<I don't really see the connection here between our past violence and the lack of money at the time.>

I do, if people are starving and hungry - close to dying, they will be more inclined to use violence to keep them alive - for sure.

In London if I am walking late at night in a wealthy Area's like Hampstead the chances of me being mugged and stabbed are virtualy nil, if i go to one of the really rough parts late at night, like Hackney, the chances are reasonably high.

Not that the people in Hampstead are necessary much better people, there just less desperate and angry.

so of course material desperation comes into it big time.

<Our history has had a lot of violence, but also a lot of peaceful existence, depending on place and time in our long history. >

yes but generally the past was far more violent, especially if you compare it to violence and wars now WITHIN the west and new developing countries like China, Brazil and India.

and your also just talking about violence, that was just one facet of what i was talking about, famines, short life expectancy due to both malnutrition and poor health, were all part of the ancient past.

Do we want to put the fact that the life expectancy now in the west is 70-80 not 30 as it was 10,000 years ago down to progress or greed ?


I do think there is quite a bit in the modern world that we have lost from the past, community, excessive differences between wealth now, community aethestics, much of our cities or ugly, but i think thats changing again now, over obsession on material things by some, lack of spirtuality etc.

But to ingore some of the great leaps of progress over the last 10,000 years or so is also not good.

To me, we want the best of the modern with the best of the ancient, with a new progressive more community centred approach to modernisation now.

You see if you "unplug" from "the matrix" - as in the film say, the collective norms of society now, you have to be careful of what you plug into instead, a distorted, unreal over romanticised view of the past is probably just as destructive as the current "matrix" and i say that as someone who has a nostalga about the past myself.

There are many things i love about ancient Egyptian, Mayan, Chinese, Persian, Celtic, Indian etc, Native America too, but Im also aware that we in our modern western society have lots of advantages to those too.

Its not a question of a choice between these. Its a question of refocusing some of our priorities in the modern world now.

We have a saying here in England " the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" meaning things that are different always look more attractive at first.