While I’m sure that there are ways in which our society could be much better geared to cultivating technological progress and/or prosperity, looking to the standards of earlier times does not seem like a particularly effective way to do so.
Considerations of how to best cultivate further prosperity aside, I would say that there is a lot to recommend having people in a society behave as they like to behave, rather than ways that they don’t like to behave.
While I’m sure that there are ways in which our society could be much better geared to cultivating technological progress and/or prosperity, looking to the standards of earlier times does not seem like a particularly effective way to do so.
Why not? Look at societies that achieved and/or maintained prosperity and imitate them; look at prosperous societies that collapsed and avoid doing what they did.
What societies maintained prosperity without either collapsing or turning into, well, us?
In any case, we are by many standards the most prosperous civilization ever to exist; by what older prosperity-promoting behaviors do you think our society might be improved?
What societies maintained prosperity without either collapsing or turning into, well, us?
That’s like saying that because everyone has either died or is currently living there is nothing we can learn about health and longevity by looking at other people’s lifestyles.
Not especially, since not only do civilizations not have hard limits on their persistence times like humans do, the very qualities which made certain civilizations particularly stable in their own time periods might cease to be viable in other ones (which is in some cases why they ended.)
Civilizations also tend to change their qualities over time, thus we can see what changes tend to promote increased prosperity (or collapse).
the very qualities which made certain civilizations particularly stable in their own time periods might cease to be viable in other ones
What do you mean by “time periods”? The logic of your argument suggests you mean it as a proxy for some other changes. It would help to thing of those variables explicitly. For example, if you mean different levels of technology, it makes sense to look at qualities that were helpful in societies of different technological level.
Different technology, different memetic environments, different relationships with other nations. Possibly other factors I’m leaving out.
Once a new meme enters the environment, it can be transformative to the political environment the way, say, the evolution of lignin-degrading bacteria, or of angiosperms, were to the ecological. Adaptations which were useful in the prior context can be totally obsoleted, with no backtracking.
I have studied history, and continue to do so, and this is not a helpful comment.
It’s easy to take the tact of “I know stuff you ought to know and would believe differently if you also knew it” without actually raising those matters in the discussion, but a useful dialogue it does not make.
When I asked you before about what specific prosperity-promoting behaviors from the past we ought to emulate, that was also not a rhetorical question.
While I’m sure that there are ways in which our society could be much better geared to cultivating technological progress and/or prosperity, looking to the standards of earlier times does not seem like a particularly effective way to do so.
Considerations of how to best cultivate further prosperity aside, I would say that there is a lot to recommend having people in a society behave as they like to behave, rather than ways that they don’t like to behave.
Why not? Look at societies that achieved and/or maintained prosperity and imitate them; look at prosperous societies that collapsed and avoid doing what they did.
What societies maintained prosperity without either collapsing or turning into, well, us?
In any case, we are by many standards the most prosperous civilization ever to exist; by what older prosperity-promoting behaviors do you think our society might be improved?
That’s like saying that because everyone has either died or is currently living there is nothing we can learn about health and longevity by looking at other people’s lifestyles.
Not especially, since not only do civilizations not have hard limits on their persistence times like humans do, the very qualities which made certain civilizations particularly stable in their own time periods might cease to be viable in other ones (which is in some cases why they ended.)
Civilizations also tend to change their qualities over time, thus we can see what changes tend to promote increased prosperity (or collapse).
What do you mean by “time periods”? The logic of your argument suggests you mean it as a proxy for some other changes. It would help to thing of those variables explicitly. For example, if you mean different levels of technology, it makes sense to look at qualities that were helpful in societies of different technological level.
Different technology, different memetic environments, different relationships with other nations. Possibly other factors I’m leaving out.
Once a new meme enters the environment, it can be transformative to the political environment the way, say, the evolution of lignin-degrading bacteria, or of angiosperms, were to the ecological. Adaptations which were useful in the prior context can be totally obsoleted, with no backtracking.
If you actually study history, you will find that there are a lot more patterns than you seem to be implying.
I have studied history, and continue to do so, and this is not a helpful comment.
It’s easy to take the tact of “I know stuff you ought to know and would believe differently if you also knew it” without actually raising those matters in the discussion, but a useful dialogue it does not make.
When I asked you before about what specific prosperity-promoting behaviors from the past we ought to emulate, that was also not a rhetorical question.