advertisement


Is our world becoming more cruel?

gintonic said:
humanity is cruel -
Click to expand...
By nature maybe. My point is that the role of nurture is to form people so they are less cruel, so their cruel dispositions are suppressed. And I would argue that our way of bringing people up has demonstrably failed. I'm not saying that other cultures have been totally successful -- but I don't believe any other cultures have done anything as horrific as the Germans did in the last world war.
 
People 'back then' were cruel on a personal leel, because of ignorance (or more correctly because what they knew to be the correct way, involved cruelty).
The sixties bought hope and kindness and love in it's way on that same personal, we can do this' scale.
But globally now, although enlightenment and education is more universal, we are still being brainwashed by governments and money makers to hate and hurt.
I play simple computer games and after each card game I get an advert to play a game killing 'the enemy'.
Min age. 12 years old.

The gullible. now with easy access to the world, are as easily exploited.
It's not cruelty that matters. By its existence, nature is 'cruel' if you define giving thoughtless pain as cruelty.
What matters is that there are people who exploit this.
They are the worlds virus.
 
No.
Generally, the goalposts have changed considerably, just for starters.

Apart from that, the cruelty that was out of sight, out of the news - the mass deaths in China due to Mao, the Vietnam and Korean Wars, Cambodia, and plenty more unspeakable attrocities "out there" and in S America/the Caribbean, has much decreased and has come far, far, far closer to home, plus, if anyone breaks wind in the furthest of the back end of outposts in Mongolia, it makes news somewhere on the www.

Anyone with any knowledge of recent history knows what never made significant news - the colonial attrocities in the British and Belgian colonies in Africa, for instance.

Man's stupidity, capacity for inhumanity to mankind, and senseless following of despots and/or maniacs has always been there, and likely always will. And that will always drive someone to inflict cruelty somewhere, to things other than other humans.
 
mandryka said:
By nature maybe. My point is that the role of nurture is to form people so they are less cruel, so their cruel dispositions are suppressed. And I would argue that our way of bringing people up has demonstrably failed. I'm not saying that other cultures have been totally successful -- but I don't believe any other cultures have done anything as horrific as the Germans did in the last world war.
Click to expand...
How many were killed in the conquest of the new world?
 
Yes our world is becoming more cruel and evil each day that passes , just look at the middle east , many parts of Europe and the cruel oppression of many minorities in India
 
gintonic said:
nup - you make gullible sound like a mental health issue.

naive view - organised religion, corporate entities......and more
Click to expand...
your inability to understand a message is sad.
I don't make gullible sound like anything. YOU read that meaning into the word.
And after i wrote governments, I wrote 'and money makers', who are the 'corporate entities' you say i should have mentioned.
You really should read the message and think a bit before replying to the writer about his shortcomings.
 
To me it really does feel like we are sliding back into darkness, and I don't see an easy way to get back towards the light. Especially now, what with Ukraine, Gaza, the very real possibility of the US falling to fascism (and the general rise of the far-right in many places), social media amplifying hatred and polarising communities, and the looming climate catastrophe.

We may not have much time left on this planet.
 
Last edited:
mandryka said:
By nature maybe. My point is that the role of nurture is to form people so they are less cruel, so their cruel dispositions are suppressed. And I would argue that our way of bringing people up has demonstrably failed. I'm not saying that other cultures have been totally successful -- but I don't believe any other cultures have done anything as horrific as the Germans did in the last world war.
Click to expand...
The Israelis?
 
mandryka said:
I'm no historian, but I think the Holocaust was particularly cruel, maybe the cruellest event ever for all I know.
Click to expand...
I confess that, when I saw this thread, the Holocaust was what came to my mind. There had been genocides before e.g. the Kaiser's attempt to annihilate an entire tribe in Sud-West Afrika (now Namibia) and the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey, but in both cases this was because they were perceived as enemies, on the one hand resisting German colonisation efforts, on the other as a potential fifth column. The Holocaust was a campaign of planned, industrialised extermination of a people just because who they were, not because of any danger they represented. It is, in my opinion, the worst crime in human history and it represents an absolute low point in human morality.
 
Last edited:
mandryka said:
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.
Click to expand...
I don't believe in evil. Evil as a concept allows us to abrogate our individual and group responsiblity to do the correct thing. It implies that the perpetrators are in some way "other" and that none of "us" could ever do the same, makes us feel better about ourselves. The truth is that any human under the correct circumanstances (which are different for every individual) is capable of acts of extreme cruelty and inhumanity.
 
tones said:
I confess that, when I saw this thread, the Holocaust was what came to my mind. There had been genocides before (e.g. the Kaiser's attempt to annihilate an entire tribe in Sud-West Afrika (now Namibia)) and the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey, but in both cases this was because they were perceived as enemies, on the one hand resisting German colonisation efforts, on the other as a potential fifth column. The Holocaust was a campaign of planned, industrialised extermination of a people just because who they were, not because of any danger they represented. It is, in my opinion, the worst crime in human history and it represents an absolute low point in human morality.
Click to expand...
I think you can build as many league tables of awfulness as you like but the takeaway has to be that put in the wrong situation ordinary human beings are capable of behaving with a cruelty no other sentient creature on the planet is capable of. There was nothing special or abnormal about the German people any more than there was the population of Rwanda, DRC or Cambodia. It's an uncomfortable thought that most us could well have behaved in the same way if we lived through those times.
 
paulfromcamden said:
I think you can build as many league tables of awfulness as you like but the takeaway has to be that put in the wrong situation ordinary human beings are capable of behaving with a cruelty no other sentient creature on the planet is capable of. There was nothing special or abnormal about the German people any more than there was the population of Rwanda, DRC or Cambodia. It's an uncomfortable thought that most us could well have behaved in the same way if we lived through those times.
Click to expand...
I'd amend that to "would quite probably have behaved in the same way". Just look at the adulation of Hitler by ordinary folk so often captured on film.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top