All Comments (7)

JWS you are looking at the wrong thing. In this instance the trees are more important than the forest at large.

GaryD, I'd say the task has become more difficult. Increasing population density trends force us to bump into each other more and more. The conflicts we see through the ever increasing media is an illustration of that.

But there are plenty of stable societies now where people are mostly free to publically pontificate as they wish. Oppression exists still but based on what I have read, not always to the degree that it existed in the times before democracies (yes I admit that there is oppression even in democracies such as ours, but nothing like the past monarchies/dictatorships).

I'd like to think that there are more people now who 'get it' than there were even 500 years ago. And by 'get it', I am not talking about a specific doctrine. I am talking about understanding the need for 'loving thy neighbor' whether it be through the doctrines of Christianity, Buddhism, Wicca, etc.

JWS I wish I could be as confident as you of this but the daily news would say that for everyone of us that has gotten it figure out there are three or for that not only don;t simply don't care to do so. Part of it has to do with man's intrinsic selfishness. As often as not even when we appear to do good we are doing as a means of self glorification.

I don't know... it seems to me that we have made progress in not only knowledge but wisdom. At least some of the world's societies seem to more and more recognize the equality of other races and genders in deserving of opportunities and freedoms. I like Prof. Marty's assertion that we should avoid stereotyping. There is a wide variety of ideas and attitudes in peoples of all races genders and creeds. And who are we to judge others?

We have free will. That we haven't self-destructed is a good sign. That many of us are more accepting of those around us is even better. We still have our work cut out for us and we take occasional steps backward, but it seems to me that at least we are mostly headed in the right direction.

This changing wisdom seems to be documented in the Bible, where our perception of God 5000 years ago was of a vengeful/tribal God, versus the more recent perception of a loving and pluralistic God. Similarly it was the "chosen people" in the OT versus Jesus's teaching to ALL peoples in the NT.

Wrong Utzi the ice man was shot in the back with an arrow circa 5k years ago. Archeological and anthropological evidence such as it is suggest that the only difference between man at the beginning and man now is that we have become more inventive in how we kill our neighbors and can do it at much greater distances. Human sacrifice and war and murder seem to go back as far as human history and likely much further.

There is in short no evidence whatever that we are getting any wiser no matter how much knowledge we accumulate. Wisdom is the gas The Ferrari is knowledge without the former the Ferrari is little more than an interesting piece of sculpture.

"Mistreatment of one sex by another or of one race or set of peoples by another is as old as recorded humanity." -- isn't the tale them old bones tell us. Not all that far back, less than 5,000 years people treated each other a lot more gently. All that "mistreatment" is rather modern, a blink of the eye back to when it all began.

Perhaps you could tell us WHY it started? What caused people to change, start hating each other just for being what they are? Fixing the problem, if it is a problem, can only come by accident if we never review the causes of it's beginnings.

The Devil you say? http://www.hoax-buster.org has the answer, a gold nugget buried in a pile of gravel and sand. It's worth the effort to pan it out. Then you can say why as well as what.

Correct sir. As long as the government compels us to identify people by skin color sex or any other grouping beyond that of citizen and non citizen we will have racism and ita various permutaions and combinations.