My theory, that I have held for a long time, is that Civilisation makes us weak. In particular, modern civilisation and being civilised. This in part comes back to this post but is also a separate issue. It was once said of humanity that the difference between humans and animals was that animals adapt themselves to their environment and humans adapt the environment to us. The weakness in this is that once we adapt things to us, we then adapt to only working within that framework - if most people today were to go for a 'camping' trip, they would take a caravan with power, would not go anywhere a great distance from the shops so they can buy food when they need it, and would still only be out for a weekend. If the same people were to go camping and had to carry their tent, food, clothing and everything else for a week, they would likely die (except that they wouldn't try it without someone who knows what's happening dragging them along and showing them what to do).
The mark of any civilised society is half measures. Things like life sentences; exactly the same as the death sentence, but it takes a lot longer and costs a lot more.
Lets even look at the death sentence; In places that are regarded as civilised that have the death sentence, it is done by lethal injection, a cocktail of toxins that anaesthetise the body and then paralyse the heart and lungs, supposedly ensuring a painless death. Now this person has been deemed too harmful to remain alive anywhere and for the sake of a few pain-free milliseconds incredible research and expense has gone into a nice easy death.
One of my pet hates is political correctness. Now before you say, 'Alphonse, you censor nigh on everything you say, that's being politically correct', no that isn't being politically correct, that's not being a bastard and toning down your more extreme outlooks. How does this fit in? The next mark of civilisation is tolerance; we have to let everyone have equal time and opportunity on everything that they want and we can't say anything negative about it, which frankly to me is sheer stupidity. It means that you can't say anything that may insult someone even out of context of by mistake, you can't be seen to favour someone that you can't offer a reason for and you have to allow equal correctness for everything. The part that I find most annoying besides the stupidness of it all is the people claiming that Christians need to be tolerant of other religious viewpoints, and then being intolerant of Christianity itself.
Political correctness is another half measure. With it, you are allowed to think things like 'All people who take up a career in politics are half-witted morons incapable of a single cogent or logical thought', but you will never be allowed to voice this opinion for fear that someone who either has or would like to take up a career in politics feels that your information is not only incorrect but insulting. We pride ourselves on our freedom of speech (which was only implied in a 1950 odd supreme court decision limiting government censorship of news media) and yet we disallow it for ourselves - that is stupidness.
Our inability to cope with death comes in as well. Recently the Australian Military has suffered massive losses in the war in Afghanistan, more people have died in the past few weeks then for most of the rest of the decade. So lets bring everyone back and leave the job unfinished. This would be a logical response if there were a large amount of deaths. 5 people and a dog do not constitute a large amount of deaths in a war. And yet due to our civilised society we forget that the Army is a place where you expect to get in life threatening situations; you don't join if you think that getting shot is the biggest worry you personally will have. But people can't cope with the idea that anyone would be willing to be injured or killed for something greater than what they conceive themselves to be. And then the biggest folly of this is that we hold up those who have made a great sacrifice in a time of war - look at the VC, something like 90% of the people who have received the greatest military honour have done so post mortem.
And the final weakness is Darwinian. No I don't accept evolution. Natural selection is completely different. And natural selection is what is being limited by civilisation. Now we know that genetic diseases get passed on and in some cases we can cure them. However in most cases all we can do is treat the symptoms and prolong life. The prolonging of life means that the genetic disease can be passed on to another person who again has the symptoms treated. The right to healthcare is something that has never come out of a non-civilised society and it has made us weak. We expect to be able to not die. When we hear that it's terminal, we either give up there and then, or we flail wildly about and expect that someone will be able to cure it. It firstly makes humanity weak and then makes us expect that our weakness will be rewarded with strength.
That's the modern condition.
The mark of any civilised society is half measures. Things like life sentences; exactly the same as the death sentence, but it takes a lot longer and costs a lot more.
Lets even look at the death sentence; In places that are regarded as civilised that have the death sentence, it is done by lethal injection, a cocktail of toxins that anaesthetise the body and then paralyse the heart and lungs, supposedly ensuring a painless death. Now this person has been deemed too harmful to remain alive anywhere and for the sake of a few pain-free milliseconds incredible research and expense has gone into a nice easy death.
One of my pet hates is political correctness. Now before you say, 'Alphonse, you censor nigh on everything you say, that's being politically correct', no that isn't being politically correct, that's not being a bastard and toning down your more extreme outlooks. How does this fit in? The next mark of civilisation is tolerance; we have to let everyone have equal time and opportunity on everything that they want and we can't say anything negative about it, which frankly to me is sheer stupidity. It means that you can't say anything that may insult someone even out of context of by mistake, you can't be seen to favour someone that you can't offer a reason for and you have to allow equal correctness for everything. The part that I find most annoying besides the stupidness of it all is the people claiming that Christians need to be tolerant of other religious viewpoints, and then being intolerant of Christianity itself.
Political correctness is another half measure. With it, you are allowed to think things like 'All people who take up a career in politics are half-witted morons incapable of a single cogent or logical thought', but you will never be allowed to voice this opinion for fear that someone who either has or would like to take up a career in politics feels that your information is not only incorrect but insulting. We pride ourselves on our freedom of speech (which was only implied in a 1950 odd supreme court decision limiting government censorship of news media) and yet we disallow it for ourselves - that is stupidness.
Our inability to cope with death comes in as well. Recently the Australian Military has suffered massive losses in the war in Afghanistan, more people have died in the past few weeks then for most of the rest of the decade. So lets bring everyone back and leave the job unfinished. This would be a logical response if there were a large amount of deaths. 5 people and a dog do not constitute a large amount of deaths in a war. And yet due to our civilised society we forget that the Army is a place where you expect to get in life threatening situations; you don't join if you think that getting shot is the biggest worry you personally will have. But people can't cope with the idea that anyone would be willing to be injured or killed for something greater than what they conceive themselves to be. And then the biggest folly of this is that we hold up those who have made a great sacrifice in a time of war - look at the VC, something like 90% of the people who have received the greatest military honour have done so post mortem.
And the final weakness is Darwinian. No I don't accept evolution. Natural selection is completely different. And natural selection is what is being limited by civilisation. Now we know that genetic diseases get passed on and in some cases we can cure them. However in most cases all we can do is treat the symptoms and prolong life. The prolonging of life means that the genetic disease can be passed on to another person who again has the symptoms treated. The right to healthcare is something that has never come out of a non-civilised society and it has made us weak. We expect to be able to not die. When we hear that it's terminal, we either give up there and then, or we flail wildly about and expect that someone will be able to cure it. It firstly makes humanity weak and then makes us expect that our weakness will be rewarded with strength.
That's the modern condition.
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