The Progress of Civilization - or How is the Modern World Getting Better?

by Pole 10 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Pole

  Do you believe our world is better than it used to be a few hundred/thousands years ago?
  
  Do we wage fewer wars?
  Do people feel safer?
  Do we have more freedom through more leasure time (or do we work less)?
  Are we healthier?
  Are we better educated?
  Is our culture more sophisticated than it used to be, or is it only "differently-sophisticated"?
  What are the greatest failures?
  What are the greatest achievements?
  What about the distribution of those achievements?
  
  These are all questions about the state of affairs on a global scale.
  
  
  Ok, I've asked some monumental questions. I hope this thread is not going to be a monumental failure ;-).
  
  Pole
• 

  Pole

  This is a continuation of a discussion from another thread:
  
  frankiespeaking:
  
  

  It is our instinctive nature at present that causes the problems. I think there will be a big change in awareness just like the one that caused us to move farther than the apes in understanding our world. I think that perhaps 30,000+ years ago we had a more trancendant state of awareness but lost it as the ego snuck up on us.
  
  Some say when man started makeing labels and naming everything that we lost our connection with the trancendant self and began to feel separate from everything outside our skin. This artificial separation must have increased our pain and suffering. But we find that many in the mystical practice were saying thousands of years ago that transformation of our mode of being was occuring back then and some see evidence of it excellerating in the present. It may happen in a macro evolution spurt which would be just in time if you ask me at the rate we are going in wiping out species every day.

  
  
  
  So you do think the two types of evolution (cultural/biological) affect each other? I'm just not so sure about the speed of this interference you seem to be suggesting. I mean even in the 20th century, there were head-hunter tribes (I'm not sure if there still are). Did that have anything to do with biological evolution?
  
  I don't think so. Much of the Western culture, at least in its popular format is a sophisticated way of covering up the same old instincts we have always been driven by.
  
  
  Pole
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Pole,

  So you do think the two types of evolution (cultural/biological) affect each other?

  Yes they must run in the same fregency of time,,right?

  I'm just not so sure about the speed of this interference you seem to be suggesting. I mean even in the 20th century, there were head-hunter tribes (I'm not sure if there still are). Did that have anything to do with biological evolution?

  Evolution seems to be an intelligent and purpose full.But I don't think it is perfect or runs in a straight line more like a fractal so there may never be perfection because maybe that is formless and perfect unity. As to what the final out come is,,that is really hard to say unless you like being dogmatic and then in that case it is easy.

  I don't think so. Much of the Western culture, at least in its popular format is a sophisticated way of covering up the same old instincts we have always been driven by. Pole

  Eastern,,the American indians on both continants all had much use for shamans, healers, enlightened men it was happening thousands of years ago in fact some educated people feel that 30,000+ years ago we were much more together spiritually and it seems as man evolved he started to put labels more and more on things the more he became seperate from the self and used rituals for this transforemation to happen. Some are suggesting that an increase of awakenings are happening now that things look like they might turn the tide of mans aquisitiveness and as he becomes more connected to everything and therefore stops thinking with an overactive ego and more open to the pain of others and not just his own species, This would calm things down and cause less harm to the enviroment that supports man of which man is only a small ego. Maybe we are just like the cells or just like a bacteria on the earth and the earth is just a small part of a much larger life a star cluster and the cluster is a small part of a larger life a galaxy and so on in both directions forever both the smaller and the bigger never ending.
• 

  jgnat

  There is no rule book that biological evolution must keep pace with cultural evolution. I see plenty of evidence that mankind has not changed at all, just our cultural skin.

  Improvements? The big scientific discoveries, as a result of developing a disciplined method of study based on observable evidence:

  • Antibiotics. In my family tree is a great uncle who died from a simple cut on his thumb going septic. Wouldn't happen today.
  • Treat soldiers as trainable, expensive-to-maintain employees rather than cheap cannon fodder.
  • Slavery, gone. Aparteid, gone.
  • Road networks, communication networks, electricity, clean water. The industrialized world has it, the rest of the world wants it. Once a nation gets this infrastructure in place, barbarism wanes.
  • Child labour, going.

  Death is no longer commonplace. People now fear death, strive to live longer. War is no longer glorious. A leader must first convince his people that he has a moral obligation to fight, or risk being deposed (Nixon).
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Jgnat,
  

  I think we really have no idea what pace cultural and bio evolution is to determine which is moving faster. I think every thing that happens is learned from the past to repeat at a frequence of our space time and the laws of nature are also evolving from past state to newer improved ones. It could be like the Omega Point that draws the present to the future like gravity,, but maybe it is love more accurate. God becomming God??? Could be,,sounds like a good guess.
• 

  stillajwexelder

  Do you believe our world is better than it used to be a few hundred/thousands years ago? ABSOLUTELY
  
  Do we wage fewer wars? Not sure but I think so
  Do people feel safer? Yes in general depending in which part of the earth we liveDo we have more freedom through more leasure time (or do we work less)? YES no question at all
  Are we healthier? ABSOLUTELY
  Are we better educated? Yes in general most of the poulation on average isIs our culture more sophisticated than it used to be, or is it only "differently-sophisticated"? JUST DIFFERENT
  What are the greatest failures? FAILURE TO STOP WARS What are the greatest achievements? Medicine , scientific advance, progress in the way we treat women, less child laborWhat about the distribution of those achievements? They are distributed fairly in lands where there is freedom -in lands where there is not freedom they do not deserve these achievements
  These are all questions about the state of affairs on a global scale. I know
• 

  Pole

  stillajwexelder

  I'm going to sound like a marxist activist, but here are a few points where the answers don't seem so obvious on a global scale:

  Do people feel safer? Yes in general depending in which part of the earth we live

  I guess we can't tell for sure. But I generally believe the media fulfill the modern need for constant fear. It's irrational, but it works.Think of the actual percentage of people who die in terrorist attacks compared with car accidents. But if you ask the average person if they fear car accidents more than terrost attacks, the likely immediate answer is that they fear terrorist attacks. Owe it up to the mass-media culture.

  Do we have more freedom through more leasure time (or do we work less)? YES no question at all

  Only at the face of it.Does more potentially free time actually mean less work? Think of how your boss would have reached you after work 60 years ago if you had no mobile and no email account?

  Are we healthier? ABSOLUTELY

  Yest in the wealthier part of the world.

  Are we better educated? Yes in general most of the poulation on average is

  I can't argue with this in general. Good education is a survival requirement.

  The tricky thing about all those achievements lies in their distribution.

  jgnat,

  good points, but:

  Treat soldiers as trainable, expensive-to-maintain employees rather than cheap cannon fodder.

  If you like historical analogies, think of ancient Roman soldiers and citizens. They were privileged in a similar way many modern soldiers are. The Barbarians were considered simply cannon fodder just like 3d world citizens nowadays often are.

  Pole
• 

  jgnat

  Correction accepted, Pole. I was basing my observations on the pivotal change that Florence Nightingale made to modern warfare. The Boer war was a cesspool. Soldiers were left to rot and die of their own wounds. Florence changed all that. Perhaps you are right, and civilization took a cultural "dip" during the Dark Ages, and there were times past when soldiers were better respected.
• 

  stillajwexelder

  But I generally believe the media fulfill the modern need for constant fear. It's irrational, but it works.Think of the actual percentage of people who die in terrorist attacks compared with car accidents. But if you ask the average person if they fear car accidents more than terrost attacks, the likely immediate answer is that they fear terrorist attacks. Owe it up to the mass-media culture.

  agreed but then of course people are not rational
• 

  onacruse

  One of the wonderful self-delusions of civilization, aided by the fascinating accretion of religion and politics, and the moral tenets and laws associated respectively therewith, is that things have changed for the better.

  I'd dearly like to see one shread of real evidence that our fundamental selfish motives and consequential social behaviors have changed one iota.

  Satan tricked Adam and Eve, Cain killed his brother, God stood back and did nothing (other than condemn)...everything remains the same.