Cultures and wars

[Monte Davis]

> A big part of finding a possible way off the brink involves realizing
> that it's not human nature that's screwed up, but the specific culture
> that we've built. 

This is the crux, of course. It would help if I could see today, or even
see historical evidence of, a culture *with* the Botticelli and Bach and
vaccines and algebraic topology and Internet and
Pynchon-books-for-20-minutes'-labor that I want... *without* the armies and
nationalism and contempt for the environment that I don't want.

I can't prove that civilization *had* to entail all the discontents it has.
Maybe it was just historical contingency, and the world would be very
different if it had never occurred to chieftain X in 7351 BC that he could
get more cattle and furs and women by persuading some thugs to help him
steal resources with which to hire more thugs to...

But it's the history that happened, and now we have to get where we want to
be by changing *from here*, confronting and controlling what we are... not
by saying "we could be as nice as the Inuit or !Kung San or Trobrianders if
we really tried."

-Monte <yes, foax, once again nature-vs-culture drags us back into boring
ol' politics>