USH'S MATRIX GAME 2006 FOURTH ASSIGNMENT (PHILOSOPHY)- 'The Door'

"Indeed so. Spreading does not necessarily advance a society. But it does increase its chances of survival, and that is the primary reason in history as to why it is done."

"Of course it does. It has been that way since cavemen. To survie you eed to spread. Isn't taht what the machines did?"

"But at some point, survival is ensured, and there is matter of development."

"Yes indeed.

"So then, we have moved society's desire to spread into the first of our two purposes, not the second. This is part of the purpose to survive, not to develop."

"Yeah I guess it would go there because you can't really develop from spreading."

"It may possibly help. In certain areas of development you may consider a larger pool of people would ecnourage it. But it is still not the primary reason for doing so.

"But, perhaps I have too specific as well. Might not all development be also actually part of a desire to survive?"

"Of course it could. I mean development seems more like adaptation to me which is all about survival."

"Well, to survive you usually have to compete in some way....those more developed win the competition, and there is competition between societies as well."

"Ah, really? But consider what your colleague Melkor said earlier about the nature of advancment."

"That survival is a sure thing or about other things like religion or moraility?"

"The second. About the wider definition of 'advancement'."

"Sometimes it seems like advancement is completely seperate from survival"

"Isn't that pointless then?"

"I would say no because advancement gives us something other than just survival. It gives us another purpose."

"How can you measure advancement?" Azrael asks, "It's easy to measure survival - you're either alive or you're not. There are examples of societies that have been so concentrated on the goal of advancement that, when it came to survival, they failed."

"Well, advancement of the society is based on the advancement of the individuals, I believe."

Originally posted by Trickster
"How can you measure advancement?" Azrael asks, "It's easy to measure survival - you're either alive or you're not. There are examples of societies that have been so concentrated on the goal of advancement that, when it came to survival, they failed."

"Then they did things badly," says Lo Qi. "But I do not think you an deny that you can compare different societies and state which ones are more advanced. Sometimes this is difficult, but sometimes it is very easy indeed."

Originally posted by Lord Melkor
"Well, advancement of the society is based on the advancement of the individuals, I believe."

"Then how do you measure the advancement of individuals? That is no answer."

Originally posted by Ushgarak
"Then they did things badly," says Lo Qi. "But I do not think you an deny that you can compare different societies and state which ones are more advanced. Sometimes this is difficult, but sometimes it is very easy indeed."

"With some forms of advancement it is undoubtedly the case that comparison is easy - technological advancement, for instance. But moral advancement, as Melkor mentioned earlier, is much harder to compare. It would require an objective point of reference, and I do not believe even you, Lo Qi, would claim to know of such a thing."

"Despite that, I would be willing to say that many of you would find advance in freedom over slavery, universal sufferage over a man-only vote, and societies that seek to construct rather than destroy."

"Yep that is advancement in my books. I say myself that advancement is pretty needed for survival. If we had no purpose then existence would seem bleak,"