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I'm not sure we can agree on all that. We're still burning witches (eg. Bin Laden), and figuratively (Assange, Manning, Snowden etc), steadily removing a due pr

by sparkie 13y ago

I'm not sure we can agree on all that. We're still burning witches (eg. Bin Laden), and figuratively (Assange, Manning, Snowden etc), steadily removing a due process that assumes innocence that was created 800 years ago. Star chambers have re-emerged to hide the crimes of oligarchs too, particularly in the UK. Slavery still exists, it's face has just changed. The modern slavery is economic slavery - the requirement to labor, and be taxed on that labor in order to survive. And to suggest that segregation is no longer an issue is disingenuous. Take a look at Israel for example, a great role model being "the only democracy in the middle east". On top of not being much more civilized than our ancestors, each year, people still celebrate the life of one of them, whose work was the mass murder and torture of aboriginal Americans. Very civilized, and patriotic. Yes, patriotism! What wonderful social values we have in the civilized world. I don't know if we should say civilization is a binary value or a spectrum, but I'm pretty sure that one which routinely conducts murder and celebrates it is definitely on the "non-civilized" side, according to my understanding of the word. I can probably agree that democracy is slightly better than what was had in the past, but democracy no longer exists, it has been eroded now to the point where recovery is not likely.

riffraff 13y ago
So, let's consider the colonization of the Americas. Most people today would probably agree that mass murder and torture of aboriginal americans is bad. This was _not_ true at the time it happened. Bartolome de Las Casas is known _because_ he was an exception, and yet he thought a perfectly legit idea to use african slaves rather than americans, until his late years. Do bad things still happen? Yes. The difference is that more people now have a framework by which they would consider them "bad" than there were in the past.
- sparkie 13y ago
  Most people agree that mass murder of Iraqis was bad at the time, just 10 years ago - it didn't prevent it from happening. The US drone program is still routinely murdering many, even though most people consider it bad. I'm pretty sure most people would've considered the mass murder of Americans bad at the time too, since Christianity was prevalent, and we know what it says about murder. There's obviously a difference from now, in that people were more xenophobic at the time, but there are still similarities to the current day. It seems that while most of us are civil individually, as a collective, the civility is lost, and what is manifested is the barbaric elements among us. The framework for what people consider to be good/bad is flawed and contradictory, because while most of us agree that murder is bad, we routinely pay a hit man to conduct it. Very few people consider that's what's happening when they pay tax, but it doesn't make it any less true. Some people recognize the fact and pay tax out of fear of what the hit man may do to them if they don't pay, and many others will suffer cognitive dissonance in which they convince themselves that it's necessary for "the greater good", and downplay the mass murder and torture. Rather than being content with what we have being better than what we had, we should consider the ways in which we haven't changed from the past and do something about them. One thing that hasn't changed is that we're still paying the hit man. Will the hit man ever stop killing people when we continue paying it? Perhaps we should be thinking how to create a different framework in which there is no hit man. Perhaps then we may be called 'civil'.
  - riffraff 13y ago
    > I'm pretty sure most people would've considered the mass murder of Americans bad at the time too, since Christianity was prevalent, and we know what it says about murder. No, the problem being that non-europeans were considered less than humans even by prominent theologists. "We are all equals" is a terribly recent idea. In the same way, cat burning was considered good family fun until the 19th century, we have only started to extend basic rights to non-human sentient beings. > Perhaps then we may be called 'civil'. And again, you have reduced the issue to being civil yes/no. We shouldn't be content with the way we are, but that doesn't mean we haven't improved.
marvin 13y ago
It is incredibly intellectually dishonest to claim that Western civilization hasn't vastly improved in its general "civilization" over the last century - respect of human rights, medical knowledge, technological capability and respect for human life and welfare. You can certainly point to many areas where things are still very sub-optimal (we don't even agree on what "optimal" means). But just the fact that we have stopped waging all-out industrialized war on each other, a tradition which ended in 1945, is enough of an improvement to make it better even if there was no progress in other areas. And there has been massive progress in most other areas as well. I don't think this is a claim which needs citations.

by sparkie 13y ago

riffraff 13y ago

So, let's consider the colonization of the Americas. Most people today would probably agree that mass murder and torture of aboriginal americans is bad. This was _not_ true at the time it happened. Bartolome de Las Casas is known _because_ he was an exception, and yet he thought a perfectly legit idea to use african slaves rather than americans, until his late years. Do bad things still happen? Yes. The difference is that more people now have a framework by which they would consider them "bad" than there were in the past.

sparkie 13y ago
Most people agree that mass murder of Iraqis was bad at the time, just 10 years ago - it didn't prevent it from happening. The US drone program is still routinely murdering many, even though most people consider it bad. I'm pretty sure most people would've considered the mass murder of Americans bad at the time too, since Christianity was prevalent, and we know what it says about murder. There's obviously a difference from now, in that people were more xenophobic at the time, but there are still similarities to the current day. It seems that while most of us are civil individually, as a collective, the civility is lost, and what is manifested is the barbaric elements among us. The framework for what people consider to be good/bad is flawed and contradictory, because while most of us agree that murder is bad, we routinely pay a hit man to conduct it. Very few people consider that's what's happening when they pay tax, but it doesn't make it any less true. Some people recognize the fact and pay tax out of fear of what the hit man may do to them if they don't pay, and many others will suffer cognitive dissonance in which they convince themselves that it's necessary for "the greater good", and downplay the mass murder and torture. Rather than being content with what we have being better than what we had, we should consider the ways in which we haven't changed from the past and do something about them. One thing that hasn't changed is that we're still paying the hit man. Will the hit man ever stop killing people when we continue paying it? Perhaps we should be thinking how to create a different framework in which there is no hit man. Perhaps then we may be called 'civil'.
- riffraff 13y ago
  > I'm pretty sure most people would've considered the mass murder of Americans bad at the time too, since Christianity was prevalent, and we know what it says about murder. No, the problem being that non-europeans were considered less than humans even by prominent theologists. "We are all equals" is a terribly recent idea. In the same way, cat burning was considered good family fun until the 19th century, we have only started to extend basic rights to non-human sentient beings. > Perhaps then we may be called 'civil'. And again, you have reduced the issue to being civil yes/no. We shouldn't be content with the way we are, but that doesn't mean we haven't improved.

marvin 13y ago

It is incredibly intellectually dishonest to claim that Western civilization hasn't vastly improved in its general "civilization" over the last century - respect of human rights, medical knowledge, technological capability and respect for human life and welfare. You can certainly point to many areas where things are still very sub-optimal (we don't even agree on what "optimal" means). But just the fact that we have stopped waging all-out industrialized war on each other, a tradition which ended in 1945, is enough of an improvement to make it better even if there was no progress in other areas. And there has been massive progress in most other areas as well. I don't think this is a claim which needs citations.