Is human viciousness changing over time?

[Derleth]

I’ve noticed something about pre-modern cultures: Some of them were really, really mean. The Romans had people fighting to the death as a form of entertainment, the 19th century Brits engaged in bear-baiting and dogfights (not to mention touring the ghastly Bedlam), and executions in all countries have traditionally been public spectacles. This isn’t even counting the bloody history of human sacrifice that pervades many archaic religions. Furthermore, deadly combat seems to have been less reviled in former times, with blood feuds and duels only recently passing into history in most regions.

In short, it seems that the human race, at least in parts, is becoming less willing to kill itself off, or to revel in actual violence. We’ve gone from selling gory souvenirs from the gibbets to carrying out executions at midnight with a very few spectators. We have replaced the duel with the lawsuit, and all our religious sacrifices are symbolic. We’ve even turned away from total warfare, and no modern army would dream of killing all the males of fighting age and taking the rest of the population as slaves after raping most of the females. (In other words, Biblical warfare makes Sherman’s March to the Sea seem like a cakewalk, and Sherman’s methods would be reviled by most modern observers.)

Is this indeed the case? If it is true, why?

[mks57]

I don’t think much has changed over the centuries.

Dog fighting and cock fighting are still popular sports. Blood feuds are still common in certain parts of the world, as are public executions. Ethnic cleansing and genocide have not disappeared. Many religions perform real, not symbolic, sacrifices of animals.

[Derleth]

@mks57

I don’t think much has changed over the centuries.

I respectfully disagree.

Dog fighting and cock fighting are still popular sports.

Both are extinct, or very nearly so, in the US and Europe, former strongholds.

Blood feuds are still common in certain parts of the world, as are public executions.

Again, both are extinct in places like the UK and Russia.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide have not disappeared.

And they are reviled crimes now, with people around the globe working to end them. They have, in the global scene, become the exception rather than the rule: Modern armies do not plow under whole cities or salt fields or slaughter every single member of a certain defeated group.

Many religions perform real, not symbolic, sacrifices of animals.

But not of humans. Name me one contemporary religion that engages in human sacrifice.

[jjimm]

@Derleth

Name me one contemporary religion that engages in human sacrifice.

Muti.

[Derleth]

@jjimm

Muti.

I was wrong: There are religions that engage in human sacrifice. However, muti seems to be rare in most of the world, and even uncommon in its native land. (Muti is a generic term for medicine among the people of Southern Africa.)

[Shagnasty]

I have wanted to ask this same question too except I didn’t really know how to phrase it. I think from a scientific standpoint that we can agree that there has been no genetic change that would have caused this is in such a short amount of time so “evolution” is out. It is also clear that many societies still engage in the kinds of practices that we find abhorrent in the modern Western World. That leaves us with exploring changes in society, particularly western culture, that have caused such overt acts of what we regard as cruelty to take other, less overt, forms.

[vetbridge]

@Derleth

the 19th century Brits engaged in bear-baiting and dogfights

Dog fighting (pitbulls) still is going on strong, with webpages showing “winners” and bragging about quality genetics. Because it is illegal, the fights themselves are done in secret.

[Derleth]

@vetbridge

Because it is illegal, the fights themselves are done in secret.

It is, in fact, illegal. That’s part of my point: The people who engage in the sport are marginalized and facing criminal prosecution if they are caught. A century or so ago, they would not have been.

@Shagnasty

I have wanted to ask this same question too except I didn’t really know how to phrase it. I think from a scientific standpoint that we can agree that there has been no genetic change that would have caused this is in such a short amount of time so “evolution” is out. It is also clear that many societies still engage in the kinds of practices that we find abhorrent in the modern Western World. That leaves us with exploring changes in society, particularly western culture, that have caused such overt acts of what we regard as cruelty to take other, less overt, forms.

Precisely my points. I’m interested in a discussion of some kind about what has happened and why it has seemingly changed the tolerance for physical cruelty of the average citizen of a post-industrial (not only Western) country.

[rsenyc68]

@Derleth

Is this indeed the case? If it is true, why?

I do not believe human viciousness is changing over time. In three months in 1994, 700,000 Rwandans were hacked to death by machetes – face-to-face combat – while the world did nothing.

However, I do believe that the modern world has allowed us to ignore the consequences of human viciousness in a way that has never happened before. Many people never personally witness acts of violence, or if they do it’s so abstract that they can’t personalize it. For example, the atomic bomb killed hundreds of thousands of people, but the grainy footage of a mushroom cloud is far less disturbing than watching a man be torn apart by lions in ancient Rome. First hand experiences of bloody violence was a fact of life for most of human history.

My point is that the innate human impulse to be vicious has not changed, but its expression has (in much of the world).

A great line from Graham Greene’s “The Third Man”, spoken by a man in a ferris wheel looking down over a crowd of people: “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”

[Derleth]

@rsenyc68

I do not believe human viciousness is changing over time. In three months in 1994, 700,000 Rwandans were hacked to death by machetes – face-to-face combat – while the world did nothing.

True. But the news can only show you what did happen, not what did not.

Plus, the news focuses on the worst of the worst of the day’s events. It is the newsman’s job to find that which will sell, and the odd sells the best.

However, I do believe that the modern world has allowed us to ignore the consequences of human viciousness in a way that has never happened before. Many people never personally witness acts of violence, or if they do it’s so abstract that they can’t personalize it. For example, the atomic bomb killed hundreds of thousands of people, but the grainy footage of a mushroom cloud is far less disturbing than watching a man be torn apart by lions in ancient Rome. First hand experiences of bloody violence was a fact of life for most of human history.

This is closer to what I had in mind. Is the dehumanization of society responsible for our lack of personal acts of violence? It would seem that conventional wisdom would argue that the opposite is the case, and try to say our acts of personal violence are facilitated by a general dehumanization. But that fails to account for, again, the relative dearth of such acts in a broad historical context.

My point is that the innate human impulse to be vicious has not changed, but its expression has (in much of the world).

How are we vicious, these days? Are we pouring all our malign sentiments into video games? Are we becoming that much more angry with our politics? I’m not jumping on you, I simply want to have a fuller understanding of how we have changed.

A great line from Graham Greene’s “The Third Man”, spoken by a man in a ferris wheel looking down over a crowd of people: “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”

If the movie is any indication, Mr. Greene also though the Swiss invented cuckoo clocks. But I digress.

My point is, and remains, that we are, by and large, not stopping as many dots these days, and that we’re stopping the few we are in relatively humane ways. I daresay that our modern fly-by-wire warfare would be seen as incurably feminine and weak to the average Roman Centurion, and that our notions of limited war and our unwillingness to enslave defeated populations would have been met with raucous laughter and jeers.

[Shagnasty]

I have two factors that I believe have curtailed some forms of these forms of violence.

1. People were more acustomed to death. Childhood mortality was extremely high. People got wiped out by epidemics in waves at any age. It was extremely likely that several members of your family or even yourself would die an untimely death. That makes death seem less less like a conclusion to a long and fulfilling life than a fact of day to day life that can happen to anyone anytime.

2. Effective violent crime control by goverment. Many people have shown that they are more than willing to engage in child abuse, animal cruelty, spousal abuse, and even murder if there is no one around to catch them. The countries listed above have laws against this stuff on the books but there is no one there to enforce it. If duels were made legal again, I can guarantee that some people would volunteer for it and reality TV would be right there to show it. Also note that the Roman Gladiator battles have a modern parallel in WWF wrestiling. Even though the violence isn’t truly real, it is still very popular and taps into the same primal urges.

[drhess]

@Derleth

True. But the news can only show you what did happen, not what did not.

Plus, the news focuses on the worst of the worst of the day’s events. It is the newsman’s job to find that which will sell, and the odd sells the best.

.

Maybe that is a sign of some vestige or slightlly under control disire to see suffering? Like the almost like torture kind of reality shows?

Also, that the news focuses on the worse doesn’t mean the massacres they show didn’t happen. As too numbers, it seems the 20th century was pretty nasty on the mass killing front. And the little outcry in the US over US killing of civilians in Iraq (not even keeping track) is disheartening.

Slave trade still exists for labor, children for sex, women. We did have a large jump in murders in the US for most of the 1990s.

I think we have institutions that shape our conduct and that we can revert pretty dang quickly under the right conditions. Think Abu Grahib (sp?). If not in that kind of instant, then at least in a generation.

[drhess]

Oh, an let’s not forget the extent of world poverty. I don’t know if it’s getting better or worse, but spending on fighting it is pretty low.

[FlippyFly]

I think that I agree with the OP. Someone mentioned child abuse. It seems to me that as little as 100 years ago, it was the social norm to beat a child when they misbehaved. Even in schools, there were rulers slapping children who couldn’t get their multiplication tables. This concept of discipline through pain has become taboo in modern society with legal and social repercussions for anyone who tolerates or endorses this kind of treatment. I would say this example supports the rapid and radical shift the OP is talking about.

[Derleth]

drhess: World poverty really has nothing to do with my topic here. I don’t know why you brought it up.

The unfortunate 20th Century was heir to a burgeoning industrial era and the radical disintegration of ancient and time-honored sociopolitical structures. The Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires were killed by the Balkan Crisis, and China was felled by a massive revolution/civil war. Both of those calamaties caused complete and utter chaos in much of the world for a half-century, give or take a decade or two by region. But, as bad as it was, much of the violence perpetrated by the wealthy nations was state-sanctioned, at least nominally, as opposed to the less structured savagery I’m talking about here.

Shagnasty:

People were more acustomed to death. Childhood mortality was extremely high. People got wiped out by epidemics in waves at any age. It was extremely likely that several members of your family or even yourself would die an untimely death. That makes death seem less less like a conclusion to a long and fulfilling life than a fact of day to day life that can happen to anyone anytime.

So, the heirs of Duke Nukem are less inured to random, senseless death? That would have gone over like a lead balloon among certain parents’ groups in the 1980s-1990s.

I agree completely: Modern women can expect to survive childbirth and see every one of their children live to be a ripe age. Polio, smallpox, and tuberculosis are bad dreams, and even the dread influenza is little more than an inconvenience. Even the men who merely do the work for which they draw the wage are retiring in record numbers, as opposed to becoming cautionary examples to new hires.

Effective violent crime control by goverment. Many people have shown that they are more than willing to engage in child abuse, animal cruelty, spousal abuse, and even murder if there is no one around to catch them. The countries listed above have laws against this stuff on the books but there is no one there to enforce it. If duels were made legal again, I can guarantee that some people would volunteer for it and reality TV would be right there to show it. Also note that the Roman Gladiator battles have a modern parallel in WWF wrestiling. Even though the violence isn’t truly real, it is still very popular and taps into the same primal urges.

This, again, is insightful. However, I have to argue that a substatial proportion of the population must agree with any largely successful law, and the laws against murder and mayhem have been very successful. As a counterexample, look at how many people of a every age used illegal drugs.

@http://internetproject.com/members/BurdanUSA/duel.htm

As a more concrete example, duelling was outlawed in France numerous times in the former era, never to much success.

@my cite

Dueling subsequently became particularly popular in France and occasioned so many deaths that King Henry IV declared (1602) in an edict that participation in a duel was punishable by death. Similar edicts were issued by Henry’s successors, although they were rarely enforced with any strictness. The various French Republican governments also outlawed dueling, making it an offense against the criminal code. Duels, however, still occur in France, although they are rarely fatal.

People liked to duel, so therefore the duelled in contravention of local law. The people of America cannot be thought of as being much different from French people, yet laws against duelling in America have been much more successful.

FlippyFly: Precisely, and that is an example I missed.

[Derleth]

My link: http://internetproject.com/members/BurdanUSA/duel.htm

I don’t know how coding that bad escaped preview.

[John_Kentzel-Griffin]

This is not a question with a factual answer.

Off to Great Debates.

DrMatrix - GQ Moderator

[Evil_Captor]

In 1066: A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman advanced the theory that high infant mortality was the underlying cause of the torture and general inhumanity that was widespread then. It wasn’t just that anyone who became a parent could reasonably expect to go through the heartrending experience of seeing several of their children die (nobody had just one child, of course – the odds of survival were too low). This also had the effect of making parents withdraw from their own children until they’d reached a certain age, so that the pain of their loss wouldn’t be so intense if they lost them (which was of course very likely).

This produced a group of emotionally distant adults who lacked ability to empathize. Result: no problems with torture, because they couldn’t emotionally grasp the tortured person’s pain.

They also didn’t really connect with their own pain. Frex, one of the fave games at fairs back then was to nail a cat to a post by the tail. Then the young swains would take their turns having their hands tied behind their backs and tryhing to kill the cat by battering it with their heads, with the cat responding as you might expect a cat to. It’s pretty easy to see how people who engaged in this sort of behavior for sport might not have much sympathy for a criminal broken on the wheel.

I suspect you’ll find a rather close correlation between countries with historically high infant mortality rates and countries with historically low infant mortality rates, and their propensity toward violence.

I strongly recommend that Tuchman book – a very thought-provoking read.

[scule]

Wouldn’t this just be the inevitable result of the growth of the human population? In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond speaks about primitive societies of hunter gatherers being quite violent and between which many murders occur, for often spurious reasons. If you look at the progress of the human species for the relatively brief period of our existence for which we have any record you can see how this might change.

Since we are only somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years old as a species, it’s not likely, to my mind, that we’re much different genetically now than we were at the start, so the social factors must be the answer. When you have societies that are basically formed of a small (20-50 people) cluster of blood-relatives living off the land and roaming to wherever the food is, their only concern is going to be for each other. Any other clan is going to be competition for resources, so they almost inevitably become the enemy. As the population expands, and it becomes more difficult to roam, areas that can be settled and worked agriculturally become prime real estate and these new tribes, still composed of related individuals but far less directly (now up in the low hundreds of members or maybe a bit more) gradually end up competing for space. As agriculture is adopted, it becomes important to secure more land so that more fields can be worked to support a greater population. The clash of competition is the end result.

Cruelty works into this because the natural instinct to protect the family is just not there for other humans. When you are talking about a group of related people, they are far more likely to care about each other than strangers, and this attitude persists to this day. So as these tribes grow and clash, the weaker ones inevitably get absorbed by the stronger and these tribes grow beyond a related family. In order to live cohesively, ideas must take hold, to give the people some form of commonality. Religion and statehood have historically filled that void, along with racial identification. Having these things in common let these completely unrelated individuals find some common ground to meet upon and live together peacefully. From earliest Sumeria to ancient Rome the people were united by faith and/or citizenship. Yet still the foreigners outside the borders were fair game. Because of this it was easy to devalue those lives you held less dear (like the criminals that were forced to fight in the gladiator pits).

What I think has really changed things for today is the further development of long-distance travel, from Columbus’s day, all the way up to the advent of the internet of today. Insular nationalism of the past took a blow when the Portuguese first round the southern tip of Africa and were truly able to settle in the East and learn more of its peoples. Further voyages of discovery led to a different understanding of the make up of the world, and the incurable advancement of scientific thought made the discovery of our place in the solar system and universe seem even more humbling. The printing press brought knowledge to millions who had never had the chance before, and the discovery of electricity and telecommunications made communication exponentially easier than ever.

All of this, I think, gradually led to an understanding of the need, as the world became smaller and more integrated, to be able to work together. Societies that wipe out others are less likely to be trusted for things like trade and alliances. Cooperation and respect engender the same in return (generally) and are better tools for advancement than conquest and cruelty. I really think this is why we see far less outright cruelty among the general populace of the world today, because of this understanding of our need commonalities. Ideas and philosophies than really became prominent during the Renaissance, the advancement of science, and (at least in my personal view) the loss of influence of religion have all contributed to a better sense of global community.

Just my 2 (or maybe 3 or 4) cents.

[drhess]

“drhess: World poverty really has nothing to do with my topic here. I don’t know why you brought it up.”

I brought it up because I see a connection. Don’t be so snippy.

To allow poverty to exist when resources are available to ameliorate it can be seen as a form of cruelty that we have not yet come to terms with. Poverty (stratification) doesn’t just grown on trees, it’s a social condition.