You are the one who said that becoming more civilized probably weakens
people.......LOL!
What I REALLY said
We conquer what is valuable, and worth the effort of conquering (at least I think
this is a possible conclusion). Knowledge is ONE thing that has always been
considered of value. As is beauty. These are things successful hominids seem to
want to possess- so I would guess they are adaptive. Studies certainly show
being beautiful in your person (for example) is adaptive. Being intelligent
probably has similar advantages. By conquering a knowledgeable people you
essentially conquer their thinking- you get their libraries, you get to enslave
their teachers to teach your children, you get their architects and their
scientists, their artists, and doctors- etc- it's a very quick shortcut to knowledge.
And I think there must be a dynamic tension between knowledge and strength.
For example- the more philosophic and educated your population gets, I would
think the WEAKER they would get. After all- they're spending their time in the
library- not out drilling with weapons. And to top it all off- they are probably
getting more tolerant, and possibly even relativistic- so their drive to fight
people based on xenophobia may be too greatly diminished. So an invader- who
is NOT wasting all his or her time in the library- finds this civilization easy
pickings- and while they may realize the knowledge of the conquered civilization
is valuable- do they realize it is also destructive? I doubt it. But I think the
tension is there. I wouldn't want (for example) to be defended by an army of
Socratic scholars, or even, people like ME.<
Poor Neo- read my post- I was talking about knowledge, it is NOT the same as civilization (I am using civilization as indicating a large settlement, or several large settlements of humans living in cities, being aggregated by some politcal/economic system, with some degree of refinement over a stone age people- I am NOT using the "refinement of art and culture definition"- which I would have thought obvious) in the sense I was using it (after all- the strong conquering people are also civilized- just not in the scribish sense- which was, in fact the WHOLE point, and you missed it). You did NOT understand what I wrote- but thank you for proving my point that you did NOT understand. You knew what you wanted to read - and you read it even though it wasn't there. I congratulate you. Not everyone is as able to create their universe against the face of the facts as well as you obviously can. Unfortunately our two universes are very different- I may actually have read words you didn't- even though we read the same sources. I can't know for SURE you read your "sources" the way you read my post- but it's certainly one data point. |
