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Is our world becoming more cruel?

les24preludes

les24preludes

pfm Member
Compared to the atrocities of past ages the world is undeniably a less cruel place. But to me it seems to be getting worse since the happier days of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s when there was a lot more hope in the air and the Iron Curtain fell. It looked like nations were getting on quite well with each other. Not so anymore. So why?

- could climate change be a factor? There is an undercurrent of hopelessness as it becomes clear that targets to achieve a drop in emissions are totally failing and the world will heat up as a result, which isn't reversible. Do people not care any more?

- could drones be a factor? So easy now to destroy residential areas of any country, knock out power stations and reduce cities to rubble.

- is there a de-personalisation happening with shoot-em-up video games, action films, AI, robots and technology? Does this make people more callous?

There is so much destruction going on, but some of it seems gratuitously cruel - destroying hospitals and attacking aid convoys in Gaza, targeting civilians in Ukraine and so on. Can this be explained in any way? What do you think?
 
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I am the youngest of five siblings, the eldest being born 16 years before me, and I have heard a lot about how things used to be handled inside families at that time. I find that as a whole, life was more cruel in the 60s and 70s, however glorified these decades might be today.

And only recently did I learn about those Glasgow slums which were destroyed as late as the 70s, the thought that people had to live in such conditions in times so close to us makes me shudder.
 
paulfromcamden said:
I dunno. The Cold War, Vietnam, Cambodia, Tibet, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Lebanon, Rwanda, Iran/Iraq... the second half of the c20th wasn't a happy time for many parts of the world.

Think about it too much and you can really go off human beings as a species.
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True, but I think cruelty on a personal level is worse today. I was bullied in school, but I at least had the refuge of my home (or basically anywhere that wasn't school or close vicinity on a school day) to be able to escape it. Even then it still had a long term emotional impact on me. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be bullied at school and then still be bullied via messaging or social media when home and on the weekend.
 
How much of such perceptions perception comes from the instant repetition / admonition/uninformed speculation filling this age of instant 'social' media..?

What's that very-old saying - 'a lie goes around the world before the Truth has got its boots on'? Something like that.

Oh, and fear and drama sell. And all conventional media have long since latched onto that effect. You bring the pictures; I'll provide the war.
 
Cruelty has been part of the human condition since the beginning of time. Maybe today's negative-biased media machine hypes it so much that it seems like we/the world are crueler than ever. And we as a species 'love' fear, and it certainly would help matters if we didn't elect cruel leaders, but I think the world has become a less cruel place. I was in a cafe the other day, when a woman (presumably a mother) walked in with a pram, lined up and ordered a coffee. Next in line was a couple. The male half went to order but couldn't as the woman was in the middle of paying. He offered to pay. She was delighted. Two complete strangers. It's not all bad.
 
les24preludes said:
Compared to the atrocities of past ages the world is undeniably a less cruel place. But to me it seems to be getting worse since the happier days of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s when there was a lot more hope in the air and the Iron Curtain fell. It looked like nations were getting on quite well with each other. Not so anymore. So why?

- could climate change be a factor? There is an undercurrent of hopelessness as it becomes clear that targets to achieve a drop in emissions are totally failing and the world will heat up as a result, which isn't reversible. Do people not care any more?

- could drones be a factor? So easy now to destroy residential areas of any country, knock out power stations and reduce cities to rubble.

- is there a de-personalisation happing with shoot-em-up video games, action films, AI, robots and technology? Does this make people more callous?

There is so much destruction going on, but some of it seems gratuitously cruel - destroying hospitals and attacking aid convoys in Gaza, targeting civilians in Ukraine and so on. Can this be explained in any way? What do you think?
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No.
It’s not getting worse.
You just know what’s going on easier, sooner and more graphically now.
The media survives through bad news.
When did you last see anecdotes like Kirk’s reported in the news?
 
gez said:
True, but I think cruelty on a personal level is worse today. I was bullied in school, but I at least had the refuge of my home (or basically anywhere that wasn't school or close vicinity on a school day) to be able to escape it. Even then it still had a long term emotional impact on me. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be bullied at school and then still be bullied via messaging or social media when home and on the weekend.
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Many people were beaten at home and found school a sanctuary.
 
I think the Western way of forming people -- values, culture -- is not very good at stopping them from behaving cruelly. This is for me the most difficult lesson of Hitler's concentration camps, which happened in the land of Luther, Bach and Kant.
 
Bob McC said:
No. It’s not getting worse. You just know what’s going on easier, sooner and more graphically now.
The media survives through bad news.
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The thought occurs to me that while the media likes bad news as you say, it could also act as a deterrent because it's a lot harder to hide from it these days. I don't know if that argument can be defended in any way.
 
mandryka said:
I think the Western way of forming people -- values, culture -- is not very good at stopping them from behaving cruelly. This is for me the most difficult lesson of Hitler's concentration camps, which happened in the land of Luther, Bach and Kant.
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Plenty of non-European nations have engaged in atrocities and massacres and have been for thousands of years.

I think the lesson is just that some people are arseholes.

I think another lesson would be to ignore the arseholes we put in charge when they tell us gays, trans people and brown people are our enemies.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Plenty of non-European nations have engaged in atrocities and massacres and have been for thousands of years.
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I'm no historian, but I think the Holocaust was particularly cruel, maybe the cruellest event ever for all I know.




paulfromcamden said:
I think the lesson is just that some people are arseholes.
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One of the main functions of culture is to make people civilised. By culture I mean the values and attitudes which are learned in school and at home.




paulfromcamden said:
some
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That word some covers a multitude of quantifiers: several, many, a few, most . . . .
 
Rodrat said:
Sadly I think most people can be arseholes in the right circumstances.
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I think that the word arsehole isn't quite right for, let's say, the low ranking Germans who managed the day to day cruelty at Belsen. To say someone's an arsehole is to say that they are stupid, irritating, or contemptible. These ordinary people behaved in an evil way.
 
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