Yeah I see your point. But really, if I take your POV then Culture is not a legitimate VC either.
But really, VC in Civ are just there to represent "great human Achievements", that's it.
It makes sense, too, seeing as you engage in a faux-historical scenario.
Your objective in the end is not really to win, because after you really get into the game you will win every single one of your games, even on Deity. Most of the time the AI is completely incapable of winning before T300, which means what makes or breaks my Civ games is not whether I win (or which VC), but rather how I win, how the scenario unfolds, how I play my cards.
I guess we really derailed this thread, sorry for that, but I enjoyed this little discussion thoroughly.
I agree with your notion, too, not just in terms of Civ. I think Scientism as we can see it today, a new religion where some notion of "progress" is seen as the ultimate thing to strive for, a solution for everything, is really harmful to society. I think we have to take a step back and think about how much life for the average human has changed in the last decade alone. We don't know yet how that'll affect us, physically and psychologically. I for my part am pretty scared to see how a generation turns out that has been creating copious identities online starting in their preteens, a generation that has abstracted human contact to smileys and letters on a screen. A generation that every day is confronted with the achievements of someone else, forced to compare & self-evaluate itself because they are presented with only the best moments of their friends and loved ones lifes through social media. Studies have been popping up left and right linking overt use of social media to either depression or narcissism, but no one seems to care.
That's it for my part, don't want to get infracted for posting offtopic