Has our society really evolved that much in the last 500 years?

[BigBearJohn]

Based on what I am seeing in the GOP
I think we're just a breath away from
holding witch trials and burnings at the
stake.

We may have evolved technologically, but
our spirit evolution has a long, long
way to catch up.... if we don't destroy
ourselves first.

Sorry to be so grim, but the aforementioned
thoughts occurred to me as I awoke this
morning.

[Sammy Pepys]

1. I don't think our society is even....

...500 years old. ;)

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Says the man with

the 350 year old screen name. :evilgrin:

[unpossibles]

2. no

as stated in another thread, we (humans that is) kill each other over trivialities such as whether Jesus becomes a cracker or whether it's symbolic, much less over the whether your favorite prophet from the same basic religion is the Messiah or not.....

I'd have to say no. We're getting a little better I guess, but it's slow coming. Every time progressives push humanity along, the giant rock of conservativism comes rolling back down the hill at us.

[jobycom]

3. With society, there is no such thing as evolution

They teach history in schools as though society has made steady progress from the darkness of the past to the enlightenment of the present. Not so. Civil Rights, for instance, were further along in 1870 than they were in 1960. They went backwards because of two SCOTUS decisions (Civil Rights Acts, and Plessy v Ferguson). Religious attitudes in ancient Rome were often more enlightened than now. Cicero's writings reveal that all these "gods" of pagan Rome were only seen as personified virtues, not actual gods. Romans executed Christians often because they had no tolerance of the other gods. They were accused of atheism, not of Christianity (that varied from time to time).

While European Christians were wallowing in the Middle Ages, there were multi-cultural societies in Spain, Sicily and the Middle East, where all religions were accepted (though Islam was given priority) and peoples from all cultures were accepted. Although, this varied, too, depending on time and place.

There is no evolution of society, just a constant battle against the forces of bigotry and hatred, and those of humanity. Don't expect it to get better and just stay that way. It never will.

That's my take, anyway.

[BigBearJohn]

5. Wow. Very well written. Thanks for your thoughts.

[Hardrada]

7. The Enlightenment gave the people a hope for reason and

a chance for justice and it did cause the end of much superstition, feudalism & aristocratic privilege. It did make way for rule of the merely wealthy however and that is something we must work to correct.

[TahitiNut]

12. Agreed. Stones don't roll uphill without help.

"Enlightened self-interest" is not viral - it's anti-viral.

[Justitia]

4. I'm turning into a serious misanthrope. Hell is other people & all that.

so, today is not a good day to ask.

[Jim Warren]

6. From a couple years ago

Saved this for a couple years and pull it out occasionally. DU post by JOHNONERLLSMEMORY in respones to this article:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/29/1548259

I hope you find it pertinent and JOM doesn't mind.

JohnOneillsMemory (1000+ posts) Tue Mar-30-04 01:24 AM

1. Tony Benn is amazing. I heard that interview from the March 20 protests.
Besides having a long history of progressive activism, Benn is fabulously articulate in the way that an 80-something Englishman can be.

Regarding hope, here is my take on the biological necessity of what I call the 'Optimism Imperative' which evolution has imbued us with to promote survival of our species:

"In another thread about inventing a progressive and humane 'authority' structure for the future, I offered this blending of evolution science, psychology, and theology:

Recent news headlines tend to give one the impression that the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' of 1925 has been reopened for arguments as part of the culture war to win the hearts and minds of Americans for the 2004 presidential election. The Georgia public school system just went through yet another battle over the use of the word 'evolution' in textbooks. How can a country that seems to still be fighting the Civil War find a uniting common ground that isn't just jingoism and fear of the Islamic world?

The physical reality of living in a body and in a brain seems to be the boat that we humans are literally all in.

This idea has been held at intellectual arm's length by many people who want to believe that humans are different from other animals in some way that elevates them to a status of god-like nobility. Many have argued that the theory of evolution threatens a moral society because emphasis on our mind's physical shell emphasizes 'worldliness over spirituality' and the barbarism inherent in the implementation of 'might makes right.' How to embody the strength of a protective father without being violent and abusive? How to embody the courage of a tolerant nurturing mother without being a sheep to life's wolves? The battle between multicultural diversity and monotheism is on the field again.

But what if the San Francisco Pagans and Alabama Baptists are really on the same team?
What if there is spirituality in worldliness? That is, what if the physical stuff we're made of is...'good stuff'?

Science has recently revealed that we all really do feel other people's pain, not just Bill Clinton.
Brain scans have revealed that there is stress in our brain upon viewing another person's stress. This indicates an innate empathy for other humans when we can see them. Perhaps now Darwinism and evolution doesn't look as savage as some feared. Embracing the idea of 'Survival of the Fittest' doesn't warm many hearts outside of Harvard Business School. It is the stuff of Hitler, eugenics, the World Trade Organization, and the Dominionist Bush maladministration.

I have noticed the similarities in both psychology and theology of human's deep-seated need to believe in god-like (powerful yet loving) parents, planets, deities, and Universe. I've decided that there is an innate emotion tied to survival of our species that might be called the 'Optimism Imperative.' It is a physical part of who we are.

That is, in order to survive first our parents (males are frequently quite abusive and violent) and then a hostile planet full of predators, bad weather, and food that runs away from us, we need to believe that our perceived source environment, be it family, jungle, or cosmos, actually WANTS US TO SURVIVE. This infuses a struggling human with the emotions of HOPE, FAITH, AND OPTIMISM which give us the motivation we need to leave the cave and look for food or sex or a job, the building blocks for long-term survival of our species and our immediate families today.

The evolutionary logic of expanding one human animal's survival tools to include all the tools in their family increases the chance of survival, strength in numbers. Hence the importance to survival of taking care of one's family. The size of the group that we define as our families have been growing steadily from blood relatives to tribes to religious sects to empires, like small businesses merging into conglomerates of people until we have come to our present nation-state system with nuclear arsenals that can destroy us all. The next evolutionary step in survival is taking care the largest extension of ourselves by ensuring peace in the human family, even though we can't see all their faces, so that a domestic argument doesn’t kill us all.

It is a deliberate tactic of the mainstream media that controls the images dominating what Americans see to not show us the faces of the people around the world whose lives we affect. If we saw what our bombs or pollution or corporate-inflicted poverty was doing to people, we wouldn't put up with it. And some people wouldn't make as much money. We might even demand control of our own lives. We can still tap into the innate empathy evolution has bestowed us with for our own survival and picture in our imaginations human survival around the world. We already have morality within our brains and don't need the Spartan values of Bush, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld compelling us to lead moral lives and survive in a complex world.

The societal construct that institutionalizes the OPTIMISM IMPERATIVE for strong and weak alike is called CIVILIZED JUSTICE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND ENDING POVERTY, something the liberal Democrats have been legislating for decades in favor of the many weak while Republicans have been resisting in favor of the few strong.

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich's platform calling for the empowerment of people over corporations would therefore seem to embody the inevitable next step in our species 7 million year-long pilgrimage from the survival of the fittest to the survival of us all, Pagans and Baptists alike.

How's that for EVOLUTION SCIENCE VALIDATING SOCIAL JUSTICE as embodied in Progressive policies? So no matter what you hear on TV, sustainable growth has nothing to do with Viagra and everything to do with the person who becomes our next president."

[devilgrrl]

8. Not even remotely. The only difference? Television sets...

and other electronics.

[leftofthedial]

9. most of us had until about 6 years ago

then a small minority created a mass hysteria that bewitched most Murkans into thinking it was 1300 again.

Sadly, still about a third of all the citizens of this benighted country still think it is about 1300.

[hfojvt]

10. it's pretty hard to imagine 1506

most people were peasants, dirt farmers, and hunters. Most people could not read or write either. How big was the vocabulary of the average peasant? Women got married at 20 and started having a child per year until the age of 45 or until she died in childbirth, whichever came first. Many of those children died before their first birthday, and I have read too, that they were not very well cared for either. There was only one church and no freedom of religion. No books were in print either, just hand written Bibles and government documents. Besides local and national warfare there were also invading Islamic armies. Government was from kings and priests and local warlords, and it was decided by battle or heredity and battle between brothers and cousins and uncles. There was no free speech, except that proclaimed by Kerbouchard - "I can say anything I want. I have a fast horse." You lived where you were born, or within 20 miles, and your occupation was the same as either your dad's or your mom's, depending on your sex.

There may have been more trade and activity in the cities and ships going around Africa and the Mediterranean and schools and artists and musicians in places like Paris, Rome and London - if you were born into a rich enough family. Most kids, however, were probably born to dig ditches, plow fields, or have babies. Witch trials were probably not that common. No more common than plagues or marauding armies.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Humanity has become much more proficient at killing.

Though, it was through no lack trying back then. Still, it was pretty difficult to chase the peasants down and whack them with a sword, or run them through with a spear. But, they managed.

Now, push a button, launch a "smart bomb" and whole towns can be wiped out. Or, whole countries with the right warheads.

Or, with a stroke of the pen, a president (the one now infesting the White House) can condemn whole populations to death by withholding funds for AIDS treatment because the people receiving it might use condoms.

[TahitiNut]

13. Until recently, governments just couldn't have weapons that were ...

... beyond the means of ordinary people. When the RKBA was drafted, an armed militia could dwarf the armed might of a government. With the advent of nuclear weapons, in particular, the equation capsized. This is one of the reasons that 'majickal' weapons play such a big part in mythology - the reality was that weapons technologies weren't beyond the reach of anyone, private citizen and government alike. The only exception today is the rather chilling consideration that all weapons are in the hands of corporations before they're possessed by governments.

The chance that 'world peace' ever becomes a reasonbly foreseeable prospect hinges on whther the people of the world can get to a point where we disarm our governments. Until that happens, 'world peace' is a pipe dream, imho.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. Power and Hierarchy have always been the problem.

For the most part, I believe, most folks would much rather get along with their lives as best they can. Once we have "leaders" or bosses, they inevitably have resort to force to maintain, or expand, their power. Whether it be against some "foreign threat" or their own populace.

The corporataions are now wielding enormous power, mostly to maintain and expand it. For corporations, the simple truth is, that they must grow or die. The problem being that, like some bacteria, they are killing the host they feed on.

Much like the previous empires that expected the hosts to die peacefully and happily for their sakes, eventually the people decided that suicide wasn't in their best interests and fought back. Alas, only to be bamboozled into following new "leaders".

I now see the worm is turning once again. There are a lot of people in the world, especially the third world, who have grown weary of providing nourishment for corporations and the nations that support them. And, after the examples of Vietnam, and now Iraq, they are realizing that for all of our mighty weapons and high-tech "majick" we are very, very, vulnerable. Pretty low-tech monkey wrenches of all sorts can be thrown into the machine. Everything from IEDs to computer worms.

I've grown a bit long in the tooth to fret about the wheels of history turning. I just do my best to ease some of the pain for those in need by sending a few bucks to people who actually do something for other people. i.e. Medicins sans Frontiers, Amnesty International, and such.

Hopefully, some inspired "leader" won't send some guys to my door in the middle of the night to reprimand me for daring to think their assholes.

[Finder]

15. Geesh, what a bunch of pessimists.

What society do you mean in particular...human overall? If so, we have definitely evolved philosophically, technologically, and physically.

[Karenina]

16. And what GOOD has been accomplished?

We're standing on a precipice with way-too-many folks unable to even SEE it.

[Finder]

18. More good than bad...

but people by nature tend to see what they want to see, not necessarily what is there.

Although focusing only on the good is not progressive either...

Evolution is not always positive but is always adaptable.

[deaniac21]

17. Well, you don't see as much scurvy in the navy and

merchant marine.