The Myth of Increasing Violence

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Originally Posted by thir

So, what, IYO, is civilization?

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In my view, civilization is, quite simply, people learning to get along with one another. People accepting their differences from one another. People realizing that skin color, or religious beliefs, or sexual orientation do not in and of themselves make people bad.

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Has it to do with cities? Do big cities make crime go down?

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Not necessarily, nor do they necessarily make crime go up. Cities which become well integrated, with people mingling and learning from one another, will tend to reduce crime, I believe. Segregating people into different color groups, or different religious groups, or different cultural groups, tends to make things worse, though. People in such situations tend to cling to old hatreds and rivalries, simply because they aren't taught not to.

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Are civilized societies bigger, and does that mean fewer wars, or just bigger ones?

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I think that, as societies grow larger they do tend to become more civilized, simply because you have more and more people, and more diverse groups of people, living in close proximity to one another. And just like society, wars become bigger because there are more people to fight them. But I think they also tend to become less common, in general, and shorter. It's unlikely that we will ever see something like the Hundred Years War, with rival kingdoms squabbling incessantly over nothing. On the other hand, modern technology (which does not, in and of itself, define civilization) makes wars far more expensive, and deadly, and thus less acceptable to civilized societies.

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What about religion, are civilized societies more or less religious?

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Whew! Talk about opening a can of worms! Well, since this is all about opinion, No! I don't think civilized societies are more religious. In fact, I think religion is a major obstacle to true civilization. Unless, of course, you want your civilization to be completely homogeneous. Too many religions promote hatred of others, rather than love for all, as they want to claim. Hatred of gays, hatred of other religions, hatred of women, hatred of non-believers. These teachings are antithetical to civilization. They tend to divide groups rather than bring them together. Of course, by bringing groups together and learning other peoples ways I think we learn to step back from religious thought and become far more secular. People, we learn, are far more important, and interesting, than gods.

Here's a little piece that may explain this better than I can:

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A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.

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What about personal freedom? Thomas Hobbes, from 1670s, mentioned by SP, apparently thought that witout strong central control it would be the jungle law, which he saw as 'everybody against everybody else.'

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Personal freedom is paramount in a truly civilized society! (One more mark against religion, IMO.) But people do have to realize that your freedom ends where it interferes with my freedom, and vice versa. When people accept personal responsibility for their actions you reduce the need for strong central control. But there must always be some way to protect the people from those who, despite every opportunity, reject a moral life and embrace a criminal one. Some central control is desirable, but this is one case where, for the most part, less is better. To a point.

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Originally Posted by Thorne

In my view, civilization is, quite simply, people learning to get along with one another. People accepting their differences from one another. People realizing that skin color, or religious beliefs, or sexual orientation do not in and of themselves make people bad.

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I think that's too narrow a definition, though it's complicated by the fact that we use "civilisation" in two senses, one practical, one moral.

Sticking strictly to the practical, I would define civilisation as any system of social mechanisms that allow people to co-operate on a larger scale than the clan or tribe. The great success strategy of humans is co-operation plus variability. Plenty of species co-operate at all doing the same thing, but humans achieved something greater by co-operating while doing a load of different things - hunting, gathering, making tools, preparing food, minding childen etc, all co-ordinated by a level of social communication so detailed that it needed a special kind of brain to handle it.

But there's a limit to the number of people that can be organised that way. It has been observed that hunter-gatherer clans, once they get past a certain size, will split and some of them move on. It's assumed that this is because their territory won't support more people, but I suspect it's more that the social structure breaks down when there are too many people, and subgroups form spontaneously.

But we know from the Neolithic farming towns that at some point people learnt to hold a bigger group together. They developed structures, ways of organising that didn't depend on everyone knowing everyone else, so that a community could go on co-ordinating its efforts while growing beyond the limits of a tribe and spreading beyond a closed group. The benefit was to enlarge the power of co-ordination plus variability. The bigger the group, the more different specialists it can support, and the better they can get at their specialty; the wider the group's territory, the more different natural resources it can exploit at once. Cultural natural selection favoured the groups that could find ways to stay co-ordinated while growing even bigger and wider spread, from village to town, from town to city with its hinterland of towns, from city-state to nation (and, if the gods spare us, from nation to world.) And those methods of co-ordination are what we call civilisation.

As I said at the start, this is a strictly pragmatic definition and says nothing about whether those methods are good or bad. In practice, they have ranged from democracy to tyranny. But the verdict of history is that tyrannies, though they look superficially more efficient, do not make the best use of human potential, and therefore eventually either fall to or evolve into systems that leave more space for individual growth and initiative.

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Originally Posted by leo9

we know from the Neolithic farming towns that at some point people learnt to hold a bigger group together. They developed structures, ways of organising that didn't depend on everyone knowing everyone else, so that a community could go on co-ordinating its efforts while growing beyond the limits of a tribe and spreading beyond a closed group.

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Which deflates your suspicion that the hunter/gatherers broke up more due to population pressure than because of the amount of food they could extract from an area. The biggest difference was that the farming communities could support larger groups of people on a comparatively smaller territory.

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And those methods of co-ordination are what we call civilisation.

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Which is basically the point I was making when I said, "people learning to get along with one another." I think that morality evolves from these mechanisms, gradually changing the way people think. Of course, technology plays a big roll, too. Better technology means more and more people can live together as a community, while demanding a higher level of education of the people in order to utilize the technology.

Is there an upper limit to how many people can form an effective community? I don't know. But I think if we can look past our cultural and (yes, I will say it) religious differences, I think it's possible that the world-wide community might be possible. Better education and better communications will help make that possible, as the Internet is showing us already. When you can chat with someone halfway around the world you quickly learn that he is not the demon you've been told he was. And that leads to tolerance and understanding.

I was sorry to leave this interesting discussion, but due to a minor accident with my eye I was barred from the pc for a while, and then had to catch up with stuff..I hope it hasn't gone out of interest at this point.

So, trying to find the thread again:

thir:
Then, when times chance, so does this. I agree with that too, which is why I do not agree in a steady curve. Things do change.

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]Yep, but where knowledge of what worked so good before isnt lost, once times allow for things to be prosperous again the population having evolved from the previous experience as a "social animal with a group mentality" also changes, hence why violence levels are decreasing when properisty allows more and more. In other words, human beings in general are also changing on a gradual curve (evolution) and we retain those things that benifited us where possible too.

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I read you like this: the theory you describe says that we keep getting more social, even if we screw up underways. I still feel that there is no real evidence that things are going that way. I'll get back to that.

thir:
The other reason I do not agree with it is that I don't think that we sort of represent the pinnacle of human developement. There is no straight line there either, I think we are what we are, and various parts of what we are will be expressed according to circumstances. My guess is that we have had cultures and civilisations better than the ones we have now, as well as worse. And so the curve of violence will fluxuate.

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You could describe it as like being the branches of a tree, but being trapped here on the same island in space for the time being we will eventually start to recombinate back unto ourselves. So in many ways we, becuase of our very presence here at this moment in time, are much more advanced than many of our predessesors in so far as what we know with certiantly about them (alien origens for humanity theories aside of course).

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What do you mean by recombining into ourselves? I took that the idea was that we started as violent and went less so?

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Oh its capable of going into a full relapse if situations develope that somehow make violence more productive than cooperation and tolereance ever come back into existance for any extensive period of time.

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It seems that the theory sees 'humanity' as one homogeneous group, all the same all over the world, and no difference between rulers and ruled either. This is where I do not see it at all, because the greedy and the power mongers - individual people or groups - will always use violence on various levels to attain their goals, while real people usually do not.

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So long as the human brain sees violence as a potential successfull solution to its problems it will seek that solution when it believes all over solutions will fail or the benifit there of is preceived to exceed the consensquences.

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Same argument: 'the human mind' is not the same thing repeated a certain number of billions of time, nor do each mind have equal influence on how things will go. It all seems to taken out of context


thir:
But the point is, that his starting graf is not valid.

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I dont know what you mean at all about a starting graf?

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SP started his journey through history with H-Gs and went through the ages to present day, trying to proof with his first graf that H-g society were the most violent of all ages, and that it went less violent from then on. But since that graf is clearly invalid, his starting point is false.

I dont think that the validity of such a graph is very far at all from how people were back then based on the evidence Ive seen during my own reaserch.

The theory is looking at human group behavioral trends in general over a long period of time, as opposed to giving focus on individual actions.

In other words the focus is on the entire forrest, not a few tress here and there.

Taking things out of that context to focus on specific areas becuase one loves the new age ideal of peacful primitive societiy being preferable to modern scoiety as somthing to be sought after (which history shows us to be way off the mark) will of course make one think that the pattern isnt there, even if its a spurious coorelation.

Its like the difference between making an argument based on looking at the behavior of an individual cell in the body thats been attacked by a virus instead of looking at the overall responce of the entire immune system over the life span of an organism's homeostatic proccess.

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Originally Posted by denuseri

Taking things out of that context to focus on specific areas becuase one loves the new age ideal of peacful primitive societiy being preferable to modern scoiety as somthing to be sought after (which history shows us to be way off the mark) will of course make one think that the pattern isnt there, even if its a spurious coorelation.

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There is SOME validity to this kind of thinking, though. In small groups the more primitive societies did tend to be more peaceful amongst themselves. Interpersonal relationships within the tribe tended to be polite and non-violent. So there is something to say for the peaceful primitives. Of course, when you went outside the tribe all bets were off. Intertribal conflicts were common, and brutal. Not so peaceful there.

What I think we see in the development of civilization is, to some extent, an expanding of the concept of tribe. Our tribe is larger now, and in some respects can be considered to be world wide. It's hard to think of the Chinese as the enemy when you can have real-time, head-to-head conversations with Chinese people who are just like you!

On the other hand, interpersonal violence becomes more common, to an extent. Perhaps it's just a function of population: a certain percentage of people are going to lack the empathy which restricts most people from performing criminal acts, so a larger population means a greater number of criminals overall.

Just my thoughts, though. This is way outside my field.

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The trend alltough cycilic in many ways when looked at by a certian perspective: still follows a general "curve" sugesting that human beings overall are gradually evolving in a manner that says "violence" bad, " cooporation" good, out the over all expanse of human experience things seem to be pointing to a trend of decreasing violence in the modern era that is unprecedented compared to violence levels that decreased during the rise and fall of our predessesor's civilizations and could perhaps be a false assumption to make until all of the data is verified (sometimg we wont be able to do until many hundreds of years after the events of our modern era are long gone) by us surviving as a species long enough to reach a kind of human wide consensus of thought and purpose.

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As I have said, I can put no belief in any of this, it is an interesting theory but there is nothing scientific about it.

First of all you'd have to define what is meant by 'violence', as it could mean 50 different things and you cannot measure changes without first having defined what it is your measure.

Secondly, computers or not, we simply do not have the data through the ages needed to actually prove anything.

Thirdly, the whole thing is based on the idea that previous cultures were exptremely violent, and there is not proof of that either.

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That all depends on the citiation imho. Sometimes Central authority is desired, as when a group needs to get all on the same page to survivve and doesnt have the time or liberty to discuss things forever until coming to a consensus. Its why the Roman Senate and voting comitas during the Republic used to temporarally ceed total authority to a Dictator in times of crisis.

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A very big question with a bearing on the civilzation talk, I think.

The central authority of the Romans were not only in times of crisis, though that's how it started. But IMO 'central' is waay too central when it means trying to govern/conquer a lot of the rest of the world. One aspect of central is that it aims to make large amounts of people obey few people - sometimes by whatever means.

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Sometimes its detrimental, as many societies in history have allready determined, it breeds cooruption when the power is held for too long and promotes the propogation of inequalities of classism which all to often cuases revolts and rebeliions.

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Yes, that is shown throughout history. So is this system worth it in the first place?
I do not understand 'all too often'. Isn't it in the interest of people to revolt in such cases, and isn't it in your own constitution that this is a right?

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Modern representative democracies (like their republican (Roman) and democratic (Greek) predessesors of the past which developed during times of past prosperity) try to do both at the same time by placing restrictions on who holds what kinds of authority and for how long and over what areas.

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Yes, maybe the only way apart from more de-centralisation.

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Originally Posted by Thorne

In my view, civilization is, quite simply, people learning to get along with one another. People accepting their differences from one another. People realizing that skin color, or religious beliefs, or sexual orientation do not in and of themselves make people bad.

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You are on the ideological end of the definitions. I like that, but would like to broaden it in two ways:
One is to say it is a society where fear, greed and hate can never put a hallmark on that society, but only be individual traits that does not affect the society as a whole.

Secondly, in these days, and in everybody's interest it should be enlarged to mean more than simply humans: A civilization is a society that doesn't take more from the Earth than can be recovered, and which treast not just humans, but also animals with respect. (Which does not mean that you cannot eat them.)

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Not necessarily, nor do they necessarily make crime go up. Cities which become well integrated, with people mingling and learning from one another, will tend to reduce crime, I believe. Segregating people into different color groups, or different religious groups, or different cultural groups, tends to make things worse, though. People in such situations tend to cling to old hatreds and rivalries, simply because they aren't taught not to.

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I take your point there. But, won't the crime rates go up (proportinally) simply because life is more chaotic in cities?

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I think that, as societies grow larger they do tend to become more civilized, simply because you have more and more people, and more diverse groups of people, living in close proximity to one another.
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How will more people make it more civilized?

I am also thinking: is there a limit to how big a society - and especially a city - can be, before it gets to complicated that no one person or group have any idea what is going on?

Or quite simply too vulnerable?

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And just like society, wars become bigger because there are more people to fight them. But I think they also tend to become less common, in general, and shorter. It's unlikely that we will ever see something like the Hundred Years War, with rival kingdoms squabbling incessantly over nothing. On the other hand, modern technology (which does not, in and of itself, define civilization) makes wars far more expensive, and deadly, and thus less acceptable to civilized societies.

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So, on balance, what is your conclusion here? Because we do fight wars, not just with more people, but over a larger area.

Are we 'loosing' civilization here, becoming less civilized because of that?

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Whew! Talk about opening a can of worms! Well, since this is all about opinion, No! I don't think civilized societies are more religious. In fact, I think religion is a major obstacle to true civilization. Unless, of course, you want your civilization to be completely homogeneous.

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That, I think, it a great many people's vision of being civilized!
Not mine, though.

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Too many religions promote hatred of others, rather than love for all, as they want to claim. Hatred of gays, hatred of other religions, hatred of women, hatred of non-believers. These teachings are antithetical to civilization. They tend to divide groups rather than bring them together.

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But that is indeed a function of bringing people together with all their differencies.
So, from this point of view at least, bringing many people (and religions) togehter will not work.

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Here's a little piece that may explain this better than I can:

Personal freedom is paramount in a truly civilized society! (One more mark against religion, IMO.) But people do have to realize that your freedom ends where it interferes with my freedom, and vice versa. When people accept personal responsibility for their actions you reduce the need for strong central control. But there must always be some way to protect the people from those who, despite every opportunity, reject a moral life and embrace a criminal one. Some central control is desirable, but this is one case where, for the most part, less is better. To a point.

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The point about personal freedom is an important one, but one that as I see it goes against the ideas of big civilizations, which, being complex, will need more control and less personal freedom.

As we overcrowd the wold, more and more control is needed to survive.

I find that the thought 'your freedom ends where it interferes with my freedom' is a lot more complicated that it sounds, because some people's idea of their freedom Will in a number of cases interfere with that of others. Many people cluttered in small areas can mean a lot of rubbing against each other's freedom. I do not think that there really is more tolerance in a city, not in all areas anyway, it is just that you can easier hide with that about your life-style that would offend others.

The moral comment about the moral life versus crime is almost religious to me - it simply does not take into account anything at all about chances and life in cities - or elsewhere. We have yet to see a society where there is always enough if you work for it.

I think I digress..

So, how much central control is allowed/needed for a society to be civilized?

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I dont think that the validity of such a graph is very far at all from how people were back then based on the evidence Ive seen during my own reaserch.

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As you say, that is a matter of belief, not fact. But when you 'cook' the graf to suit your purposes it becomes worse than useles, it becomes manipulation.

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The theory is looking at human group behavioral trends in general over a long period of time, as opposed to giving focus on individual actions.

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But this graf it a sort of individual action in that it takes a few of the H-Gs out and look at them, a very select few, insted of them all.

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In other words the focus is on the entire forrest, not a few tress here and there.

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My point exactly. The graf - and the whole theory - looks at things here and there, with no apparent coherence. To be valid it should be using a scentific method which would be to choose some parameters in 'everybody' - meaning the whole forrest of societies or as many as possible. And I mean societies from sufficiently recent times for there to be a reasonable amount of data to compare.

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Taking things out of that context to focus on specific areas becuase one loves the new age ideal of peacful primitive societiy being preferable to modern scoiety as somthing to be sought after

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Well, not being a new ager I cannot really comment of that part of it, but for the rest, what I am missing in the whole thing is exactly for SP to Not take things out of context as he is clearly doing in that graf! Tell me Denuseri, do you think it ok only to choose violent tribes of today, when there are actually more that are not violent? What about the rest of the forrest?

I mean, the man is postulating that the H-Gs were living in such a blood bath that it surpasses anything and everything that later civilazations with wars and crimes and what not could and did throw at each other! And with zero explanation too!

It is not about what I would want, or what I think the past was like. It is about that graf misrepresentating excisting tribes. In order for this whole theory to make sense, SP must prove that things were more violent in the past (any past, really) than they are today, and he is not doing that, because of his false graf but also because he completely avoids defining what is meant by violence, which leaves him free to take examples of some ways and avoid others as he chooses. Which means he can 'prove' just about anything!

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(which history shows us to be way off the mark) will of course make one think that the pattern isnt there, even if its a spurious coorelation.

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What does history show us? A number of more violent and less violent societies (whatever we mean by that term) after each other, and at the same time all over the globe.
To prove less violence would be a superhuman job, and would demand first of all that one defines what it is one is reseraching.

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Its like the difference between making an argument based on looking at the behavior of an individual cell in the body thats been attacked by a virus instead of looking at the overall responce of the entire immune system over the life span of an organism's homeostatic proccess.

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Which is what he is doing, taking a couple of cells here and a couple of cells here - those, and only those, that suit his purpose.

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Originally Posted by thir

Secondly, in these days, and in everybody's interest it should be enlarged to mean more than simply humans: A civilization is a society that doesn't take more from the Earth than can be recovered, and which treast not just humans, but also animals with respect. (Which does not mean that you cannot eat them.)

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I don't quite get the "respect" for animals meme, personally. I don't believe we should be permitted to brutalize them, simply for our own pleasures, but I don't think they should be treated as equals, either. As much as I dislike placing controls on people in general, I realize that such controls are sometimes necessary, and placing limits on the number of "pets" people can maintain would not disturb me in the least. Just a personal preference, though.

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I take your point there. But, won't the crime rates go up (proportinally) simply because life is more chaotic in cities?

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Actually, I think the evidence is showing that the crime rates are DROPPING proportionately. Larger cities may mean more criminal incidents, but not necessarily more crime per capita.

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How will more people make it more civilized?

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For one thing you have more people keeping an eye on one another, whether as friends helping friends or as witnesses reporting criminals.

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I am also thinking: is there a limit to how big a society - and especially a city - can be, before it gets to complicated that no one person or group have any idea what is going on?

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Why does any one person NEED to know what's going on? That just gets back to the question of control.

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Or quite simply too vulnerable?

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Yes, this can be a problem. A large population in a relatively small area can be more vulnerable to attack, to disease, to food shortages, etc. But increasing technology can help to mitigate these problems, hopefully, making such large populations safer, to some degree.

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So, on balance, what is your conclusion here? Because we do fight wars, not just with more people, but over a larger area.

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Yes, we do still fight wars, but the primary causes of war are slowly disappearing. If you allow cultures to blend naturally, let people learn that other cultures are not evil, you help to remove one of the causes of warfare. The same with religion or race. Knowing that a nation is not evil JUST because it's people worship a certain way or are of a different color reduces the likelihood of war between those groups. Better communications and better distributions of goods and services (technology, again) help in these areas.

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That [homogeneity], I think, it a great many people's vision of being civilized!

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Yes, sadly, it is. Those who think they are better than others because of their color, or their faith, or their citizenship.

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So, from this point of view at least, bringing many people (and religions) togehter will not work.

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But it does work! Letting people get to know others outside of the restrictions of culture, race or faith has been shown to foster tolerance and acceptance.

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The point about personal freedom is an important one, but one that as I see it goes against the ideas of big civilizations, which, being complex, will need more control and less personal freedom.

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To a degree, perhaps, but it doesn't eliminate the need for personal freedom, just increases the need for personal responsibility. Some control is needed, yes. Keeping the highways open and moving safely, eliminating wastes, protecting the vulnerable members of society. But there is a very fine line between too much control and not enough control. It's a difficult problem, to be sure.

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The moral comment about the moral life versus crime is almost religious to me

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Only if you presume that morality exists as a result of religion. It doesn't.

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We have yet to see a society where there is always enough if you work for it.

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That doesn't mean such a society isn't possible. We have yet to see a society where all people are TRULY considered equal. There always seems to be some subset of society (blacks, Hispanics, gays, atheists) which is considered to be "less" than "real" people.

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So, how much central control is allowed/needed for a society to be civilized?

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As I said, it's a delicate balance. I don't claim to be an expert, but in my opinion we need only enough control to insure that things continue to run smoothly, to keep all members of a society reasonably healthy and reasonably happy, but not so much control that large portions of that society are oppressed.

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Originally Posted by thir

As you say, that is a matter of belief, not fact. But when you 'cook' the graf to suit your purposes it becomes worse than useles, it becomes manipulation.

Which is exactly what the new agers did by onl;y looking at isolated modern primatives of their own choosing. Who are not violent with outsiders anymore becuase of overwhelming threat of outside intervention or they simply live in an area thats too remote for interaction on any large scale.

But this graf it a sort of individual action in that it takes a few of the H-Gs out and look at them, a very select few, insted of them all.

You mean he used a few as examples in his presentation, just like anyone would do, just becuase he doesnt mention all the others by name doesnt mean they were not examined.



My point exactly. The graf - and the whole theory - looks at things here and there, with no apparent coherence. To be valid it should be using a scentific method which would be to choose some parameters in 'everybody' - meaning the whole forrest of societies or as many as possible. And I mean societies from sufficiently recent times for there to be a reasonable amount of data to compare.

Shrugs...Apparently what you consider to be reasonable and what other anthroplogists and related disiplinarians consider to be reasonable is different. We both watched the same presentation of his theory and apparently have completely different views on it.



I mean, the man is postulating that the H-Gs were living in such a blood bath that it surpasses anything and everything that later civilazations with wars and crimes and what not could and did throw at each other! And with zero explanation too!

All he really was saying is that in the age when primitive societies were predominant the likely hood of having a short life and dieing from violence was greater than it is today and that the over all data points to a trend that sugests that with more modernization that likely hood is actually by far decreased compared to what I call the "new agers" would like us to think.

It is not about what I would want, or what I think the past was like. It is about that graf misrepresentating excisting tribes. In order for this whole theory to make sense, SP must prove that things were more violent in the past (any past, really) than they are today, and he is not doing that, because of his false graf but also because he completely avoids defining what is meant by violence, which leaves him free to take examples of some ways and avoid others as he chooses. Which means he can 'prove' just about anything!

Everything he was saying seems to match up just fine with the data Ive seen on the subject. In fact the only people I have found trying to distort things were the new ager crowd.



What does history show us? A number of more violent and less violent societies (whatever we mean by that term) after each other, and at the same time all over the globe.
To prove less violence would be a superhuman job, and would demand first of all that one defines what it is one is reseraching.

Well thankfully science doesnt have to be restricted to any one persons demands upon it.
Especially now when cross disiplinarian reaserch has finally seen the fruit of its labors coming into focus.


Which is what he is doing, taking a couple of cells here and a couple of cells here - those, and only those, that suit his purpose.

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Shrugs...again I didnt see that, what I saw was him using a couple examples for the purposes of his presentation as opposed to dragging on and on about data sets as one would do for a thesis. He was making a short presentation (a summary) of his findings, not a detailed blow by blow examination of every little detail.


If you feel so strongy about it why not write him a letter or publish a peer reviewed article that disproves his assertions?

So, what, IYO, is civilization?

>The opposite of barbarism.

What is barbarism, then?

Has it to do with cities? Do big cities make crime go down?

>Urbanization alone is perhaps a spurious association in so far as trying to identify a "single" reason. Its more like a sympton of prosperous conditions. I don't think there is any one single reason for the overall reduction of violence brought on by our latest cycle of civilizations growth so much as it is how human beings respond to these paticular set of circumstances.

So, having plenty is civilization?
I am not trying to look for one single factor here, just - looking in general.

> We have a historical trend to urbanize under the right conditions. Like I was saying above, if the location coupled with enviromental conditions develope in a manner that allows for a greater degree of prosperity our population rises, cuasing the need for certian things like cities as opposed to villiages, as opposed to tribal enclaves, as opposed to a few huts inside a palisaide etc etc.

Do you mean that centralization is a must with bigger societies then? Or can they spread out, as it were?

Are civilized societies bigger, and does that mean fewer wars, or just bigger ones?

>They tend to be larger than their less civilized counterparts.

Do you mean spread over a larger area, with larger cities, or both?
Were the indians uncivilized, for instance, by way of being spread over a bigger area rather than making cities?

Can you give an example of a civilzed society and an uncivilzed one, and say why in both instances?

>Fewer wars, and bigger wars is a whole other issue.

Why? Are wars not part of the definition of being civilized?


>Initially cities were considered harder to attack and overwhelm than their smaller and less well defended counterparts, so in some ways they serve as a deterent.


You mean that most cities were fortified?

>However, they also create a situation where those outside of a city may wish to come into it to take as opposed to trade (as evidenced by all of human history). Population consolidation occurs for a wide variety of reasons though and sometimes urbanization can result in over crowding which can lead to violence under the right conditions depending on resource availability and headonistic diversion levels (bread and circus delima).

Is this more or less civlilized?

What about religion, are civilized societies more or less religious?

That all depends in which part of a given civilizations developmental stage your looking at.

>Initially cities and civilizations ussually evolve from a homeogenous group who allready shares a common faith and purpose ,

I am not so sure about cities, seems more diverse than that, but I can see what you mean when you say civilization.

>but as conditions change to increase overall prosperity and a cicilization becomes larger and begins to rub up agisnt other populations groups who may or may not share the same common belief systems they can cuase divisons to become further reason for defence and keep a given population together for the purposes of opposition and later during an expansion phase, conversion or intergration occurs as people become more acepting of the other group due to familiarity.

I read you as saying that this must occur, that there is a cycle in these matters. Prosperity must follow, competition between the societies, then acceptance in the form of integration or conversion. Can you give examples of that?

>When civilizations develope under the right circumstances and such needs of security change or are not as nessesary and its possible to become more focused on individual pleasures and liberties the external factors that make organized religions a desireable standard for providing a common purpose appear to decrease.

So it would seem. Is that then a sign of where you are in the cycle, if such exist?

>Though the individuals need for faith (being to a large degree a biological function) in in their own belief system (what ever that may be or devlope into or change into as time goes by) seems to remain the same.

What you are saying is contradictory - how is this to be understood?

>IE the % of people who have faith in their own personal belief systems and philosophies doesnt change all that much as the nessesity to have a given populations organzied in a social contract lessens (under the right conditions) so much as the people dont feel the need to have a common outside guilding force.

Do you mean that a belief or ideology is neccesary for people, but may change with conditions?

What about personal freedom? Thomas Hobbes, from 1670s, mentioned by SP, apparently thought that witout strong central control it would be the jungle law, which he saw as 'everybody against everybody else.'

>One should keep in mind that altough Hobbes assertations in many ways are correct in so far as explaining what people had a tendency to do in history (sacrifce their own personal needs for the good of the group when nessesary, sometimes even quite naturally consolidating authoprity in the hands of a singularly powerful individual)he lacked the same level of hindsight we today have developed and he was making his synopsis in support of the King he liked in opposition to Cromwell and the others who wish to get rid of said King or take away his power over them.

So, the answer being yes, is strong central control one of the defining factors or civilizations?

So, do we need strong control and centralization, or would de-centralization and bigger personal freedom be better?

> That all depends on the citiation imho. Sometimes Central authority is desired, as when a group needs to get all on the same page to survivve and doesnt have the time or liberty to discuss things forever until coming to a consensus. Its why the Roman Senate and voting comitas during the Republic used to temporarally ceed total authority to a Dictator in times of crisis.

> Sometimes its detrimental, as many societies in history have allready determined, it breeds cooruption when the power is held for too long and promotes the propogation of inequalities of classism which all to often cuases revolts and rebeliions.

So, how to see this in terms of civilisation, or cycles of civilisations?

Modern representative democracies (like their republican (Roman) and democratic (Greek) predessesors of the past which developed during times of past prosperity) try to do both at the same time by placing restrictions on who holds what kinds of authority and for how long and over what areas.

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Originally Posted by Thorne

There is SOME validity to this kind of thinking, though. In small groups the more primitive societies did tend to be more peaceful amongst themselves. Interpersonal relationships within the tribe tended to be polite and non-violent. So there is something to say for the peaceful primitives. Of course, when you went outside the tribe all bets were off. Intertribal conflicts were common, and brutal. Not so peaceful there.

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How do we know this?

Theoretically I find the idea that people behave differently outside their own clan or tribe very likely, but the question is different in what way?

Some may well have had conflicts, as you say, but there'd have to be a reason, and are we not talking early days with lots of space and food? I have such trouble with this, because we keep hearing of these enormous areas with practically no people, so where is the cause for friction?

Secondly, for instance the eskimoes never had wars that I know of - none of them. I think some of the indian tribes were more warlike than others, but mainly skirmises? And some tribes had these meeting every 7. year or something like that and debated stuff, didn't they?

What I am trying to say here is that I can see the possibility very well, but by no means any universal rule.

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What I think we see in the development of civilization is, to some extent, an expanding of the concept of tribe. Our tribe is larger now, and in some respects can be considered to be world wide. It's hard to think of the Chinese as the enemy when you can have real-time, head-to-head conversations with Chinese people who are just like you!

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What about people who are not like us?

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On the other hand, interpersonal violence becomes more common, to an extent. Perhaps it's just a function of population: a certain percentage of people are going to lack the empathy which restricts most people from performing criminal acts, so a larger population means a greater number of criminals overall.

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I think the instincts for getting along and co-operation functions with a certain number and/or at a certain close distance, and when you are beyond that, you need something extra to bring them out. For instance an emergency, which often awakens the work-together feeling or a feeling of closeness, of being in the same boat.

It doesn't always have to be so much. For instance I was once on a ferry that got stuck in the ice, and it took like 5 hours to get unstuck and complete a journey of normally about 20-30 minutes. Afte a while a lot of people sat on the floor sharing tea or coffee, or playing cards, or just talking - a scenery that would have been unthinkable without the small emergency.

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Just my thoughts, though. This is way outside my field.

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Outside most people's field. Doesn't mean you cannot have an idea :-)

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Shrugs...again I didnt see that, what I saw was him using a couple examples for the purposes of his presentation as opposed to dragging on and on about data sets as one would do for a thesis. He was making a short presentation (a summary) of his findings, not a detailed blow by blow examination of every little detail.

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If you cannot see the difference between examples being representative for the whole group or not, then there is nothing more I can say.

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If you feel so strongy about it why not write him a letter or publish a peer reviewed article that disproves his assertions?

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I am quite content to discuss things here.

The reason I feel strongly about is, I guess, that I fear that the idea of less violent and more 'civilised' societies coming about automatically is not true, but that such an idea will stop people working for peace and tolerance.

I do not believe that such comes by itself. I think it has been courageous, compassionate and clear thinking people who have dared work for their ideals in the face of bad odds, often putting their lives in danger because of it.

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Originally Posted by leo9

I think that's too narrow a definition, though it's complicated by the fact that we use "civilisation" in two senses, one practical, one moral.

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You have a very important point here. I believe that most people actually use the expression in the moral sense.

Throughout history, many countries have used 'teaching others to be civlized' - meaning 'like us' - as an excuse for conquest. People who consider themselves civilized feel superior to people they consider uncivilized and this is - even in recent times - still an excuse to run them over.

Civilized as in our moral, our religion, our technology, our complex societies.

But it was always about power and resources and money.

There is still this idea today that humans progress towards something better automatically - in spite of Darwin, it is seen as if there is some master plan behind it all. And of course it is our culture that is the superior one - whoever 'we' are - our culture that we must at all costs and with all methods bring to others.

In this discussion we start talking about the kind of society we would like to have, or which we think will come. Much better.

I agree with Thorne about tolerance between humans, and would add respect for other living creatures and for the earth we must all feed off. I would consider civilized a society where fear, greed and hate can only be an individual thing, not something that can for instance make leaders take a country to war. Most wars are based on greed, and some on fear or hate.

I also do not consider the extent of or absent of technology a measure of civilization or of lack of it. It is how we are with each other that will determine the future.
I consider a too technology-dependant society a society heading towards collaps. With all its advantages it also makes us much too weak and vulnerable. A civilized society is a stable society.

Freedom is all important. Without sufficient influence on our own lives we have no human dignity and life has no meaning. Too strong central control makes a society uncivilized, IMO.

But cilivizations tend to be complex, and the more complex, the less freedom. The bigger, the less personal, and the less effect of our natural tribe co-operation. So, as I see it civilizations cannot be too big without without becoming meaningless or falling apart.

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Sticking strictly to the practical, I would define civilisation as any system of social mechanisms that allow people to co-operate on a larger scale than the clan or tribe.

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Defined like that, are civilizations good or bad?

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But we know from the Neolithic farming towns that at some point people learnt to hold a bigger group together. They developed structures, ways of organising that didn't depend on everyone knowing everyone else, so that a community could go on co-ordinating its efforts while growing beyond the limits of a tribe and spreading beyond a closed group. The benefit was to enlarge the power of co-ordination plus variability. The bigger the group, the more different specialists it can support, and the better they can get at their specialty; the wider the group's territory, the more different natural resources it can exploit at once. Cultural natural selection favoured the groups that could find ways to stay co-ordinated while growing even bigger and wider spread, from village to town, from town to city with its hinterland of towns, from city-state to nation (and, if the gods spare us, from nation to world.) And those methods of co-ordination are what we call civilisation.

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As I see it, there is a limit to how far this developement should be allowed to go. You end up with using resources faster than they can be regrown, or use them up, and you end up loosing far too much individual freedom and meaning with life.

Money is probably seen as a function of civilization. Yet now that we no longer catch or grow our own individual food, money means that the economical ups and downs determine whether we live or die. Factors now so complicated that noone can overview them, and over which we have little influence, even if our politicians think we do.

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As I said at the start, this is a strictly pragmatic definition and says nothing about whether those methods are good or bad. In practice, they have ranged from democracy to tyranny.

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How would you characterize the Western societies?

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Originally Posted by thir

If you cannot see the difference between examples being representative for the whole group or not, then there is nothing more I can say.

Blinks...I believe I was sayng that one uses examples for the sake of expediency becuase they were representitive of what one's overall findings were. Why continously try to take what Im saying out of context and spin it thir?


I am quite content to discuss things here.

The reason I feel strongly about is, I guess, that I fear that the idea of less violent and more 'civilised' societies coming about automatically is not true, (yet a statistical analysis of history sugests otherwise, though no one said anything at all about anything being "automatic") but that such an idea will stop people working for peace and tolerance. I hardely see why coming to a better understanding of human behavior in large group settings should do that.

I do not believe that such comes by itself. I think it has been courageous, compassionate and clear thinking people who have dared work for their ideals in the face of bad odds, often putting their lives in danger because of it.

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You seem to be having dificulty seperating romatic ideals from clinical observations conserning group behavior models while completely misinterpeting anything I say about the subject.

I mentioned at no time what so ever anything about individual human efforts being diminished. Nor did I even remoely suggest that they were unnessesary. Quite the contrary by definition in fact, since groups are composed of "individuals" and considering how human group behaviors are modeled on dominance hierarchies...some individual behaviors become all the more important in influencing the group.

That kind of out non-contextual thinking reminds me of how some people were so threatened by the idea of the earth going around the sun in the middle ages.

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Quote Originally Posted by thir View Post
If you cannot see the difference between examples being representative for the whole group or not, then there is nothing more I can say.

Blinks...I believe I was sayng that one uses examples for the sake of expediency becuase they were representitive of what one's overall findings were. Why continously try to take what Im saying out of context and spin it thir?

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A discussion of whether the chosen tribes in the first graf - which everything is based on - are representative or not is hardly to take it out of context! It is a most factual criticism of the validity of his starting point.

Would you like to discuss this point? Because that is what I have been trying to do for quite a while now.

t

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The reason I feel strongly about is, I guess, that I fear that the idea of less violent and more 'civilised' societies coming about automatically is not true,

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D

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(yet a statistical analysis of history sugests otherwise, though no one said anything at all about anything being "automatic")

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So, do you believe it is automatic or not? I am in doubt here.

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t but that such an idea will stop people working for peace and tolerance.
d I hardely see why coming to a better understanding of human behavior in large group settings should do that.

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As I have read you, it goes like this: when times get worse, violence gets worse, when times get better, violence goes down. Is that correct?

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I do not believe that such comes by itself. I think it has been courageous, compassionate and clear thinking people who have dared work for their ideals in the face of bad odds, often putting their lives in danger because of it.

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You seem to be having dificulty seperating romatic ideals from clinical observations conserning group behavior models

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Ok, let's here more about that. I have studied some about group psychology in earlier days, and I would be interested to hear about how it pertains to increasing and decreasing of violence through the ages.

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while completely misinterpeting anything I say about the subject.

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If so, it is unententional.

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I mentioned at no time what so ever anything about individual human efforts being diminished. Nor did I even remoely suggest that they were unnessesary. Quite the contrary by definition in fact, since groups are composed of "individuals" and considering how human group behaviors are modeled on dominance hierarchies...some individual behaviors become all the more important in influencing the group.

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This is getting really interesting. As earlier requested,can we hear more about that?

That kind of out non-contextual thinking reminds me of how some people were so threatened by the idea of the earth going around the sun in the middle ages.

"civ·i·li·za·tion (sv-l-zshn)
n.
1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions."

"Civilization (or civilisation) is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally urbanized. In classical contexts civilized peoples were called this in contrast to "barbarian" peoples, while in modern contexts civilized peoples have been contrasted to "primitive" peoples."

"War – civilisation only functions through constant expansion. That means that neighbouring lands, people and resources have to be ‘absorbed’ to fuel the growth. Our civilisation is a culture of occupation – initially absorbing the surrounding countryside, enslaving the peasants to feed the the city’s inhabitants. Then absorbing neighbouring cities – their slaves, land & resources now feeding the conquerors."

" Civilization is a form of human culture in which many people live in urban centers, have mastered the art of smelting metals, and have developed a method of writing."

"The first civilizations began in cities, which were larger, more populated, and more complex in their political, economic and social structure than Neolithic villages."

"One definition of civilization requires that a civilized people have a sense of history -- meaning that the past counts in the present."

"Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life."

So, does civilization have to do with art, war, record-keeping, complexity, history or the end of chaos and insecurity?

What is barbarism?

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