It was probably true -- cavemen might have been violent, savage r-ists. They were brutal pillagers and looters, they regarded women as property objects. If one bigger, stronger caveman successfully killed a weaker one, he could take that one's food and dwellings, as well as that one's female baby factory. That is precisely why r-- is *not* considered evolution. Physical urges do not make anyone more evolved. And they sure as hell do not indicate fitness over someone who is not prone to as many physical impulses. It is baffling that there are still people out there, including editorial writers, that are under the impression that r-- is due to evolution.
That's funny, I thought true evolution was determined by the level of humanity that is prevalent in a society.
True evolution is indicated by actions that show compassion, empathy, equality for all humans, and good judgment. True evolution is the triumph of logic and reasoning, nonviolent conflict resolution, and morality. This is sort of a continuation of my Cooperative Gene essay.
The following is a list of much more useful and accurate factors for evaluating a society's advancement. You will notice that all of it is a matter of behavior and conscious choices.
No biological markers to speak of, such as heritable medical diseases, are present in this list. This is for obvious reasons. Heritable medical conditions, for example heart disease or diabetes, are determined genetically and have very little to do with the degree of civilization that can be attained by a person or by a society. To think that medical condition has anything to do with how a person is as a human being is eugenics, which is immoral, unethical, vile, abhorrent. Attempting to create a master race by sheer accident of biology, civilization is not. Beginning the list.
*Treatment of women in the society. I have said this many times before and I will continue to say this many times again. This should always be considered first and foremost. The way a society regards women, that is, fifty percent of the population, is the greatest and most precise indicator of the extent of civilization of a society.
Does a nation have laws that recognize violence against women for the crimes that these acts are? Does the nation enforce these laws? Are all educational and career opportunities open to women? What is the public's general sentiment towards women? What are individuals' personal sentiment towards women? How do men behave towards women? How do women conduct themselves? How do women behave towards other women?
*Literacy rates. *Or rather, education being prioritized. Even if a culture does not have a written language, they still must value passing down oral traditions, historical legends.
*Standard of living. Cleanliness, hygiene. Do people know about personal hygiene and the fact that attending to this can prevent a number of diseases?
*Treatment of widows and orphans, as well as homeless men. If widows and orphans are simply thrown to the streets, leaving them to the mercy of abusive violent opportunists that would only exploit and take advantage of them, rather than the society as a whole showing mercy to them, this is proof that the society is not evolved.
*Any and all medical advancements that lead to an improved quality of life -- with the exceptions of those that treat the most complex illnesses. Medical advancements indicate evolution to a certain degree. Vaccinations. Medications, antibiotics, even home-grown herbal remedies can count if they work. Treatments for simple things like bug bites, cuts and scrapes, mild illnesses. More importantly, to what extent does a society know about the preventability of a certain illness.? If they do know, then to what extent are they practicing said preventability? (To what extent are they actively implementing these preventative strategies?) Treatment for conditions like heart disease, cholesterol, diabetes are not quite as complex, so these are counted.
I am not including more complex diseases that are not well-understood such as cancer and Alzheimer's. Because those are not necessarily preventable, and as I said they are much more complicated to contract than simply sitting in stagnant water and catching mosquitoes. Also, complicated illnesses do not exist in every culture. Again, this goes back to hygiene and cleanliness, which can prevent a lot of diseases.
*Birth control, which prevents a pregnancy from occurring in the first place. As opposed to abortion and infanticide. That's right, I am asserting that abortion is a primitive, savage method of controlling population numbers. I strongly feel that abortion is violence against women.
*Rate of infant survival, whether death is due to illness, poverty, or infanticide.
*Delaying having children until one is psychologically mature enough to raise children.
*The extent to which a society is guided by logic and reasoning as well as emotional connections, over physical dictates.
*Treatment of minority races within the larger society.
*Limit childbearing to a small number rather than shooting for the absolute maximum number one can churn out. Place value on quality over quantity. The reasoning behind this is that smart parents would have only a few children and invest all their time and energy into those few. They will put in a lot of investment in emotional and educational development, resulting in maximum fitness per child.
By contrast, if an individual has as many offspring as possible with as many different people as possible, then they are doing so as a probability game, in hopes that one of the numerous children will turn out safe and will survive to pass on the parent's genes. This would result in maximum possible fitness of physical genes as opposed to emotional development and maturity for a given individual child.
This is usually a sign of low degree of evolution. This is how animals in the wild that are often prey do it, such as rabbits, turtles, and fish. Hell, even predators such as sharks, eagles, and bears do it. Kinda like that Cole Porter song, but with a really macabre take on it.
Evolved humans are smart enough to realize it cannot be relegated to mere biological urge. Parents must actively grow their children in terms of social breeding.
*This does mean the extent that the society encourages sustained, long-term, committed couples raising their children together in a two-parent home. (Preferably married even though that is oh so un-PC nowadays.)
*A culture -- art, music, literature, theater, creativity. Stuff that is explicitly there to grow a soul and is not based on any physical urges or on basal survival. And not necessarily based on logic either. Imagination. The ability to think, dream, create, be lost in thought, daydream. Also it needs to be stated the people must be fully aware that this stuff is imagination and is not real. The extent to which a person is governed by more abstract thought rather than basal instincts.
*A criminal justice system. Ethical laws against violent crime. (By "ethical" I do not mean going easy on criminals. I believe in strict punishments.) Enforcing the law. Prosecution of criminals. Not letting people get away with murder. People have to be held accountable for their actions, and pay the legal consequences.
*I am only including some technology as an isolated factor for evolution. Only technology as far as it contributes to quality of life. As in standard of living, everyday maintenance of good health, medical contributions again, life expectancy. Also work productivity, efficiency. The reasoning for this is straightforward: Technological advances alone do not necessarily indicate a more evolved society.
In a lot of cases technology just creates more efficient ways to deploy primitivity. War, slavery, child pornography, forced prostitution (i.e., rape), child soldiers -- technology can and has aided all of that. Ergo, technology in and of itself does not prove evolutionary superiority. Japanese are arguably the most technologically advanced in the world, yet they still treat women as sex objects, property, and crap like that.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/02/why-women-only-transit-options-have-caught/1171/
Islamic terrorist groups use cell phones to communicate within the group and with other extremist groups. They have access to computers, internet, and streaming video. They have access to complex weapons and machinery. Polygamist compounds with their incest and pedophilia in the United States have members that drive SUVs, use cell phones, and have fully functional electricity. Raw technology does not automatically equate to being an evolved species.
Now, technology up to a certain point does indicate evolutionary superiority. You can think of technology as a continual spectrum, starting at using sticks to pick up bugs, and going on until whatever we have somewhere on the planet in the given present day. But there is an optimal zone. After a certain cutoff point, no more technology produced will make a society any more evolved.
Medical advancements that increase quality of life are great. Refrigerators and freezers. Communication devices are great. Cars and airplanes are great. Clocks, plastics, heaters and air conditioners, electricity, increases in food productivity, cleaning solutions. I'm not being facetious, I really do like all those things. Plus, I'm hardly what you would call an environmentalist.
But does having a computer for every person in the house mean they are more civilized? Does having the ability to follow celebrities on twitter mean a society is more civilized? Does having 1,500 satellite channels on a 72-inch TV mean a person is more civilized? Does being chained to the internets all the time mean someone is more evolved? What about frozen premade meals loaded with preservatives? That is definitely technology. And of course there are those Japanese people who apparently have too much time on their hands and more money than they know what to do with, who create mechanized dolls that look and act like real people. Then there's that gigantic indoor ski mountain that has been built in the arid, baking desert of UAE.
Just because a culture embraces raw technological advancement, this is not proof of a civilized society. There are video games available all over the planet that have no higher purpose than to coddle the ape hindbrain vestigium of particular humans. These video games are technically categorized as technology, certainly. They have programmers that make the games, they use ever higher screen resolution and pixelation to get better graphics. They use the internet to advertise their wares and offer streaming video of screenshots of the games. But -- look at the driving factor of the so-called humans that developed those video games. Were they motivated by altruistic reasons of making the world a better place? No. They just wanted to feed off the degenerate pathetic nature of the type of people that patronize this crap. They wanted to make unevolved criminal types feel that their violent urges are perfect okay to indulge, most likely because the video game makers themselves wanted to feed their ape brains.
Now, although you could not tell from that rant, I do like technology. I'm not going to sit here and say we should get rid of computers. I'm on my computer all the freaking time, I have a cell phone, I've had all my vaccinations.
Having technology to attain evolution is analogous to having money to attain happiness. I concretely, fervently believe that a certain amount of money will bring happiness. Or rather, it will bring peace of mind. No amount of argument from anyone will change my mind on this. This is because it is simple logic. A person is much more likely to be happy if they can afford a safe, clean place to live, healthy food to eat, and clothing for whatever weather is there. A person who can afford all that is going to be much happier than someone who lives in poverty. Money is needed for survival, like it or not. But after a certain point, obtaining stuff for the sake of obtaining stuff will not make anyone happier.
That is analogous to technology being used as a barter to being evolved. A certain amount of technology, such as medical advancements and standard of living, do indicate the degree of civilization of a society. But after a certain point, more technology will not make anyone more civilized or happy.
Regarding my list, it is obvious that no society on the planet is quite all the way there yet. But economists, sociologists, demographers, psychologists the world over, The US Department of Health and Human Services, and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all agree with me that these tenets are the guideposts of a truly civilized, evolved society in which the population is healthy and better off.
That's funny, I thought true evolution was determined by the level of humanity that is prevalent in a society.
True evolution is indicated by actions that show compassion, empathy, equality for all humans, and good judgment. True evolution is the triumph of logic and reasoning, nonviolent conflict resolution, and morality. This is sort of a continuation of my Cooperative Gene essay.
The following is a list of much more useful and accurate factors for evaluating a society's advancement. You will notice that all of it is a matter of behavior and conscious choices.
No biological markers to speak of, such as heritable medical diseases, are present in this list. This is for obvious reasons. Heritable medical conditions, for example heart disease or diabetes, are determined genetically and have very little to do with the degree of civilization that can be attained by a person or by a society. To think that medical condition has anything to do with how a person is as a human being is eugenics, which is immoral, unethical, vile, abhorrent. Attempting to create a master race by sheer accident of biology, civilization is not. Beginning the list.
*Treatment of women in the society. I have said this many times before and I will continue to say this many times again. This should always be considered first and foremost. The way a society regards women, that is, fifty percent of the population, is the greatest and most precise indicator of the extent of civilization of a society.
Does a nation have laws that recognize violence against women for the crimes that these acts are? Does the nation enforce these laws? Are all educational and career opportunities open to women? What is the public's general sentiment towards women? What are individuals' personal sentiment towards women? How do men behave towards women? How do women conduct themselves? How do women behave towards other women?
*Literacy rates. *Or rather, education being prioritized. Even if a culture does not have a written language, they still must value passing down oral traditions, historical legends.
*Standard of living. Cleanliness, hygiene. Do people know about personal hygiene and the fact that attending to this can prevent a number of diseases?
*Treatment of widows and orphans, as well as homeless men. If widows and orphans are simply thrown to the streets, leaving them to the mercy of abusive violent opportunists that would only exploit and take advantage of them, rather than the society as a whole showing mercy to them, this is proof that the society is not evolved.
*Any and all medical advancements that lead to an improved quality of life -- with the exceptions of those that treat the most complex illnesses. Medical advancements indicate evolution to a certain degree. Vaccinations. Medications, antibiotics, even home-grown herbal remedies can count if they work. Treatments for simple things like bug bites, cuts and scrapes, mild illnesses. More importantly, to what extent does a society know about the preventability of a certain illness.? If they do know, then to what extent are they practicing said preventability? (To what extent are they actively implementing these preventative strategies?) Treatment for conditions like heart disease, cholesterol, diabetes are not quite as complex, so these are counted.
I am not including more complex diseases that are not well-understood such as cancer and Alzheimer's. Because those are not necessarily preventable, and as I said they are much more complicated to contract than simply sitting in stagnant water and catching mosquitoes. Also, complicated illnesses do not exist in every culture. Again, this goes back to hygiene and cleanliness, which can prevent a lot of diseases.
*Birth control, which prevents a pregnancy from occurring in the first place. As opposed to abortion and infanticide. That's right, I am asserting that abortion is a primitive, savage method of controlling population numbers. I strongly feel that abortion is violence against women.
*Rate of infant survival, whether death is due to illness, poverty, or infanticide.
*Delaying having children until one is psychologically mature enough to raise children.
*The extent to which a society is guided by logic and reasoning as well as emotional connections, over physical dictates.
*Treatment of minority races within the larger society.
*Limit childbearing to a small number rather than shooting for the absolute maximum number one can churn out. Place value on quality over quantity. The reasoning behind this is that smart parents would have only a few children and invest all their time and energy into those few. They will put in a lot of investment in emotional and educational development, resulting in maximum fitness per child.
By contrast, if an individual has as many offspring as possible with as many different people as possible, then they are doing so as a probability game, in hopes that one of the numerous children will turn out safe and will survive to pass on the parent's genes. This would result in maximum possible fitness of physical genes as opposed to emotional development and maturity for a given individual child.
This is usually a sign of low degree of evolution. This is how animals in the wild that are often prey do it, such as rabbits, turtles, and fish. Hell, even predators such as sharks, eagles, and bears do it. Kinda like that Cole Porter song, but with a really macabre take on it.
Evolved humans are smart enough to realize it cannot be relegated to mere biological urge. Parents must actively grow their children in terms of social breeding.
*This does mean the extent that the society encourages sustained, long-term, committed couples raising their children together in a two-parent home. (Preferably married even though that is oh so un-PC nowadays.)
*A culture -- art, music, literature, theater, creativity. Stuff that is explicitly there to grow a soul and is not based on any physical urges or on basal survival. And not necessarily based on logic either. Imagination. The ability to think, dream, create, be lost in thought, daydream. Also it needs to be stated the people must be fully aware that this stuff is imagination and is not real. The extent to which a person is governed by more abstract thought rather than basal instincts.
*A criminal justice system. Ethical laws against violent crime. (By "ethical" I do not mean going easy on criminals. I believe in strict punishments.) Enforcing the law. Prosecution of criminals. Not letting people get away with murder. People have to be held accountable for their actions, and pay the legal consequences.
*I am only including some technology as an isolated factor for evolution. Only technology as far as it contributes to quality of life. As in standard of living, everyday maintenance of good health, medical contributions again, life expectancy. Also work productivity, efficiency. The reasoning for this is straightforward: Technological advances alone do not necessarily indicate a more evolved society.
In a lot of cases technology just creates more efficient ways to deploy primitivity. War, slavery, child pornography, forced prostitution (i.e., rape), child soldiers -- technology can and has aided all of that. Ergo, technology in and of itself does not prove evolutionary superiority. Japanese are arguably the most technologically advanced in the world, yet they still treat women as sex objects, property, and crap like that.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/02/why-women-only-transit-options-have-caught/1171/
Islamic terrorist groups use cell phones to communicate within the group and with other extremist groups. They have access to computers, internet, and streaming video. They have access to complex weapons and machinery. Polygamist compounds with their incest and pedophilia in the United States have members that drive SUVs, use cell phones, and have fully functional electricity. Raw technology does not automatically equate to being an evolved species.
Now, technology up to a certain point does indicate evolutionary superiority. You can think of technology as a continual spectrum, starting at using sticks to pick up bugs, and going on until whatever we have somewhere on the planet in the given present day. But there is an optimal zone. After a certain cutoff point, no more technology produced will make a society any more evolved.
Medical advancements that increase quality of life are great. Refrigerators and freezers. Communication devices are great. Cars and airplanes are great. Clocks, plastics, heaters and air conditioners, electricity, increases in food productivity, cleaning solutions. I'm not being facetious, I really do like all those things. Plus, I'm hardly what you would call an environmentalist.
But does having a computer for every person in the house mean they are more civilized? Does having the ability to follow celebrities on twitter mean a society is more civilized? Does having 1,500 satellite channels on a 72-inch TV mean a person is more civilized? Does being chained to the internets all the time mean someone is more evolved? What about frozen premade meals loaded with preservatives? That is definitely technology. And of course there are those Japanese people who apparently have too much time on their hands and more money than they know what to do with, who create mechanized dolls that look and act like real people. Then there's that gigantic indoor ski mountain that has been built in the arid, baking desert of UAE.
Just because a culture embraces raw technological advancement, this is not proof of a civilized society. There are video games available all over the planet that have no higher purpose than to coddle the ape hindbrain vestigium of particular humans. These video games are technically categorized as technology, certainly. They have programmers that make the games, they use ever higher screen resolution and pixelation to get better graphics. They use the internet to advertise their wares and offer streaming video of screenshots of the games. But -- look at the driving factor of the so-called humans that developed those video games. Were they motivated by altruistic reasons of making the world a better place? No. They just wanted to feed off the degenerate pathetic nature of the type of people that patronize this crap. They wanted to make unevolved criminal types feel that their violent urges are perfect okay to indulge, most likely because the video game makers themselves wanted to feed their ape brains.
Now, although you could not tell from that rant, I do like technology. I'm not going to sit here and say we should get rid of computers. I'm on my computer all the freaking time, I have a cell phone, I've had all my vaccinations.
Having technology to attain evolution is analogous to having money to attain happiness. I concretely, fervently believe that a certain amount of money will bring happiness. Or rather, it will bring peace of mind. No amount of argument from anyone will change my mind on this. This is because it is simple logic. A person is much more likely to be happy if they can afford a safe, clean place to live, healthy food to eat, and clothing for whatever weather is there. A person who can afford all that is going to be much happier than someone who lives in poverty. Money is needed for survival, like it or not. But after a certain point, obtaining stuff for the sake of obtaining stuff will not make anyone happier.
That is analogous to technology being used as a barter to being evolved. A certain amount of technology, such as medical advancements and standard of living, do indicate the degree of civilization of a society. But after a certain point, more technology will not make anyone more civilized or happy.
Regarding my list, it is obvious that no society on the planet is quite all the way there yet. But economists, sociologists, demographers, psychologists the world over, The US Department of Health and Human Services, and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all agree with me that these tenets are the guideposts of a truly civilized, evolved society in which the population is healthy and better off.
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