OH MY GOD!!! YOU FAIL AT USING APOSTROPHES.

*seethes with anger and outrage*

*hands you some pink tinted glasses, a kitten and some chocolate cake*

"silent majority"? If I'm thinking of the same thread you are, I think you have been anything but silent Phantom. And I also think that you're getting way more bent out of shape than it's worth. It certainly isn't going to improve anything.

Mindsets and cultures vary as you circle the globe, and there's no way to say that any given mindset/culture is "right" or "better." We try to do this a lot, and on a lot of different topics. Sure we have technology everywhere, but is our culture any better than the culture of the ancient egyptians, or the celts? By our way of thinking, yes, but there's no way to objectively say that. Priorities also vary by what culture you have been steeped in as you have lived your life.

Just for the sake of it (and I'm not trying to start anything, so please don't take me too seriously), imagine a civilization of robots (in the modern sense of the term). Such a civilization would revolve entirely around rules and protocol, and they would be strictly adhered to. Then you can compare that against a culture of humans (for lack of a better example) who value their own freedom above all else. Such a mindset would almost certainly lead to near chaos. People would die and be maimed, and things unthinkable to our mind would be done with some measure of routineness. To our mindset, this is a drastically inferior culture to our own, and the robotic civilization would probably be regarded as superior to our own, as central organization would be possible to ensure equity for all citizens. But again, there's no way to objectively quantify one as "better" than the other. One is better for the mass, and the other is better for the individuals.

Something else that comes to mind is the degree to which human life is held as sacred (usually), when compared with not-too-long-ago. In the Battle of Gettysburg: "Between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans were casualties in the three-day battle." [Wiki] In modern warfare, having that many soldiers die in a single battle would be entirely unthinkable, and the populus of the nations involved would be issuing a hue and cry for the soldiers to be returned home (and if it happened to the USA, a bunch of us would be fleeing to Canada). But the mindset was different then. Yes, the losses were seen as horrific. But the war continued. Men continued volunteering to fight in the cause. In the culture of the time, it was seen as more important to fight for your way of life or principles. I say all this to point out again that mindsets vary and shift, and I don't think any of us (majority or minority or individual) can say that one is objectively "best," because we, as humans, cannot think objectively.

Anyways, that's how I see it.