Has Humanity, as a whole, gone down the drain?

Actually, I think two of them are in tacit agreement.

I think you are wrong... People were never more polite or political than their social conditions forced them to be... When every man was his own law defending his own right and honor with ready weapons people were only impolite at the risk of their lives, and so, usually polite... The society of the internet is such that some jerks who can hide behind it will cat call you to doomsday and back when they would be all smiles and good humor to your face...Because they would not risk the ass tanning they deserve, and know it...

The point is, that what ever people think of me means very little to me if they cannot prove me wrong, and it should be easy because I am pretty much the product of reading rather than of a formal education... I realize some of the dots I connect are very widely spaced, but that does not mean it is wrong to connect them... We can infer far more about prehistory than we will ever know, but we do have a lot of evidence by way of European contact with native peoples around the world... Those contacts help us to make sense of primitive behavior found in Greek and Roman prehistoric tales... As many writers have concluded; peoples of a similar level of technological developement shared similar social institutions...Primitive technology forced a better quality of humanity... We only have so many assholes and parasites because we can afford them due to a more advanced technology...

From my point of view it is sad to witness, but also difficult for me because I have little formal education... What if Setanta is right and I am all wrong... What if the library I have read has left me stupid??? I doubt it, but what if???

Despite your admitted lack of formal education, some of the things you've said actually make sense to me.

And have ganged up (or so it would seem) on the third.

The problem is not in what Fido has read (or alleges that he has read), but the loony flights of fantasy in which he indulges based on what he has read (or alleges that he has read). I have been a student of history for more than 50 years. I had a double major in history and literature when i was at university. Two things which one learns as a history major are historiography and historical synthesis. Historiography teaches us what the value of any testimony is (does the source have an interest in portraying things a certain way? does the source ignore--through ignorance or prejudice--evidence which was available to him or here? does the source have an ax to grind? is the source personally interested in the record he or she leaves?). Historical synthesis is the process of relating what we know of one period to subsequent periods, and judging the value of persons and event in an attempt to understand cause and effect.

Fido demonstrates again and again that he has no concept of historiography. Furthermore, his flights of delusional fantasy demonstrate that reasonable historical synthesis is beyond his knowledge and skills. Long, long ago, i told him that i didn't want him commenting on my posts, both because he has nothing to teach me (although he seems to think he does) and because his profound ignorance means that he is intellectually unequipped to reasonably comment. David tells he he has profound mental health problems. That sounds plausible given that what passes for historical synthesis at his house seems to be based on the principle that if he can imagine it, it might be true, and if it might be true, he might as well comment as though it were true.

That's why i don't want him hanging the rags of his ignorance and delusion off of my posts. When i told him this, long, long ago, i told him that whenever he does, i will not failt o point out that he is an . . .


Idiot.

I have read a lot of history, but it is by putting history together with Anthropology that I have drawn most of my conclusions... You cannot understand the actions of people of Islam, for example without understanding the Bible, at least in part... The one helps to explain the other... Understanding law, history, and ancient drama, even fairy tales requires some understanding of each, and each sheds light on the subject of the other... If I had only read history I would know nothing of prehistory, but prehistorical and historical German and Indian nations shed a lot of light on the Greeks of an earlier age; and understanding the quasi institutions of earlier people helps one to understand later developments...

I am formally uneducated... I am not unintelligent or unread... I have read many books on many subjects and still have most of them because I doubt my memory... This much about my memory I can swear to...I can learn no fact in no subject without the ability to relate it to other subjects... Everything I know or think I know makes sense in the light of all the other knowledge I have found... If I learn a fact that I cannot piece together with all others, it remains a subject for thought and investigation until I can put it together...

If all I knew about was history, I would feel ignorant... Certainly, it does account for a hugh part of my library... I am reading at the moment six books about Iraq and Afghanistan just because it was an open hole in my knowledge... When it is done I may know more on the subject, but I will no more be able to say that the conclusion I have drawn are absolutely correct than those I have drawn about ancient people's based upon reading about other ancient people...

History is all fiction... Non fiction is only realistic fiction...So is Anthropology; but that does not mean it does not often hit very near the truth....One thing is obvious... People have not changed, and do not change according to what they know... There are many Caesars, Alexanders, and Napoleons in the world of business, and few in government...I read a book once comparing the business skills of a successful manager with those of Attila the Hun.... Perhaps the lesson is to share the credit and take the blame, but the skills of successful politicians seem geared to taking the credit and giving the blame... We are not governed by government, but by business...

There has got to be a lesson there; right??? No... The lesson one can take from history is not from the people... You can only take so much from bad examples seen at a distance... The real lesson of history is that people cannot change and do not change, and that when change is required they change their forms, their institutions, or they are destroyed by them... Some times, and usually, when forms change they evolve under the force of individual personalities, but such change is seldom desirable because people are usually self serving... When people begin to see themselves isolated from their communities they are prey or preditors in their own lands, and they soon go down the drain with their communities...

Nietzsche has written some about this period... Because people got so much of their identity from their communites they would never willingly exile themselves... That is why Socrates would not leave Athens... There he had rights and was somebody and he could not bear to be a nobody with no rights... We have lost track of that part of community where we recognize our community as our identiy, our character, and our moral soul... We do not surrender to our communities willingly its right over our very lives, but for primitives, their community was their alma mater, their soul mother, the life of their life...

Which one of us would be will to be cut up and burned while we watched it happen to show our people brave and honorable??? To judge by the individuals we value so highly, humanity has went to hell, and are in it, and we cannot escape it... And I know the way out... I inderstand what is going on and has been going on from the beginning...That is what I know...

So you think people who study history formally don't study anthropology, and archaeology, and economy, and ethnology, and a host of other subjects? You are an idiot.

You whined earlier that you don't make **** up. You do it all the time, and you're doing it again. You admitted that you had never heard of Hesiod until you read my post, and yet you were willing to make up this long, bullshit story about what Greece was like in the time when he lived--and you were wrong about everything.

You make **** up all the time, and in fact, it appears that that is all you do. That's because you are an . . .

Idiot.

By the way, everything you post just convinces me more and more that David is right, that you suffer from a serious mental health condition. That would account for your rambling, nonsensical posts. You really have no grip on reality at all.

I wouldn't say them if they didn't make sense to me to... It is hard to judge humanity against humanity when all we have done we have done to avoid change... Humanity is what it always was... The same thing could be said of individual people, that we are what we were, and yet we are something different today... Within ancient and primitve man is the seed for all falible humanity... Look at the Spartans who to control avarice which has destroyed so many people made their money out of pickled iron... It did not make the less greedy for gold, but it did make them better at concealing it... I cannot and would not turn back the clock on mankind, but realizing what made them what they were, and all people alive today are the result of communities which survived war and poverty for centuries, I know the clock can be advanced so we can have the best of this world for the survivors of humanity to enjoy freely... We have come through carnage... Let us enjoy peace, understanding and technology...

You have not learned anything... You know facts... I know people...And I know an ass when I see one..

I never read Hesiod... I have read of him several times at least.. I have read the Illiad several times however, and I have a large and growning library on the Greeks, including about their drama, and their dramas...It is like knowing about their atomic theory which tells us very little...You cannot dismis all of their ethical understanding because of a scientific theory they were in no position to prove or disprove... The problem with the ethcial understanding of those people in that day was their want of perspective.... They did not have history, but myth... They invented history, but clearly did not grasp the meaing of all their myths... An understanding of them is incomplete without an understanding of all ancient people, and as a jigsaw puzzle there are a lot of missing pieces... So I got to use my head and and I am not pulling this out of my ass...

The common denominator with all ancient peoples and many people alive today is their high regard for their honor... If you think you are ever going to understand those people based upon simple facts in evidence about them, you are nuts...And if you think you know so much, it ought to be easy to prove me wrong and you can't, so you say you won't...The bullshit here is in quantity, but it is all coming from you.

Your quote from Hesiod tells me a lot about his society, but only because I bring a great deal of understanding of that time and society to your quotation...

Prove that too... If you think you can... I know as much as you and more, because I know what is important to know... I still own the Morgan's Ancient society I read when I was 16 and now I am pushing hard on 60... I have only added to my knowledge... And constantly.

No, you know nothing about Greece in the period in which Hesiod lived--you've already demonstrated that. What you claim you "know" has not been proven by you, and yet you're demanding proof from me. Given that i was 61 years old yesterday, the odds are pretty good that i've been reading history, and archaeology, and paleontology, and ethnology and a good deal else in addition, for a lot longer than you have. You are delusional. Your posts are long, rambling assemblages of some bullshit you just made up on the spot, and because you can imagine it, you treat it as though it were the truth. Nothing you post convinces me that you know anything about people. You're delusional, and you're an . . .


Idiot.

You're absolutely right on this point. How true it is!

An ARMED society is a POLITE society.





David

I really botched up the quoting there. It should have been the opposite.


When every man was his own law, then the weak were polite to the strong, the roughly even were careful around each other and the strong treated everyone else as they pleased. At least here you know where you stand with folks.

Fido needn't ever worry about that, he'll be doing no "ass tanning" to me. The internet is also full of loud-mouthed heroes who talk about what bad asses they are while hiding behind their monitors.

How true this also is!