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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The world now and then
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
I have been reading Tom Wright's book "Simply Good News"
As I read it, he is equivocal about whether the world has become a better place for people to live, over the last 2000 years.
I am convinced it has. My grand daughter seems to agree but puts it all down to the enlightenment etc. - which is a common view.
I know I am treading on someones threads but I think that today's world is the outcome (not finality) of the planting of the Kingdom of God by Jesus.
Does the Crew believe that there is less suffering and a better life overall for people now, than has ever been?
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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Raptor Eye
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# 16649
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Posted
It might seem that there is less suffering in the world when looking at it from the perspective of a country in which health care is readily available to most people.
Sadly, many people in the world don't have access to the basics of regular nourishing meals, clean water, shelter from the elements or health care.
I do put progress in some countries down to the effects of Christian values, but see this in waves rather than in a steady upward flow over time.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Have a look at Stephen Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature. He argues that not only has humanity become less violent, it is measurable (and he has about a million graphs to back it up). It is one of those books that you finish, and put down praying, "Oh Jesus, let Stephen Pinker be right!"
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I don't know about this. The problem I have is how you define "better".
I have already lived beyond my life expectancy 2000 years ago. But is that better? Or just different? What are the costs of this globally? Is the fact that I live longer an implication of a better world - or maybe a worse one.
And there are many places where life expectancy is little or no better than 2000 years ago. And there are many who would have died very early 2000 years ago, who now live a life of suffering. I am not saying that is necessarily worse, but does it make things better.
2000 years ago, I would have expected to have been threatened by my overlords. As long as I was subservient, this threat was largely mitigated. Today, I am threatened by people I have never met, and cannot mitigate this, because the threats are random.
Is this better? Is a world with more technology, with all the developments from 2000 years of religious and enlightenment development definitively better, when so much of that "progress" has an aspect that is aggressive and making the world a more dangerous place?
I don't know the answer. But I can see good arguments both ways. Sometimes I think all of the progress we have made has simply made new ways for some people to oppress others. It may be that it feels better, because I am more part of the oppressor than the oppressed.
There is a sense that the global community means that our understanding of oppression is much greater, and our possibilities of making a difference is greater, but we don't. In a world with vastly greater differences between the top 1% and the bottom 1%, I struggle to see that this is definitively better.
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Blog
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Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I have the feeling that in the West, we may have passed peek good. We will have it worse than our parents when it comes to housing, health care, pensions … And our children may have it worse than us.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Questions like this always hinge on who you mean. No doubt, that I am better off materially than my grandparents, who lived in a slum, with an outside loo, and never had foreign holidays.
However, are the Amazonian tribes better off, now that their land is encroached by logging and oil? They may get more money, but they may lose their land in the end, hunting rights, and so on.
Also depends on your criteria, material, cultural, spiritual, and so on.
I've no idea what effects Christianity has had, for good or ill. Have a guess.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
Pinker's book has been severely criticised by his peers.
Wright's book is considerably better and more realistic (and I am no fan of Tom Wright).
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I don't know about this. The problem I have is how you define "better".
I have already lived beyond my life expectancy 2000 years ago. But is that better? Or just different? What are the costs of this globally? Is the fact that I live longer an implication of a better world - or maybe a worse one.
No, it's a better one. If I thought a better world were one where I'd died at 40 I'd logically be booking a place at that Swiss clinic. No, we know it's better, because we go to the doctor when we're ill. If we didn't think it was better having doctors, why bother seeing them?
quote:
And there are many places where life expectancy is little or no better than 2000 years ago. And there are many who would have died very early 2000 years ago, who now live a life of suffering. I am not saying that is necessarily worse, but does it make things better.
And there are many who live lives where there is considerably less suffering than if they'd been alive 2000 years ago. Chronic pain's bad enough, but it's worse without morphine.
quote:
2000 years ago, I would have expected to have been threatened by my overlords. As long as I was subservient, this threat was largely mitigated. Today, I am threatened by people I have never met, and cannot mitigate this, because the threats are random.
But also very, very small. The threat of being mistreated by overlords was very real. The threat of being blown up by ISIS is absolutely tiny.
quote:
Is this better? Is a world with more technology, with all the developments from 2000 years of religious and enlightenment development definitively better, when so much of that "progress" has an aspect that is aggressive and making the world a more dangerous place?
I don't know the answer. But I can see good arguments both ways. Sometimes I think all of the progress we have made has simply made new ways for some people to oppress others. It may be that it feels better, because I am more part of the oppressor than the oppressed.
No, it feels better because I can get glasses to overcome the fact that I'd have been half blind 2000 years ago, unable to see clearly more than a few inches. I'd have probably been savagely beaten as a child frequently just a century or less ago, made to work in an unsafe factory or sent up chimneys. As an adult I could have looked forward to more of the same, or living a hand to mouth existence in the countryside at the mercy of the harvest. Just two hundred years ago, in this country, I could have been hanged at 8 years old for petty theft. Seems a better world to me.
quote:
There is a sense that the global community means that our understanding of oppression is much greater, and our possibilities of making a difference is greater, but we don't. In a world with vastly greater differences between the top 1% and the bottom 1%, I struggle to see that this is definitively better.
Sure, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
And for the majority of the human race -- the female portion -- it is unquestionably better now. Not for all women, all over, but more now than ever before. Birth control alone has changed everything.
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Birth control alone has changed everything.
Yes, and not forgetting that the chief body set up to promote the Kingdom of Christ has done, and still does it's damnedest to supress the use of contraceptives.
I call it a bit rich for Christianity to try and take the credit for the last 2000 years of human advancement. Take Ancient Egypt for example they look like they were pretty clued up. The first known civilisation to use condoms AIUI.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Birth control alone has changed everything.
Yes, and not forgetting that the chief body set up to promote the Kingdom of Christ has done, and still does it's damnedest to supress the use of contraceptives.
I call it a bit rich for Christianity to try and take the credit for the last 2000 years of human advancement. Take Ancient Egypt for example they look like they were pretty clued up. The first known civilisation to use condoms AIUI.
I just don't know how one can make such claims, except as a guess. I don't mean this purely in relation to Christianity, but most influences. How can we ever separate out all the variables, and ascribe especial significance to one of them?
They used to say that the French Revolution was caused by shifts in class structure - a guess, I think.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I have already lived beyond my life expectancy 2000 years ago. But is that better? Or just different?
Are you saying you would rather be dead? It's still an option if one is serious, but most people prefer life so I think the consensus is that it's better.
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
And there are many places where life expectancy is little or no better than 2000 years ago.
I don't think that is true. Life expectancy is up even in the poorest areas of Africa. Where is it no better?
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
Originally posted by rolyn: quote:
I call it a bit rich for Christianity to try and take the credit for the last 2000 years of human advancement. Take Ancient Egypt for example they look like they were pretty clued up. The first known civilisation to use condoms AIUI.
As I understand it, there have been about 16 major civilisations which have made little progress beyond some advanced maths and ceramics. Very little in the way of care for the individual citizen, let alone women.
According to Rodney Stark (The rise of Christianity) it was the change, started by the effect of Jesus’ life and death which has made our Western world what it is.
Maybe the Church has fouled things up at times but seems to be learning better ways now.
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
Karl - I do take your points. I was trying to question whether the things that we assume are "better" actually are.
In evolutionary terms, of course, my life expectancy is irrelevant. I have done my job, so anything else is irrelevant. If globally, my life expectancy was at the cost of others, then is that worth while? And do I know what the cost of my living longer actually is?
The significant increase in mental health issues we have seen in the West over the last decade or so might be a suggestion that life is not better for us. It is different, but until we define "better" in a realistic way, we cannot say what is better and what is not.
So yes, I do think we - those I know and associate with - have life very much better than we would have 2000 years ago. Just this week, I had someone take a look inside my stomach, while I had no memory of the process - that is a remarkable achievement. I do not question that this technological progress saves lives. But does that make life better? On a global level? Because the cost of doing that might be better spent on less well off people and allowing them to eat for another day.
I don't think the question is an easy one. It seems like an easy question, but I think Wright has a point in raising it, and questioning it. It doesn't mean that he is right, but that it is a valid question to ask.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
I think for women it is an easy question.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
Abso-blooming-lutely.
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
In evolutionary terms, of course, my life expectancy is irrelevant. I have done my job, so anything else is irrelevant. If globally, my life expectancy was at the cost of others, then is that worth while? And do I know what the cost of my living longer actually is?
The biggest boost to average life expectancy in most places has been in the form of reduced infant mortality (anyone who's missed handing in homework knows what zeroes do to averages), which is actually a pretty huge deal "in evolutionary terms".
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
Originally posted bySchroedinger's cat :
quote:
On a global level? Because the cost of doing that might be better spent on less well off people and allowing them to eat for another day.
There was a news report the other day that more than half the worlds population was now obese.
It does seem to me that on balance the Crew agree that the world is becoming a better place to live.
Even the Amazonian tribes who might say that they want to live the traditional way of life seem to dress in western clothes if they can get some.
quote:
until we define "better" in a realistic way, we cannot say what is better and what is not.
'Better' seems to mean a preferable way of life to the one you have and I think the tendency is a drift towards western values which have a Christian basis.
What used to puzzle me is that so much good work is being done by people who worry little about Christianity - let alone its traditional message.
This now appears to me to be the Kingdom of God working itself out irrespective of the Christian Church. I'm not trying to put a Christian gloss on Stevan Pinker's book but I am convinced it all started 2000 years ago and the world will continue to get better.
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Pinker's book has been severely criticised by his peers.
The criticism, from my reading, is mostly quibbling. I think that Pinker's larger points stand.
Another take on this is Max Weber's concept of the rationalization of society. As time goes by the advance of knowledge and technology lead to societies that are organized, so that there are, for example, laws based on something approximating rational thought, and where those laws are enforced.
These advances generally lead to improvements in fairness and equity, in nutrition and healthcare, and in the reduction of crime.
However the improvements that come about as a result of these advances are mostly confined to areas that are tangible and measurable.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
Not having read Pinker's book, how does it explain the incredible changes in western civilisation when so many others (e.g. chinese, indian, aztec or dare I say it, Islamic)have failed miserably to do anything like it?
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
Are we talking about changes in attitudes or changes in technology?
Deep seated attitudes have only changed relatively recently. Taking the one example of improved freedom for women in parts of the world. How can this be attributed to a religious doctrine that has advocated female suppression for two Millennia?
The rapid changes in the technology, which most marvel as having improved our lot, have only come about largely through massive advances in the exploitation of oil and electronics
As my sig shows I do subscribe to a form of Christian faith following an adult conversion, so I could believe that Jesus pointing the way to a new relationship with God has, in a mysterious indirect way, been responsible for all subsequent human advancement, (everything being God's Will etc.). But looking at the near inversely proportional decline in Christianity in the very places where most recent advances have occurred makes it extremely hard for me to award the credit to this particular faith over and above other factors.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
I think one could have made just as good a case that the world was getting inexorably better as Pinker does 105 years ago. Whether you could have 95 years ago I'm not sure. There's a risk of sampling error.
The overall thesis that the world is getting better is probably right, if we discount the possibility of environmental collapse in the next hundred years.
I think that's a large thing to discount.
On the other hand, I think there's a danger of the thesis being put to political misuse, by breeding complacency about our current short-term course. In particular, I get the impression that in some ways it is a successor to Fukuyama's End of History thesis, which basically proclaimed that neoliberal capitalism had won and history had come to a .
Just because neoliberal capitalism has come along at the end of six thousand years of improvement in the human condition doesn't necessarily mean it's entitled to take all the credit. Nor even that it's continuing the same trajectory. There's some evidence that it's putting the trajectory into reverse. It would be dangerous to give the neoliberal version of capitalism the credit for a period of growth that happened under the Keynesian post-war consensus.
Another problem that the thesis might make us overlook is that while we're I think at the longest period of continuous peace in west and central Europe and north America ever, this isn't true of the rest of the world. There's reason to think that some of the peace and prosperity in west Europe and North America is bought at the price of instability to the Middle East and Africa. It may not be the case that the same trajectory can be followed in the rest of the world as has been followed in west Europe and north America, unless west Europe and north America make some sacrifices. And the thesis, it seems to me, might encourage us to think no sacrifices need be made.
[ 13. April 2016, 22:58: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Pinker's thesis is not that the world is getting better per se. This is difficult to measure. It is that the world is getting less violent and painful, which is easier to quantify. The number of people who die untimely, the number who are executed, the relative ookiness and goriness of their ends -- these can be tabulated more easily. And it could well be that if you do not die by torture your life is better, right there, putting every other consideration aside. He argues that even taking in all the widely-known bloodbaths of the last century-- the World Wars, 9-11, nuclear blasts, etc. -- we are still less violent than ever before in human history. We are deceived by these events' nearness to us in time, their attendant anecdotal power (Grandpa fought in the Great War) and by their well-documented nature -- the newsreels and photographs and in-your-face records. But analyzed numerically, we are getting better. Please God, may it be true.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
The significant increase in mental health issues we have seen in the West over the last decade or so might be a suggestion that life is not better for us. It is different, but until we define "better" in a realistic way, we cannot say what is better and what is not.
The apparent increase in mental health issues may well be better recognition. I don't think we have any direct evidence of an increase.
I think staying alive is better in a realistic way. Violent death is also a realistic criteria for judging improvement. There are also DALYs and QALYs that can be used to compare lives saved in health economics.
What would you want from a more realistic criteria?
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Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
Originally posted by rolyn
quote:
Are we talking about changes in attitudes or changes in technology?
Surely it is changes in attitude which have made the world better. No civilisations prior to the Christian one have been taught to relieve suffering at the cost of personal sacrifice except that "sometimes a good man will lay down his life for his friend".
Certainly the links between technological improvements, say the invention of reading glasses, and attitudes are difficult to show but in today’s world it is bloody obvious.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
The significant increase in mental health issues we have seen in the West over the last decade or so might be a suggestion that life is not better for us. It is different, but until we define "better" in a realistic way, we cannot say what is better and what is not.
The apparent increase in mental health issues may well be better recognition. I don't think we have any direct evidence of an increase.
I think staying alive is better in a realistic way. Violent death is also a realistic criteria for judging improvement. There are also DALYs and QALYs that can be used to compare lives saved in health economics.
What would you want from a more realistic criteria?
Your point about mental health resonated. It's very difficult to look back and say, oh, people were less fucked up, when in fact, there was very little recourse for them, if they did feel fucked up. It couldn't be named in a secular context.
Freud used to comment about Viennese women, who were married and sexually frustrated, that at least modern society enables them to take a lover. The alternative was silent misery, but then it became possible to give this a name, and the psychological disciplines were born, (approximately speaking, since Nietzsche had anticipated most of it).
But I think the point made by a few people about women is very striking - here we can see repression being lifted to an extent. After all, married women were non-persons in England via coverture.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Another problem that the thesis might make us overlook is that while we're I think at the longest period of continuous peace in west and central Europe and north America ever, this isn't true of the rest of the world.
No it isn't, but the rest of the world isn't any worse than it used to be either. An improvement in one area while everywhere else remains the same still adds up to an overall improvement.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quetzalcoatl wrote: quote:
But I think the point made by a few people about women is very striking - here we can see repression being lifted to an extent. After all, married women were non-persons in England via coverture.
That's true. But it relies upon using a time-frame niftily chosen to show up the fact.
Coverture was a Norman introduction. It's original imposition was upon the Norman ruling class, and on such of the Anglo-Saxon underclass that had any resources that had not been appropriated. The further you went down the hierarchy, the less it meant.
But then came the regularization of the law and its application - a long process that you could probably say started with Magna Carta, but took off following the collapse of feudalism. And that meant more and more that coverture got applied to the situation of all women. In this respect, probably the worst time to be a married woman was probably 1881, the year before the Married Women's Property Act.
In the longer run, we would have to consider the position of women in Anglo-Saxon society (no coverture), Romano-British society (probably depended on which kind of marriage you had opted for), and pre-Roman Celtic society (hard to tell, but it appears to be much more equitable than most till recently).
So in the long term, the argument about repression in the context of the right of married women to manage their own civic affairs depends very much on the timeframe you put around it. There has been no long-term march towards the sunny uplands. Indeed, there have been centuries of marching backwards.
The reason for holding forth on this is that the grand narrative can all too easily obscure the fine detail of what is going on, but it is the fine detail that is what we experience in our own lives.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Good points, HRB. It also depends on how much one applies the theory of patriarchy, i.e. that men have generally controlled women, women's bodies, women's sexuality, and so on, since the year dot.
I don't know enough about it in historical and anthropological terms, to say whether or not this is an over-generalization, and whether, for example, it has been untrue in some societies at some times.
I suppose one interesting factor today is that it's possible to have a theory of patriarchy, although again, it depends on how it's applied. But probably some feminists would see this as consciousness raising, or consciousness having been risen!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Pinker's thesis is not that the world is getting better per se. This is difficult to measure. It is that the world is getting less violent and painful, which is easier to quantify. The number of people who die untimely, the number who are executed, the relative ookiness and goriness of their ends -- these can be tabulated more easily. And it could well be that if you do not die by torture your life is better, right there, putting every other consideration aside. He argues that even taking in all the widely-known bloodbaths of the last century-- the World Wars, 9-11, nuclear blasts, etc. -- we are still less violent than ever before in human history. We are deceived by these events' nearness to us in time, their attendant anecdotal power (Grandpa fought in the Great War) and by their well-documented nature -- the newsreels and photographs and in-your-face records. But analyzed numerically, we are getting better. Please God, may it be true.
I share your desire that it may be so. But contra Freddy, the critiques of Pinker's thesis are pretty weighty. I'm not sure what the outcome of considering both together might be. It's a work in progress as far as I am concerned.
But in any event, I agree with you that Pinker's thesis is not about the world being a better place, full stop. It is in respect of one (very important) area of improvement. ISTM that most people have been answering some question other than in the OP in one way or another. So maybe 2/10 for effort alone.
His argument is a form of narrative that has been around for a long time. The academic areas of History of Ideas and Intellectual History have quite a bit of literature on it. His main departure is to back it up with statistics, thereby attempting to make it empirically demonstrable. So any critique will need to address those areas.
However, I have to say that we've been long on assertion so far. That's not going to get us anywhere, and actually is disrespectful of Pinker's approach. Moreover, the original OP asked us to comment on a choice of two views - Pinker's, as discussed above, and Wright's, which if I understand it, is that progress is possible, in certain areas, but is not guaranteed.
[ 14. April 2016, 11:28: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
I get the impression that some have read Pinker‘s “THE BETTER ANGELS……..etc“. I have no wish to immediately start ploughing through his book, but I am genuinely curious, - does he suggest why all other major civilisations (e.g. chinese, indian, aztec or dare I say it, Islamic) have failed to initiate the technological advance we see today?
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
No. Because the book isn't about technology or its impact. It's about violence and pain. Which of course technology can help you with, both for better (anesthesia) or for worse (atomic bombs).
One of the theses of his book is that we no longer approve of violence and torture. It used to be that torturing people, or animals, was an entertainment. Bull-baiting, dogfights, setting slaves to kill each other in the arena, watching a hanging with drawing and quartering -- all fun! Let's go, and bring the kids! Agony and bloodshed did not elicit sympathy and empathy. It elicited "C'mon, sock him again!" Nor did Christianity (for a long time) ameliorate this much.
We don't feel that way any more. The social disapproval now is overwhelming, to the point where people who want to do bullfights have to argue in favor of it. Executions are on the decline. Vegetarianism is on the rise. We are a kinder, more sympathetic species now, and this is good.
I was in Sausalito, CA some years ago. It is on San Francisco Bay, and there was a man fishing from the dock. He caught a fish, quite a big one, and pulled it out. He seemed about to hit it on the head and take it home for dinner. (I believe there was a companion with whom he was discussing this plan.) All of a sudden the townspeople gathered around. Ominously. There were spectators, many of them, and they were not there for the death. They were there to indicate that that fish had better be released and tossed back into the water. I don't think that the fishermen would have been strung up from the nearest lamp post, had they dared to kill that fish. But the feeling of the community was unanimous. You could fish from our dock. But you couldn't kill the fish.
I will point out that this is in northern California, which may not be like where you and I live. But consider how very, very different this community feeling is, than it would have been at any point in our past.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
I'm not trying to put a Christian gloss on Stevan Pinker's book but I am convinced it all started 2000 years ago and the world will continue to get better.
I used to think that - a combination of my socialism and the idea that we are building God's kingdom on earth - but I stopped belioeving it when thatcher came to power in 1978 and undid all the improvements we had mae - and again when the coalition came to power in 2010.
For every step forwards, it seems we fall back too.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Another problem that the thesis might make us overlook is that while we're I think at the longest period of continuous peace in west and central Europe and north America ever, this isn't true of the rest of the world.
No it isn't, but the rest of the world isn't any worse than it used to be either. An improvement in one area while everywhere else remains the same still adds up to an overall improvement.
It does. But it doesn't mean that the process that leads to improvement in one area is necessarily going to lead to an improvement in every area.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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TurquoiseTastic
Fish of a different color
# 8978
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
I'm not trying to put a Christian gloss on Stevan Pinker's book but I am convinced it all started 2000 years ago and the world will continue to get better.
I used to think that - a combination of my socialism and the idea that we are building God's kingdom on earth - but I stopped belioeving it when thatcher came to power in 1978 and undid all the improvements we had mae - and again when the coalition came to power in 2010.
For every step forwards, it seems we fall back too.
Crikey - so Hiroshima, Hitler, Stalin and Mao failed to dent your optimistic view of history, but a few years of old Maggie blew it away?
Posts: 1092 | From: Hants., UK | Registered: Jan 2005
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
I get the impression that some have read Pinker‘s “THE BETTER ANGELS……..etc“. I have no wish to immediately start ploughing through his book, but I am genuinely curious, - does he suggest why all other major civilisations (e.g. chinese, indian, aztec or dare I say it, Islamic) have failed to initiate the technological advance we see today?
I would say that he suggests that all civilizations are impacted by these changes - some more, some less.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
One of the theses of his book is that we no longer approve of violence and torture. It used to be that torturing people, or animals, was an entertainment.
I agree that this is a truly remarkable development, and one that is emphasized in the book.
One thing that strikes me, however, is how the progress in these areas is limited to things that are tangible and measurable. Violence and cruelty are sensitive to exposure - and once exposed people find ways to oppose them.
The same is true for hunger, disease, fraud and theft. Once they are detected and exposed people do everything they can to eradicate them.
One measure of a developed economy is the extent to which the above issues have been successfully dealt with.
But there are deeper, less tangible issues that have enormous effects on our well-being. Things like our relationship with God, sexual morality, our success in finding friendship, and forming intimate relationships, are things that do not seem to get better in a more organized society. In many ways the developments that bring about so many obvious improvements seem to do the opposite in these areas.
I'm not sure how Wright deals with this aspect of how society has changed.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
But there are deeper, less tangible issues that have enormous effects on our well-being. Things like our relationship with God, sexual morality, our success in finding friendship, and forming intimate relationships, are things that do not seem to get better in a more organized society. In many ways the developments that bring about so many obvious improvements seem to do the opposite in these areas. [/QB]
I think it is OK that we are dealing with the low-hanging fruit first. If you are about to be drawn and quartered (and the entire town is gathering around to enjoy your agony, passing the popcorn and bringing the lawn chairs and the frisbees) then the concerns you mention are less relevant. To go back to the OP, I think it is fair to say that we are indeed better than we were two thousand years ago. We can do better yet. But we are better now.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
But there are deeper, less tangible issues that have enormous effects on our well-being. Things like our relationship with God, sexual morality, our success in finding friendship, and forming intimate relationships, are things that do not seem to get better in a more organized society. In many ways the developments that bring about so many obvious improvements seem to do the opposite in these areas.
I think it is OK that we are dealing with the low-hanging fruit first. If you are about to be drawn and quartered (and the entire town is gathering around to enjoy your agony, passing the popcorn and bringing the lawn chairs and the frisbees) then the concerns you mention are less relevant. To go back to the OP, I think it is fair to say that we are indeed better than we were two thousand years ago. We can do better yet. But we are better now. [/QB]
These things vary from country to country, so you'll need to refer to your own histories elsewhere. But you mentioned hanging, drawing and quartering, which was an especially barbaric English method of execution. Probably the most insanely sadistic that can be imagined, up there with crucifixion. And as it's one we have to be honest is part of our history I hope you won't mind if I address it.
But in the words of the English Legal History website - quote:
The legal history of capital punishment in the United Kingdom is an interesting one and ranges across many centuries from the extreme of having no crimes strictly punishable by death to a multitude and back to none.
Which makes my point really. When it came to capital punishment, we were in a poor way by the 18th century. It took us around six centuries to get there, but we managed to move from no crimes punishable by death to 220 of them at peak. Including "being in the company of gypsies for one month". In fact it was one of my unsung heroes, Samuel Romilly, who deserves a lot of the credit for starting to push things in the opposite direction. He only managed to get rid of two of them, but he changed the mood of the country. It won't be a big surprise that he was a supporter of William Wilberforce in the abolition of slavery. However, the point is that if you were writing in, say, 1800, the narrative of improvement in violence inflicted by the state, in terms of executions, would have been bleak indeed, and entirely running in the wrong direction.
And the other narrative about the crowd baying for blood is a lot more complex too. A more realistic assessment would acknowledge that if the criminal was unpopular for some reason, then yes, that could happen. But things could easily run the other way. If this was a political execution of a popular figure, the whole thing could result in a riot. Executions could be high-risk events for the powerful as well as for the victims.
Mary Tudor took the throne as a popular monarch. The country was broadly fed up with the austerities of Edward VI. But Mary became Bloody Mary and the country grew weary of the executions. And even though Elizabeth I was far more canny, some of the executions of catholic priests under her reign are recorded as going down very badly with the populace.
This is only one area of violence of course. I'm only trying to point out that - as before - when you look at the evidence in more detail, some of these assumptions of movement in one direction look rather shaky. And they are contingent on the timeframe you choose to examine them in.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
In the longer run, we would have to consider the position of women in Anglo-Saxon society (no coverture), Romano-British society (probably depended on which kind of marriage you had opted for), and pre-Roman Celtic society (hard to tell, but it appears to be much more equitable than most till recently).
And the experience of women in China. I read a history book that explained how despite all the depredations and oppression of Maoist China it nevertheless seems likely that the lot of women improved dramatically from second class, non-professional, foot-bound, domestic servitude under imperial China to communist equality.
I thought it was a very striking point and I have to admit had not really occurred to me before.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
That's probably right, mdijon. I was particularly addressing quetzalcoatl's point about coverture, which of course would not apply to China.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I think it is OK that we are dealing with the low-hanging fruit first.
I think that is the right way to look at it.
Interestingly, this was the kind of benefit that Rome brought to the world when Jesus was born. I think the "Life of Brian" points this out eloquently. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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shadeson
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# 17132
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Posted
Originally posted by Freddy quote:
I would say that he suggests that all civilizations are impacted by these changes - some more, some less.
.......Sorry I can't make head nor tail of this answer to my question which asked if Pinker's book explained why previous civilisations had failed to make the technological leap of the Christian one.
quote:
But there are deeper, less tangible issues that have enormous effects on our well-being. Things like our relationship with God, sexual morality, our success in finding friendship, and forming intimate relationships, are things that do not seem to get better in a more organized society. In many ways the developments that bring about so many obvious improvements seem to do the opposite in these areas.
I think that you have come near the truth here.
Tom Wright takes a conventional view of personal salvation in the book but fails, I think, to make the most important connection.
That is that we are creatures of nurture far more than nature. So a change in society can occur, but only over many generations.
Without a conviction of the truth about ourselves, nothing will ever start to change. As is evidenced by the fact of the kind of stasis that was the only result of civilizations prior to Christian.
I believe this is the whole point of Jesus teaching about salt, yeast, light etc. changing society for the better. And more poignantly, at this time of year, about a seed falling into the ground and dying.
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
.......Sorry I can't make head nor tail of this answer to my question which asked if Pinker's book explained why previous civilisations had failed to make the technological leap of the Christian one.
shadeson - I presume you mean the current technological paradigm? (I don't think you should overlook the historical pre-eminence of other cultures' technical achievements which in their time eclipsed those of our current culture.) If so, it's an interesting question, but you are probably asking it of the wrong writer. In fact you probably need to ask it of historians and philosophers of science.
I can't remember whether Pinker touches on it - he does sometimes go off-piste in the book, but I originally read a borrowed copy so can't look it up. But as Brenda Clough said, the book is about something else.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
Originally posted by Freddy quote:
I would say that he suggests that all civilizations are impacted by these changes - some more, some less.
.......Sorry I can't make head nor tail of this answer to my question which asked if Pinker's book explained why previous civilisations had failed to make the technological leap of the Christian one.
Thanks for clarifying. I thought you meant current ones. ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
I don't think that Pinker really gets involved in comparing cultures. He mainly starts from the premise that declining violence follows the increase in knowledge and technology, so he goes with that in whatever form the progress takes.
Personally I am happy to attribute all of it to the work of God in Judaism and Christianity - and in fact to His work in all world religions.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by Freddy
But there are deeper, less tangible issues that have enormous effects on our well-being. Things like our relationship with God, sexual morality, our success in finding friendship, and forming intimate relationships, are things that do not seem to get better in a more organized society. In many ways the developments that bring about so many obvious improvements seem to do the opposite in these areas.
Of course, such things are hard to quantify. We might know that Old Noll and Charles I had loving and intimate relationships with their respective wives, Henry VIII and George IV not so much, but this doesn't really tell us much about the totality who were historically silent. The fact that between 3% and 10% of adult women living in Victorian London seemed to have engaged in, at least part time, prostitution, suggests that things in the garden weren't particuarly rosy, (though London, of course, isn't the world, and great port city will always be overrepresented in the prostitution stakes).
I think it extremely likely that things on the personal intimacy scheme haven't changed that much, or, if they have they have changed for the better, but the perception is altered by the amount of data available now as opposed to then. We have to be as careful to discount the "Eastenders" effect now as we are to discount the unofficially censored historical records of those with a vested interest in presenting their society as more moral than it really was.
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
I have been reading Tom Wright's book "Simply Good News"
As I read it, he is equivocal about whether the world has become a better place for people to live, over the last 2000 years.
I am convinced it has. My grand daughter seems to agree but puts it all down to the enlightenment etc. - which is a common view.
I know I am treading on someones threads but I think that today's world is the outcome (not finality) of the planting of the Kingdom of God by Jesus.
Does the Crew believe that there is less suffering and a better life overall for people now, than has ever been?
Can I just take us back to the OP?
My interest was initially engaged by the suggestion that Pinker's book may address some aspects of this. I haven't read Wright's book, but if he is indeed expressing equivocation on whether "the world is a better place", that's not really disagreeing with Pinker. For all I know, he may agree with the thesis that levels of violence have been falling.
But on the subject of The Enlightenment -
quote:
My grand daughter seems to agree but puts it all down to the enlightenment etc. - which is a common view.
Yes, it's often heard, though rarely backed up with facts. For myself, I would want to acknowledge the positives, but we shouldn't just airbrush away the negatives as well. And there were plenty of them. I don't raise the fact to start a debate, but simply to say that if you want to address the relative levels of suffering, happiness etc. pre- and post- some event or paradigm shift, then just looking at the good whilst ignoring the bad makes no sense at all. Your answer can only be "better" because your way of investigating it has pre-determined the matter already.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
On the issue of bloody spectacles, I am reminded of this section in St Augustine's Confessions:
quote:
13. He, not relinquishing that worldly way which his parents had bewitched him to pursue, had gone before me to Rome, to study law, and there he was carried away in an extraordinary manner with an incredible eagerness after the gladiatorial shows. For, being utterly opposed to and detesting such spectacles, he was one day met by chance by various of his acquaintance and fellow-students returning from dinner, and they with a friendly violence drew him, vehemently objecting and resisting, into the amphitheatre, on a day of these cruel and deadly shows, he thus protesting: Though you drag my body to that place, and there place me, can you force me to give my mind and lend my eyes to these shows? Thus shall I be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them. They hearing this, dragged him on nevertheless, desirous, perchance, to see whether he could do as he said. When they had arrived there, and had taken their places as they could, the whole place became excited with the inhuman sports. But he, shutting up the doors of his eyes, forbade his mind to roam abroad after such naughtiness; and would that he had shut his ears also! For, upon the fall of one in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirring him strongly, he, overcome by curiosity, and prepared as it were to despise and rise superior to it, no matter what it were, opened his eyes, and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he desired to see, was in his body; and he fell more miserably than he on whose fall that mighty clamour was raised, which entered through his ears, and unlocked his eyes, to make way for the striking and beating down of his soul, [...] For, directly he saw that blood, he therewith imbibed a sort of savageness; nor did he turn away, but fixed his eye, drinking in madness unconsciously, and was delighted with the guilty contest, and drunken with the bloody pastime. Nor was he now the same he came in, but was one of the throng he came unto, and a true companion of those who had brought him there.
Which suggests to me both a.) Even in Roman times some people thought bloodthirsty sports were immoral, but also b.) If any of us were magically transported to that time, we might find we have more bloodlust in us than we want to admit.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
I suppose that many Christians want to see Christianity as implicated in modern progress, since presumably the 'God of history' leads somewhere, or has a goal, a direction. Fair enough, but it seems a bit lame to me to say that there has been progress in the West, the West has been mainly Christian, therefore the root of progress is Christian. Or maybe that is too crude a summary.
It sounds like post hoc ergo propter hoc.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
There is another way to think about this. Before you can do it, you have to imagine it. (Alan Moore, the comic book writer, has said that all wars are firstly a failure of the imagination. Fiction writers have the specific task of imagining it, and holding it up so that the rest of us can look at it and try it on for size.)
So: what Jesus did was to hold it up. Love your neighbor. Don't sit down and enjoy that Samaritan's misery, but help him. Neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free, but a family of God.
It might not have been utterly novel -- you can probably dig up an older iteration of these concepts somewhere in classical writing. But Jesus was the first one to run it up the flagpole in a major way. You can't be a Christian without at least paying lip service to what He said. You can imagine it.
And once we could see it, and try it on, we gradually became able to do it. And so this may account for our dim and halting progress in the past two millennia. Because we have indeed progressed, yay, go us!
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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