(April 9, 2011 at 4:19 pm)Chuck Wrote: Civilization is social engineering. The former can not exist without the latter.
To an extent yeah, we promote or condemn desires to change the desires of others, we praise or condemn desires that tend do good and condemn those that tend to do bad, we also punish and reward the results of action to deter people from acting on certain desires but it's organic unlike the central planning engineering of social attitudes which most people are concerned about, me included.
That being said, the statement "Civilization is social engineering" is inaccurate, it is significant but not ultimate, our nature plays a large part of what makes the Civilization and there are a number of other smaller factors too.
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