No, no, no claim made one way or the other. It was just a random parenthetical association observed while responding.
On Feb 22, 12:43 pm, David Ennocenti <[email protected]> wrote: > Are you calling me a conservative? > Dave E. > > > > On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 10:16 AM, delancey <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > 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_viole... > > ). > > 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 > > -- > David Ennocenti > 9 West Crest Drive > Rochester, NY 14606 > 585-426-2348 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
