How advanced would man kind be if we never had the dark ages and the Roman empire never fell?
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How advanced would man kind be if we never had the dark ages and the Roman empire never fell?
The Greeks were very advanced in mathematics until such 'knowledge' was suppressed by religion.
hard to tell, but currently technology is insane!
just look at computers from the 60's compared to now, look at how life was different 200 years ago compared to now its simply amazing.
yes hard to say but we I think I head it speculated that we could have had warp drive 500 years ago and settled many nearby stars by now if events transpired differently from the days of ancient Greece onward through the Dark Ages and beyond. We would be a whole lot more advanced, that's for sure, if we had put all our energy into peaceful cooperation and helping each other, pooled all our resources and intellectual talent into constructive technology instead of destructive technology, and so on. We can still get our shit together, but we better start now as we could all be dead tommorrow if some huge disaster happens.
is being "advanced" a matter of technology, or is it a matter of life quality?
perhaps both?
If we had 1000fold better technology NOW, we would almost surely be slaves, all of us.
if we had NO technology now (living like it was 1000 BC) we'd all be free, and have to WORK for a living, EVERY day, ceaselessly.
i think *this* is the middle ground.
When the human race lost access to it's sacred psychedelic plants, it started to regress to more ape-like behaviors - but with a very deadly twist: Rather than hurl feces at each other like the apes do, we have the intelligence to create weapons that fly through the air with the capability of destroying entire continents, even the whole planet.
Quoted for emphasis.Quote:
Originally Posted by Breukelen advocaat
people are stupider since the 30's, they just happen to have more technology.
stupid technology too... wasting our time kind of technology :(
I don't see any sense or logic to your reasoning beyond the opening statement which had me hopeful the rest of your post would be brilliant. Not that it is dumb by any means, I just don't see how you come up with that. If we had "1000fold" better technology, or put another way had technology 1000 years more advanced, why would we all be slaves? I say the technology would be our slave and we would all be free, let the machines and androids and the like do all the mindless monotonous manual labor while we all sit on the beach somewhere sipping a margarita and toking on a joint while collecting a fat check for it! :D Our only role would be to guide and manage the technology and maintain/repair it, some of that also could be done for us. We could be free to go hiking or swimming or skiing every day instead of report every day to a job we hate and pay the DEA's paychecks in the process. I see great hope for a better world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stoner Shadow Wolf
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Originally Posted by space toker
merely examples of my opening statement's point. the opening statement was all i had to say, the examples, mere after thoughts based on that first sentence.
the only logic i used in those examples was that if we were using technology 1000 times more powerful than what we have now, what would the cost be to ACHIEVING it? i assumed we would all be forced into labor from early childhood in order to accomplish technology that powerful, "this' fast. (modern day, with technology WE may never see for an eon)
however, in a perfect world, yeah, we would have robots that did all the work, but in order to reach that step, we would have to have technology that was developed for EVERYONE, not just one particular nation, wherein lies the clincher; everyone wants to be the most powerful ruler on earth (not literally EVERYone, but you know what i mean) and will use technology, by all means, to achieve dominance.
there is never a way or form that power craving people DON'T exist, they always do, and always will exist.
without them, there would be no people without any interest in power.
for every good influence breeds a polar opposite influence.
Light and Shadow beget each other, creating contrasts of which to use to differentiate them from one another; they are the same thing, just opposite sides of their respective coin.
Advancement and technology don't remove what makes us human , the feelings we have , the ideas and creativity.
Because emotions make us what we are we must also contend with negative sides of each emotion and the consequences of those "drives".
The drive to procreate, the drive to be Alpha male/female , not to mention greed, envy and the other 5 deadly sins all lead to conflict on some level. The nationalism and patriotism you feel is simply an extension of the tribalism of our ancestors , even within a town there are tribe (neighbourhood) issues and the lowest level tribes are the street gangs we see more and more.
Add all this together and you will understand that what makes us human holds us back.
I think what we're starting to see now is another age in society, the age of over indulgence. It is easy to write off our ancestors as stupid but is that really the case? The human brain hasnā??t changed significantly over the last few thousand years. They would have had more restrictions to survive, raising crops and preparing for winter. The environment was tough and would have weeded out the stupid, gullible etc. Today we live more sheltered life away from the harsh environment of nature.Quote:
This concept of a Dark Age was created by the Italian scholar Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) in the 1330s and was originally intended as a sweeping criticism of the character of Late Latin literature. Later historians expanded the term to refer to the transitional period between Classical Roman Antiquity and the High Middle Ages, including not only the lack of Latin literature, but also a lack of contemporary written history, general demographic decline, limited building activity and material cultural achievements in general. Popular culture has further expanded on the term as a vehicle to depict the Middle Ages as a time of backwardness, extending its pejorative use and expanding its scope.
The rise of archaeology and other specialties in the 20th century has shed much light on the period and offered a more nuanced understanding of its positive developments. Other terms of periodization have come to the fore: Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages, and the Great Migrations, depending on which aspects of culture are being emphasized.
the ultimate suppressor is religion. if we never had it we would probably be a thousand years more advanced. humans were always taught to work and think within the bounderies of their religion and if they didn't, they got killed.
in technology we are very advanced but in logic and wisdom and knowledge of life we are way behind or perhaps goin backwards.......humankind is commiting suicide we're stupid and were killing ourselfs not slowly but very fuckin quick............were all doomed in a very advanced way ;)
relax, nature has a way of preserving the strongest specimens. toughen up.
Say what you will about Christianity, but the relative peace it brought to Europe allowed the Industrial Revolution to take root.
Anyway, I'm personally thrilled to be living during an age where we're right on the cusp of all these breakthroughs but we aren't quite there yet.
if there wasn't religion many conflicts wouldn't have started in the first place.Quote:
Originally Posted by khronik
and if there was conflict, we wouldn't have needed some theists to sort it out. Sensible logical people would have done so.
Yes! The key to our survival as a race is to move beyond those primitive feelings. Only then will we make true progress with both technology (with those feelings gone, organized religion will surely follow) and socially.Quote:
Originally Posted by psychocat
Thank god we got through The Dark Ages and the Roman Empire. Because if we didn't we wouldn't have had the will to strive for even greater things.
These "mistakes" taught us valuable lessons about the human race.
Our tool-using nature spurred us into high-gear proliferation mode with an emphasis on survival, and what is the right to survive but the means? The initiative?
Technology was an exciting development in human history, but people found out what they could do, and got excited and did it all, but now no one is really excited anymore. Nevertheless, everything has changed and it's hard to imagine existing the way it was before things changed.
A common wish of mine is that somehow there was never any technology developed beyond the level of gears and such, but medical technology was really really advanced. That would sure be fun, I would ride my bicycle down a lovely country road past fields of nice crops and windmills and see the potential of the human quality of life fulfill itself.
Forget about the Roman Empire, imagine how smart we would be if the Empire of ancient Mesopotamia survived. They were far more advanced than the Romans ever were. Too bad its never taught in the history books.
But if this civilization would have survived we would basically be living like aliens with anything the imagination could think of
If we never struggled we'd have no reason to be strong
If it weren't for humans' greedy nature, the Romans would have never fallen.
I firmly believe that that was the greatest empire ever on Earth. However, we as humans can't even get along.
Think about it, there's got to be other life out there. And whos to say if they know or don't know that we're here.
Sorry to get off topic, but its just food for thought. While we struggle amongst our selves, we could be instead using that time and energy and finding out the secrets of the universe.
far out, eh man?:hippy:
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Originally Posted by khronik
ok so the industrial revolution is all thanks to christianity?
that just gives me more reason to hate the christian religion.
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Originally Posted by LanSLIde
and if we no longer need to struggle, we no loger need to be strong, we might as well die. what's your point, pro tech or con tech?
you have to remember that alot of technology we now possess is the result of aggression, the computer, satellite communications, concrete, mass production, steel hull ships, trains. These are all technologies created originally only for aggressive purposes, or were whose developments were greatly sped up by aggression.
A culture which does not compete, and aggression is a form of competition, does not advance. Look at Australian aborigines, Native Americans, look at the Gauls, Pict and Celts, in Roman era europe. All of these were predated by more aggressive competitive cultures.
Everyone needs to consider this when their making statements like, if it weren't for the violence of the middle ages, or other warlike periods, we would be more advanced. When in fact in many areas without war we would be less advanced. Not saying that a more peaceful less advanced culture would be a bad thing, just that in my opinion it would not be a more advanced culture, technologically speaking.
As far as the rest of the species on earth are concerned we stopped doing anything worthwhile a long time ago.
How much of this technology can we shoot into our arms before we are totally spun out or are we already. Will we as a species always be at some degree of technological poisoning and in extreme cases techno overdose?
I do not hate technological advancement. Its just that the groups steering it are not human friendly. The disposable unit society is not healthy. None of the consumer products that we made today are going to be here 50 years from now. Its junk. The kind of things that we are making degrade our environment. They degrade our body. Infectious diseases are down. Autoimmune diseases like arthritis, allergies, diabetes, MS, and crones are exploding. 1/3 Americans will have some form of cancer in their lifetime. 1/150 is autistic. Who knows about aeschburghers syndrome.
I put forth the theory that the more complex a society becomes the worse life is for any individual caught in that society. Until it gets so bad that people don't even give a fuck anymore and society collapses no is cannibalized. Our society is cold and calculating. Its powerful enough to trap us now but it is spun out no longer progressing. Waiting to be blown away by the next magnitude of baddest men alive.
I'm not sure we would be that much more advanced than we are now. The dark ages refers to a period of history in western europe, but the byzantine (eastern roman) empire lasted a thousand years after the fall of the western empire. And then there's the 90% or so of the world which was never part of rome....