Are you calling me a conservative? Dave E. On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 10:16 AM, delancey <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > as fo people are becoming more civilized? I don't think so. Some are, > some > > are becoming less civilized. Tun on the news, local, national, or world > news. > > The news is nothing but anecdotes. It focuses on the dramatic. > That's fine as a social service, but not as a source of representative > sampling. > > Interpersonal violence has smoothly declined for centuries (see > Pinker's nice discussion of this at TED: > > http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html > ). > Slavery, sexism, homocidal homophobia, racism, state torture, > sanctioned genocide, the belief that all non-human organisms lack > moral value -- a million foul beliefs and practices that were normal > as little as a century or even 50 years ago are now socially > unacceptable. Our government is now forced to wage war in secret > (e.g., Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador) or with huge disinformation > campaigns that limit the time the wars can be waged. Examples like > these can be compounded indefinitely. Though, perhaps, these trends > are largely but not solely in the developed world, such as Europe. > > (As a side note, this is the thing I find most perplexing about > conservativism. Conservatives appear to share a belief that things > used to be better. That's astonishing to me. It's just false. As > nuts as denying evolutionary theory.) > > We should consider these facts when evaluating the singularity. Will > it be a spinning out of control, or will social factors continue to > improve? > > cd > > > > -- David Ennocenti 9 West Crest Drive Rochester, NY 14606 585-426-2348 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
