Morality of Modern Empires Compared to Rome

[Germanicus]

I thought it was the Australian Government who took the children from there families?it must of been if it was still happening in the 60's.

 

Yes Longbow - the Brits started the process, and after federation, the Aust Government was only to happy to carry it on.

[Augur]

Yes, it is tiring to hear todays "moral/cultural norms" repeatedly used so casually to denounce societies that existed in entirely different times and circumstance. Yes, also, most of these denunciations do seem to come from people who are unable to think beyond today's modern norms -- people who continue to be indignant and downright angry that ancient Rome didn't act like modern Denmark. But the most frustrating aspect of all this is that the people voicing all this moral indignation simply do not know their history.

 

First, the high point in the mans'-inhumanity-to-man contest did not occur 2,000 years ago. It is happening now, we are in the midst of it -- 80+ major wars killing roughly 180 million people in one short 100-year period.

 

Second, and more important, even when measured by modern standards a society's cultural norms are NOT, repeat NOT defined by the moral standards and aspirations it espouses -- every villianous thug, from Popes to Hitlers, have had lofty motives and self justifications.

 

What defines every society is not what it believes or what it says it believes, but what it DOES, what it actually DOES. And, folks, what humanity as a whole has done to itself in the last 100 years makes the ancients -- including the Romans -- look like a troop of girl scouts.

 

So get with it Rome-haters. If you are looking for the real murderers, Nazis and ethnic cleaners, look closer to home -- its all there in today's (and everyday's) New York Times.

[DanM]

My point was to say that a common mistake of historians and anthropologists is to try to place other peoples within their context of values and when these people do not easily fit, they too often try to make them fit. This means revisionist history and that, of course, means bad history.

 

To either assume that Romans lived by our moral standards or assume they were just like some more modern form of evil are both equally distortive and equally bad ways to attempt to understand them. To me, it would make a lot more sense to ask ourselves what sort of values conditioned the Romans to accept the cultural norms of their time with respect to sex, violence, civic duty, etc, instead of just labeling these guys and moving on. Thats too easy and, in my opinion, lazy.

 

It might make some people uncomfortable to recognize some of the more destructive and violent elements within all of us. The parts of human nature we are not proud of possessing. These things are largely controlled by the conditioning we received as we were raised in our modern culture, but each one of us would have been capable of things we may not want to admit if we had simply been conditioned differently.

 

So before you condemn these guys too quickly, ask yourself what you might do if you had been taught a different set of values.

[Augur]

People just can't seem to get it into their heads that most powerful nations were brutal until the 20th century...

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"...nations were brutal until the 20th century." Which I assume means that they weren't brutal in the 20th. Yes? If so, I must disagree on this one, DanM.

 

Yes, it is true that the appearance of "brutality" became less acceptable and eventually unacceptable for Western/industrialized nationstates in the 19th and the 20th centuries. But this is generally attributed to the information/communications explosion and the growing importance of public opinion during that period, and seems to have been more a political necessity than a new moral consideration among leadership elites. Despite the higher moral tones, particularly in the West, it was during this same period that the concepts of popular government, citizen armies, national mobilization, etc. acted to create an environment in which war became "total war," which eroded and then eliminated many of the traditional restraints on warfare that had existed in the past.

 

I am not sure how the term "brutality" is defined and doubt it can be quantified, but I must assume that a primary aspect of this term must focus on organized killing, either through Wars or political persecution/murder. To the extent that organized killing does reflect brutality, the 20th century is without a doubt the all-time, hands-down, no-contest winner in the "human brutality" department. (Google has many sites that list, summarize and chart the the tragic details.)

[DanM]

I'm not trying to whitewash the 20th century by any means, but you need to revisit your history books a bit before you convince yourself it is the most brutal or violent century.

 

You think the Isreal-Palestine conflict is brutal now. The crusaders butchered every Jew and Muslim in Jerusalem when they captured it.

 

You think the religous fanatics (either Muslim or Christian) are bad today, try the Spanish Inquisition or the 30 years war.

 

You think our invasion of Iraq is brutal? What about the English invasion of France in the 100 years war.

 

Until this century, rape during the course of war was not commonly accepted as a crime. Ditto for robbery, torture or extortion.

 

The Mongol hordes would depopulate entire regions that resisted them.

 

The Ottoman Turks would regularly take the children of Christian peasants and raise them as soldiers.

 

Look at what the Spaniards did to the native peoples of the Carribean Islands, the Incas, the Mayas and the Aztecs. Look at what the Americans did to the native peoples of north America.

 

Capital punishment may exist, but its not a spectator sport in our time. We don't feed prisoners to wild animals or force them to hack each other apart. And we don't crucify them anymore either.

 

Its not just a matter of numbers. Under such a standard, whatever time period has the most people will almost always win. Its a matter of how these cultures viewed the sanctity of life and its about the creative, sadistic ways they would end a life.

[Augur]

Sure, Dan, things have gotten murderously nasty in the past, and you have mentioned a nice representative group of them. The problems is that you have collected those examples from throughout history. My guess is that the 20th century -- with its 180 million war deaths and political murders -- may be more brutal than all those other centuries combined.

 

Oops, I have just learned that that last statement was wrong from some very strange people who actually keep tract of such arcane killing information. Their estimates are these: For prehistory, that is from 50,000BC to 8,000BC (420 centuries), total human war deaths are estimated at 170 million killed, for an average of about .4 million killed/century. For most of known history, ie 8,000BC - 1,500AD (95 centuries) total war deaths are estimated at 214 million killed, for an average of 3.3 million killed/century. This provides a grand total of 384 million humans killed in 515 centuries, for an average of .75 million killed/century. Thus, the "less brutal" 20th century you refer to had a war death rate per century that is 240 times greated than the average.

 

What does this prove? Absolutely nothing, of course. Sure, in today's Western popular culture all brutality is "ikk, disgusting!," and beating your dog will land you in jail. Fine. But when it come to serious brutality the numbers above do suggest that modern man's enlightened philosophies and belief systems are having little impact in reducing brutality in its most lethal form, organized killing. Indeed, it seems obvious to me, that just the opposite is true.

 

The final question regards the "morality" issue you raised. The question is this: Who is most moral, the society that kills in the belief that brutality is normal and acceptable? Or the society that hates and totally rejects brutality in all its forms, but kills anyway -- on a massive, unprecedented scale?

 

Face it. Whether measured by kill-rates or by moral standards, the 20th Century was clearly NOT one of our specie's shining moments.

[Primus Pilus]

Who is most moral, the society that kills in the belief that brutality is normal, acceptable and perhaps even desirable? Or the society that hates and totally rejects brutality but kills anyway -- on a massive, unpresidented scale?

 

As I'm not really taking part in this debate allow me just to interject my own clarification... This question might suggest that modern society is worse because of an 'enlightened' attitude but it leaves out other various factors. It also assumes that 20th century society was inherently peaceful. Certainly there are elements of peaceful people, but there is and always will be those with an opposite attitude. I think numbers of dead don't quite illustrate the entire story. What may be more telling are those numbers as a percentage of total world population. Its much harder to compare numbers to die 2,000 years ago when the world population was only a fraction of today's. In 1 AD, the world's population was perhaps as much as 150 million people vs. 5 billion in the mid to late 20th century.

 

Using the numbers provided by Augur above...

 

.75 million people killed as an average per century prior to AD 1500 translates to about .5% of the world total in 1 AD (these numbers are flawed because the world population is so low in the early part of this formula that is skews the average throughout). Again using the numbers of 180 million (I'm not verifying the accuracy here) the 20th century translates to roughly 4% of the total. While certainly larger we must take into account the ability for man to kill on a massive scale in modern warfare vs. that ability 2,000 years ago and the problem we could have with the 'average' population.

 

Again, this is not my debate, I'm just throwing out these numbers as a percentage for comparison purposes, but I bet with some minor fluctuations we'd find a pretty consistent average percentage of total population being killed throughout history.

[Augur]

I agree, PP, war-death counts, wheather in absolute or percentage form, are a shaky way to argue the relative "brutality" of any time period, particulary when comparing earlier times with the last two centuries of human development, pro or con. The inventions of nationalism, total war, and the mass mechanization of killing processes make any such comparisons meaningless. My comments above are directed at those who insist on applying our [Western] society's current norms to condem the actions and motives of the ancients (particularly Romans). This may be unavoidable, of course. But what is frustrating is that many of this group have a totally ideolized misperception of what "our norms" are. 20th Century Man is not a monster, but neither is he a saint against whom all others can or should be measured. Who knows what Sulla, Marius, Pompey or Ceasar whould have done if they had had a 5 megaton nuk in his arsenal? More important for us: who knows what we will do with the 20,000 we still have in ours?

[DanM]

Thanks for providing some stats to compare war deaths by century. I just think you are missing one critical element of the analysis. Its not a matter of total numbers of deaths, but a tracking of the percentage of those alive in the century who were killed by war deaths that really matters.

 

If we had 1% of today's population 3,000 years ago, then anything other than a ratio of war deaths/living in that century will be kinda misleading.

 

And it still goes back to the values of the time. People in our century are killed with guns and bombs. A much higher percentage of the people in earlier centuries were killed by disease, knives, clubs and hands. I have never killed anyone, but I imagine a death by a sharp stick, rock or knife would generally be more brutal than being shot by a gun at 60 meters. Maybe I am wrong.

 

Also, when thinking of brutality, don't just think about those who died. In the past, it was common practice to enslave the losing side. At least those that were attractive whether they be men, women, boys or girls or those with some useful skill.

 

And yes, I agree the 20th century is not a shinning example of the best potential within humanity, but that still does contradict with my belief that we are showing incremental improvement when compared to earlier times. The fact that technology is making the job of killing more effecient and more possible to do on a massive scale is not necissarily the same thing as saying we are waging more brutal wars than in the past. That doesn't make it "better", but I believe it does make it less brutal.

 

Finally think about this one last point. Has there ever been a time in history when more people could live free of the fear of violence in their daily lives? While I will admit there are still horrors and death on massive a scale, I still believe we are seeing incremental improvement over time as societal expectations move.

[Augur]

Well posted DanM, but I am afraid our mutual attempts to compare the morals and brutality of different societies is a slippery slope that can only end in battles of semantics. Sure, we all agree that the man who kills 100 men with a rock or a short sword is brutal, but how about the man who kills a million with the flick of a switch or simply with his signature? This is not just a theoretical question. As a young man I was once a B-52 pilot sitting on alert with six nuks targeted to take out several cities in China. They called it MAD

[Skarr]

There are wars going on all over Africa as we speak. The press doesn't report it and for some reason, no one seems to care as long as they don't attack UN convoys etc. An occasional movie (Constant Gardner, Hotel in Rwanda) tries to raise some awareness but like everything else, we have all become desensitized to images of war and death.

 

In our movies, our video games, etc. we depict killing with casualness, using all kinds of technology, real or imagined. It is as if we are all conditioned to accept violence on one level. However, on another level, we are told that the greatest evil is not the number of arms and guns that are available all over the world, from street gangs, to terrorist gangs to tinpot dictators across the globe but the flashing of a breast on public TV or other kinds of nonsense.

 

Our priorities are lopsided and we spend more money still on defence budgets instead of solving energy problems or the population explosion which seems to squeeze resources slowly, across the planet.

 

Our problems today are billion fold and we have too many divisive forces, from countries that are arming against one another, to countries arming to protect their superior status over the others, to countries that seem to survive only by exploiting its people and so on. Where will all this lead ? Who knows ultimately as we seem to heading for one global crisis or another - economic, natural, military, etc. etc.

 

The simple fact is that we are too many and the Earth can support only a few or at least not that many, in comfort. There is no easy solution and perhaps there is no will to find one, collectively. All we can do until then is survive and live day by day.

[Germanicus]

I used to think as you do DanM, that we of the modern age had grown beyond our genetic dispositions and had somehow become more enlightened than those in times passed. But I no longer hold that view, the older I get the more I realise that people lie, cheat, steal, rape and kill for wealth, religeon and politics just as much as they always have.

 

All we can do until then is survive and live day by day.

 

I like this line Skarr. Actually the whole paragraph was well put.

[Augur]

Don

[DanM]

Actually I am not discouraged and I think you guys are missing my point. I do not think we are more evolved than in the past. I do not think we have progressed along some eveloutionary scale towards a better place. I just think our societal conditioning has made many things less acceptable than they were in the past.

 

Slavery is not acceptable in most parts of the world. Capital punishment is not accepted in many places and highly regulated in many other places. There are more direct consequences for rape, murder and the exploitation of children.

 

Does that mean evil is gone? Of course not. But the greater effiiciency of our machines and greater capacity to kill is not the same thing as saying we are a more brutal society. The innovations of Henry Ford allow us to kill people in far greater numbers, but that does not mean Henry Ford is more brutal than Ghengis Khan. See where I am going with this one?

 

Adolph Hitler was a horrible man who was brutal by anyone's standards. Same thing for Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Sadam Hussein and a host of others who have killed on a massive scale within the past 100 years. But the difference is that these men are outside of what is acceptable in our modern society. They are outlyers. By constrast, Ferdinand and Isabella were considered heros is Spain even though many Jews and Arabs were forcibly converted tortured and/or murdered. The european knights of the first crusade where considered men of God and protectors of the church even as they killed every Jew and Muslim they could find in Jerusalem. The Mongols were considered a great power even when they exterminated entire cities in an effort to instill terror and enslaved conquered peoples by the thousands. The conquistadors and even Christopher Columbus are looked at as heroic figures even through they destroyed vibrant native cultures of the western hemisphere and killed millions through war, murder, exploitation and disease. And Julius Ceasar killed and enslaved Gauls by the hundreds of thousands over 8 years so he would have the prestige and the money to sieze power in Rome.

 

The critical difference is that these people are not accepted as heros or great men in our time. In the past, mass killings and exploitation of entire peoples for the profit of a few was considered normal. Today things are not the same. Violence is no longer given such a free reign as an extension of poltics. While it can be done, there are a host of constraining factors that limit it and that create consequences if its worst excesses are allowed to occur.

 

And the fact that we do not view out mass murders with the same generous or respectful attitudes as those of the past is a clear indication that modern society has different values. Simply put, Adolph Hitler does not represent the values of the 20th century, but our perception of Adolph Hitler does give a strong indication of our society's values.

 

I used to think as you do DanM, that we of the modern age had grown beyond our genetic dispositions and had somehow become more enlightened than those in times passed. But I no longer hold that view, the older I get the more I realise that people lie, cheat, steal, rape and kill for wealth, religeon and politics just as much as they always have.

 

Sorry, but I really do not think you understand what I am trying to say at all. Human nature's capacity for both good and evil are constants throughout history and will remain so in the future. I never intended to say we were evolving towards some higher moral perspective.

 

I only meant to say that our views about things like capital punishment, murder, rape, slavery and the wholesale exploitation of entire cultures is different than it was for the Romans of the 1st or 2nd centuries BC. That is why the actions of Julius Ceasar would be viewed very different today if he were leading the armies of some western nation. I am not trying to say that violence or brutality has stopped, but society's acceptance of these things has changed and that has an influence upon the actions of those that might benefit from the use of violence or brutality.

 

If Julius Ceasar were alive today and behaving the same way, then he would be viewed as a genocidal maniac instead of being viewed as one of the great characters of history. But since he was viewed through the looking glass that was the accumulation of cultural values at the time, he is seen differently.

[Augur]

Actually, I do understand what you are trying to say, you say it very well. And yes, I do agree that societal condemnation of "brutality" is heartening, an encouraging sign. Our difference is that I find all that righteous indignation unconvincing, indeed downright gratuitous in the face of so much contemporary violence and havoc. Marching to save the retarded gay whales, fainting at the site of gore, and crying for huricane victems is all well and good, but not if one fails to fight or even to acknowledge mass murder (which is going on as we write). Finally, no, the positive, enlightened views you attribute to modern societies are far from universal. Just ask many of the survivors of Stalin and all those skin heads running around in nazi uniforms. Peace.