How can you say that we've learned to make peace, when there's more conflicts, more violence, more wars, between diverse peoples now all over the world than ever before in the history of mankind?
For a smart guy you are either woefully innumerate because of an odd vector in your education, or you just like to affect innumeracy the way you like to affect curmudgeonliness. Everything you just said is simply incorrect. Deaths and injuries and even destruction of property due to deliberate acts of violence by groups--including governments--have been on a steady decline since V-J Day. Even before that, the periods of peace between the wars kept growing longer.
That is a vision of a perfect society, but the problem here is that the limbic system still composes part of the human brain causing instincts to surface in everyday life. No matter what we do to try and curb this, short of genetic engineering or evolution, primitive instincts are going to be here.
You're only half right. The forebrain of Homo sapiens is so big that it gives us an (arguably) unique ability among all animals: the ability to override our instincts with learned and reasoned behavior. We
learn that the practice of learned and reasoned behaviors such as deferred gratification and situational ethics yields risk/reward and pleasure/pain ratios that satisfy the primitive in us, and the primitive with his time-sense learns that the tradeoff is not merely satisfactory but superior to that gained from purely instinctive behavior.
So we try and raise a boy to adulthood with the more "civilized" values. What happens when they encounter alpha males in society?
For the goddess's sake, Iron John,
we don't shoot you! Isn't that good enough for you? That testosterone haze you jocks walk around in distracts you from your wits and we simply outwit you without having to resort to violence. We let you think you've come out on top because you have the biggest office and the sexiest car and the longest work week and the most dysfunctional family and we're all happy.
Even in the corporate world, which is what I am in, it is survival of the fittest. I wouldn't be where I am if I had been the "civilized" male and not fought for everything I believe in.
Yes, and haven't we seen what your style of "corporate world" has wrought. The Industrial Era is over, and not a moment too soon, since there's still enough rain forest to recover and we can still clean the air up. A new generation of kids who are getting prosperous (rather than filthy rich) by writing software at home, "manufacturing" products one by one with CAD/CAM, and not spending one fourth of their time commuting, is taking over. You'd better adapt to their world or get out of their way.
It has even been proven that humans still exhibit the same instincts as we did thousands of years ago, just in different manners. For instance, the Discovery Channel had a show on sexual attraction then and now. The same thing takes place today. Men use money and power in today's society to attract a mate. That has replaced the hunter/gatherer, yet it's the same instinct.
I love it when you butch guys see the data but can't quite do the reasoning. That's exactly what I'm talking about: overriding instinctive behavior with learning and reasoning. This is a vast improvement over beating each other with clubs. Not to mention the mates you get that way are not the ones we're competing for. My wife has an M.A. in English, tutors immigrants, breeds and hand-feeds baby parrots, and once ran a teddy bear collectors's club with me. She has about as much use for a corporate cookie as I do.
Talking about schools, a person I used to mountain bike with told me about the most pathetic incident in the school system I have heard about. He was a music teacher and had two eighth grade students that failed his class due to not caring and not trying. He gave them F's. The principle came to him and said to pass them with C's because of the no child left behind crap. He refused because he had tried to help and encourage them with no success. He told the principle no that they did not deserve it. She fired him over this and he was glad to be gone.
As I already said, this too shall pass. It's a social experiment, it's failed, and by using learned and reasoned behavior America shall move past it.
I don't think one can measure the overall "peace" in the world by just the numbers of dead people!
I suppose not but its a good barometer. Just exactly what gauge do you read to indicate that we're worse off today than we were in 1943 or the middle of the Civil War? Or during the Inquisition or the Dark Ages or being slaves under the "glorious" Roman Empire?
Conflicts all over the world between various peoples, even if it doesn't result in great numbers of deaths, is a very disruptive, and often a very costly, force against this thing we call "civilization".
The conflicts we have today are not as disruptive as the ones of previous generations. The metastasis of Islam into Egypt destroyed an entire civilization. The metastasis of Christianity into the Americas destroyed two more. Those are pretty hard to beat.
Sure we can. That is the only way to compare objectively today's world and 200-500-1000 years ago. So if 500 years ago let's say 1% of all humans died of violent death annually because of wars and today it is only .03%, then today's world is way more peaceful. End of story.
Max has a good point. Death is not the only misery. Nonetheless disease, homelessness, separation of families, destruction of cultures--all of which are grievous byproducts of war--are also on the wane.
The wimp factor is increasing exponentally. Worse, the wimps seem to be in control of the government. We've got idiots in California trying to ban spanking. They're talking about making it illegal to smoke in your own car or house if children are present. Children must be use booster seats to age 13 despite the fact that there is no proof booster seats provide any additional protection over normal seatbelts. We have schools banning games of tag, dodgeball, all forms of competition. They claim losing is bad for children's self esteem.
I've addressed your concerns in my previous posting. Children are no longer dying of polio and influenza, so their lives appear even more precious than ever, so parents wrap them in baby carriages made like little Volvos.
Of course true self respect comes from overcoming adversity, not from being shielded from anything offensive your entire childhood. What happens when these hothouse porcelin dolls hit the real world? Nothing good.
Yes, and as I said in the other thread, these consequences are already being seen and people are waking up to them. A generation of overprotected babies first becomes obese due to lack of exercise, then hits adolescence and starts taking every crazy risk they can find.
The failure of this experiment is becoming widely known and it will soon stop.
"Learned and reasoned behavior" and all that. We are capable of correcting our mistakes. Sometimes a generation gets lost in the process. It's better than losing them to war.
