The Nature and History of Human War and Violence Throughout Hisotry

A break off topic to avoid a derail and possibly an interesting discussion.

Please refrain from making a mess of the thread. If your going to get hot under the collar or start bashing take it somewhere else.

The discussion was spun off of the brutality and violence of humanity. We have a long and checkered history of many different conflicts through out time.

Some think humanity has become less brutal over time others disagree and believe our brutality is still just as nasty.

What are your examples for either side of the argument?

Who watches the watchmen?

Violence now isn't more or less brutal, the methods sort of are. War has gotten much more emotionally distant with the advent of machines and long range ordnance that we use to kill eachother. A swordsman could spend years perfecting his art and facing another man in combat within mere feet of eachother, that does indeed take more balls than pushing the "launch" button for a Reaper UAV's ordnance, even if the Reaper is more effective than the swordsman.

We can kill in far greater numbers than ever before, with far less effort or emotional investment involved.

I'd say humanity has been enamored with the art of spilling blood and pleasing Khorne since the first caveman decided to brain his jackass neighbor with a heavy stone. If there's one thing we are REALLY good at, it's finding new and creative ways to maim, kill, and/or burn or fellow man.

We have gotten slightly less bloodthirsty in recent times, but people are and always be hot blooded, check it and see.

edited 13th May '11 6:40:00 PM by MarkVonLewis

As societies grow and our division of labour becomes more complex, individuals become increasingly more dependent on each other for survival. This has too many effects to account for, but I think a growing reluctance to harm each other is a big part of it. I'm no sociologist, but this might explain the shift from the open expression and sometimes celebration of violence we had in the past, to our modern society where our violent impulses are only really expressed through fantasy, sports and isolated outbursts.

EDIT: in regards to war, I'm not sure if I'd say we're emotionally disconnected with it. I mean, the fact that we actually feel guilty about it, feel disgust towards killing and torture and even recognize the concept of PTSD implies a much deeper emotional connection to war than what we had several centuries ago.

edited 13th May '11 7:09:24 PM by Gaiseric

Less brutal

> As societies grow and our division of labour becomes more complex, individuals become increasingly more dependent on each other for survival.

agree with this

primitive societies essentially everyone outside family/clan is enemy. people could murder / steal cattle / women with impunity. then people create city-states. then nation. each increasingly larger group that we regard as human like us

look at pressure for US to us precision bombing and avoid civilian casualties. demand for international intervention in humanitarian situation (Libya/Rwanda/Kosovo). both show that we regard killing people who are not related to us is aborrent.

I've heard it argued that we've gotten really, really good at getting soldiers to kill, but not nearly as good at preventing psychological trauma from killing. I've heard that remote drone pilots are particularly likely to break down after killing someone they've only seen on a screen (which, if true, is an interesting counterpoint to what Barkey's saying.)

Also worth noting is that battlefield medicine has gotten way better than it was as recently as the Civil War.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

If you look carefully, you'll notice modern wars are caused mainly by people who have more backwards ways of thought e.g. they're not as socially advanced as some of the more developed countries. Not to say undeveloped countries are savages or some supremacist shit like that, but underdeveloped countries often correlate with medieval leadership, not to mention education opportunities = less urge to kill. I think we're definitely getting our act together. Human nature may remain, but we can curb it and learn to control it, which is what I'm seeing a lot of today.

I mean, did they have hippies in the 18th century?

edited 14th May '11 12:09:29 AM by Astrosimi

I think using a sword would dehumanizing then a gun. A sword was probably more dehumanizing because you need to be close. Killing one person was probably horrifying, but in a crowd? after the second or third? I think the less risk to the killer makes it harder. You get to think about them, turn them into you, while upclose you can smell them, you can fear you can hate them and feel righteous. I dont know. Do snipers suffer more pstd than average or less?

edited 14th May '11 12:21:11 AM by TheDeadMansLife

Please.

That word, 'dehumanising'...I don't think it means what you think it means. Personally, I think that if you're going to kill you should do it up close where possible. Know your kill as best you can; you owe him that much, at least.

Astromasi: yes, they did. I think you'll find that wars are caused by those who want wealth and power, regardless of where they live (for examples see recent US history).

edited 14th May '11 12:28:02 AM by InverurieJones

'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'

We are less brutal now. The more people that have survived wars, or seen photo and film footage of the horrors of war, the more they know that it is not very glorious. Also, leaders are less likel to send waves of humans to die, as new ideals make them mroe than faceless hordes.

the statement above is false

[dont know]Dehumanizationis to make somebody less human by taking away his or her individuality, the creative and interesting aspects of his or her personality, or his or her compassion and sensitivity towards others[/dont care about how to make a qoute]

Word seems to functioning my end. How is it on yours?

Please.

Then how is killing a man face-to-face more dehumanising than killing a running shape 300m away?

'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'

Because later when you think back will you feel more apathy for someone who you fought close up or the person who died far away. I think it would be the one further away as you dont get a chance to hate them. The grunting individual you sliced open can not be romanticise later. I think if you mananged to kill someone with your weapon you get a sense of achievement and you can immediately move to someone else. When you are shooting at someone from a far away they mean less. You get a brief interaction and its done. Only later when the soldier with the gun and the soldier with sword are safe and resting again, when they are thinking of the past, the gunner is thinking about the face-less enemy does he begin to wonder about who they were, while the swordsman is thinking that either he was more skilled or more lucky than those other guys.

Please.

Apathy develops either way.

Snipers tend to get a bit fucked up in a head after a while.

Who watches the watchmen?

I agree with your sentiment, but not for the reasons you gave.

I feel a larger contributing factor is that now your society has protectors that keep the horrors of war from reaching the borders of those of us in first world countries in the first place.

Free to be sheep because they are protected from the wolves by the sheepdogs, so to speak.

Until everyone gets morality chips implanted at gunpoint by some future global totalitarian government, people will always have a beast inside them, pawing and snarling in it's cage. It's been popular for a while now to label it as an entirely evil thing deserving of extinction, but that's because those same labellers have been cocooned enough to forget the reasons why we have it in the first place. Sometimes, you literally have to fight for what you believe, and indeed may have to fight for your very life. That's when you really, really need to unlock the cage. Plus, it can be a source of fun, so in times of peace bloodlust can be channeled into non-lethal, tightly controlled activities like sports. We don't need to kill the beast, we need to control it and keep it away from toddlers and the fine china.

That said, I still mostly see war as a hellish thing wherein the poor are turned into mince because one national leader wanted another leader's icecream. But, when no other path can be taken, I see no reason to hold back. I suspect my idea of sorting out global conflicts with boxing matches will never catch on, either.

Aww, did I hurt your widdle fee-fees?

@The Dead Mans Life: I'm trying to remember the correct term (emotional distance?), but it's easier for a man to kill another person if that individual if further away. Compare an artilleryman firing at a grid square, to an infantryman engaging in hand to hand combat; both result in death of the enemy, but only one of those men will see them.

Taking a life affects people differently. With regards to snipers, apart from preform reconnaissance, a sniper is there to eliminate high value targets and erode the enemies will to fight. Compared to the infantryman who will see his enemy shooting at him and shoot back, a sniper will shoot at a target that doesn't know he's there, and isn't posing a direct threat to him.

Back in the day, they used to pick whoever was good with a rifle, now you look for people who are mentally strong; it's easier to teach a man to shoot than it is to teach him morality.

Not really. It depends on the person, some people will not think about it while others might be mentally scarred for life. As for your example of close range fighting, there was an account of a ww1 soldier who sliced open his enemy with his bayonet and couldn't stop thinking about the eyes of the boy he killed. A similar fictional scene is in "Im Westen Nichts Neues", where the I-person stabs a frenchman who jumped into his shellhole and spends the rest of the night with him and finds out from his documents that he is Gerard Duvall, a printer: "you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade." But like you said, there will also be people who will be proud of themselves they killed the bastard.

At long range it is the same. The soldier might think about the other man, but he also might enthusiastically boast to his mates how nice the shot was (or both).

And dehumanizing means making someone less of a human. If you take empathy as a human characteristic (if animals can feel empathy is another discussion but anyway) the combat that makes someone lose empathy is dehumanising. In the same line of thought, the propaganda that paints the enemy as beastlike and murderous rapists is also dehumanising, it makes the enemy less human in the eyes of the own soldiers.

edited 14th May '11 12:53:51 PM by honorius

If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied -Rudyard Kipling

> > primitive societies essentially everyone outside family/clan is enemy. people could murder / steal cattle / women with impunity. then people create city-states. then nation. each increasingly larger group that we regard as human like us

> I agree with your sentiment, but not for the reasons you gave. I feel a larger contributing factor is that now your society has protectors that keep the horrors of war from reaching the borders of those of us in first world countries in the first place. Free to be sheep because they are protected from the wolves by the sheepdogs, so to speak.

Society able to create Protector because they have feeling they become part of a larger group. In primitive group creating protector is nearly impossible, because they feel the protector only protect their family and just extract tribute without protection from the rest. In tribal societies (for ex: Afghanistan) tribal feeling is stronger each tribe have its own protector, but no national army could function because nobody trusted them, everybody feel national army belong to another tribe and they feel oppressed. In Nation States, they could have national army, because everybody believe its their protector, not invader from another tribe. People could only become sheep if they trust the sheepdog.

Yes. Bohemians in Paris and Wanderwogel in Germany and the US. Also, people like Thoreau in the US.

There is a similar issue with multinational societies, e.g. the United States and the Soviet Union's militaries. Depending on the era, they were either highly unified and not characterized by ethnic/racial/religious biases (e.g. the Soviet Army in WW 2), or the current United States military - or they were shaken with demoralizing effects due to ethnic conflict (e.g. the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the intervention of the Soviet Army in Armenia/Azerbaijan's border war pre-dissolution, or the United States military during the Vietnam War & post-desegregation)

edited 14th May '11 9:24:57 PM by fourtwenty

Table Flipppin Mad (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Well, there sure are a lot more violent ways to die now, like operating heavy machinery while under the influence of alcohol, or having your thyroid inflate till you suffocate because a wild peanut suddenly appeared.

This would make a great Mel Brooks movie.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Well I do want to note that percentage of population dying in wars has dropped a lot. Even the World Wars weren't as bad (in terms of percentage) as a single cave man raid.

I mean, even with nuclear weapons, the expected total kill is several hundred million people across USA and Russia (assuming only those two launch), which in terms of percentage comes out to around the average for a tribal war!

Your joking right? The sheer level of global devastation from WWII jacked up nearly everyone. WWI wiped out a couple generations in the trenches and fields of France. You don't get much more brutal.

Who watches the watchmen?

Relative Casualties = number of people die in violence / Number of total population

in primitive societies its not uncommon to have half of men meet their death by violence. million died in one day during WW is terrible, but relatively its small percentage of population. And war not happen that often in modern society, primitive societies raid each other every summer.