Tyyr wrote:
I only ignored them because they were utterly irrelevant. You're not getting treated out of the kindness of anyone's hearts. They get paid for what they do, the hospital gets paid for use of its facilities, etc, either via cash, insurance, or taxes people are getting paid for their services just like always. No one is doing it just to be a nice guy. All you're talking about is an increased standard of living, not a basic change in human nature.
What I do not understand is that we are talking about the maturity of a whole society and yet if it comes to point out the progress said societies made you point to individuals arguing that humans hadn't changed at all because they didn't get any nicer/person.
Who seriously cares? I don't care that I don't get treated out of the kindness of the doctors heart. What I DO care about is, that the society as a whole agreed upon that such care for the majority of the people, along with another bunch of civil rights people did NOT enjoy even a few decades ago, might be a good idea. How is this not PROGRESS?
What you want is not progress in society but evolution of the human race, which isn't likely to happen in the next few thousand years, I agree.
Tyyr wrote:Sorry, bullshit. You're casually dismissing my opinion and my point and assuming you know why I think them as opposed to trying to understand it and debate the substance of it.
Take a look at this century. In the last 80 years we have seen some of the most widespread, systematic brutality inflicted upon the human race. Obviously you've got the holocaust in Germany (Godwin's Law!) where in a civilized, advanced western society systematically extermined approximately 11 million people on the low end. In that mature and advanced society an entire population chose to turn a blind eye to the rounding up and slaughtering of millions of their own country men and millions more prisoners just because they weren't the right race. And of course, on the grand scale of human misery for the century that was just the third worst.
In second place is the Soviet Union under Stalin who directly murdered or indirectly killed via famine about 30 million of their own citizens.
Then you've got Communist China in first who between outright oppression, murder, and famine killed between 45 and 60 million of their own citizens trying to enact their version of a perfect society. Well, ok, to be honest Mao's version of a perfect society. But still, even in a country of a billion people that's a lot of bodies. And of course today they're still all warm and fuzzy and full of love for their fellow man today.
And of course that's just the big three of the last 80 years. You can always start to throw in great humanitarians like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (7 million dead which for a country that size is a hell of an accomplishment), Saddam Hussein, the Japanese occupation of mainland China (first you rape her, then you bayonet her baby), Yugoslavia in 1990's, pretty much anything to do with drugs in Central America, communism in general, Apparthed in South Africa (wasn't that fun?), pretty much any of the ethnic cleansings that have happened in Africa in the last 50 years that the highly advanced west has done both jack and s**t about, human trafficing in south east asia, child sexual tourism in south east asia, /b/ on 4chan, etc.
None of it's really new of course, the big advancement in human misery this century has been that we've industrialized it. So in the light of what we've managed to do to ourselves in the last century claims like:
No, what is new is that first, we know of these things because of mass media compared to the late middle ages where noone knew or cared about the latest massacres in south-america with the indeginous people busy killing each other until the europeans arrived and finished the job for them, for example.
And second that almost all can agree upon the horrendous nature of those acts which are by most considered to be wrong beyond words compared to earlier ages were the next pogrom, witch hunt or forcefull removal of a people was considered no biggy.
Somehow I really just waited for WW2 to pop up as I knew it would but what you really need to understand is, that this was not a common event mirroring the state the world is in. WW1 and 2 were extreme exceptions in the history books, not the norm and if you look at the world directly at the end of those extreme event and at today, how can you not say we come a long way since then? Sure, not everyone is there yet but imho it is getting better.
Tyyr wrote:I'd recommend a history book.
Thanks, I recommend cutting back on wh40k literature,
Tyyr wrote:Like I said earlier, pretty much any combat intensive sport such as MMA or boxing.
Well to be honest I needed to google what MMA even is, so I guess the popularity of that sport isn't that high, at least outside the US, but correct me if I am wrong.
But we surley can agree that this MMA has not the popularity of Soccer, Football or Gladiator games in ancient rome, so this seems a rather lame argument pointing to a niché sport as an indicator for cultural progress imho.
Tyyr wrote:Sure we don't kill the loser ever forth or fifth time now a days. So hey, there's some societal advancement. We've gone from a combative sport with a 10 to 12% death rate to just wanting to watch a man be beaten into senselessness. Now that's some serious progress.
Sorry, boxing professionals would probably disagree and that you compare this sports to ancient events where slaves and prisoners publically got eaten and killed by animals or forced to kill each other is beyond ridiculous.
The be completely honest, the last man who comes to my mind who died for his sport is Ayrton Senna. There were maybe others but nevertheless those 10% figure seems a bit on the high side.
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