The Myth of Increasing Violence

[thir]

I am not convinced that violence is going down in one steady curve.

Nevertheless it would be interesting to discuss what does make violence go down.

I get the impression from SP that although he says that noone knows why violence may be going down, it has to do with becoming more civilized.

So, what, IYO, is civilization?

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

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

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

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.'

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

[denuseri]

Its a cross disiplinary approach when it comes these kinds of studies or human history and where its heading now days that prevails becuase it looks at events from several diferent perspectives.

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.

In other words even though humanity has many lapses into dark age periods due a wide variety of factors, we at least in localized areas (and collectively when those localized prosperous areas spill over and intergations occur later) have a tendency to all learn from our mistakes and evolve in a more cooporative manner if possible or die out.

I am not convinced that violence is going down in one steady curve.

Nevertheless it would be interesting to discuss what does make violence go down.

I get the impression from SP that although he says that noone knows why violence may be going down, it has to do with becoming more civilized.

That is the general consensus in this field of study, to an extent.

So, what, IYO, is civilization?

The opposite of barbarism.

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.

Urbanization, outside of it being a natural tendency of humanity for organziational purposes and consolidation of rescource exchanges once they develope in conditions that allow for it is in and of itself the byproduct of nessesity due to many factors. 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.

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

They tend to be larger than their less civilized counterparts.

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

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. 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).

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 , 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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

[thir]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

[thir]

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.

[Thorne]

So, what, IYO, is civilization?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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:

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.

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.'

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.

[leo9]

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.

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.

[Thorne]

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.

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.

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

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.

[thir]

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.

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.

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.

Defined like that, are civilizations good or bad?

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 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.

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.

How would you characterize the Western societies?

[thir]

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.

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.)

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.

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

[quote]
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.
[/quote}

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

[Thorne]

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.)

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.

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

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.

How will more people make it more civilized?

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

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?

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

Or quite simply too vulnerable?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.