Is the USA uncivilised?

[cronus]

Civilization is vastly overrated.

It's a lifestyle choice and a luxury few can afford. The entry test is based on IQ not wisdom.

[klr]

The Seth-related derail has been split off into a separate thread in the in-depth discussion area:

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 27&t=46157

[Blind groper]

To Audley

In my very first post, I suggested there were two kinds of civilisation. Technology and social.

Your hill tribe might be more socially civilised than ancient Rome, but less technologically civilised.

To Tyrannical
Killing people is less civilised. Your desire to see more people killed does suggest something about your individual level of 'civilised'.

[cronus]

There's a third kind of civilization that evolves with conflict between the two above which I'd call camouflage civilization or magic town...where they use the slide machine and are seldom seen.

[Seth]

I see civilisation as a progress. It is not an absolute measure, but rather a relative measure of how far individuals or natons have moved towards the goal of humane behaviour.

I think you need to define "humane behavior" rather precisely before going on.

We can see this best by looking at the past. Even 100 years ago, there were many things within western society that are almost unthinkable today. WWI began 99 years ago, as the result of five great empires all wanting to grow through military conquest. With the possible exception of Israel, that attitude is not acceptable today. Monarchies were strong back then. Today, they are no more than tourist attractions. Religiosity has been falling throughout most of the western world, as those nations move towards a more humane and civilised way of life. Blasphemy can no longer, in most places, be labelled a crime, with designated punishment.

Israel isn't attempting to grow through military conquest, it was forced into military defense by its enemies and it prevailed over them and took possession of certain lands as both just compensation for being attacked and as a self-defense measure to put distance between Israel and it's implacable Muslim enemies surrounding it.

And now you need to define "civilized" with some precision as well.

If we look further back, we see torture in use to elicit confessions, we see the death penalty widely used, slavery in many of its dreadful forms, body mutilation as punishments, and so on.

Yes, we do, world and culture-wide.

Many nations today are still uncivilised by those standards.

According to your undefined and subjective definition of "uncivilized" I'm sure you think so, but therein lies the problem.

Sharia law which permits body mutilations, like cutting off a thief's hand, is a form of lack of civilisation.

Is it? Muslims don't think so. They think it deters crime, and that deterring crime and thereby protecting the innocent is more civilized than, by way of example, deliberately disarming citizens and putting them in danger of being prosecuted and jailed for using physical force against a criminal that is threatening them or is attempting to steal their property.

What is more "civilized?" Protecting the rights, dignity, autonomy and liberty of every law-abiding individual by using punishments that deter criminals or pandering to bleeding-heart liberalism by insisting that criminals be protected against the consequences of their criminality.

I'd say it's arguable that Sharia law regarding punishment for theft or other crimes of physical violence are at least as, if not more civilized than UK law that does little more than victimize and re-victimize innocent citizens because of some nonsensical and grossly misguided notion that criminals deserve to be treated with kid gloves and protected from suffering severe consequences of their criminality.

Of the two cultural practices, the UK system causes much, much more pain, terror, loss and victimization on the greater body of the citizenry than does the cutting off of the hand of, or the whipping of, a thief or mugger. In Sharia law, such criminals only get to victimize others (and get caught) twice. After that they have been effectively rendered permanently incapable of robbing or mugging anyone, thus ending their criminal career. Even a first offense punishment puts a permanent mark on them that serves the valuable public purpose of identifying them as untrustworthy and potentially dangerous to those he may come in contact with.

In the UK, the criminal is treated like he has a sickness and isn't responsible for his actions. His actions are excused and protected against interference by his victims by law, and there is little beyond a short jail term to either notify the public of his dangerous proclivities or dissuade him from going right back to his criminal practices.

THAT is uncivilized because it values the sensibilities of the criminal over the safety and freedom of the public.

In the western world, imprisonment is the standard punishment (and it is difficult to think of practical alternatives). Such imprisonment becomes uncivilised in the relative sense when it is cruel. Such as using small and confining cells, or crowding the prisons.

Now you need to carefully define "cruel." You might as well take on "unusual" at the same time. The purpose of punishment is, well, punishment. It's supposed to convince the criminal that the wages of sin are too high to risk and that being a law-abiding citizen is the preferable course of behavior. Another purpose of prison is to segregate those who criminally victimize others from the citizenry at large, so as to protect everyone else. When one commits multiple, repeated crimes, or particularly heinous crimes, one needs to be removed from society permanently, or for a long enough time that one is physically incapable of harming others when one gets out.

The death penalty remains a mark of relative lack of civilised behaviour.

Why? I say that NOT exercising the death penalty in certain situations is barbaric and uncivilized to society and the victims and their families. You need to explain why the life of a heinous criminal who butchers a family for his enjoyment is worthy of being protected. Explain why all human life, regardless of how big a risk one person may be to others or how much harm and misery that person has caused and may continue to cause to others is somehow sacrosanct and immune from suffering the consequences of his actions? Explain why society should be required to tolerate his continued existence and pay for his continued incarceration, where he may kill others in prison or may be released at some later date by some bleeding-heart judge who sympathizes with him long after the impact of the crime he committed has been tamped by time?

Then explain what's "civilized" about putting a person in a cell on 23 hour a day lockdown until he dies of natural causes in prison? I find that to be barbaric. If a person is deserving of being imprisoned for life, then that person is deserving of being quickly and painlessly terminated. T

So you see that definitions are important and your subjective opinion, while valid as your opinion, doesn't constitute an unassailable argument because human society is a bit more complex than you care to acknowledge.

Laws and practices by authorities that lead to human misery and death are also uncivilised. This is why the American second amendment is uncivilised. But a lack of availability of good medical care to all would be equally another mark of lack of civilisation, by today's standards.

We can see high levels of civilised behaviour and civilised laws in Scandinavian nations, where the laws protect the people rather than put them at risk, and where medical care is readily available.

Now you need to define "protect" and "put them at risk."

Life is risk, and a great many people prefer to assume various risks rather than live under the kind of totalitarian nanny-state that would "protect" them by making them slaves to the collective.

People have a right to take risks with their lives and suffer the consequences of those actions, and others do NOT have a right to interfere with risk-taking that harms only the risk-taker.

And I suspect "put them at risk" includes allowing them to keep and bear arms, which is a manifestation of nanny-statism that incorrectly assumes that the mere keeping and bearing of arms is more risky than not doing so.

So again, I ask. Is the USA uncivilised?

No, but the UK is.

[cronus]

America is a young nation. If it survives peak oil this it will return to some sort of greatness.

[Blind groper]

To Seth

I told you once before that I am a pragmatist. I advocate those things that return good outcomes. Now, if we look at the progress I term civilised behaviour, we see that it correlates with a drop in crime rates. As nations become more civilised, crime falls. There is absolutely no need to implement bodily mutilations, executions, or other barbaric, cruel and nasty actions to deter crime. Crime rates are dropping anyway, and at a good rate.

Of course, some crimes in the USA (mainly the worst crime, murder, including mass murders) are lagging behind the rest of the western world. This is a reflection of the overall lack of civilised behaviour.

You asked for definitions?
As I said, there are two kinds of 'civilised.'
1. Technologically civilised. Having modern tools and toys. This is not what this debate is about.

2. Socially civilised, which is what I am discussing. This is related to how people behave. I call it humane behaviour, meaning that which does not cause harm to others, and hopefully assists others. It will not be perfect, since the term 'civilised' is purely relative, and no nation has come anywhere near the ultimate in being civilised. But some are more 'civilised' than others.

[Seth]

To Seth

I told you once before that I am a pragmatist.

Must....not....tell....you....what....you....really....are....

I advocate those things that return good outcomes.

Good outcomes for whom?

Now, if we look at the progress I term civilised behaviour, we see that it correlates with a drop in crime rates. As nations become more civilised, crime falls.

Good. But until crime disappears, punishment and deterrence is still necessary.

There is absolutely no need to implement bodily mutilations, executions, or other barbaric, cruel and nasty actions to deter crime.

I doubt you'd feel that way if it was your 14 year old daughter who was brutally raped and tortured to death by a repeat sex offender.

Crime rates are dropping anyway, and at a good rate.

Glad to hear it. When it's zero, then we can talk.

Of course, some crimes in the USA (mainly the worst crime, murder, including mass murders) are lagging behind the rest of the western world. This is a reflection of the overall lack of civilised behaviour.

Now that is a particularly unfounded and unsupportable claim. You have presented zero critically robust evidence that murder rates in the US are caused by (a reflection of) an "overall" lack of civilized behavior. It can just as easily be that there are a larger number of heinous criminals in the US than in some other country, though I'd love to see you demonstrate your thesis. I also despise how you cherry-pick your examples to deliberately attempt to put the US at the bottom of the stack by excluding all the dozens of nations where "uncivilized behavior" is orders of magnitude worse than anywhere in the "western world."

The UK is, according to crime statistics, a more dangerous and violent society than the US is. It's overall crime rate is still much higher than ours is, and you know it. But what you do in your dishonest and mendacious argumentation is to restrict your citation to the "worst crime" rather than looking at the overall crime rate. This is a consistent dishonest tactic of yours that makes the rest of your arguments not credible or interesting.

You asked for definitions?
As I said, there are two kinds of 'civilised.'
1. Technologically civilised. Having modern tools and toys. This is not what this debate is about.

Never seen a definition of "technologically civilized." Technologically advanced perhaps, but "civilized" and "uncivilized" are social, not technological concepts.

2. Socially civilised, which is what I am discussing. This is related to how people behave.

Yes, that's what the word means.

I call it humane behaviour, meaning that which does not cause harm to others, and hopefully assists others.

Seems to me that "humane behavior" different from "civilized behavior," but it is shown as a synonym so I'll let it pass.

It will not be perfect, since the term 'civilised' is purely relative, and no nation has come anywhere near the ultimate in being civilised. But some are more 'civilised' than others.

And here's where you shoot your own argument in the foot. You are absolutely right, "civilized" is a relative term. It's also entirely subjective. Indeed the very dictionary definition acknowledges the subjective nature of the word because it uses the phrase "thought to be" in association with the determination of acceptable social behavior.

As I pointed out, Muslims consider themselves to be highly civilized. More so than anyone else on earth in fact. They have a rigid and comprehensive set of social rules that in their eyes produces the highest and best form of civilized behavior. They consider non-Muslims to be infidels and most of the Western world to be depraved, barbarian, barely-human creatures to be dominated or exterminated.

Why are they wrong?

"But they cut the hands off of thieves" you say. Well, their definition of civilized behavior calls for people not to steal from other people, since stealing from others is, in their culture, a very uncivilized and evil thing to do that does serious harm to both the victims and society as a whole, in part because it violates the trust between individuals that helps Muslim society to function smoothly. So they weigh the interests of the victim, and the desirability of preventing harm to victims and society at large against the actions of the thief and conclude that strong measures to deter thievery is the most civilized thing to do because it results in the least amount of harm to the largest number of people and it places the responsibility and consequences of such antisocial behavior where it belongs; on the individual who chooses barbaric and uncivilized social behavior.

Why are they wrong?

If they don't deter theft, or they don't punish thieves severely in order to prevent them from repeating their crime, and to prevent others from becoming thieves by making the punishment so severe as to make it not worth the risk, then more people will be victimized, and that, to them (and to me) is far less civilized than severely punishing the thief. The innocent victims after all have done nothing to deserve being victimized, and so if Muslim society can keep an individual from victimizing more than two people at most, it serves the greater good even if it causes "harm" to the individual thief.

Compare that to some "civilized" western nations that don't punish thieves much at all, with the result that a single thief can victimize hundreds or thousands of people in his lifetime and get away with most of his crimes. I say that allowing a criminal to victimize anyone is unacceptable, but allowing them to victimize people more than once is intolerable, and that the most civilized and humane thing to do is to remove such persons from society permanently and irrevocably.

So who's civilized and who isn't?

You studiously ignore how social tolerance for criminal victimization such as that seen in, oh, say...Glasgow, Scotland, negatively affects the victims and the society as a whole and you focus on how punishment for committing crimes might negatively affect the criminal. You disregard the right of society as a whole to be free from (and by that I mean absolutely and completely free from) criminal victimization by discounting and ignoring the impacts of criminal victimization on the victims and society while focusing exclusively on the purported harm done to the criminal that you personally think is excessive.

This seems to be a common trait in the UK and its satellites. I'm not sure why that it, but it sure as hell has nothing whatever to do with being more "civilized" than the US, or any other nation for that matter.

Here in the US we believe that the epitome of civilized behavior is holding the individual liable for his exercises of liberty and freedom that harm others and making the consequences of victimizing others serious enough to dissuade rational persons from doing so and making sure that those who do so anyway are removed from society for the protection of society, not for the protection or rehabilitation of the antisocial individual, at least not as the primary intent.

So no, the USA is not uncivilized, it is much more civilized than the UK or any other nation on earth because we value the liberty, autonomy and safety of each and every individual citizen and respect each individual's right to peaceable freedom of action over and above any claim to protection by society of those who engage in non-peaceable, criminal and harmful behavior. The interests of criminals comes three furlongs at least behind the smallest liberty or safety interest of an innocent individual.

That is civilized behavior.

The UK's practice of disarming its citizens and effectively prohibiting them from defending themselves and their property against criminal victimization is entirely uncivilized however. It's positively barbaric in fact. I don't know why Brits put up with it. Perhaps they've been bred for thousands of years into a race of servile sheeple who can't comprehend, much less effectuate and enjoy, true liberty and freedom. I think that must be the case.

[Tyrannical]

To Tyrannical
Killing people is less civilised. Your desire to see more people killed does suggest something about your individual level of 'civilised'.

There is nothing less civilized then allowing the uncivilized to roam free and terrorize the population. Violent and anti-social behavior has a genetic component, and it is important to weed those people out of the gene pool.

[Jason]

it is important to weed those people out of the gene pool.

A racist AND a eugenicist. Who'd have thought?

[Seth]

it is important to weed those people out of the gene pool.

A racist AND a eugenicist. Who'd have thought?

Reported.

I think it's pretty well documented that there is a genetic component to some violent tendencies, and I agree that weeding out such undesirable genetic traits is just as important to advancement of society as weeding out the genetic traits that cause various diseases and conditions like diabetes.

The question is how, exactly, does society go about doing so? Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and Adolph Hitler (who greatly admired Sanger and her philosophy) turned a perfectly useful and beneficial scientific process into a dirty word by claiming that the genetic defects that needed to be weeded-out were connected to race.

They are in some cases (like sickle-cell anemia), but not when it comes to "violent tendencies," so far as I know.

Genetic defects occur in all humans from time to time.

That being said, again, it is HOW society goes about weeding out those genetic defects that determines whether "eugenics" is a good thing or a bad thing.

If all parents volunteered to be genetically tested prior to having children to see if the child has a high probability of being passed a genetic defect, and they decide for reasons of altruism and social conscience not to have children in order to prevent the perpetuation of that genetic defect, as I have done regarding my family history of diabetes, that's a perfectly acceptable and moral form of eugenics.

Forcibly sterilizing or killing people (including fetuses) or races in an attempt to "purify" humanity quite obviously is not.

[Jason]

it is important to weed those people out of the gene pool.

A racist AND a eugenicist. Who'd have thought?

Reported.

I probably won't receive so much as a spanking. Isn't life a terrible thing?

[Jason]

The question is how, exactly, does society go about doing so? Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and Adolph Hitler (who greatly admired Sanger and her philosophy) turned a perfectly useful and beneficial scientific process into a dirty word by claiming that the genetic defects that needed to be weeded-out were connected to race.

I suspect the Holocaust had something to do with that as well.

[Warren Dew]

it is important to weed those people out of the gene pool.

A racist AND a eugenicist. Who'd have thought?

Reported.

I'm pretty sure Tyrannical will take that as a compliment.

If all parents volunteered to be genetically tested prior to having children to see if the child has a high probability of being passed a genetic defect, and they decide for reasons of altruism and social conscience not to have children in order to prevent the perpetuation of that genetic defect, as I have done regarding my family history of diabetes, that's a perfectly acceptable and moral form of eugenics.

Agreed that voluntarily refraining from passing on a genetic defect is acceptable and even admirable.

Disagreed that diabetes is such a case. Diabetes is almost entirely diet related.

[JimC]

it is important to weed those people out of the gene pool.

A racist AND a eugenicist. Who'd have thought?

Reported.

I'm pretty sure Tyrannical will take that as a compliment.

If all parents volunteered to be genetically tested prior to having children to see if the child has a high probability of being passed a genetic defect, and they decide for reasons of altruism and social conscience not to have children in order to prevent the perpetuation of that genetic defect, as I have done regarding my family history of diabetes, that's a perfectly acceptable and moral form of eugenics.

Agreed that voluntarily refraining from passing on a genetic defect is acceptable and even admirable.

Disagreed that diabetes is such a case. Diabetes is almost entirely diet related.

Type 2 yes, Type 1 no...