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Originally Posted by Ustwo
This just proves the point. The nature of our lives allows us to be non-violent.
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Close. I would say that the socio-economic status of our individual lives
helps most individuals to have less reason to be violent... certainly, I'm not making excuses for violence, but there are contexts that must be considered.
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
No one is saying we are 'better' as humans,
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Well, that was the gist I was getting from this portion of the thread... that humans living in an industrialized society are more innately peace-loving than those humans who are living in hunter-gatherer societies. And yes, I do take issue with that. However, if you are not saying that, then no, obviously I have nothing to defend.
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
Extreme violence was the currency of Central and South America prior to Europeans
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... part and parcel with the Europeans, let's not forget. I already stated that I think the Noble Savage idea is a crock of shit, but my addition is that the West is not morally superior by sole virtue of its level of material development. Just because we've developed more sophisticated, efficient methods of killing does not make us somehow less violent by nature.
As I already said, we're all potentially violent assholes at heart, given a particular context--and I'm not talking about how "civilized" our society is, as a context. I'm talking about distribution of resources, etc... and that can happen well or poorly at any level of social evolution.