> as fo people are becoming more civilized? I don't think so. Some are, some > are becoming less civilized. Tun on the news, local, national, or world news.
The news is nothing but anecdotes. It focuses on the dramatic. That's fine as a social service, but not as a source of representative sampling. Interpersonal violence has smoothly declined for centuries (see Pinker's nice discussion of this at TED: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html). Slavery, sexism, homocidal homophobia, racism, state torture, sanctioned genocide, the belief that all non-human organisms lack moral value -- a million foul beliefs and practices that were normal as little as a century or even 50 years ago are now socially unacceptable. Our government is now forced to wage war in secret (e.g., Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador) or with huge disinformation campaigns that limit the time the wars can be waged. Examples like these can be compounded indefinitely. Though, perhaps, these trends are largely but not solely in the developed world, such as Europe. (As a side note, this is the thing I find most perplexing about conservativism. Conservatives appear to share a belief that things used to be better. That's astonishing to me. It's just false. As nuts as denying evolutionary theory.) We should consider these facts when evaluating the singularity. Will it be a spinning out of control, or will social factors continue to improve? cd --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
