There are many on OLO that deny the obvious. (ie is we are selfish and corrupt). Only Christ can change a person from the inside out. I suppose that is why nations that have had a Christian view have been by far the most generous in history. Places like India with their untold wealth allow their poor to rot because they are of a different caste. Despite secular lies Christians are generally by far the most generous givers. Secularist are very generous with Government and other peoples money.

Sure, if all Christians followed the teachings of Jesus 100%, they would be less selfish than most people.

But they don't, and they're not.

Inate human selfishness, which starts with a need for survival and security, and works up to a need for social status, self-actualisation, etc. (Read Maslow), is why Communism can't work. It's not an evil concept, it's just unworkable because people don't like being forced to give anything up.

Humans are selfish, and it is the root of all that is wrong with the world. Christians are human and no different, regardless of what they think about themselves.

Runner,

Being generous is a reasonably-good technique for loosening the control of the genes over us, but just giving away is not enough: we must do so wisely to ensure that the proceeds of our generosity goes towards the good and well-being of others, rather than to aid their genes. Genes are non-sentient mechanisms, ever hungry to multiply. By all means, do serve Others, but serving others' genes is not a good deed.

TrahscanMan,

I agree with many things you said, but communism IS evil because it is materialistic. It claims that we are bodies, denying our spiritual essence as beings capable of, and thriving on, free choice. If for example we are forced to give things up, then we are denied opportunites to be generous and give up those same things out of free choice, thus we are denied opportunites to loosen the control of genes over us - this is not good!

No, Communism is pooling all resources and sharing everything out equally among the community. I can't see how that is evil.

Many small tribal communities live that way, and they are hardly materialistic.

Free choice? It's a selfish concept. The free choice of a completely unselfish person would be to ensure everyone got a fair share.

The problem is that humans by nature do not choose that option. So communism, to work, would have to enforce it. AS you say, taking away free choice.

I'm all for freedom of choice, don't get me wrong. It's one of the great things about our society, and I would never deny anyone freedom of choice. And I am not advocating the introduction of Communism by any means. I'm just pointing out that Communism is not an evil concept, it's just an unsuitable system for the human race, purely because of our selfish nature. But I wouldn't change that.

Yuyutsu:>> Actually, it is not the humans who are selfish - it is their genes who are.<<

Y, a fine observation. Our programming like all living things has a directive to survive. In the animal kingdom this drive is put into neutral in many females of the species during nurturing, when the mother will be protective of her young even if her life is endangered. This act is not one of "free will" it is a supplemental to the prime directive to ensure the survival of the species not just the individual.

We humans have the ability to over ride the prime directive because we have a "free will". We commit suicide, we kill others for reasons other than survival, we favor one person over another for a plethora of reasons, we change the status of the favored if they displease us, in short our minds can conceive then direct the body to physically react to any scenario it can conjure up.

What controls our minds from wholesale hedonistic behavior is the family unit and society as a whole. There are rules and punishments both in interpersonal relationships and societal relationships that we adhere to because our chances of survival outside the family unit or society are decreased markedly. We need others.

So Javan the behavior you describe in your place of birth is human and expected, we favor those close to us or that we are dependent on or have been dependent on. We pay our emotional debts to those who have aided us. If the shoe was on the other foot and your ethnic group or faction back in Africa was in control and the others subservient, you would not be complaining and focusing on the negative aspects of human interaction. You would be busy justifying in your mind that the others are lesser than you so as to overcome emotional guilt regarding the inequity of human to human relationships.

Javan use the spelling checker.

Very interesting, TrashcanMan (sorry for earlier spelling your name wrongly),

Pooling all resources and sharing everything out equally, is not evil per se, and if a small tribal community lives that way happily without coercion, then I wouldn't call it communism, then it is a fact, not an ideology, it just happens to be that way for the time-being.

As noted by Runner, many Christians (and others) choose the option of generosity. Not 100% as did Jesus, but they exercise their free choice do determine their personal percentage. This is good (though imperfect as I noted earlier). Long term trial-and-error allows them to grow as individuals and gradually release themselves from their bondage to genes.

Free choice, to the degree that it is indeed free, and not for example subconsciously dictated by the remembered-voices of other influential people; or by one's own genes under a false identification with one's body, is the highest expression of who we are, or perhaps you could call it our "higher self". It is OK to call it "selfish", but in that case I would rather use a capital "Selfish" to distinguish it from actions born out of slavery to our genes.

"Fair share" is a very difficult and slippery concept to define, I wonder if anyone could, but in any case, I fail to see why it necessarily follows that "The free choice of a completely unselfish person would be to ensure everyone got a fair share".

First technically, "a completely unselfish person" must be either dead or unconscious, but I take the liberty to assume that what you rather actually meant, is a person who is not bound by their "little self", or by the day-to-day needs of his/her body and the constant cries and demands of his/her genes. I don't believe that the choices of such a person, being totally free, can be predictable. I would like to believe that the actions of such a person would be benevolent to all, is some wise sense, though not in such a gross materialistic sense as in "sharing all property equally".

Sonofgloin, Thank you.