Advantage and Wednesday Discussion

I think I have realized what the advantage is that we were talking about yesterday. Even if it is not the advantage that Dostoyevsky was talking about specifically I do believe that it can essentially be seen as one. It is obvious that Dostoyevsky is saying that our advantage is our ability to disregard any sort of warning or harm that we know may accompany something. I think that this might be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective because our ability to say fuck it to dangerous things does kill off a number of humans each year. Especially people around my age since the leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds is driving related accidents. The deaths that occur through our ability to disregard would kill off people that make up for the "weakness" that we bring upon our society through the rules of civilization. I am not too sure what I said makes sense and it does sound a little twisted to see people dying as an advantage. I am not happy with the way it works or all too sure I can even be sure it is an advantage but it seems to be the only sort of connection that I can draw.

Like I mentioned today in class, I believe that civilization is based on the repression of our instincts. We created civilization in order to survive and to do that we had to stop killing. Nonetheless, this restriction only increases the desire to kill and that bloodthirsty grows exponentially. It may not be evident in every individual, but it is definitely present when you look at the entire population. It is extremely ironic that civilization is what ends up making us uncivil in the end. I do not really see how people can disagree with the idea the religion and civilization has made us more violent, I think it is a pretty clear cut idea (Chow if you're reading this, sorry but I'm referring to you). While religion was supposed to make us into peaceful humans, it has ended up dong the complete opposite. It's like one of those ideas that sounds good in your head and as it plays out it is a total mess. Good in theory, awful in practice. Events like the Crusades, the constant attacks on Israel, and even the crucification of Jesus Christ himself show us that religion has made us into anything but peaceful.