Another philosophical debat on David Brin's site, about whether modern civilization is better or worse than archaic civilizations.


"Every creative act is destruction. You can only bring about the creation of the new by the death of what it replaces." - Prof. Daniel Robinson, "The Great Ideas of Philosophy" - speaking on the theories of Nietzsche.

This is a riff off of the same song, just reconfiguring the notes: Is today more corrupt? Or was the past?

Which is "better"?

In order to make a value judgment -- which is really what we're doing here -- we have to define waht constitutes "Better" or "worse." To do this, we must define what exactly a societal structure is supposed to give its members.

Safety, self-fulfillment, sense-of-belonging, a support network in times of trouble, happiness, health, quality-of-life, life expectancy, level of violence -- these are just a few possible measures. Some overly-simplified notion of "innocence", or a sole measure of violence/war, represent too few datapoints.

In fact, whatever we decide here is highly questionable -- especially as there are no members of the Tribal Societies we are discussing present on this forum.

Even beyond this, we have to accept that there may be other points of view on how to value a society:

Some people may feel (by Nietzsche-an tradition) that a society should be measured by its ability to fulfill its rulers' Will to Power: that the worth of society cannot be measured by the opinions/suffering of the Herd, but rather on the amount of success found by the Hunter.

Such a set of measures would give heavy weight to tribes ruled by cruel tyrants, and very little weight to "liberal" society.

No agreement on measures is likely to be reached. This is the danger of engaginging in philosophy. In the end philosophy is merely opinions -- and everyone has one.

Make no mistake -- when we start to try to place values or worth on a society, we have definitely crossed into the realm of philosophy. No matter how stringent our method, there will always be counterarguments -- and in this realm, arguments of gut emotion hold almost as much wieght as statistics.

I, personally, prefer to live in a society where I am not likely to be murdered or have to go to war, and I have a relatively high standard of living.

I am not a follower of Nietzsche.

That said, I still have primal urges -- I do martial arts, sword fighting, and sparring. I weight train. I enjoy conflict, when it is controlled (and especially when I win). I am still a human animal, after all.

Re: Why has violence waned?

Because people don't like to die. They don't like the uncertainty of war. And as quality of life goes up around the world, there is less desire/need to take what belongs to others. (The exceptions are obvious.)

In the end, that's what War is -- taking away somebody else's stuff. Their land. Thier lives. Their ideology. Their Oil. But there's always something.

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The full debate:
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/06/big-news-about-great-scifi-writer-plus.html#comments
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I was very wrong to be concerned about the political leanings of the blog, btw. He has an "adopt an ostrich" program, where you adopt someone you know that's a Bush loyalist and talk to them sensibly until their head comes out of the sand.

I think that's pretty hilarious :) But everyone should do it. Right now!