How illogical is our “civilization”?

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Coadunate
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27 Dec 2008, 7:17 pm

I just got through mailing my automobile liability insurance payment. Once again I had to remind myself what purpose it served. I reminded myself that even though I haven’t had an accident since 1980 and that I have had only one moving violation since 1984, which I still believe was not completely my fault, it was so that if I had an accident and injured someone or damaged something that the insurance would cover the other person’s injuries and damages. All good and well worth it. This chain of thought once again led me to contemplate what else we do in our lives that can lead to injury or property damage, and once again I thought of that one thing that we as human beings do that is potentially more dangerous than driving any moving vehicle. Potentially more dangerous than using any known firearm. Something potentially lethal that we produce which we don’t need a license or liability insurance for, and once again it let me to see how disgustingly illogical our society is. Why is it that we do not need a license or insurance to make babies when those babies can potentially grow up to be serial killers, genocidal dictators or the very least gangbangers? What do you think?



Fnord
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27 Dec 2008, 7:32 pm

Coadunate wrote:
How illogical is our “civilization”?

Compared to what?

A culture that keeps women covered, stones them to death for adultery, forbids them from acquiring an education, and allows a man to have as many as he can afford to keep (wives and concubines)?

A culture that glorifies druglords in song, allows cattle to be slaughtered in public and call it 'sport', and illegally exports its working class to performed unskilled labor for a neighboring country?

A culture that is so ignorant and backwards that the people believe that having sex with an infant will cure AIDS?

A culture so desperate to become a world power that it looks the other way whenever one of its factories uses lead paint in toys, or that allows factory owners to keep kids out of school to work 16-hour days for less than a dollar a week?


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pakled
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27 Dec 2008, 10:27 pm

no more or less than any of the others....but we got cookies!...;)



carturo222
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27 Dec 2008, 11:24 pm

@ the OP: you really need to read this.

@ Fnord: I guess what the OP meant by "civilization" was humanity as a whole.

(Now, if you want to start making comparisons, a culture where teenagers happily massacre their classmates, banks unabashedly and knowingly grant loans to people who won't be able to pay them back, consumerism is extolled by advertisers and made into a popularity contest, evolution is shunned from schools, and a mediocre manager and former alcoholic can be president twice isn't much to look up to either.)



Icheb
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28 Dec 2008, 8:33 am

I think having children should be outlawed. No one has the right to force a sentient being into existence.


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Awesomelyglorious
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29 Dec 2008, 1:14 am

That doesn't seem *that* illogical, given that the rest of society makes efforts to prevent psychopathic behavior on the part of it's members and preventing it. Not only that, but by the time that people often become psychopathic, they become independent agents, outside of the legal control of their parents.

I mean, the system that exists has a logic to it, I would really look to something else if I were to point to the "illogic" of our civilization, but in this case, all this really is, is an apportioning out of responsibility and of risk. In any case, car accidents are likely more common than most irreparable crimes. A better example of the illogic of the system might be the fact that children are given tax credits, but even then, one can make an argument for the utility of that.