Here's a list of all pros and cons against civilization I could think of:

pros:
+ art - made by artists gone mad by the horrors of their societies, they produce their works in pain, live in loneliness, and die forgotten and poor
+ science - people constantly having to search money and support to do their work, having very little time to use their genius to actual research. When they finally get money for research, it's earmarked and they have to make studies that prove the company who gave money for the research is the best, so whatever research is made is seldom objective.
+ public order - the fighting in animal flocks is seldom to the death, and it's allowed to back out of the fight at any time if you only admit you're below the other part in sexual status (what women you get to choose). In civilization fights for rank status is done by backstabbing, murder and intrigue, and law enforcement makes sure those who have good economy or power can harass and break down the poorer in this fight, while assuring that the poor can't revenge by physical violence because then they get locked up in jail. This of course causes problems with public order, a problem which law enforcement of civilization solves. It's doubtful whether the public order of civilization is a good thing though, considering that most of the problems with public order were initially created by civilization itself. Furthermore public order at many times in history becomes the tool of dictatorship and persecution of individuals when it's power is extended, for example with Gestapo and KGB.

cons:
- women started wearing clothes instead of being naked
- sex is rare and when it comes it's dangerous - most people in civilization don't get nearly as much sex as they pretend to get. Most people in civilization when they get sex, do it with someone they don't like, but with that person because he/she was easiest to catch. It's cultural taboo and culturally shameful to not get much sex, so people are too afraid to admit to themselves or others that they don't get what they want, and when they finally get some, they enter a form of denial where they pretend that they are happy with what civilization gives. But in today's civilization, even if everyone could miraculously get as much sex as they wanted, life wouldn't be good, because civilization has led to the evolution of more and more STDs, so that people can hardly have sex without risking to get diseases such as HIV or gonorrhea or syphilis. Today we are dressed in plastic bags called condoms, covering our *****, but tomorrow we'll need plastic bags covering more parts of our body. Soon we'll have sex dressed up in all-body-covering rubber sacks. The STDs have due to oral sex trends spread to mouths too, so it's dangerous to kiss a woman too, unless you want some other guy's ***** diseases in your mouth.
- prostitution - one of the many problems that the invention of money caused to mankind. Prostitution obviously didn't exist before civilization. But because so many men get too little sex compared to what they want, they soon see prostitution as a positive thing and praise civilization, although their need for prostitutes really hadn't existed unless civilization had caused that need.
- school - small children in their best years kept locked up in a prison for most of their childhood. When they get out they're already on the verge of getting impotent and have nothing left of their youthful flame and enthousiasm.
- in nature there was evolution through natural selection, determined by nature, not by human hands. Today there's unnatural selection, determined by the hands of human beings. The result is that people with power (who got it by immoral means) make sure they get benefits and bring on their genes, while better people don't.
- lack of freedom - people have almost no freedom to do what they want today. Everything follows regulations. You can't live a normal day without going through 50 letters, listening to 20 telemarketers and filling in 70 forms. If you forget to fill in any of the forms you'll get punished and looked upon as an immoral criminal.
- workload pre civilization was around 4 hours per day, and involved movement so there was no need for extra exercise. After civilization workloads for the masses have varied between 8 hours to 20 hours a day, often involving sitting so you need additional hours for exercise above the 8-20 hours. Furthermore, to get to work you need transportation, which accounts for up to another 2 hours. Finally, there's household work which needs to be attented after coming home from work, accounting for additional 2 hours or more per day.
- human sacrifice - another invention of civilization. Even today it still exists, and it's usually political leaders who decide who should be sacrificed in battles or in some other method. Somehow they manage to convince even the victims of the sacrifice that their brutal death is a good thing for those they love, so that they accept it. Now, just like back when men were sacrificed for the sun to keep shining, the sacrifices achieves little to the safety of those the sacrificed ones love.
- warfare - some minor skirmishes existed pre civilization, but there were no wars, and seldom any casualties at all. Civilization introduced settled cultures which meant there were tighter fights for land, especially as settled cultures tended to overpopulate to a greater extent than nomadic cultures, so that the settled cultures needed to expand by murdering nomads or other settled cultures. When wars begun to happen, it often became necessary to fight wars simply for the reason of fear that someone else would attack. Thus, militarily strategical positions became a reason for war even though there was no real conflict behind.
- dependency on more resources - mankind has become completely dependent on not only the original food and water resources, but also on iron, oil, gold, silver, titanium, plantinum, argon, neon, helium, hydrogen, silicon, germanium etc. Now these resources are so necessary for societies that they are prepared to start war to obtain them, increasing the number of reasons for war, and thus the number of wars.
- destruction of the environment - environmental problems. In many areas in the world it's impossible to find clear drinking water. Eutrophication makes our lakes poisonous, while removing nutrition needed to fertilize our farming lands. It would require excessive amounts of energy to reverse the process. Global warming threatens to make the trophical areas uninhabitable within 30 years. The ozone layer hole lets through so huge doses of ultraviolet light that it can cause cancer-inducing mutation and death, or hurt germ layers which means getting children who will have trouble surviving. The effect of most environmental damage comes a long time after the actual polluition, but mankind is too stupid to realize this.
- important information doesn't reach the masses - if there was a problem in a flock before civilization, people would shout and everyone would be informed of the problem and be able to help acting to solve the problem. In civilization, the masses are so ignorant about psychological, political and environmental problems that they neither see the need to solve them, nor have the capability of helping to solve them, instead tending to cause more problems. Therefore environmental problems increase while the ignorant call the environment scientists ridiculous, the political problems such as terrorism and war problems increase because those who aren't within that field call those who are within that field ridiculous, and the psychological problems and raising of children causes new Hitlers and Stalins every day because people not within that scientific field fail to see the problem and calls those within the field ridiculous.
- genocide - the mass-murder of men who happen to live in the wrong place to allow someones master plan for world domination, or the result of a political situation which causes too heterogenous groups where unity is needed has repeatedly caused mass murder.
- victory of the evil - often those who carry out mass-murder or war for their own personal gain aren't punished as early as they should, which convinces people that evil pays off, so that people seek evilness as their ideals. All small-scale evilness seems to pay off without exceptions. Women seem to have started preferring evil men over good men. There's no reason to support good anymore. Thus the moral degradation of society. The "turn the other cheek" preachings only convince the good to accept slavery and oppression, while the evil preach it so that the good bend down and accept the whip of the unworthy and evil.
- major diseases - caused by the massive populations kept in a single place. HIV, plague, legionella, anthrax - all have been caused by mankind improving communications between areas so that whenever an epidemia begins, it will reach all parts of the world.
- brainwashing - some of it through religious propaganda (crusades), some of it through nationalistic propaganda (nazis), some of it through ideological propaganda (communists). Brainwashing seems to reach the masses and easily convince them to join mass murderers. However, when men stand up for rationality, the masses snort at them and look at them with contempt. People judge evilness as strength, morality as weakness. It's partially true that those who are stronger don't need morality as much to survive, but when those who are evil happen to be the weakest, and their stupidity brings nothing but destruction, the masses have been fooled, but they never learn from it.
- the knowledge needed to understand world's problems is so large that almost nobody can aquire it - you need to know history, biology, psychology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology and logics to be able to fully comprehend the mess that the world is. But very few aquire that knowledge, for many reasons. One reason is that it's impossible for most people's brain capacity. Another reason is that wide knowledge isn't as economically competitive as deep but narrow knowledge.
- society favors those who cause more environmental problems, and punishes those who could solve the problems - nobody could get the time to solve the problems of civilizations. As mentioned above science money seldom comes from the state but often from individual lobbyists who want their own product/country/whatever proven to be the best, rather than finding the truth.
- people who questioned civilization throughout history were ruthlessly killed for it, so that almost only people who accept and like the whip of society have survived. An genetical evolution which gradually brings mankind even further from being able to solve the society problems. People who questioned the insanity that civilization is, were killed, crucified, beheaded. Thus civilization's problems can't be understood, civilization's problems can't be protested against, and civilization's problems can't be solved, due to restrictions imposed by civilization itself. You could say that civilization is no longer mankind's creation, but that mankind is ruled by civilization.
- pretty much all of the problems mankind faces today really has it's root in civilization! Pandemias, warfare, genocide, environment problems, nuclear war threat, oppression, prostitution, inability to supply the overpopulated earth with food and water etc.

Ah the joys of civilization!

Discussion: 1. do you think civilization was an improvement or not over the life in nature? 2. if we didn't have enlightenment and art, would you think of civilization as a good thing still? 3. it seems impossible to get rid of civilization, because civilization gives rise to weapons making, which makes people with civilization able to conquer and murder people who don't accept the horrors of civilization and implement it by free will. Thus once a single group has decided to use civilization, all will get it, and those wise men who are most against it will die painful deaths. It seems necessary for mankind to invent something that is a civilization but has the benefits of pre-civilization society. How do you think this could be done?

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I'm rather fond of modern civilisation as it means I am likely to die peacefully in my bed at the age of eighty rather than miserably in a field of a preventable disease at thirty.


By the way, art has been a defining attribute of human beings from pre-history. Some would argue that it was the defining attribute. Your views on sex and relationships are also rather bizarre.

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By the premise that civilization is necessary to allow higher reasoning capabilities by humans, as certainly civilization encourage the development of speech far beyond the practical usage of a caveman's assumed everyday life--literature being a prime example--and consequently more complex logic, I'd say you and I owe civilization for our awareness too much to just say:

"You know what? Let's return to the Original Position together. The State of Nature is ideal."

Besides, without civilization, we will have all the bads still without the good; that is, ignoring your rather strange view on sexuality and its purpose. Just look at the chimpanzees; remember the thread some time ago about that video on how they, despite certainly not in civilization, still commit brutalities without apparent reason like we do?

Also, your premise that lack of civilization = freedom is flawed. The connection does not exist beyond a philosophical exercise.

On a few other points, you mentioned the workload. Well, the lower workload does not necessarily equate to a better life now, does it? Especially considering that the times other than the workload are spent mainly on "hybernation" of some sort.

As of the environment issue, not necessarily, I must say.

Overall, the complex problems you presented as "cons," while many do not exist as means without civilization, the similar ends--death, brutality, murder, practical slavery--remain. Like I said, cons without the pros.

Now, an anarchist might disagree with me, but anarchism still works from an awareness that owes to civilization. You can't "get out of civilization" without the thing you need to get out of existing in the first place now, does it?

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Sid Meier rocks!!!

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We can't return, that's the sad part.

If we tried to go back now, yes. That's not the point of the post. The point is to realize the civilization does not make good things, but the struggle against civilization and corrupt authorities has given us a few good things in a system which is flawed and sick in it's foundations. The struggle for rationality, science and art in a world that fights against rationality, truth and beauty is one thing that keeps civilization from being a worse hell than it is.

Feel free to elaborate on that

Feel free to show any examples. Just because you don't understand the communication among chimpansees it doesn't mean they had no reason for the fight. Also, how many casualties and suffering did the chimpanzee form of fighting cause? Did you see any chimp try to beg for surrender but not being shown mercy?

A statement supported by neither examples nor proof is an empty statement.

Go say that to third world slave workers, or the Europeans working in mines and factories during the 19th century. Just because you and I happen to be exceptions from the worst forms of excessive labor load, it doesn't mean the society form works well, or that our generations will live in that luxury always. The society system is flawed because it has always needed some people to work as slaves. Before they used peasants within the own society, now they use people abroad. If you read about the situation of peasants and workers in most historical periods I'm sure you would prefer natural setting over that. You might prefer your current life over natural setting though, but remember that your life style would be impossible unless underpayed slaves didn't produce a lot of your clothes and food abroad, which means our society systems in Europe and America are flawed too - they can't afford to support people with the products they want even though you have an excessive workload. People having acceptable workloads is a parenthesis in history - the common case is suffering and open or latent slavery.

This is a fascistical thought directed against people who work more effectively but have limited endurance. What gives people with little strength and intelligence the right to oppress people with limited endurance?

You mean there would have been ozone layer holes, poisonous water, nuclear radiation at Chernobyl, global warming and eutrophication of lakes even without civilization?

When did you last see a slave animal? When did you last see an animal that didn't have the freedom to leave it's group as it wished? How often do you see animals actually killing each other? They kill, but it all follows clear rules and it's obvious what you can do in each situation to avoid the killing. Carpet bombings, civilian massacres and genocide aren't possible to escape in the same manner because they're irrational and unpredictable.

Also, how come people can praise civilization for doing nothing but solving 10% of the problems it created itself, while causing plenty of new problems and solving none of the problems that existed before civilization? There's no reason to support civilization. If I had made this list and used another word than civilization for the concept, everyone would immediately look upon supporters of the concept as insane. However, when the word civilization comes up, it causes an irrational desire which blinds all reason.

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Early Egyptian civilizations had almost no health care skills at all when the historically documented methods are judged after modern knowledge standards. Still, many Egyptians lived up to 100 years. Furthermore, consider that civilization has created many of the diseases that have killed many people throughout history. For each medicine developed, three new diseases evolve. While you might think it's an improvement to survive pneumonia today, consider that pneumonia hardly existed before the ancient and Medieval periods, and when flocks were isolated such diseases didn't spread or mutate as quickly, because there were less subjects and smaller chance of spread between groups. We haven't made much of a progress in medicine at all in terms relative to ourselves, mostly only relative to the diseases.

Art and science are, and have always been, an expression of individuals, not of civilization - in fact civilization has always worked against art and science, to control people's minds. It's almost impossible to make a living as an artist or scientist in today's society for instance. Looking back at history and looking at the facts and not on the popular prejudice, scientists and artists have almost always had trouble surviving the regimes and the tyrannic civilization.

Feel free to elaborate

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That's a HUGE post. Well, I've come to expect nothing less of you

I'd rather have a good looking woman that dresses up then a hairy, filthy cavewoman.

See above. Also today we have the advantage of being able to have sex without having kids forced upon you, wich you don't mention.


The general problem with your stance is that the pre-civilization state, or more accurately pre-society state, never existed. Even before we became homo sapiens we lived in social structures, and the oldest profession in the world has existed longer then the current species of humans. What you propose is an unnatural state.


Someone has had an unpleasant youth I see?

That is natural selection in the modern age. Nothing unnatural about it- avarice and ambition are part of our nature. I also fail to see how it is worse then a primitive society where the largest thuggish brute is the only one who gets to breed.

It bothers you that you have to read 50 letters on a day? Do you have any idea what you're putting us through by making posts this long? (J/K)
Summarizing Hobbes, lack of freedom and being bound to rules is the price we pay for the merits of civilisation. We accept that we can't go around killing people in exchange for the protection of our life, property and well being in general. Everything is better then the "natural state", wich is a state of war between everyone. Of course no such natural state ever existed he admits, neither does any version of a natural state propogated by such philosophers.

4 hours a day? I don't know where you got that idea from, but it's bullshit. Humans in the dawn of man did not dance in flowers nor did they smoke pot 12 hours a day. The life of paleolithic nomads was brutal and they usually lived on the brink of starvation as there was barely enough to go around in the ice age. That's the way scarcity works- if there was an abundance of recourses so that a species only has to do marginal effort to live and procreate, population will grow and undo that.

And when did this not occur? Exactly, when humans did not exist.

Of course violence has taken a huge flight since it has become institutionalized in warfare. I still prefer society over a condition in where you can be murdered by your neighbour for as much as a days meal.

You'll have to provide some statistical evidence that there has been a huge increas in wars since the industrial revolution before anybody will accept that point.
If you had pointed out that the drive for recources has caused nations to enslave others and establish colonies, you would have a debatable point.

The ozon hole has shrunk the past few decades and will continue to shrink. Eventually we'll be forced to realize we can't keep on damaging the environment, but we have not reached that point yet. It's sad that our species as a whole is acting so short sightedly.

Specialization, my friend, is a necessary product of society and that wich makes society possible. Not everybody needs to understand economics and political theory. Ideally, our social and economic structures should ensure that the most competent and good willing are calling the shots, but in practice it will always be falling and getting up.

And cavemen tribes would not resort to exterminating eachother when they got the opportunity? Please.

The only reason those morals exist is because humans are sentient social creatures- by nature, we are not amoral. And being social creatures, we live in societies as that is our nature.
Throughout history empires and nations have become decadent, followed by their decline and fall. We'll have to reverse this trend or face the consequenses.

We are vulnerable to epidemics because we can sustain huge populations due to the lack of natural enemies. Your whole post seems to come down to that because society can't prevent all wrongs, it would be better to revert to something even worse.

So, we have so much knowledge that one man can't possibly comprehend at all...and that's a BAD thing? Again, specialization.


Not in the long run, some day reality will catch up with us. Survival of the fittest favours the relentless, that's the way it's always been and not much can be changed about it.

Living in societies is a logical consequense of our nature. We can't deny our nature- duh! And by the way, how is it that you live, after having questioned society so furiously? Oh right, freedom of speech. What a wonderful product of civilization that is

A more accurate statement would be that our continuous development has traded many old problems for new ones. I prefer the new ones.

1. An improvement over what? An anarchists utopia that never existed? We've come a long way since we lived in animals' hides, I'll call that an improvement.
2. Art has existed as long as we have. If by enlightenment you mean the enlightenment era, well, if I were making your argument I'd just have asked if you woulnd't have any of the advantages of civilization but still the disadvantages, would you still think civilization is a good thing? The question is meaningless.
3. What definition do you use for civilization anyway? Were the Egyptians not a civilization for example? I acknowledge that civilization tends to cause certain trouble (our zealous hygienic habits could be the cause of an increase of alergia, for example), but that's something we'll have to deal with rather then ditch civilization alltogether for something worse.

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I'm afraid this is largely nonsense. Do some reading and you will find the majority of ancient human beings died quite early from disease, burnout or warfare. The ancient Egyptians had quite an advanced medical technology for the time, but life was still brutish and hard for most people. Have a look at the studies of those few pre-civilisation societies that are left. Average life expectancy is around forty.

Again, very wrong. Modern western civilisation is very supportive of artists - no longer do they need rich patrons and therefore to be reasonably good. The place is swarming with mediocre talents nowadays, usually supported on benefits by my taxes. And science is a respected and reasonably well-paid profession. Both professions may have had a hard time in the past, but at least civilisation has afforded them the privilege of time to think and create. Do you really think Aristotle or Michelangelo would have achieved anything if they had to live their lives scouring the mountains for berries and decomposing mammoth?

OK, I'll bite.

Why is women wearing clothes a downside of civilisation? What about naked men?

Most civilised people have sex with someone they don't like? Nonsense. Most people I know have sex within a loving relationship - I love my wife, and I didn't choose her because she was easy to catch. You have a deeply disturbed view of relationships if you think any of what you wrote is normal. Civilisation has developed moral rules for relationships that promote stable families and economic arrangments that benefit all sides. Women particularly have benefitted by protection from laws that protect them from exploitation, rape and being treated as property. Took a long time, I agree, but it would never have happened in a palaeolithic grouping.

Again, with the STD argument. First of all, if you have a stable loving relationship, your exposure to these diseases is greatly reduced. These diseases may have not been as prevalent in prehistory (we don't know) but that would be mainly due to very low population densities. So if you're arguing that the high populations of civilised societies promote disease you may have a point to debate. But you are toying with misogyny again with the kissing statement - why do you fear women so much?

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It's impossible to avoid civilization especially with large human populations.

Say 10 people can form a tribe and terrorise any individuals. Twenty people will form a tribe as protection and defeat the other tribe.

Another aggressive tribe of 50 forms to beat the 20. Hence another 100 will form yet another tribe. Next thing you know, you've got cities, kingdoms, states, nations, empires and the united nations.

It's not really about weapons at all. It's about population and resources.

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...The Plot Thickens...

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Worst thing ever to happen to mankind. (My eyes hurt so I can't tell you in details)

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Ah, a debater.
Well, the "state of nature" from the philosophies of those old English/Frenchmen does not make for any real pre-history "humans." Before we are human, we were apes, and we all know most apes have some sort of "society" developed already.

Where is this state of nature?

Besides, if we are to subscribe to Hobbes, it will simply be War against All, far worse than civilization; then, if we are to subscribe Rousseau, then we'll be blank sheets, without this awareness and unable to debate the merits of civilization together.
Define "civilization." You seem to equate it with government alone. The struggle is not "against" civilization but within the confines of civilization against the state. Civilization is the entire system; state is just a part of it. Those who rebelled against governments, those who start revolutions, and those who deny the state, all (except a few 20th century anarchists, which is another topic entirely) do so in the hopes of improving civilization, revolutionizing civilization; but still do so for civilization nonetheless. Why do you think we are able to develop arts, complex science, enjoy our history (this is a semi-history forum, no?), and develop complex rationality beyond a rare individual basis? One could say I'm speaking of civilization as society.

For example, communism does not seek to destroy civilization, it seeks to establish a classless society, a civilization unlike any seen before. But still civilization: interactions, systems, all there.
Your point on sexuality seems to rely on a very primate and practical view of it: produce children, spread your genes, those kinds of things. We as humans developed a consciousness for sexuality seperated from its "natural" purpose; why do you think pills and condoms are used? I'm just surprised you keep this "natural" view, which seem to imply you do not recognize the latter.
The different scales does not make for different crimes. An industrial war is as much for resources as an ant invasion of another's lair.

Animals are in a perpetual state of war. In society at least there are lapses of peace. The Chinese saying: from peace comes war; from war comes peace. The animals? War of all against all.
Like I said, the lack of civilization does not mean the end of interaction. And what is interaction but a limitation of certain freedoms? You kill the other you deprive her life. You simply talk you deprive yourself the freedom to kill. You eat you destroy. You do not eat you lose your life.

And if there is no interaction whatsoever, that supposed ideal state of nature, then there really is no true consciousness. Is Eden that appealing?

I think not.
Society is flawed = society bad in all circumstances? That does make for a logical fallacy. The specific do not apply completely to the general. And I know of the existence of "Third World Slave Workers"--I was born in "The Third World"--and I can say an existence of slavery, disgusting, cruel, evil, whatever metaphors and colorful descriptions you want, as it is, does make for a slightly better position that sheer wild lawlessness. Our goal here nonetheless covers improving, as opposed to destroying, civilization.
You misunderstand me completely. My point is to demonstrate that an animal-like state--you know that animals eat a lot for only a few hours; work, if you might, and do nothing for long periods?--does not make for an appealing state. Candide expresses that wonderfully. What's worse? Being raped a hundred times by [Barbary] pirates, have your buttocks cut off, being whipped and hanged, being cheated, or sit there and do nothing all day?

And what's the solution from all this? We cultivate our garden.
Let's refer to your original point: society favors those who destroy the environment. That's not supported, the claim that "individual lobbyists" are responsible excludes thousands of years of civilization. And just because individual lobbyists favor their own interests doesn't mean out-of-civilization humans don't. We are, in fact, arguably, on the verge of a new development to reconcile society with nature. With science of course.
Ant raids. Ant slaves: stolen from their home "lairs" and raised as slaves. Of course, they remain one step behind genocide for one little reason: further exploitation. How nice. Lion males imposing its super-duper lazy rule over female lions. Need I go on more? What about those fugitive animals that often got shunned, got hunted, got killed?

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If modern society's unnatural selection through genocide, war and fear tactics, fashion and trends is considered normal, then people should be taught to have the right be allowed to strive for their own survival and not be brainwashed with morality and stopped from maximizing their survivability. Then I and all others should be taught in school to break written and unwritten law if we knew we would get away with it but acquire power and success through doing so. The idea of law is justice, and if that justice is no longer the goal, but some flawed evolution favoring evil people over people who listen to their mothers and fathers and others advicing them to follow morality and law, then the society form is flawed, and even full anarchism and uncontrolled bloodshed is better for the species.

Your view of brutish individuals having success in nature is also flawed by the way - have you noticed how many animals are considerate, and particularly small and weak? If strength and brutes would pay off in nature, would there be rabbits, mice, dogs, wild cats, squirrels? A majority of all mammals are extremely considerate and peaceful to their own species. None of you civilizationists have any clue about what nature is like.

Hobbes supported dictatorship and kings by the grace of God. His logic was utterly flawed - just look at how the 17th century king of God's grace system broke together. To quote Hobbes is to embrace dictatorship.

Which merits?

As Voltaire said: "Killing is immoral and wrong, therefore people who kill are punished except when they do it in lines with trumpets in the background". The excessive bloodshed of society is greater than anything seen among any possible natural setting scenario that could be imagined.

as explained, there's less protection and safety in civilization

The species is now on the verge of destroying itself. We weren't even close to that before civilization. What safety is it you speak of? Nuclear war, environmental destruction, man-created pandemics?

A prejudiced opinion

You seem to know little of nature. If you'd actually bother to learn about it, you'd see how flock cooperation and friendliness is the key to why for instance weak and fragile beings like humans could ever survive in the first place. Humans are too slow to catch fast animals, have too little endurance to catch the long distance runners, and to little strength to beat the slow but large beasts. All they have is cooperation in the competition against others.

[QUOTE=Kralizec]
Of course no such natural state ever existed he admits, neither does any version of a natural state propogated by such philosophers.


Your idea is completely wrong. You can even look at nature today to confirm that many animals can get their daily dosage of food needed for survival by only a few hours of work. In that time they can also scare away intruders and mark the borders of their territory.

Please present proof of human sacrifice before the earliest civilizations. Also present proof of animals doing sacrifice of their own species. There is a link between early civilizations and animals comparable to man. You make a false assumption by backtracking from civilization without meeting up by trying to predict how natural state turned into civilization. Look at both perspectives, not only how civilization came from nature, but also how nature became civilization.

Again a flawed view of nature. How often do you see monkeys kill for a single meal? Monkeys are rational beings, seldom killing unless there's a shortage of things. And do civilized people not do this? Actually, civilized people have more resource dependencies and therefore get into shortage more often, starting wars even for things such as oil which isn't needed for the basic survival. Oh and there's also the regular form of fight over food - in Rwanda about 50% of the population was killed as an indirect result of food shortages.

Gold mines was a source of war already in ancient periods.

And here's one of the key points you might actually understand if you abandon the prejudice - civilization causes problems that it's members can't understand and stop. Do you see a movement to stop these things? No. And it gets worse because problems tend to appear with longer and longer delays after their causes, meaning it's impossible to reverse it if it goes on too long. Take some time thinking about this - the state of the Weimar republic caused Hitler and nazism. The Tsar period of Russia caused the Russian revolution and the gulag archipelago. The 19th century caused world war one. The world is like a pendulum, if you swing it too far in one direction it comes back in another. Everything is caused by what was before. People don't usually understand the consequences of actions that will have consequences 20 or 50 years later. The result is that even people who strive for peace might end up helping the creation of a world war. Even without evilness, civilization drives men to points where there's no return. Compare how much choice the world had a century before these incidents I gave as examples, and how little choice was actually left when it happened. And compare this to the natural setting, where every action has a very easily foreseeable consequence.

Exactly, and that's the danger of it.

When you talk about cavemen you talk about civilization. They had weaponry, religion, art and specialization, so they were civilized. But try to show any other species than humans carrying out extermination more often than humans, or even nearly as often as humans. The important insight is that it isn't civilization that causes our good things, it's the struggle against civilization and established authority that gives true art, and true science. Just remember how the best artists and scientists had to fight to get their works out to the masses.

The causes of the fall of nations and empires lie in the way the empire grows and flourishes. Decadence is usually an inevitable consequence of greatness.

Society has caused 99% of our current problems. It has solved none of our problems before civilization. Please try to explain why the natural setting would be worse than civilization? Is the list above not enough? Do you like genocide, war and oppression? Also I'm not advocating the removal of civilization since it's impossible - it's a curse that lies upon mankind and can never be gotten rid of. What we can do is however to learn from the natural setting that once was, and while retaining the curse of civilization recreate as much as possible of the benefits of pre-civilization society within a civilized society. Remember how the most successful and peaceful civilizations have indeed been built upon studies of the nature. The greatest artists and scientists - for example Michelangelo and Newton - found their inspiration in nature.

Thanks for deliberately misreading. I'll state it again - we NEED so much knowledge to understand how to solve our own problems that we can hardly be able to solve them. Because it's nearly impossible to understand the magnitude of the problems without being educated in all the fields I mentioned. No single person is able to know all of that, and thus nobody makes the connections. Plus we have a dogmatic culture of mind in our societies.

You fail to understand the main point - as years passes by, we get better and better at creating problems whose consequences don't appear until decades or centuries after the action that caused them was carried out. It's difficult to at all trace those responsible for the actions and would be pointless to do so exactly. But we can see general systems - not giving a **** about environment causes cheaper production for your company, so you're favored.

Freedom of speech is a result of reactions and rebellion towards civilization, not a result of civilization. You must first remove the right to say what you want before you can give it back. Guess who first removes the right to free speech - civilization or nature?

You prefer bigger problems?

The same vague idea of distancing from nature used by most. The concept is so vaguely defined that it has caused much prejudice about political philosophy to spread through generations because people praise civilization, without clearly knowing what it is, but the most commonly used definition in the prejudice is distancing from nature and abandoning of the natural setting lifestyle.

Remember that I'm not supporting removal of civilization - since it's impossible - but that mankind should stop be so prejudiced and consider distancing from nature a good thing, for in fact closeness to nature is what has given us most of the good things we have today. And those things are reactions and rebellion towards distancing from nature (i.e. civilization), not something caused by, or supported by, civilization itself. Just like we have refined our art and science by looking at nature, it's time we look at nature to learn how a good society is created. It's a society system created by billions of years of evolution and it's not perfect, but it has no serious flaws like our own society today has. Maybe we could by comparing nature and civilization realize how bad a job we've done because we've constantly left creation of society form to unworthy and egoistic people who don't care about the common good, and how important a subject it is. With the magnitude of today's problems there's no room for failure in society philosophy. Remember how the natural society lacked any big problems, and whatever problems it had were small, while today's society tends to "solve" problems by replacing them with more and worse problems than the problem initially intended to be solved. What I recommend you to do is to instead of backtracking from early civilizations towards the natural setting, try to trace the events from the other direction. Then it becomes clear what I mean in that we have a lot to learn from nature in how to form a good society structure. It would be a civilization, but a civilization that lives up to the word "civilized", which oddly means the opposite of what civilization - distancing from nature - is.

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That's exactly the reason why I consider return to nature impossible - it is impossible. Return to nature was not my point of the thread.

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As I explained above Hobbes was an idiot whose name shouldn't be mentioned in a serious debate.

Done above. But I posted it while you were writing this...

Government is what forms our society form. What the government says should be, becomes. And what becomes when they say it should be, is what civilization is to us today.

You use another definition. My definition is IMO rational because government is so closely related to civilization. The civilization - distancing from nature - means an alternative form of rule is used. Whatever that alternative rule is, it happens to be the central point of civilization. Remember that civilization caused these governments, so whatever evil all governments and kings have done as a result of the powers they were given and the society and political environment they were exposed to is caused by civilization.

On the contrary, most rebels seem to want to see themselves get the power of their former oppressor, and oppress others with it. Again think of how the government system is a central part of civilization itself and make the obvious connection.

There are obviously civilizations better than other civilizations. But it's not the level of distancing yourself from nature that is proportional to how good the society form is. The prejudiced connection between anti-nature thoughts and peaceful and enlightened societies is a lie.

All thoughts even today have their root in these primate and practical views. Surely my emotions, and nobody elses either, calls for creation of an offspring, but for a form of enjoyment and closeness between someone you love. But those feelings have their roots in exactly the practical view, and the more correctly created your instincts are, the more horrible your emotions will be if the practical things aren't fulfilled, and the more enjoyable your emotions if they are fulfilled. All instincts are based on correlations existing in nature between the practical point, and something that happens to exist in combination with that practical point. Condoms for instance fool the instincts to think we just got an offspring, but we didn't. Still remember though that if your emotions would be perfect, you'd not enjoy sex with a condom. But that's a side matter - it's acceptable to base the society system on the emotions rather than the rational background behind those emotions, but then we must be aware of what we're doing. In the case of sex, it's no damage to have less children with the current overpopulation on earth, but there are other cases where listening to the emotions while having changed the practical situation without the emotions being able to tell the difference can cause serious trouble. I will not go into detail into this. But as for the actual comment about my view on sex and love my emotional opinion is as I explained different from my society philosophical view of it. A rational view is needed in society philosophy because society philosophy must be based on reason and rationality. Unfortunately most societies are formed by emotions that are mistriggered because the triggering stimuli aren't correlated to the rational reason for the triggering of the emotions when society drastically differs from the natural setting, to which our instincts are developed and are still best adapted to.

Just like Kralizec I think you know very little about biology. When was the last time you actually watched a wild animal and how it interacts with others in it's flock?

The Candide example was a case of civilization. There, the other definition of civilized is used - where it's used to denote enlightenment, but the concept has been so abused that it usually means the same as "barbarian" came to mean to the romans. Therefore I don't think that definition should be used in this debate.

Lions aren't comparable to humans. Just like you can't compare insects to men. For example there's an insect that kills the male after mating. It's ethically correct for the female to do so, because it gets a million offspring, so the species has developed that way - the male provided nutrition for the million offspring. But if humans would do the same thing - humans who only get one child per mating (twins etc. are rare), every mating would mean -1 in net population count, which would be impossible. Thus humans can't have females killing males after mating. The same way, certain animals have raping as a natural state, while for humans it isn't - generally for all animals who experience some form of love rape is a crime. So why is rape a crime that the females don't like, why did evolution decide that females should feel pain and try to escape from a situation of rape? Because there's more survival chance for the offspring if the partner is chosen by certain fairly accurate partner choice instincts so the offspring gets the optimal combination of genes - individual strength of the partner is less important than a good matching between partners. Compare this to fish - where sperms are mixed almost randomly, and primitive reptiles, where the couple creation is decided by fights - the males internally decide together who is to mate with who. The human system with love and partner matching has been superior to alternatives and that's why in our natural setting humans developed an aversion towards rape. Do fish females dislike getting "raped", i.e. getting an offspring with the wrong male fish? No. Do lion females dislike being "raped"? No, because it isn't rape for those species. It's rape for humans to do it, but not for those animals. Just like it's not murder for a certain inscent female to kill the male after mating, while it would be murder for a human female to do the same thing.

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That's not the case.

Ha!
Have you ever seen how protective cats are of their territory, and how they behave in the mating season?
Dogs behave hostile to other dogs that are not part of their "pack".
Like the old saying says: nature is cruel. It's you who doesn't have a clue about how nature works.

Hobbes' contract theory explains why humans would always chose society over the Natural State. Just because you don't like him doesn't mean his philosphy is flawed.

Have you ever seen anybody get killed? Have you ever witnessed violence at all with your own eyes? If you lived in a more primitive society you'd be confronted with violence on a regular basis.


No you didn't, and no there isn't

Nothing short of an extraterrestrial threat (comet, supernova) would wipe out the human race entirely.

As said, Hobbes' state of nature is purely hypothetical and could not exist for any period of time because humans are social creatures by nature.

Did you know that a large wolf could eat a quarter of a cow- but if necessary can also go 2 weeks without any food? Even if for some species surviving is a walk in the park, that does not apply for humans because we breed so fast- any overcapacity of an environment to produce food will be consumed by newcomers in a single or two generations, making it harder to forage and hunt for food.

Before? I said that sacrifices would not occur when humans did not exist, hence before civilization.
I don't think paleolithic nomads would have sacrificed humans, since they couldn't spare anyone.
Now a word about the "natural state": we are living in it right now. Human nature is to live in societies. Our modern civilization is just a more developed version of tribal confederations. Evey society throughout history had its own problems for its time. A state of nature where we only worked 4 hours a day, had sex with everyone without getting STD's and smoked pot all day long never existed.

So to clarify: you think you have a larger risk getting violently killed today then in [insert society of your choosing]?

If humans were a species that never got anything done, we wouldn't have large scale wars. Or interesting history for that matter. Why do you hate humanity?

I see. You'll admit then, that there was no "before civilization", at least as far as the period covering human existence?...

...that would make this part redundant.
Like I said before, we trade old problems for new ones as we go.
What natural setting? I have asked you this before.

Then your beef is with civilization at this moment, rather then with civilization in general.

Many things have been defended as being "right" by "law of nature". Enlightened thinking is a product of civilization, not a throwback to a more primitive society.

Would you say that hippies had the right idea?

A civilization is simply an advanced society. That's open to interpretation of course, but I'd say that being sedentiary would be minimum standard.
I'm all for a "rediscovery of nature" if that's what you're arguing for.

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Interestingly, there's quite a lot of evidence for palaeolithic humans being cannibals. Many finds of human bones, right up to the neolithic have shown carving marks consistent with defleshing.

Now, many opposing archaeologists would say that perhaps there is a ritual element to the defleshing that does not necessarily involve consumption, but given what we know of human behavious and more modern 'stone age' cultures, cannibalism is highly likely.

After all, in a resource limited territory, smacking the neighbouring tribe around, stealing their women for reproduction and eating the high protein chaps sounds remarkably familiar.

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Again you make a fallacy. In all forms of natural violence except resource conflicts, it's possible to surrender and be shown mercy. You can ALWAYS avoid non-resource conflict violence if you want to. In civilization that's not the case, and most fights of non-resource character seem to take the proportions and principles of resource-fight eventually, which makes our conflicts all the more devastating. Also you need to compare with the correct animals. You can't compare insects to humans, or too distant mammals to humans. Plus you can DEFINITELY not compare animals that live alone to a flock animal such as humans. See my post above for why lions can't be compared to humans in sexual behavior.

Hobbes says that dictatorship is the only way for humans to live. We know how incorrect that theory has turned out to be. Do you like dictatorship? Because by praising Hobbes teachings you're praising dictatorship.

In a more primitive civilization, is what you mean. It's still in a civilization and that's the point - the societies called uncivilized are still civilizations. If you look at the natural setting it's about equal to the best of the civilizations, and the best of the civilizations happen to be parentheses in history and quickly be over due to the instability of civilization.

You close your eyes to the obvious.

Your ignorance in the subjects that explain the magnitude of our current problems doesn't mean your view on them is correct. See above for a very incomplete but still shockingly long and horrible list of our current problems.

This is a very flawed statement. All flock animals are social by nature, but do you see all other flock animals starting war, genocide, environmental problems and create pandemics by their lifestyle?

No, the rapid reproduction of humans is a result of civilization and culture, not something biological. Humans wouldn't have survived long with the fast reproduction rate of today. Nature regulates overpopulation before it happens, while mankind in civilization uses war and genocide as birth control - post-birth abortion.

Please cut out the ad hominem attacks and stop accusing me of drug usage.

You fail to realize that Europe and America today is an insignificant parenthesis historically and geographically, because in civilization we create unforeseeable problems that appear dozens of years after the actions that caused them. Just because we have peaceful periods between our world wars it doesn't mean we're doing better than the natural setting. On the contrary, two world wars and plenty of genocides during the 20th century - a century seen as enlightened - pretty much proves that civilization is unstable and fragile. Looking at the times where we say "no more wars" and forgetting the actual wars is a fallacy. Remember how all people at the outbreak of each of these conflicts felt it necessary to act as they did, because the situation caused that behavior. However nobody realized that such a situation would appear until it appeared. Remember that nobody could really stop all this bloodshed when it appeared. Civilization creates scenarios that cause massive violence, because in civilization the consequences of actions are much less foreseeable, due to the complexity of civilization. That's one of the principles we can learn from nature - a society form must be as simple as possible - everything that makes it more complex needs to have a thorough motivation. For instance the ridiculous way we appoint new commissions every time something goes wrong is not sound politics. Nobody can really overview current society and make decent predictions of the outcome of actions - that's why so many undesirable scenarios appear even when we strive for peace. Predictability of consequences is one of the key points in free will - without predictability there's no free will or responsibility lying upon the person making a choice of action.

Why do you hate freedom and safety?

Define primitive. Is war and genocide with high-tech equipment less primitive than peace and occasional small fights by hand that never go to the death?

No, hippies desired laziness, being controlled by emotions, and not solving problems. Their "close to nature" ideal was entirely sexual and emotional, and created plenty of STD epidemias due to how they incorrectly chose an emotional behavior in a society not adapted to their emotions. Thus they made exactly the same mistake you and other civilizationists are making. The failure to realize what consequences distancing yourself from nature has. Distancing yourself from nature in just a single aspect will render many emotions useless and if people keep acting by emotions in a world not adapted to the emotions, the result is undesirable consequences and large-scale society problems.

Good, with the same definition of the concept it seems we agree to many things. But the vague definition of civilization is a big society problem, I'd say. Consider that the very word civilization has an emotional "positive" meaning to everyone, but the actual practical definition of the word is so vague and changing that it causes a lot of fallacies in thought. With an exact definition it becomes apparent in which cases the word denotes a good thing and when it denotes a bad thing. I believe a less vague and more accurate word for "civilization" would be enlightenment. It's the enlightenment and a serious struggle for peace etc. that can occasionally make societies good to live in.

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Just to help you along, Legio, human beings are not a flock animal.

Flocking is a behaviour which helps defend against predators by both spreading the risk (like herd behaviour, it presents many targets which might not be you) and presenting a confusing overall target.

Humans are small group social, and highly territorial animals. Like most of the primates. The benefits of this behaviour have some anti-predation use, but are primarily connected with reproductive effectiveness (long gestation and infancy periods, high genetic investment and so forth).

If you can use the right terminology, your arguments will be less confusing.

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Thank u I meant herd

Flock is used in the same meaning as herd. It was a wrong choice of word, but it should have been quite obvious what was meant with it because the words are nearly synonyms in an ecological and society philosophical sense:

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No they're not, that's what I was trying to say. In biology, the words describe different behaviours, neither of which aply to human or primate behaviour. Since some of your arguments stand on this misuse, I was trying to help you focus your thoughts. Just because your use is obvious to you, doesn't mean to say it is for others.

Wikipedia is a largely useless source in most scientific cases, since it is not properly peer reviewed. In your example, it is vague and misleading.

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My thoughts don't change because I found out that my knowledge of English vocabulary made me chose the wrong word for a concept where I knew which concept I was referring to. However it makes me change my communication. I have no need to clear up my thoughts since I don't rely on word definitions in my conclusion steps. See below.

Wikipedia is not scientific but since words don't matter to the actual meaning of thoughts, using it for looking up words seldom causes problems with the line of thought, but sometimes with the interaction of a discussion. If you're a biologist or native English speaking or both I take your word for the definition over what wikipedia says, otherwise I'll check a real dictionary if your way of thinking and not only the communication relies on the definitions of the words. It's a common fallacy to rely on the meaning of words when making conclusions, usually the meaning of the words are slightly altered between subsequent conclusion steps, meaning that the conclusions end up wrong. Therefore words should only be used in communication and not in thoughts, and when they're used in communication the definition should be made clear by the debaters, because since most words are learnt through listening to in which situations they appear in and not by reading the formal definition, people usually have different definitions of the words even despite scientific attempts to make formal and common definitions. In many fields, for instance, there can be up to 5 meanings of a word, but all of those definitions are scientifical formal and exact definitions - despite formal definitions it's still impossible to tell which phenomenon or thing the word refers to. The only word definitions that make sense in a philosophical discussion are those that are defined by the debaters. That's why philosophical discussions always apply the principle of discussing which own definition of the word is used by the parttakers - the definitions can be figured out either before or during the debate.

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pros:

-modern medicine
-anti conception
-probably less day to day violence
-food and lots of it
-vacation days
-heating and airconditioning
-more interesting past time activities


cons

- war
- pollution
- politicians


If you don't like civilization move to Alaska, I like it just fine, now if only we could cut back on the negative things...

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You missed the point, civilization is a curse we can't escape from. It's not emotions but rationality that is the center of the discussion. I'm perfectly able to stand civilization by denial, just like everyone else. Moving to Alaska or living in a hippie reservate would work if there was an emotional concern. It's not an emotional concern, it's a rational concern. As you can see in my post above I've mentioned very little about the emotional consequences of civilization - the points are only about practical problems.

The main point of the debate is that emotions and instincts don't work in a civilization - the old well-known conclusion made by those who formulated the earliest ethics and moral systems in our history. The system that has been tried repeatedly to solve that problem is an accepted form of morality "brainwashing" by teaching people the moral values decided by a culture, and hope they'll follow those values even when they aren't benefitial or don't seem so to the individual. I'd say that method has failed, and that the only way that could work for the masses would be a system where the environment of stimuli looks very much like that of the natural setting, but that it would still be a civilization - because escaping from civilization is impossible. When society and human mind don't work together, either human mind or society form can be changed to solve the problems of that incompatibility. The method typically chosen in history has been to change humans, and kill those who don't fit into the scheme proposed. But within that system society itself also constantly changes without much deliberate control, so the selection criterion will keep changing (because the society environment changes) so that there'll always be a need to remove undesirables, if that system is kept - which is why with regular intervals large-scale murder and similar is applied within such systems. Plus there'll always be people questioning the morality brainwash and choosing something immoral because it is, or seems, more benefitial within that society system. Instead, the way to peace and stability is to adapt society after how humans work, because some things in human behavior can't be changed - for example fear and the search for maximizing the chances of survival and reproduction. Because the natural setting was compatible with the human mind (because the human mind evolved to adapt as perfectly as possible to exactly that setting), studying the natural setting is an excellent way of learning how the human mind works, and learning about how to create a system where the murdering and instability usually related to civilization is removed - while still achieving this within a system that would count as a civilization, where positive things such as technology could exist without causing the horrors typically related to civilization.

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So many people squashed up together? It isn't healthy I tells thee!

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Well, my doctorate was in zoology, and I am a native English speaker. But look it up in a scientific dictionary by all means.

Personally, I believe that useful debate requires precision in language and that one's thoughts necessarily are coloured by the language one thinks in.

However, I respect your point of view even if it makes it hard for me to follow what you are actually arguing.

I was only trying to be helpful. Now, I shall let things get back on topic.

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War has done a lot of 'good' things for civilizations.

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Hey, a list like this is always going to be subjective

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Gah, you're right...

*don't question me; I'm not gay*

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Also on that point, War would be a con of no civilisation. People would still fight, albeit on a smaller scale, in tribes and such. They would still compete for food, water, shelter, etc...
And without civilisation they have cannot settle the matter over a game of bridge, snap, or Mornington Crescent -- violence would be the only way.

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