Thoughts On A Civilized Society

Something I've been thinking about today. Some people have been claiming that there's a lot of disrespectful people out there who are very rude to you.

I have an idea on what may be causing this increased lack of respect.

I think it's because that in a civilized society, you are not allowed to react with a physical action, such as punching someone for calling you a c***.

In a civilized society, violence is not acceptable, and for some reason it doesn't matter who caused it or what the cause of the reaction is. It is all wrong.

Unfortunately, this has a bad side effect or two.

The first is the message that you are not allowed to defend yourself because you might hurt someone else.

The second is, that since there is no fear of retaliation, you don't have to respect someone and you can say anything you want to. Because a strong person will not allow themselves to be hurt by mere words. Or so they say.

And this is what breeds the lack of respect.

Think about it. Why should one control their mouth if no one is going to break their nose?

Why should a person have any respect for another person? There is nothing a person can do to earn respect. A title? An education Absolutely meaningless to some people. Why should they be respected? After all, it's just mere words.

And since people aren't really being taught about respect, that is to say, control what they say, since it doesn't matter, well, why the hell not? There is no repercussions at all if you just sit there and antagonize a person all to hell and back. Absolutely none.

And when there is no repercussions, that only encourages bad behavior.

Because you see, without any incentive to behave properly, most people just won't.

The only real incentive to watching your mouth, at least as far as I know, is the threat of physical action. If you know if someone is not going to break your nose, you just don't care and will do what you can to antagonize a person. After all, in a civilized society, one that values freedom of speech, people's feelings just don't matter.

So, this is what I think actually causes the increasing amount of disrespectful and rude people.

It's because we have a civilized society that values free speech but does not allow for physical altercations. This removes any incentive to treat people with respect.

Think about it.



(By you I mean in a general sense, nothing specific)

reply to post by EvilSadamClone



You just declared that respect comes from fear of physical harm.

And, I can't argue with that.

what kind of society tells people not to defend themselves?....

You stated that respect comes from fear of physical harm. I refute this and offer a more complex explanatory model to satisfy your hypothesis that people are afraid to act instinctively. Respect in broader terms is understood to be a state of honor for someone, thus it is very unlikely for you to inflict harm upon them. In smaller groups it is defined differently. The categories exists, ethnically and within minorities. A person from the middle class might without knowing a man respect him if he has a bigger house or higher rank in a company, oppositely a peoples with very little money might respect a man who provides a service to the community. In a caste-like system peoples who rank lower in society are mandated to respect people "above" them, thus respect cannot be gained or lost through these levels as you cannot move up or down, and any persons caught striking someone above you is reprimanded. Instinctively, these people know to keep their hands to themselves.
I say, that in democratic countries, respect is being lost from the bottom up through the degradation of morals. How? Well, simply stated, it all starts at home which if I were to expound upon my reasoning I would be in danger of going off topic. The world is undergoing a great change and it's up to individuals to positively effect the future.

reply to post by EvilSadamClone


Looks like I was the only one that agrees with you, as nobody else starred or flagged your thrfead as of this post.

I coulnt agree more with everything you said, which is why I reserve the right to punch someone in the face, I don't care if "civilised" people like it or not.

The world is run through pain and fear, or fear of pain. Pain is the best teacher in the world, that is why all creatures feel pain. If there was a better method nature would have used it instead. However scientific evidence says this is true.

Words don't teach neerly as well as pain, for example.

All small children get warned by their parents what "hot" means, no matter how many warnings, no matter how much proding, no matter how vigilant the parent, eventually every child will have to learn this all to familiar lesson the hard way, by getting burned.

Once the child is burned one time, they will from that point forward for the rest of their lives, respect the warning and listen.

If this isn't proof of concept I don't know what is.

So the claim as I understand it is, society became civilized because of physical harm and the threat of physical harm. Now, we see society collapsing because the element of physical harm has been removed or discouraged.

I disagree with this premise. Most third world and developing world nations still encourage violence and physical reactions and they seem far less civilized than the western world.

The problem is not the lack of physical repercussions for uncivil or downright mean behavior, its the lack of proper up-bringing with children on what is considered acceptable behavior.