# (no subject) *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 17 Dec 2010* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Lee Berman *17 Dec 2010, 13:47* > Andrew Mason: But can we distance ourselves from Urth? Torture exists in our world. > If kahibits don't, it's just because we don't have the technology; exploitation of women, > in various forms, does. The Commonwealth is a pretty nasty place in many ways, but is it > worse than Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia? I think this is just the inherent corruption of > humanity, not a sign of a godless world. In my view, the world is gradually, with frequent backsliding, gradually improving and becoming more humane. The atrocities of WWII are now recognized for what they were, even by the nations which perpetrated them (sadly the USA lags behind in acknowledgement of the atrocity of the purposeful killing of over 1 million civilians in Dresden, Tokyo etc. and of course Hiroshima). Since then we have progressed to the point that killing a few thousand civilian Iraqis and Afghans is somewhat frowned upon as are simulated drownings and stacking naked Muslim men into pyramids. Generally, I see progress. If Urth was Earth in the future it would show complete backsliding, back past WWII to Medieval times and ethics. Even the skimpy history/future of Urth we are given with Typhon's empire and the creation of the Hierogrammates depicts a universe of cruelty. I find it a far more positive and uplifiting view that Urth is missing some essence of progressive goodness that we on Earth possess. --- ### Jeff Wilson *17 Dec 2010, 18:33 · in reply to Lee Berman* > On 12/17/2010 7:47 AM, Lee Berman wrote: >> Andrew Mason: But can we distance ourselves from Urth? Torture exists in our world. >> If kahibits don't, it's just because we don't have the technology; exploitation of women, >> in various forms, does. The Commonwealth is a pretty nasty place in many ways, but is it >> worse than Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia? I think this is just the inherent corruption of >> humanity, not a sign of a godless world. > In my view, the world is gradually, with frequent backsliding, gradually improving and becoming > more humane. The atrocities of WWII are now recognized for what they were, even by the nations > which perpetrated them (sadly the USA lags behind in acknowledgement of the atrocity of the > purposeful killing of over 1 million civilians in Dresden, Tokyo etc. and of course Hiroshima). > > Since then we have progressed to the point that killing a few thousand civilian Iraqis and Afghans > is somewhat frowned upon as are simulated drownings and stacking naked Muslim men into pyramids. > Generally, I see progress. > > If Urth was Earth in the future it would show complete backsliding, back past WWII to Medieval > times and ethics. Even the skimpy history/future of Urth we are given with Typhon's empire and the > creation of the Hierogrammates depicts a universe of cruelty. > > I find it a far more positive and uplifiting view that Urth is missing some essence of progressive > goodness that we on Earth possess. That's my opinion; Urth is a place where humanity (for whatever reason) has squandered the light of Christ and is so much the poorer for it. There are still good people in the world and essentially everyone feels the urge to help one another at some point, but it is so much easier to ignore some atavistic impulse than the Word of God, and the immediate temporal reward is so much more tempting to really, grindingly poor people that they stay in their rut for ages upon ages. ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` ---