Posted by: chupacabra
It depends on what metric you are using. The environmental damage is no doubt a failure, but the level of education and the safety of the average person a massive success. Hunter/gatherers lived to be about 35 on average and their lives could be brutal in a lot of ways. Slavery, monogyny, even cannibalism were common. I don't think it is a dichotomy. The next level of intelligence is surely a version of sustainability where we still live in houses and use electricity.
I am sure it is easy to say, just not so easy to prove. If a culture has a worldview, what distinguishes the 2? I would say that worldview is more tied to religion that just culture as a whole, but it is easy to confuse those 2 as well.
That’s a short statement with a lot to digest and a lot to say. I agree that it is not a dichotomy and believe it’s incredibly important to recognize that all of what you said sits on a table of grey where these things are interconnected.
To start, we cannot isolate Western success from the fact that it involves the oppression of people and environmental destruction. When you say that "... the level of education and the safety of the average person is a massive success" I have to ask for who exactly? The average person in Western societies or all societies? There’s no doubt that improvements in education and technology have made improvements in the quality of some people lives, but they also come with costs. I also wonder why you think it is a massive success; what has driven that success beyond the obvious answer of improvements in tech? Western society didn't advance because Europeans were so much smarter than everybody else. History shows that other societies were more advanced in some areas before Europeans were. Western history tells our story in a light that is favourable to us, it doesn't necessarily tell all stories.
Your point about safety (assuming you're thinking life expectancy) is good, but I don’t think it’s as clear an answer as you present it to be. In that argument it’s important to recognize the role that infant mortality plays, as it significantly skews life expectancy numbers. So while life expectancy was half of what it is now a few centuries ago, that doesn’t mean everyone was dropping dead at 35 either. To further explore mortality rates there would be a huge amount of data to pour through that is not really relevant to the broader discussion here, but I do agree that many aspects of the health argument are better now. I also think that those improvements have been offset by human stupidity in living lifestyles that are detrimental to our wellbeing and in our greater ability to kill each other.
TLDR - I don't think we can call our level of education a massive success when we continue to destroy the only place we know of that can sustain life. The Western worldview of consuming the planet in the name of profit is not something I would call smart. Add to that the fact that the biggest causes of mortality are lifestyle related and I don’t think the health argument is not so strong anymore.
RE worldview, it might be better to backtrack a bit to gain a better appreciation for what worldview is. Ken Funk wrote an interesting piece on world view. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology, magna cum laud, from Taylor University, and the Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University. He is an Associate Professor in Oregon State’s School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, where he teaches courses in human factors engineering, engineering ethics, and philosophy of technology.
“In summary, your worldview is the set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of Reality that ground and influence all your perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing. Your worldview consists of your epistemology, your metaphysics, your cosmology, your teleology, your theology, your anthropology, and your axiology. Each of these subsets of your worldview (each of these views) is highly interrelated with and affects virtually all of the others.”
If you're interested on reading the whole thing here's the link: https://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~funkk/Personal/worldview.html
That’s a lot to take in so I would simply say that a worldview is the way an individual or society views the world and their interaction with it. So yes, worldview is fairly easy to prove. As I said before it's highly related to cultre, but is not just cultre. Religion also plays a part, but it is not just religion. It is the culmination of beliefs and practices. The biggest distinctions between an Indigenous worldview and the Western worldview are the connection to nature and the interconnectedness between all life.
Lastly, I went back to something you said that kind of got us on this path
Posted by: chupacabra
I think it makes sense for a culture that is still rooted in a hunter/gatherer lifestyle to be more invested in keeping nature as it is. With animal husbandry and agriculture people learn that they can manipulate nature to their benefit.
I still find the comment against keeping nature as it is surprising. I think that is ultimately modern humanity's greatest downfall, that we somehow think that nature is there to be used and abused at our whim. Humans are dumb.