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No, it isn’t. Adding up every genocide et al. started by governments during the 20th century is more than enough to outweigh any other single cause of death during that time period.
Language is already an effective way of transferring information and writing does not necessitate a centralized government. Besides, what’s so bad about cavemen? (Not that this argument of yours is even valid since there’s been several more advanced civilizations that had no centralized government, cf. certain natives for instance.)
I'll need you to define centralized government. I'm talking about anything above and beyond the idea of a tribal village elder or something of the sort. Basically, anything that had a bureaucracy of some form. or a government where people other than a hereditary or spiritual ruler can CHOSE to work in the government. By the definition i used, i can't think of any large or advanced civilizations that didn't have strong central governments.
Sure, language is a good way of transferring information, but it's not a good way of doing it efficiently in regards to complicated concepts, or the kind of things that progress is built on. sure, someone could explain to you all about how to make a power plant, and how to run and maintain it. but a book is a much more efficient way of imparting that information to a wide range of people.
Sure, writing and reading also convey that information. But in the past, literacy rates were garbage. here's some information on that.
Today the world literacy rate is around 80%, but for a better look, i'll use Germany.
Today, germany has a literacy rate around 99%
1950 the literacy rate was around 87%
1900 it was 75%
1800 it was 50%
1700 35%
1600 25%
1500 12%
It was along with a strong centralized government that civilization progressed to the point where the basic needs of shelter, food and water, and safety were being handled that people could focus on other things, like learning. it's pretty clear that without a strong central government keeping things in control, the average person would have too many more pressing issues to deal with than to take time learning other things. There is a reason why knowledge has exploded in the last century.
So no, cavemen are not adding towards the overall advancement of mankind. That said, sure, being a caveman is fine. Contarary to what most poele think, the Cavemen lived a pretty awesome life. sure there was a chance of getting killed in a hunt, but on the job injuries and deaths were always there. the Cavemen provided enough food with one hunt to last more than a week, and the rest of that time was bascially spent in party mode. Cavemen lived it up.
Unfortunately, cavemen "living it up" also meant that there became a huge increase in baby cavemen. and hunting was no longer providing enogh food to feed all of them, so they stopped being nomadic hunters, and started farming and domesticating animals. As it turned out, Farming sucked, and life became much harder.
but yeah, being a caveman was probably just great. i doubt it's much better than the current civilized world, but it's likely better than living in most third world countires. if you wanna become a caveman, that's certainly a viable option, although, i think most poeple would opt to keep their current situation.
regardless, being a hunter caveman can't support a large population, and it also offers very limited opportunity to advance society. Even if you ignore advancing society and civilization, Humans naturaly look to make the population grow. you'll need to forgo a natural aspect of being human to maintain a caveman society, and asking people to forgo their inherent nature is something that tends to not work well at all, but to evn try it, you usually need some kind of strong centralized power, possibly a government of some form.
Anyways, on the genocide thing.
I looked at wikipedia and saw that a low estimate of genocide deaths from 1900 on is 15,280,860, a high count of 42,738,500, or a average of 29,009,680. i'll be using the average number of 29 million.
worth noting,
The congo free state genocide has no listed lower estimate, and took place from 1885 to 1908. since majority of it took place before the 19th century, i didn't include it.
the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities had a lower estimate of 26k but an upper of 3 million. for something that lasted only 1 year, thats a large amount of discrepency, bt i included both the lower and the upper into the numbers.
The wiki had a entry for something called the Australian Genocide debate, but it was formatted incorrectly, it had the date listed as 50,000 to 200,000, but also had different numbers for the death toll estimates. so i didn't include that.
so 29, million dead from genocide in a 100 year period, lets see how that compares.
Infectious disease. 1.6 billion.
- Cholera 2.3 million
- Hepatitis B and C 19 million
- Rabies 6.6 million
- The seasonal Flu (Excluding major outbreaks) 36million'
- smallpox 400 million
Non infectious diseases 1.9 billion
- Alcohol abuse 6.3 million
- Parkinsons 7.2 million
- Stroke 409 million
- asthma 17 million
- appendicitis 1.5 million
Cancer 533 million
- Breast 35 million
- Bladder 13 million
- Liver 46 million
Complications in childbirth 435 million
- Mother bleeding to death 17.8 million
- bay death to due low birth weight 163 million
nutritional deficiencies. 59 million
- protein 31 million
- Iron 16 million
Famine 100 million
Natural disasters 24 million
- volcanos 95k
- earthquakes 1.6 million
Getting eaten or mauled by animals 6.7 million
- wolves 342
- sharks 575
- jellyfish 3432
- elephants 48199
- snakes 5.9 million
Ideology 141 million
- communism 94 million
- Catholicism 3 million
- democracy 14 million
War 130 million
- ww 2 66 million
- Vietnam 1.7 million
- russian civil war (1917-1922) 9 million
Drugs 115 million
- illegal drugs 6.5 million
- tobacco 100 million
Murder 177 million
- Suicide 88 million
- assassination 571
- homicide 57 million
- riots 842,000
- death penalty 178,000
Accidents 297 million
- Road accidents 60 million
- falling 39 million
- killed by tools/machinery 92 million
- plane crashes 120,000
Air pollution 115 million
Other
- video games 17
- sleeping 352
- mountain climbing 1809
so, lets see here, Genocide comes in.... behind lots of things.
but lets see what we can attribute towards government.
all 4.1 billion deaths due to disease are out.
childbirth problems can't be blamed on government.
malnutrition.... it seems unfair to lay all the blame on governments for that, but lets say half of it can come from government problems, so 30 million.
same with famine, lets blame half of that on government, 50 million
Natural disasters and animal deaths can't really be blamed on government.
Ideology is 100% government fault though, so that's 141 million there.
Now, how about War? that's sorta tough. Sure, the aggressor in the war is responsible, but you can't really blame the government who is defending. also, with civil wars, by definition, it's someone against the government. But hey, for arguments sake, lets say all war deaths count. add 130 million
for murder, lets see. genocide is here, 29 million, death penalties, 178 or so thousand. riots 842k lets round up to 31 million
Accidental death, drug use, and air pollution can't be blamed on government.
so our end total of deaths is.... 382,000,000
thats less than smallpox 400 million, less than the flu, 485 million, less than deaths due to childbirth 435 million, less than all heart diseases 1.2 billion, and less than cancer 533 million.
nearly as many people died falling to their death, crashing into trees, eating things they shouldn't, drowning, burning in fires, or by using a tool incorrectly.
More than a fourth of that number died due to smoking.
about one seventh of that number died by being murdered by their fellow human, not on a governments orders, but because of passions or profit
around one fifth of that number ended up dead through suicide.
now keep in mind here too, all those things killing people, at least most of them, strong central governments are doing everything to reduce those numbers. your tribal village doesn't have a good plan to combat colon cancer. private business isn't leading the charge to lower air pollution, that's government. who runs the gps system that helps planes and boats navigate the world? it was with government funding and direction that vaccines nearly eradicated polio.
The funny thing about humans is, that we generally always move in which ever way benefits us the most. sure, there might be mistakes here and there, we might get mislead, there might be disastrous consequences. but generally, we learn from our mistakes, and we proceed forward. Forward being, larger population and more advanced civilization. If large governments were detrimental to our development as a species, then we would have long ago stopped forming them. the idea that for tens of thousands of generations of humanity, all from different cultures, would somehow be simultaneously working against their own best interest in the exact same way is absurd.
Edited by silveus, 13 November 2014 - 03:42 AM.
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