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Before the modern age, it seems the good majority of people were capable of killing others even torturing them without feeling a sense of remorse or guilt. Killing thousands and torturing people just for fun was something very few seemed to have an issue with, why was this? Up until the modern age did people just completely lack a conscious of any kind? You look back in history and there doesn't seem to be any king/emperor or ruler that existed that not only had absolutely no issue killing tens of thousands of people but torturing their own people or watching them suffer, even just for fun.
Before the modern age did ANY ruler anywhere ever feel bad for anything that today we would view as not only wrong but abhorrent?
What do you call what's going on in the world today? The Middle East and Africa are awash in blood. Ukraine, Mexico and a lot of Central America are pretty bad, too.
WWI and II happened in the Modern Age. The Gulag and Cultural Revolution did, too.
People are just as cruel or as kind as they've ever been. But the means to express kindness have fallen way behind those used to express cruelty.
I thought a little about this while listening to a story about how lead was so commonly used for centuries. It was used as an artificial sweetener of all things. William Clark thought mercury was a magical elixir. People were just nuts. The wealthier and more powerful they became they just got nuttier and more arrogant.
Despite the horrors of WW2, the modern world is more peaceful than 1,000 years ago - where the likelihood of seeing death by actions of another human was something like 6 in 10 (I think I read that, it was a couple months ago). The last 50 years, after WW2, are probably the most peaceful in history. The countries in Europe were in almost a constant state of warfare for hundreds of years and, as a percentage of the population, wars were just as deadly.
Such is the growth of civilization where you moved from hunter/gatherer societies to fiefdoms with serfs and masters to more complex modern societies. The world worked primarily on human muscle power - shackled and enslaved. The value given to life was centered around what manpower can they contribute. If none, then they were a liability and disposed of. Rulers didn't even see them as human, but as tools. Life was cheap and hard, people died by desease before reaching old age anyways. Premature death was a common element of life. Combine this with superstition and religion - warfare was as much a ritual as anything else.
But with modern times and the advance of civilized society bring technology, the industrial revolution, specialization, integration, globalization, trade, science, etc. Man was no longer simply a farming or mining implement. Time was given to contemplate the arts, philosophy, rights of man, and social inequality. This is simply evolution. Of course the downside is that technology also brings us more deadly weapons.
I thought a little about this while listening to a story about how lead was so commonly used for centuries. It was used as an artificial sweetener of all things. William Clark thought mercury was a magical elixir. People were just nuts. The wealthier and more powerful they became they just got nuttier and more arrogant.
That was on NPR yesterday. Good story too.
But it appears the OP confounded two different topics as rulers are never the majority of the population and he indicates "the majority of people were capable of killing others..." and later included a question about rulers. Then there is the questionable "killing just for fun" mentioned twice among both the populace and the rulers. etc.etc.
As usual it depends on what era and what social orders you are looking at. I could provide numerous examples of where violence in an earlier age was considered abhorrent and of course we are all aware, as mentioned, of extraordinary violence in living memory.
Before the modern age, it seems the good majority of people were capable of killing others even torturing them without feeling a sense of remorse or guilt. Killing thousands and torturing people just for fun was something very few seemed to have an issue with, why was this? Up until the modern age did people just completely lack a conscious of any kind? You look back in history and there doesn't seem to be any king/emperor or ruler that existed that not only had absolutely no issue killing tens of thousands of people but torturing their own people or watching them suffer, even just for fun.
Before the modern age did ANY ruler anywhere ever feel bad for anything that today we would view as not only wrong but abhorrent?
You don't get out often do you?
Define modern era! Did it start before or after Hitler and Lenin. Does it include Pol Pot, Nicolae Ceausescu, Idi Amin, Yahya Jammeh, Kim Jong-il or his fat little mentally retarded son Kim Jong-un?
Need to get out and see the world from someplace other than your recliner while watching MSNBC. And the list I gave is SMALL, there are thousands of small despot rulers within countries that are never even talked about on any news cast. These animals don't kill thousands cause they only have hundreds to work with, but they do a great job of killing in a high ratio to the population they control.
Mao Zedong probably holds the record (somewhere between 50-70 million estimated) of killings and torture, but many will say Pol Pot (estimated 2 million killed and tortured) was the worse since he actually killed off approximately 25% of the population of his country. And no one will ever know, the actual number for any of the great killers of the 20th century.
Not just Hitler or the list of famous dudes you know from the last century.
Pretty much every country that colonialized the rest of the world was party to huge numbers of atrocities, torture, mass murder, etc. Well into and past the 1940s.
Humans have an inherent ability to be heartless and lack empathy & compassion when they convince themselves that they are doing I either for religion or a political ideology.
But it appears the OP confounded two different topics as rulers are never the majority of the population and he indicates "the majority of people were capable of killing others..." and later included a question about rulers. Then there is the questionable "killing just for fun" mentioned twice among both the populace and the rulers. etc.etc.
As usual it depends on what era and what social orders you are looking at. I could provide numerous examples of where violence in an earlier age was considered abhorrent and of course we are all aware, as mentioned, of extraordinary violence in living memory.
Take for example the Romans. From the beginning of the Roman Kingdom to the end of the Roman Empire there were MANY emperors/rulers, yet every single one has stories of brutality and killing others with no pity or remorse. I find it shocking how not one seemed to even stop to think perhaps killing and torturing others was wrong. Yes lots of bad people have been responsible in more modern times, even today but now, at least in the west it is considered a bad thing to kill/torture people just for fun or for personal gain, why did it take so long to reach this point?
Are humans default setting to brutalize and hurt others it is simply a matter of living in and being raised in a place where such things is considered wrong that more people don't do it?
Humans have an inherent ability to be heartless and lack empathy & compassion when they convince themselves that they are doing I either for religion or a political ideology.
same old song. There's a whole lot of people that do heartfelt things IN the name of religion. It about summed up welfare before people were forced by law to be charitable
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