ab9924
Educator / Liar Champion
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2011
- Messages
- 904
- Reaction score
- 135
- Location
- Sharing time between UK and US.
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
But most people are NOT homeless, and most people have NOT been raped by a streetgang. Perhaps you are spending too much time fretting over things that are really rather unlikely?
Men have not magically become angels, no. However, to pretend that nothing has changed for the better is nonsense.
Do some research into the Rennaisance. We have no conception of the daily threat of violence many people lived under in those days: vicious crime, oppressive rulers who could have you tortured on a whim, marauding bandits and mercenaries, the threat of war hanging over them every day, the perils of being conquered (pillage, rape and plunder were once great sports for the military), the joys of annual plagues and so on.
In my studies about Elizabethan London, I learned that it was considered a mortal peril to try to travel in London much after dark. Persons of property who did so, did it with armed servants holding lit-match Arquebuses and lanterns on poles, and kept their swords and bucklers handy. Some scholars believe that many Rennaisance-era cities had more street crime and violence than any modern megapolis.
I think you need to study a bit about primitive tribes from a more neutral and scholarly source. As I've said they were not, for the most part, angelic innocents. I'm part Native American and in the time I spent studying that part of my cultural heritage it became clear that "the Noble Savage" was largely myth. Further studies about Amazon and African tribes confirmed this thesis.
This is interesting.
But still, I must propose that it may be logical, that it is less stressful to the mind when you know that something will (almost) certainly happen if you go ahead with something, than when you know that you may or may not avoid something that may or may not destroy you. As per the OP, your analysis shows, that we may have traded physical uncertainty for mental uncertainty.