When we think of all the terrible things happening around the world today, it's easy to believe that we're getting more oppressive, more tyrannical, more fanatical, etc. - we certainly did outstrip ourselves in the last century in terms of industrializing murder

But looking back through history, we seem to always have been absolute arseholes to each other, often whole populations lived on the whim of a single individual who could - at least theoretically - have them killed with a word.

From another thread:

Tortured_Genius wrote:

tuco wrote:What's wrong with us, the western civilization?

Ironically, I think humanity as a whole is actually getting better.

The monsters have always been in charge - read any history book. The behaviour of the thugs and warlords in charge hasn't changed in millennia.

It's only in the last 75 years that we've had liberal democracies who are expected to act with restraint, peacefully transfer power and not engage in wars of conquest for the glorification of an individual or consolidation of an empire. If anything the big challenge is not to slip back into political medievalism and how to deal with those that do.

Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

This supposed quote is almost certainly made up, but idea behind it seems sound enough.

I think to try and be as inclusive and broad as possible, Western civilization is...

An ethnically European (plus their descendant primarily ethnic European colonial nations) with a representative government and liberal economy and society, birthed from a medieval feudal society and a hegemonic Christian religion, that arose after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and is either linguistically Greco-Roman, Nordic/Germanic, or Slavic.

Sorry Finland.

Really, it's such a nebulous concept, yet it's standard currency.

I like to believe the world has moved on so much so (culturally, socially, emotionally) that what we’re witnessing are the final vestiges of old power desperately lashing out everywhere, self immolating, to burn it all down rather then to move along with where all the positive changes are heading. That they’re a dying breed fighting a losing battle.

On bad days though I have a hard time believing a species which so arrogantly and carelessly destroys its own life support systems should have a place among the living to begin with. And that our collective angst and stupidity binds us to oppression by violent autocrats untill it comes all crashing down.

Is Humanity Getting Better?

Seven years ago, I probably would have said yes. But now that I know that all fascists have to do to bring back fascism and get away with it is not call themselves fascists, it's a bit harder to be optimistic.

Much of the supposed improvement through western civilisation has been an abstraction and outsourcing of violence and exploitation via financial and corporate mechanisms to other parts of the world where people's lives are seen as less important to our media. Possibly this is caused by, or has created, a lower tolerance for personal violence. But all the while we've also been building a system of almost exponential environmental destruction as we try (and will inevitably fail) to separate our society from nature. If this is allowed to continue to the point of cascading ecosystem collapse and global famines, then we may see if we can learn to resist a return to outright violence.

Interesting topic indeed. At the same time, inconclusive.

Since OP quotes me, post #6 explains what I meant by the quote from OP.

Is humanity getting better? I think so. I mean, define "getting better" but beyond that, and despite the accurate observation posted by minininja above, I think it's getting better simply because it's shifting from let's say ignorant and local view of the world and its problems to a more (mis!)informed, rational and global one.

Why is being informed and rational "better"? As I said, it's a matter of definition, but what else could be better?

"To know the good is to do the good" - (allegedly) Socrates

I was born and raised in streets where many left their front doors open. This was before the age of computers and information. All I know is that the Information Age closed all of those doors. So, there's a shortfall in that theory of yours tuco.

This was a question tackled by Steven Pinker in his book ‘The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has declined. (2012).

I read this and I found the arguments put forth by Pinker regarding the OP’s question have a lot of merit, although I think he overstates the case in some ways. Anyways, a good and thought-provoking read.

Our modern sensibilities are somewhat skewed by recency bias- the horrors of the world wars, the Holocaust and the atomic bombings et cetera figure large and distract us from the facts of more distant time periods where horrors also occurred. Linked to this is what might be called documentation bias. This means that we are more than familiar with such things as the transatlantic slave trade, the violence of the colonial Europeans towards indigenous peoples and all of the other well-documented and readily available history of atrocity and violence in mainstream, popular culture.

For more historically naïve people there may be an idea that because one doesn’t know anything of what happened at a certain place at a certain time, then nothing can have happened and the peoples must have been living lives of peaceful co-existence. Names such as Ayutthaya or Vijayanagara mean nothing to most people in the west. Partly because the destruction of these magnificent cities happened without any western input. Similarly, there is not much awareness in most western people’s minds of what happened at Baghdad in 1258 or Delhi in 1398. The western presence in these two cities in later centuries will be far more prominent in popular consciousness- although it was very far from the worst thing that happened in these two places. Similarly, even within Europe, what happened at Dresden in 1945 will figure much more prominently in people’s consciousness than what happened at Magdeburg in 1631- an event of similar brutality-which shocked Europe at the time.

The past was indeed a different country- and often a very violent one, and there seems to be an emergent sensibility in some places and among some people that what was accepted as normal in previous times is completely unacceptable now.

That being said, I am in agreement with mininija’s assessment that humankind’s assault on nature seems to be escalating, and that if we end up living in a version of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’, we will quickly revert to previous modes of being.

Anyways, here is a reading list that has informed some of my views of this issue.

Henrich, J. (2020). The WEIRDest people in the world: How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. Penguin.

Keely, L.H. (1996). War before civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage. Oxford.

Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature: The decline of violence in history and its causes. Penguin.

Rutger, B. (2020). Humankind: A hopeful history. Bloomsbury.

White, M. (2012). The great big book of horrible things. WW Norton.

Edit: Spelling and amend book list.

jamest wrote:I was born and raised in streets where many left their front doors open. This was before the age of computers and information. All I know is that the Information Age closed all of those doors. So, there's a shortfall in that theory of yours tuco.

I have a computer.

My front door is always unlocked.

don't get me started wrote:This was a question tackled by Steven Pinker in his book ‘The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has declined. (2012).

That's been at the forefront of my thoughts as well as I found it a persuasive argument.

The one that always sticks with me is how modern society has largely stopped using the torture of animals and humans as mass entertainment.

Spearthrower wrote:

don't get me started wrote:This was a question tackled by Steven Pinker in his book ‘The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has declined. (2012).

That's been at the forefront of my thoughts as well as I found it a persuasive argument.

The one that always sticks with me is how modern society has largely stopped using the torture of animals and humans as mass entertainment.

Yeah, the descriptions in Pinker of the various 'sporting' entertainments that used to be a common (dog fighting, bear baiting, cat burning etc) really brought home to me how vile life could be in the past. And that was just the animals. Add on top of that the various public tortures - from the human sacrifices of the Aztecs, to the 'Games' of Rome, to the crucifixions, impalings, burnings, beheadings, breaking on the wheel, drawing and quartering that were normal parts of life for most of history in most places.

The nail a cat to a pole and then have people dare to try to bite its nose was not something I'd ever heard before, and thought it had to be false. Oh no, turns out my imagination is insufficient to capture what humanity can find fun.