| נשלח ב-18/10/2004 16:44 |
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Dune-Prescience and blindness
If any of you had read Frank Herbert's "Dune", perhaps you would be more privy to the origin of this question I bring forth.
Looking back at history, even one with meager historical knowledge could understand the fact that humanity as always been a sort of immaculate creation which foils itself over and over again. Beauty exists with ugliness , flaws within perfection.
The question is,
if even the most prescient and prudent rulers and civilizations dwindled and ground themselves into the dust of oblivion, how is there any hope for a humankind that has failed to bring itself into its golden course for thousands of years?
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| נשלח ב-18/10/2004 18:41 |
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Judaism believes that humankind is constantly improving.
One could make an argument that society today is more advanced morally and more peaceful than society 2,000 years ago. We no longer have gladiators or human sacrifice and even the death penalty is rare. Slavery has been abolished in most parts of the world and so on and so forth.
Judaism does not believe in the Roussean ideal of the noble savage. Society is improving, however I would agree that this is an exceedingly slow process.
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| נשלח ב-18/10/2004 19:04 |
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Chout listen to yourself! 
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| נשלח ב-18/10/2004 20:45 |
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Human sacrifice , slavery, cruelty,
have they really left the surface of the earth?
or they have become tabu , which we replace by accepted alternatives that are indistinctly of the same nature?
Human sacrifice.. what would you call the suicide bombers that scathe our babies? human sacrifice on the altar of religous-self-rightous political instrument by power-greedy autocrats hiding behind ancient words and twisting their meanings for their own self-indulgance?
Slavery.. Not only does it persist in its usual form.. what would you call the kidnapped women forced into prostitution all over the world? it's a growing and huge economy that prevails easily..
it may have become illegal, but definitely far from extinct.
the morality of mankind has simply changed the names and natures of human sacrifice, slavery and aristocracy.
Frank Herbert wrote once that in any society in Human history, the ruling group of people eventually settled into behavioral patterns of aristocrats.. Even in modern democracies, try and picture parliament members as Barons and Dukes.. eventually, they hold the power, the money and the instrument to rule your life, it looks different, it has a different circumstantiality, but though the cause is different, the effect is the same.
When mankind grows, the problem-solution ratio grows with it..
we make better solutions and recieve bigger problems,
perhaps it is a hidden constant, which brings me back to my original question, is there an end to this loop?
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| נשלח ב-18/10/2004 21:31 |
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I did not claim that human sacrifice, slavery or cruelty of any kind has been completely eradicated. What I did say is that the scale of these phenomena is less now than ever before in history. Only 100 years ago the majority of Russians were serfs tied to their land and to their master. Entire sections of Africa and the Indian sub-continent was subject to slavery. In India at that time, when a man died his wife was burned on his funeral pyre. All that has since ended. I do believe there are grounds to consider society as a whole more moral today than ever before in history. And should we deem ourselves capable of learning from history, then we may assert with some confidence that over the long term things are only going to get better.
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| נשלח ב-18/10/2004 21:44 |
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Chout
Does this progress you celebrate have anything to do with Judiasim? Or is it a product of secularisim?
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| נשלח ב-18/10/2004 23:40 |
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My point being, that some phenomena are never truly eradicated and in many cases its modern incognito version is much worse and heinous than the public acceptable-by-all version. think of the same type of atrocities in the extremity of the new millenium...
Think of all those 3rd world countries out there, their endless civil wars, their endless atrocities..
I still think it's like trying to grab soap with two slippery fingers - it always skids to the other direction.. if not in one place, then in another.
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