I guess it depends on if you view it as "More civilized" in the first place.

And I'm yet to study a great civilization that hasn't become lost in its own greed and self-centered attitude that hasn't ended, except the United States. All great civilizations fall, it is just a matter of time.

I vote for independent.

There are two distinctions:

1. The rights of society.
2. The rights of the individual.

The last fifty years our nation seems to have almost abandoned the rights of society and moved to excess in an individuals rights. I'm not suggesting a reactionary state but a more balanced approach between the good of society vs the individuals rights.

Actually it all started with the Supreme Court during the late fifties into the seventies. One of the justices actually said if he wishes to bend the constitution to his liking he will do so.

There are two distinctions:

1. The rights of society.
2. The rights of the individual.

The last fifty years our nation seems to have almost abandoned the rights of society and moved to excess in an individuals rights. I'm not suggesting a reactionary state but a more balanced approach between the good of society vs the individuals rights.

Actually it all started with the Supreme Court during the late fifties into the seventies. One of the justices actually said if he wishes to bend the constitution to his liking he will do so.

There are two distinctions:

1. The rights of society.
2. The rights of the individual.

The last fifty years our nation seems to have almost abandoned the rights of society and moved to excess in an individuals rights. I'm not suggesting a reactionary state but a more balanced approach between the good of society vs the individuals rights.

Actually it all started with the Supreme Court during the late fifties into the seventies. One of the justices actually said if he wishes to bend the constitution to his liking he will do so.

As we are getting more & more civilised we are becoming more & more self centered and losing sense of humanity. Are we heading towards good?

But starting from our birth we are dependent on others.

I vote for independent.

I don't get this "independent" thing, either.

What's the big advantage? I can't see that, either.

I can see much more of an advantage of living in a society than being loners, each for his or her own, and slaughering each other for our meat, or raping the daughters of others.

Indepenence... in this sense... of being independent from society, of being independent (except for Sundays, when you show up for services, go into religious ecstasy and eat the yummy cupcakes of the Lady's Rotating Baking Committee, while you drink tea and chat with the Treasurer of the Lawn Maintenance sub-routine)... what does it MEAN?

I think people make way too big of a deal of a person that wants to be independent. Its not a bad thing. Being too dependent on someone can make you needy. We were given brains to have individual thoughts for a reason. Me; I admire a person that is independent as that means the person is open for growth. So, its all in how you perceive independence.

Makes a little more sense, but I could go grow faster if I did it with a loved with whom we were dependent on each other for many things, mainly emotional/spiritual/love things.

I also did a lot of growth with like-minded people when I belonged to a gorup called "humanists of Toronto."

But all that growth would not have been possible if I did not take the pills, which society developed for people like me, with my illness. without those pills I'd be a vagrant, sleeping on the streets and eating out of trashcans.

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For me more dependence is good, but for you, what is the thing that would restrict your freedom to expereince joy and goodness? I think I am not a bad thinker, so when you say you can think independently, that's actually not too convincing, to a lot of degree. You don't need to be dependent or independent to have a brain and use it. You need a brain for that. You got one; who is stopping you from using it, when you are in a "dependent" situation?

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"I guess it depends on how you see "independence"."

I don't like that. Because then it becomes a discussion of what makes independence. I wish you could give me an example of how your life is better with more independence, than with less. That is, how your or someone else's life could be made worse with more dependence in the normal course of life. I don't mean people in wheelchairs or whose limbs are cut off or who are mentally low-functioning, or blind, etc. I mean normal people who can function well in society, have normal intelligence and abilities. How do they benefit from less dependence? How do they suffer from more dependence?

We, each of us, already are incredibly dependent on each other and on society. You wear clothes that others make. Would you prefer to cut this line of dependency, and make your clothes from scratch, from here on, that is, pick cotton, or sheer lambs, etc., and go through all the porcesses?

Or make food? You'd raise cattle, and pigs and chicken, and grow corn and wheat for them and your family and for yourself, and risk any year a bad crop for you all to simply die from starvation, when a heavy rain lays down the standing wheat a week before harvest? Or have your beef get hoof and mouth disease?

Or would you like to give up your dependence on medicare? You would still stay human, with the fallibilities of humans, that is, ability and chance to break bones, get infections, get mad or depressed? Would you rather go around with a broken leg, independent from medicare?

Or would you go independent from police? Have your own guns and your own rules? If someone wants to have sex with your daughter, then shoot him? Well, your sons will be shot in the neighbourhood, too.

Or do you prefer independence in warfare and national defence? Each for his own, with his own gun? You could well defend against the Albanian air force, or against the Hungarian navy, but come even Argentina, let alone Germany or China or Viet Nam, with an organized army, and the little homesteads would all go poof-poof, and the people there be killed.

I really don't know how you mean to be "more independent." Not get sick, and not depend on doctors? by not getting sick??? Or be shut off from the world and not need papers, tv, or computers with internet? I don't know how to build a tv or a computer independently. Do you?

This independency-thing is really rubbing my better judgement the wrong way, and I am baffled at how others can't see that more independence and less interdependence would only hurt everyone. Society's strength is given to it by common goals, which gives it reasons to stick together, division of labour, which give it efficiency, and a system of doling out products in a justifiable but not equitable way, which makes people stay motivated to be a part of society.

All these three elements need dependence and interdependence. What is the problem that people see in the workings of a society, who advocate independence?

That is what I'd like to know.

Sure, sure, nobody wants to depend on police or fire crews or ambulance. But we do, we all do, even if we don't get involved in direct need for them. The bakery could be on fire, and the fire is put out for YOU as much as for the baker, coz you would not be able to buy bread, or at least only for a much higher price. You never called the police? I haven't, either, but I walk on streets sometimes where desparate people come my way, and I know they don't rob me or beat me only because they are afraid of the law, of which police is a part of.

So what the ize is the thing with independence?

"An example of independence to me is doing things for myself; like making my own money; fixing..."