Are we living in the least violent times in history?

Fraggle Rocker:

Your reading comprehension is poor: you still insist on equating 'violence' only with 'violent death', and you conveniently ignored my assertion that violence has been diversified in its manifestations.

Life expectancy includes infant mortality, which indeed has decreased, not the least through basic sanitation over the last couple of centuries. Fewer 'zeros' averaging into the pile bestows the illusion of greater lifespan for all.

This is plain false, and telegraphs an almost profound ignorance of modern science. What is your diet like?

 

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Well i was under the impression that they were UN sanctions. And they were trade sanctions, arent they the same as those in so many other countries especially Cuba.

Could Iran trade with them or some other country?

But i dont understand why if things were so bad Saddam didnt help to make things better?

Also, did you want Saddam to be successful in invading Kuwait?

But really i never even voted so i dont see why you are going off on me what do you think i am part of the U.N?

 

Well i guess then we should do something about this and fast. OR we can all sit here and bang the war drums.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm

Every year 15 million children die of hunger

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jul/26/internationalaidanddevelopment.famine

Every year, every year. No one talks about them, well here i sit with $6 in my pocket and your much well off than me but i cant blame you. Someone has to help though because right now i know that i cant do a thing about it. I know that if i could, if i had the means then i would make sure that not one kid ever has to suffer but thats just not going to happen because i'm flat broke. Well when i was a teenger i sponsored a kid in africa, sent $20 a month but then i fell on hard times and i couldnt even feed a goldfish. So when i stopped sending the money the letters from him stopped i guess he thought i died but i know that if i could do anything, i would.

 

Again, murder rates are not the subject of this thread. They would be spurious anyway, especially trying to determine them from centuries ago. Violence must exist in the mind before it is manifested, and an honest survey of the landscape will reveal that violence is as firmly planted in the minds of human beings as it ever has been.

Source, please? I don't understand in any event how life expectancy in one country two millennia ago lends substantive weight to the proposition that human beings are less violent now.

No one was claiming that human violence was the prime cause of infant mortality before the 19th century, so this is another red herring.

Your statement was and is an exhibition of gross scientific ignorance, and waving a certificate does not change that; indeed, it only further detracts from whatever little significance still attaches to 'college' degrees.

What do you consider to be a reasonable calorie intake?

 

I bet %-wise way more died 200 years ago. That is one in every 4000. Hell, at the Irish potato famine something like 1/3 of the Irish died or emigrated...

 

No fuckin way we are living in the least violent times, everything is just camoflaged. Yes we don't have anymore public beheadings and we use lethal injections now, which doesn't make it any different. It all depends on the argument of method vs purpose. Just because we now comfortably sit in our bad ass million dollar jet fighter while dropping 2 ton nuclear bomb to wipeout...forgive me for using that word...to neutralize targets, it doesn't really make any difference. In fact its probably more inhumane because what used to take a centurium of Roman soldiers to do now takes a press on button while sipping pina colada. However we have rules and all types of rights now, a far different society from say 11th century; but for the times we are in( civilized times) we probably still are just as violent- i.e comparing to less civil times.

 

Same brain, same violence.

 

A lot of modern violence is hidden and chronic. Take the use of some pharmaceuticals. Take advertising. Take fast food. Take the greater stress modern life inflicts on the body.

Please. Take them.

 

A lot of modern killing is for things not required for survival. Luxury killing, like Third world starvation in the face of rising obesity in the first world, bombing countries for oil for SUVs, destroying small underdeveloped regions for exploitation for stuff like coffee (and thus killing off the natives that lived off the land).

 

This went on before, though perhaps you are on to something. I'd need to hear more. It seems to me nobles in Feudal society came up with a number of ludicrous schemes and rules that ensured poverty and death, especially of 'other nobles ''subjects'''.

Alexander the Great certainly had enough to eat before he set out on his 'tour' and so did Ghengis. The Romans who decided to enter North Africa and England certainly had enough to eat. And so on.

But I am not ruling out that you are on to something. I just needed to make these counter examples to get a clarification.

 

Correct, but Alexander was ultimately, a failed soldier. He achieved nothing. The Mongols at least moved from horsemen to empires and settled Asia into a developed country. The difference between the Mongols (who killed for power, not luxury) is that when they got the power they used it unbiasedly, no people who were under them were impoverished. Currently though, the powerful nations exist as parasites on the rest of the world, even to the extent of waste and overdose of resources, when clearly they are damaging without replacing or benefiting anyone other than themselves.

The only way to counter them is to become them. One could say this model was started by the Romans, it failed for them so there is no reason it should work for anyone else.

 

Uh - the Mongols plundered, loaded themselves up with luxuries, sent wagontrains home with piles of stuff, platoons of slaves, herds of animals, harems of concubines.

They stuffed themselves with the surplus production of the rich lands they sacked, and set themselves up as rulers of the golden-egg geese they had overwhelmed, whatever was difficult to transport.

That Genghis Khan was a wiser and more farsighted ruler than many, and did not condemn to abuse and misery those he did not kill, but instead treated them as would best increase their value to him, aligns him with other thoughtful imperialists - such as Machiavelli, who warned against striking without killing. That such men are few, and the successful among them the lucky fewer, does not change the fundamental nature of their actions.

The Mongols did not use their power "unbiasedly" - the bias in favor of Mongols was very marked, and might be said to be the point of the whole enterprise.

 

No, actually you're on notice for resorting to cowardly blithering rather than evidence-supported, intelligent responses. Saying 'Google it' does not qualify as a source citation, and is especially ironic coming from a man who makes it a hallmark to continually berate others for not being 'scientific' enough.

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Hmm from what I have read of Mongol history, Mongolia did not benefit as much from it as Arabia and other parts of Asia did (not to undermine the savagery of 30 million people killed in 200 years, though that was du jour at the time). Regardless, they did not kill for luxury.

 

I am not enough of a historian to challenge your takes on the other empires, but it seems now we are talking about something as old as Rome. I would also guess that slavery in many places kept at least a significant portion of the slaves in poverty. I am still unconvinced it is new, though other than that I agree with your position. I think the problem is that it is not so out in the open for the citizens of the ruling nations. Though even here, I am not sure how much the lower middle classes in Rome really understood how they were parasites on barbarian people elsewhere, except of course for the slaves.

 

Yes, obliviousness is one of the defining characteristics of the modern society.

http://www.smallnoises.com/?p=16

 

From the perspective of the Greeks, you are quite wrong. He brought Hellenistic culture to the old Persian empire. What survived for many centuries in most parts of it, was impressive mix of both east and west. The Selukids, in particular, had the dice fallen differently in a few key battles and leadership, would have been a new empire easily rivalling and surpassing Rome and Darius-Persia, combined. From the steps of India to the Alps, to Carthage.