WHAT IF

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES AND THE MYTH OF GYGES

 

What if your creed required you not to do it?

 

What if doing it required you to exterminate or enslave all other civilizational opponents?

 

What if, again, your moral code and or religious beliefs prohibited you from doing the Gyges thing, call it liberalism, until another civilization had developed it and then deployed it against you? 

 

There are, for example, Christian Scientists who allow cancers to eat away their face and into their brain causing death rather than seek medical help...