The REAL state of the USA : Fact vs Fiction

[BruceVC]

In my high school civilization class they classified a civilization as an agricultural society with enough development to allow a semi-specialized economy, and that has a system of written language.

 

I think thats a reasonable definition

Would you define Canada as a civilization?

[Oerwinde]

 

 

In my high school civilization class they classified a civilization as an agricultural society with enough development to allow a semi-specialized economy, and that has a system of written language.

 

I think thats a reasonable definition

Would you define Canada as a civilization?

I would count us as part of european civilization, as we have the same languages, religions, systems of laws and government, etc.

[Sweet_Sadie]

 

Oh, like the Atlanteans?

 

This is in line with how I teach about civilizations in the classroom.  It references my state standards as well.

 

http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/brown.html

 

No

 

More like ancient Babylon...how much of that exists? The Hanging Gardens for example are long gone

Didn't Babylon leave some archeological evidence that it existed? If so, even there are only stories about the Gardens, I would place them in the "probably real" category. If there is no tangible evidence of Babylon's existance, then the Gardens go into my "probably myth" category along with Atlantis. YMMV

[BruceVC]

 

 

Oh, like the Atlanteans?

 

This is in line with how I teach about civilizations in the classroom.  It references my state standards as well.

 

http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/brown.html

No

 

More like ancient Babylon...how much of that exists? The Hanging Gardens for example are long gone

Didn't Babylon leave some archeological evidence that it existed? If so, even there are only stories about the Gardens, I would place them in the "probably real" category. If there is no tangible evidence of Babylon's existance, then the Gardens go into my "probably myth" category along with Atlantis. YMMV

 

I have always wondered what the gardens must have looked like ? They definitely were real at some time in history 

[Sweet_Sadie]

 

 

 

Oh, like the Atlanteans?

 

This is in line with how I teach about civilizations in the classroom.  It references my state standards as well.

 http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/brown.html

 

No

 

More like ancient Babylon...how much of that exists? The Hanging Gardens for example are long gone

Didn't Babylon leave some archeological evidence that it existed? If so, even there are only stories about the Gardens, I would place them in the "probably real" category. If there is no tangible evidence of Babylon's existance, then the Gardens go into my "probably myth" category along with Atlantis. YMMV

I have always wondered what the gardens must have looked like ? They definitely were real at some time in history

There is tangible evidence they existed?

[BruceVC]

 

 

 

 

Oh, like the Atlanteans?

 

This is in line with how I teach about civilizations in the classroom.  It references my state standards as well.

 http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/brown.html

No

 

More like ancient Babylon...how much of that exists? The Hanging Gardens for example are long gone

Didn't Babylon leave some archeological evidence that it existed? If so, even there are only stories about the Gardens, I would place them in the "probably real" category. If there is no tangible evidence of Babylon's existance, then the Gardens go into my "probably myth" category along with Atlantis. YMMV

I have always wondered what the gardens must have looked like ? They definitely were real at some time in history

There is tangible evidence they existed?

 

Not as far as I know but they mentioned in ancient texts and manuscripts?

[Sweet_Sadie]

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, like the Atlanteans?

 

This is in line with how I teach about civilizations in the classroom. It references my state standards as well.

http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/brown.html

 

No

 

More like ancient Babylon...how much of that exists? The Hanging Gardens for example are long gone

Didn't Babylon leave some archeological evidence that it existed? If so, even there are only stories about the Gardens, I would place them in the "probably real" category. If there is no tangible evidence of Babylon's existance, then the Gardens go into my "probably myth" category along with Atlantis. YMMV

I have always wondered what the gardens must have looked like ? They definitely were real at some time in history

There is tangible evidence they existed?

Not as far as I know but they mentioned in ancient texts and manuscripts?

Then I maintain they only probably existed. Ancient texts, mauscripts, pottery, and scrolls are subject to the human that wrote them's interpretations, beliefs, and intent. Edited May 24, 2016 by Sweet_Sadie

[Malcador]

 

 

In my high school civilization class they classified a civilization as an agricultural society with enough development to allow a semi-specialized economy, and that has a system of written language.

 

I think thats a reasonable definition

Would you define Canada as a civilization?

Not even as a culture.

[BruceVC]

 

 

In my high school civilization class they classified a civilization as an agricultural society with enough development to allow a semi-specialized economy, and that has a system of written language.

 

I think thats a reasonable definition

Would you define Canada as a civilization?

Not even as a culture.

 

Plus you guys dont have electricity  and running water in all areas  ....so it would be inappropriate to even hint Canada is a civilization.....   

[Oerwinde]

 

 

 

 

In my high school civilization class they classified a civilization as an agricultural society with enough development to allow a semi-specialized economy, and that has a system of written language.

 

I think thats a reasonable definition

Would you define Canada as a civilization?

Not even as a culture.

Plus you guys dont have electricity and running water in all areas ....so it would be inappropriate to even hint Canada is a civilization.....

Hey, the natives get funding for their reserves and such, its not our fault the chiefs use 80% of it for their salary.

[Meshugger]

 

Religion and spirituality is too inherited into the human condition for it not to exist as part of civilization.

This is fallacious, sorry. Again, "with this, therefore because of this". What you have in reality is the observation that most, if not all, societies that have survived long enough to leave records seem to present religious or spiritual practices of some sort. That's it, end of story. You cannot claim that it's a part of "human nature" simply because of that.

 

I'm going to counter with an alternative explanation, which I'm sure you've heard before. If we accept that natural selection is not a mechanism restricted to living beings, it stands to reason that there exists a natural selection of societies, effected by cultural genes (memes, as per Dawkins). Hence, it's possible that religious practices confer some sort of competitive advantage to societies that adopt them, over those that do not. As a result, over time you would have more cultures with different religions but essentially similar practices, than cultures without. No appeals to romantic and vague notions of "human nature" needed when the much better understood natural selection will suffice.

 

edit2: oh, you didn't say "human nature", you said "human condition". My bad, feel free to explain the difference.

 

 

 

There's a difference and that's why i think we are talking past each other. I see the differences as following:

 

- The human condition is about how we handle mortality, meaning and existence, with vehicles like art, philosophy and religion. It's inseparable from us.

- Human nature is about how humanity developed, why we have a will to power, nature vs. nurture and so on. Memes do play a role in that case, i agree.

 

 

My point was that Byzantium wouldn't be Byzantium without the orthodox church, which was the result of the split of Rome and the customs that preceded it. The Justinian code was to emphasize of the natural consequence of such.

 

The Soviet Union was the natural result of when experimenting with materialistic philosophy, brought to us by the enlightment. which is much like the capitalistic one we have in the west, but just the other side of the coin.

No, Byzantium wouldn't be Byzantium without the Orthodox Church, but it also wouldn't be Byzantium without the Paganism prevalent even after Constantine converted to Christianity, and it wouldn't be Byzantium without the incorporation of territories that had been previously part of the Macedonian empire, some of which were in turn part of the Persian empire before and therefore under its influence, and so on and so forth. Interestingly, there is the theory that the reason for initial persecution of Christianity in the Roman empire was due to concerns of infiltration by Zealots. That is, it's possible that what came to be the official religion of the state was in its inception influenced by the political aim of rebelling against that very state (lol). And, of course, let's not forget what Christianity draws from Judaism.

 

The point I'm making is that claiming that there is a founding religion (or any other thing) you can clearly point at in a culture* is a simplification.

 

About the Soviet Union comment... I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

*also the point about the divides between one "culture" and its predecessors and successors existing clearly only in textbooks

 

edit: they really need to fix the forum. I'm using Notepad++ to write posts up...

 

I do not even think that we disagree here really as i didn't claim that a civilization would exist disjointed from any other form culture, religion or any other flow of historical currents.

Edited May 24, 2016 by Meshugger

[Rostere]

Several people here have the wrong perspective on religion. Today, religion is simply answers to questions which cannot be answered by science. But historically, the institutions which we now call religious have had so many more functions. It makes little sense to argue about whether all civilizations have featured religion, since at the inception of civilization, the religious institutions handled all understanding of the world, effectively all commonly held knowledge and superstition.

 

In order to understand the rise of religion, we have to look at what happens when a tribe can accumulate food effectively enough that all people do not need to constantly work to gather food, which can be the case in a hunter-gatherer society. One of the very first roles which appear is the one of a priest, medicine man or wise woman. Such a person (or persons in case of a budding civilization) would hold all the tribe's knowledge of medicine, astronomy, and superstitions. The further back in time you go, the more intermixed scientific knowledge and religious superstition become. But scientific knowledge is also subject to an evolution of ideas of sorts. Eventually, people will realize that you don't need to do chanting for the medicinal herbs to work or that invisible angels pushing the planets is a superfluous explanation.

 

Eventually, the scientific profession became separate from the religious one, even as religious institutions were preserved. The Enlightenment marked the point in time where you were more likely to get useful answers from a secular scientist than from a monk (and in the transition period, many of the people who veered from superstitious views of the world were monks themselves, like Giordano Bruno). Eventually, religious institutions was only used as a tool for kings and such to control the population and make them fight their wars, I'd say in Europe up until around WW1. This means that from the enlightenment onwards, testable theories have been subject to an evolutionary process, that process which we call the scientific process.

 

This was the point in time where secular ideologies and philosophies replaced religion as a tool for state control, and as a guiding philosophy for how an individual should live his/her life. Nazism and Communism are of course the prime examples for this. But they would simply by brute force impose their own guiding philosophy on the populace, just like the state church had done before. Democracy and freedom of religion became the norm in most of the civilized world throughout the 20th century, and so instead of being imposed a guiding philosophy by the state church/party, individuals were free to choose their own. Eventually, some philosophies have been largely dismissed, because they failed in the eyes of the public. Thus personal and political philosophies have been subject to an evolutionary process.

 

The only thing which is left in the religious sphere is the questions science can never answer, and the old religious answers to these questions linger like old food leftovers at the bottom of the kitchen sink. What we today call "religions" are remnants of institutions which once held actual knowledge and functions. The vestigial organs left today were never of any use, but the religion of old also encompassed scientific knowledge and laws organizing society, which were clearly of much use.

 

Some people want to regress to the stage where we have an imposed state religion. Now, a free society in which personal philosophies are in a state of evolution is always going to be weak in the short-term, since a lot of people will adopt harmful personal philosophies, compared to the scenario where an enlightened despot chooses the guiding philosophy for everyone, that is. However, the society which is in a state of evolution can always improve, while a society with a fixed philosophy can never improve without a revolution.

 

Let us make a case study: Islam and Muslim countries. Islam as originally formulated describes a very specific set of laws (what we call "sharia law") compared to Christianity, which is extremely vague. Why did the Enlightenment occur in Europe, and not in the Muslim world, which in many ways was more civilized at the time (admittedly there are also other factors here, like the Mongols torching Bagdad...)? Muslims were  - and some still are - stuck in a mindset where you could always look to the Quran and religious scholars for answers. When religion has such a large place in jurisprudence, that stifles scientific thinking. Meanwhile in Europe, people lived under the creed to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, a minimal interpretation of which would be to let secular law rule society. It is of course not a coincidence that Christianity was made the religion of the Roman Empire. Which Caesar would not a adopt a religion with that message? A polar opposite of the Islamic and traditional Judaic traditions, which postulate Sharia/Halakh law, and thus preserve the role of religious scholars over secular scholars in their societies.

 

It is true that Islam can be considered a harmful element in Western society for as long as Muslim groups impose their philosophy on their group members and indoctrinate them, in which case they are not allowing their young to be subject to the evolution of philosophies. However, we must ask ourselves to which degree this reflects reality. The Western society which is open to all philosophies is in opposition to an Islamic society which imposes Islamic philosophy. But specific Islamic ideas are of course part of the grand evolution of philosophies, and as such not opposed to Western society. Muslims will assimilate and secularize as long as they can't keep their young from absorbing Western ideas and reaching Western living standards. The question is only how much time it will take to reach a balance, and what can go wrong on the way. We must not let in too many Muslims at once, and not allow them to ghettoize. We do not need to regress to imposing some philosophy on all citizens, but it is true that the prevailing ideas might change from those we see now.

 

 

The specific ideas in opposition here are, I think, primitive culture vs. the welfare state culture. A welfare state attracts immigrants because of the guarantee of quality of life, immigrants who increasingly make the welfare state impossible because of their burden on the economy (before they integrate). Primitive peoples who come from areas like Somalia which is located on the lowest rung on Maslow's hierarchy are relocated to advanced societies where everyone is pushed up to the third level through state programmes. There is going to be a delay, but Somalis who grow up in Sweden (for example) will eventually want to achieve the next level, rather than being focused on a lower one. Meanwhile, the people whose grandparents grew up in the welfare state are too focused on the higher levels for the long-term wellness of the society. In a welfare state, you count on the state for your pension. In a primitive culture, you count on your children for pension. A synthesis of the two is required to create a harmonic lasting society, which is what will eventually happen. Let us just hope we can avoid machetes and ovens on the way there.

[Gorth]

In my high school civilization class they classified a civilization as an agricultural society with enough development to allow a semi-specialized economy, and that has a system of written language.

 

I think thats a reasonable definition

Well, my Nordic ancestors would qualify as a civilation then. Besides growing a bit of crop and writing runs on stuff, they had a secondary economy in raiding, raping and pillaging

They weren't ruled by clergy men though, but by kings and strength of arms. Gods weren't someone you "worshipped", but someone you beseeched for help or cursed depending on your situation.

 

@Numbers: Social Darwinism would be a good fit for what you describe I think? I.e. civilisations and societies change, evolve and become extinct when you lose your edge.

[Amentep]

Kind of hard for us to know of them otherwise, then, no?

 

But that was my whole point when I said "evidence of absence isn't absence of evidence"; the argument (as I understood it) was that no ancient civilization existed that did not have a religious base and non-religious civilizations were a recent "thing".  But since we don't have a complete record of everything that ever existed, sweeping statements like this don't hold up to scrutiny.

 

 

 

I'd probably classify that as a more tribal society than a civilization.

So a civilization has to leave tangible evidence of its existence?

 

Oh Amentep I love the way you think, you have this insight or perspective that is difficult to dispute 

 

No a civilization doesn't need to leave  evidence to be relevant so thats not a requirement 

 

Whats your view on religion and  its relevance to the foundation of civilizations ?

 

 

I think that the things that tend to bind people together are family and shared belief systems.  Therefore its not surprising that most - if not all - of the known civilizations had some form of hereditary rule system and a unified (or consolidated) belief system at one time or another.

 

 

Oh, like the Atlanteans?

 

This is in line with how I teach about civilizations in the classroom.  It references my state standards as well.

 

http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/6.3/brown.html

No

 

More like ancient Babylon...how much of that exists? The Hanging Gardens for example are long gone 

 

 

One of the problems when you start poking around history is that you'll find that limited sources end up influencing how you think about things. Even now we call Ancient Egypt "Egypt" because that's what the Greeks called them, not Kemet (or Kmt) that they called themselves.

 

Anyhow, "babylon" literally means "gate of the gods" as I understand it; one of the going theories about The Hanging Gardens is that they weren't in the literal city of Babylon but in Nineveh.  The city of Nineveh had a gate dedicated to the gods - a literal babylon.  It was also home to a well documented Hanging Garden created by King Sennacharib which some scholars believe is what the "7 Wonders" really refers to rather than a garden in the actual city of Babylon..

 

However the western(?) half of the actual city of Babylon is buried under the Euphrates as I recall, so it may be impossible to determine if there was a hanging garden; existing Babylonian records don't indicate one, though.  But the gardens at Nineveh are well documented as mentioned (and considered an impressive feat, if I recall correctly).

[BruceVC]

http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2016/05/27-unhappiness-in-america-graham?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=30176694&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9rHAUzSTnfC7Iybb9fSIhXu2KXzbJlbQcfEEBa7qibRMFWdEk5nmWhf8tAQUlvvMZ9cnGa9plxOB8tY5Z79iGJ9TrgcA&_hsmi=30176694

 

Guys here is an interesting article around suggested reasons for why so many white Americans seem so angry

 

Its a good read and I think  much of if you guys will agree with but read the whole article, the first paragraph is part of the conclusion at the end so dont get put off by that 

[ShadySands]

This makes me angry

 

Edited June 3, 2016 by ShadySands

[obyknven]

http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2016/05/27-unhappiness-in-america-graham?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=30176694&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9rHAUzSTnfC7Iybb9fSIhXu2KXzbJlbQcfEEBa7qibRMFWdEk5nmWhf8tAQUlvvMZ9cnGa9plxOB8tY5Z79iGJ9TrgcA&_hsmi=30176694

 

Guys here is an interesting article around suggested reasons for why so many white Americans seem so angry

 

Its a good read and I think  much of if you guys will agree with but read the whole article, the first paragraph is part of the conclusion at the end so dont get put off by that 

Too long to read. This is article about small bodyparts of white men?

[Longknife]

This makes me angry

 

 

 

[obyknven]

True Amerikans flee from Murika.

http://youtu.be/SRZCq-HoFuk