progress on it's own, uninterrupted.
Simply wishing parts of us away wouldn't seem...fitting.

...I just realized that i'm that one guy on the thread that takes it way too seriously.

ermmm... the appendix. that thing's fucking useless and it can kill you if you don't get it treated.

 

[Miyam2]

Not sure if this counts, but I would remove physical pain,disease and death. I would see this as a challenge to mankind to take care of overpopulation and rise into a cultural revelation. Hopefully.

I would trust humanity to not degenerate into total war, as a war where no one could die or feel pain would be the most pointless and wasteful war in all of history.

 

[spartandude]

i wouldnt erase anything, just add something The Emporer!

 

[GameMaNiAC]

Assholes, dickheads and... well... Yeah, jerks only. That's who I'd get rid of.

The stupid ones who do nothing but corrupt our society even further.

 

[4RM3D]

Erase all but one language............ sucks for translators and foreign language teachers though.

*snip*

*big snip*

This is turning into an interesting discussion.

I think that if we erase all but one language, things might actually improve for mankind. But I also know this won't be possible in the way some of you see it. There are two variations to erasing all but one language. When I asked "What if you could erase one aspect of mankind", I didn't specify when.

The first variation is when there is only one language at the dawn of mankind. We would all learn the same language and every cultural aspect (diversity) we have now, would be diminished. However, I still think we can create diversity with only one language. Each country could have its own sayings, to give a simple example. However all this would be theoretically impossible. If two groups of people evolve parallel of each other without coming in contact, the language would branch into different paths. And there is another more interesting dilemma. Which I'll quote below:

Spoiler

Experiments have found that whether or not you can register a color depends on whether or not you have a name for it in your language. You can see the color, it just doesn't register in your mind.

One study compared some young children from England with kids from a tribe in Nambia. In the English language, young kids usually learn 11 basic colors (black, white, gray, red, green, blue, yellow, pink, orange, purple and brown) but in Himba it's only five. For instance, they lump red, orange and pink together and call it "serandu."

If you showed the Himba toddler a pink card and then later showed him a red one and ask if they're the same card, the kid would often mistakenly say yes -- because they're both "serandu." If you hold up a pink card and a red card next to each other, the English kid and Himba kid both would say they're different. But not when they see them one at a time. The ability to recognize the color comes with having a name for it.

The second variation is when you switch to one language later on in the human evolution. Lets say now, 2012. If you do that, you will surely butcher a lot of cultural aspects and that what defines a group of people. Or maybe not...

What you actually want is that everyone can understand each other. But even with one language, that won't be possible. What could become a real possibility is that everyone learns one universal language, besides their native tongue. That means where ever you go, you can always communicate with people, while still leaving your culture intact. But make no mistake; language is just the foundation. Communication goes much further than that.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

I'd erase apathy, i think.

Way too much time tends to get spent just doing nothing on account of "cannot be bothered" and if no one ever felt like that just imagine the things we could get done!

No potential ever lost and no talent undiscovered because everyone would be out searching for the one thing they were good at. And i think natural selection might get a reboot from it too.

 

[henkalv]

If I could put it back again afterwards then maybe all desires and drives. Just to see how we would react and what we would do.

(Note to self, never become omnipotent)

 

[Vykrel]

I really doubt that.if you get rid of religion then you would just get rid of a scapegoat and people would just blame other things

im not so sure about that. people would would otherwise be basically good tend to do evil things in the name of religion. they think they have to.

 

[Erttheking]

People no longer feel hatred towards one another, but we still feel hatred in the terms of the hatred that we need. (IE we still hate going hungry so our survival instinct keeps going, we still hate being cold, we still hate being uncomfortable) but we no longer hate our fellow man.

 

[Erttheking]

I really doubt that.if you get rid of religion then you would just get rid of a scapegoat and people would just blame other things

im not so sure about that. people would would otherwise be basically good tend to do evil things in the name of religion. they think they have to.

Doubt it, the KKK didn't kill in the name of religion, what's stopping them from committing unreasonable acts of violence, what's stopping them? Also there's other reasons you would hate people, racism, political beliefs, moral beliefs, personal hatred...religion isn't the source of all of the worlds evils.

 

[DarthSka]

Race barriers and religion

Science flew us to the moon, religion flew us into buildings

racism because its a poison that keeps us from uniting as a whole.

I know, thats 2. I'll just flip a coin on it

Did you just generalize all religious people as terrorists.

Yes, but not the suicide bombers the media has popularized. I view religious people as terrorists to themselves. Think about it, most religions teach there brainwashed followers they are fallen sinners that are unworthy of love and affection and are only redeemed through pledging allegiance to the prophet of there religion, while the religions that don't do that make you waste your life away with pointless prayer. In the end it still wastes your life.

We need to do away with beliefs that make you feel guilty for being human, that is the real terrorism.

How long has it been since you've been to a religious service? First off your generalizing all religion to be Abrahamic, animist and many polytheists don't have a specific prophet(usually) and don't necessarily pray all that much.
Secondly, why do you completely forget the other parts of religion other than devotion, like help the poor, meek, etc. in the Christian faith, or how Islam united separate clans into a sprawling empire that promoted intellectual discovery and trade in the Classical per'iod (using Abrahamic because I know about these more.) "Wasting life with pointless prayer..... WE'RE VIDEO GAMERS we waste our time and life too in pursuit of entertainment or the next level. Your making assumption and generalizations about a group that you are no part of! The only religious people you wish to see are the outspoken crazy one! What about organizations like the Red Cross, or Christian Church groups who organize charities to give to various countries in need? Is that terrorism? Many Christian Churches I've been to are merely congregation points for believers to spread the word, learn about what the(primarily new testament) scripture and help the needy, you know like what Jesus preached. It's not terrorism to themselves, especially when many times a religious experience can drive them to become a better person as a whole. I know it's predominantly Christian oriented, but that is what I know.


You know I don't hate atheist, at least not by default, but that is really hard to do on this site when many atheists here also have some weird Vendetta against religon. I ask you to respect my beliefs(whether or not you think I'm "Brainwashed" doesn't matter), and I'll respect yours).


Now on to the real topic, removing an aspect of Mankind is a tricky subject, your bound to want to remove something that may have some unintended consequences and make the end result not quite human any more, so with that in mind I would like to remove the lapses in common sense people tend to have. I know many of us probably had an error in judgement in the past that they would like to take back, I don't think much humanity would disappear if we had fewer Darwin Awards.

^This guy. This guy right here.

As for what I would get rid of? Greed, hatred, or even laziness would be good choices to me.

 

[Vykrel]

Doubt it, the KKK didn't kill in the name of religion, what's stopping them from committing unreasonable acts of violence, what's stopping them? Also there's other reasons you would hate people, racism, political beliefs, moral beliefs, personal hatred...religion isn't the source of all of the worlds evils.

the KKK is a protestant christian organization.

anyway, i never said religion would wipe out all of the atrocities in the world, but it would deal with much of them. and one thing you can say about all those other things is that at least they are actual reasons for people to do bad things.

when you do something bad for any other reason, its because you want to.

when you do something bad for religious reasons, its because you think you have to.

 

[Talshere]

But if we can get fusion then the primary consumption dies. Everyone gets electric cars because filling them up becomes dirt cheap because energy is dirt cheap meaning only production things still take oil, this extends the supply of oil massively. Plus one of the biggest problems we have for developing new technologies is the power requirements are beyond imagining. If we had fusion thats no longer a problem so tech leaps forward. I mean the only reason we cant as of right this moment freely create anti matter is because the power required to make one nano gram makes it the single most valuable particle on the planet, to the point no nation in the world could afford 1kg. When the problem of power is mute, whats to stop us developing this new unimaginably powerful energy source?

The problem is time. We would need this technology ready before we run out of oil. I just don't see this happening.

Even most conservative estimates believe that we will have stable fusion in the next 100 year. I expect it within my lifetime.

 

[TheSaw]

Can I erase gravity?
Because I think that would be quite a funny sight while it lasted.

 

[4RM3D]

when you do something bad for religious reasons, its because you think you have to.

Usually after being mindfucked completely.

I don't really understand religion. There is something called 'The Bible' and it says something like 'thou shall not kill'. Yet, whole cities have been annihilated in the name of religion.

 

[Truniron]

The aspect of whining; an unimportant aspect that usually occurs when someone finds the result of others actions unfair or stupid. Solves nothing and usually ends in hate for everything except what happend.

Example: While I was playing League of Legends (as Soraka) yesterday, I saw a Sion With low health (150HP). I took a long route around and killed him when he was about to teleport away. 1 sec. later, Ashes ultimate-ability flies over the dead Sion, which leads her to blame me for a kill steal and called me n00b and all that.

 

[DanDeFool]

I wouldn't necessarily erase it, but I think I'd like to see it diminished. The male sex drive, that is. I'd be more than happy to let women decide when's the right time to "reproduce". As a wise man once said, ?It?s never the right time to have kids, but it?s always the right time for screwing." I think we could stand for that to be a little less true.

We don't really need it to be as... acute as it is now, what with the 6.8 billion people in the world. (I mean damn! You think that's enough!?)

The benefits? For one thing, we might have a few less people like this [http://jezebel.com/5779905/usc-frat-guys-email-explains-women-are-targets-not-actual-people-like-us-men]. Ugh.

And lord knows we can do without all the problems the male sex drive (arguably) gets us into. Exploitative strip joints and pornography. Prostitution. White slavery. All the spam mail offering penis enlargement and knock-off Viagra.

Not to mention all the time we'd save, not having to... you know what? I'm just going to let you fill in the blanks on that one.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Erase possessions - this seems to work in Star Trek. I'd probably have a very tough time in this kind of world, but I suspect it would be for the better.

Buddhists have tried it.
It's not that great.

I would erase bigotry. Think about that, just getting rid of bigotry would stop a bunch of horrible things like genocide, racism, sexism, minutemen, teabaggers, funeral protestors, probably a good amount of rape bullying & terrorism (not all of course), neo-nazis, the kkk, American Family Association, FoxNews and the republican party.

Every human being would need a legitimate reason to dislike another human being.