See this^
This is why I said you had a conniption fit. You are having another one. This is NOT "being the definition of civil."
Really? All I've done is summarise the points I've made and, as best I can tell, your response. What's uncivil about that? And please don't use ALL CAPS, I can read lowercase just fine.
Rather than be accepting that the human condition is fucking ugly, and includes such things in its background, you would rather deny it. I can clearly see that in your dialog.
I think you're reading far too much into very little, in an effort not to be wrong despite having taken a position you realise, consciously or unconsciously, is untenable. I was going to go on a long rant about how I've rubbed shoulders with the dark side of humanity nearly all my life, but that's not really actually relevant.
Instead of making an appeal to emotion to try and discredit my argument, why don't you just give a straight answer?
The society of the mound dwellers bends over backward to accomodate individual taste. The one problem most certainly is their paranoid fear of outsiders destroying them. Do you want to know why?
There is research that only 20% of a population needs to hold a view, for that view to become the new dominant one. The mound dwellers allowing outsiders to come and go, would change their culture away from all the decadent horrors depicted, at least in time.
The result would be a very progressive culture, already sustaining a functioning public welfare system with fantastic levels of social tolerance.
Neat statistics, but the isolationism predates the advent even of immortality by a good distance, so that's a completely irrelevant point. Besides, I don't recall that the discussion was ever about what the k'n-yan could be - your claim was that the society as-is would be "really not that bad".
So since you're conceding the "decadent horrors", would you agree that the k'n-yan are, in fact, regardless of how they could change if it weren't for the fact that they apparently democratically chose not to, absolutely abhorrent?
You... Didn’t answer him, as far as I can tell. At this point, from what I can see, there’s some kind of disconnect between what you’re both saying.
You're quite correct. Every time I present something to which he has no legitimate counterpoint, he shifts the discussion; and if I restate the issue, he accuses me of begging the questions he's posing that have nothing to do with what I originally asked.