So, from a human-rights standpoint, which society would a person have had more freedom, or also, less likelihood of being tortured/imprisoned/executed - modern day North Korea, or some ancient civilization like Rome, Greece, Egypt, Babylon or Assyria?
Depends… Some citizens in the ancient empires would have some pretty good rights; the nobility and such. Roman citizens were big on their laws (recall St. Paul insisted on a trial in Rome as a citizen). Classical Greece was a democracy in many cities - for the men who were free citizens. For the women, for the slaves, not so much. Recall that slaves had a special status in Rome, they were more like unpaid indentured servants. OTOH, many of the ancient civilizations could be incredibly vicious when threatened. Jesus was crucified for allegedly planning to overthrow Roman rule; the Jews that actually tried 40 years later, they were crucified by the thousands along the road out of Jerusalem; and in the temple allegedly blood flowed like a river. Similarly Christians were crucified by the thousands on the highway out of Rome a little later on. Babylon, IIRC, had laws where for example, if a nobleman killed someone’s daughter or son, his son or daughter could be executed as punishment. (Eye for an eye)
But most ancient civilizations relied on armies to maintain order; and in the days before tanks and machine guns, one swordsman or archer was as good as another; the only advantage an emperor would have would be the size of his army. A monarch who did not at least try to maintain the favour of some of his nobles would find himself facing a major rebellion, and then the size of the armies came down to picking sides; many learned this lesson the hard way.
North Korea, by contrast, as long as you did not come to the attention of the authorities, supposedly life was not bad - albeit a little dull and severely short of food. As for torture of prisoners, I doubt there is anything PRK does that hasn’t been exceeded over the years. I think it was Marco Polo who described prisoners planted in the ground with only the head showing. so that the cavalry could practice decapitating them at full gallop to amuse the royal court. Roman whipping and medieval tortures were certainly as vicious as anything North Korea could dream up.
however, we have this image that someone like Kim is like the guy running SPECTE, and everyone jumps to do what he says. Quite the opposite. Like the ancient emperors, Kim has to be ever mindful of who he has pissed off, watch for too many people in the upper ranks putting their heads together, etc. He is riding a tiger. Quite often, the crazy talk and reckless acts (like sinking a South Korean navy vessel or shelling an island) are to whip up activity at home to keep his minions too busy to conspire against him; and anyone getting too popular could also “disappear”. So the upper levels of NK society have a pretty good life, but have to be wary of appearing not deferential enough or associating with the wrong people.
Since this probably does not have a simple factual answer, let’s move it to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I’m saying North Korea. Oppression is like anything else; its methods develop over time. Up until about a hundred years ago, nobody would have had the means to run a totalitarian state. Once you got a dozen or so miles from the throne room, you had a lot of de facto freedom just because the ruler couldn’t project his authority very well.
Human rights isn’t a monolith. I think the results in different societies and different times would be uneven.
That almost sounds like a solid working explanation of feudalism. Local rulers, arguably tyrants, could project their power locally, while more distant tyrants could project their power indirectly through the local ones.
Iunno, not enough coffee yet.
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At the very least, the use of electronic cameras and listening devices have affected the individual’s perception of privacy. Sure, talking negatively about the emperor ran the risk of having your remarks reported by witnesses, but speaking ill of a Kim even when you are completely alone can destroy you if there’s a bug in the room, and you have to work on the assumption that there is, don’t you?
When Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon, he freed the slaves and made a lot of improvements in the law. However, it was still pretty brutal and entirely based on your social level. For example, if someone superior to you in society killed you, he’d have to pay your family about a pound of silver. If you merely slapped a superior person, you’d get 60 lashes in the public square.
Empires are perhaps not the best places to live if you want freedom and equality.
In Rome, the Paterfamilias, or male head of the extended household (which only applied to Roman citizens) was responsible for governing the entire clan and theoretically had the power of life and death over all of it’s members, although this was somewhat restricted by law. If you were NOT a Roman citizen, you really had very few rights. You might also find yourself knifed to death by roaming bands of roman youths even in Rome itself.
In North Korea, you have Songbun;
Songbun (Chosŏn’gŭl: 성분; MR: sŏngpun), formally chulsin-songbun (Chosŏn’gŭl: 출신성분; MR: ch’ulsin sŏngpun, from Sino-Korean 出身, “origin” and 成分, “constituent”), is the system of ascribed status used in North Korea.* Based on the political, social, and economic background of one’s direct ancestors as well as the behavior of their relatives, songbun is used to determine whether an individual is trusted with responsibilities, is given opportunities within North Korea, or even receives adequate food. Songbun affects access to educational and employment opportunities and it particularly determines whether a person is eligible to join North Korea’s ruling party, the Workers’ Party of Korea***
I have to disagree with this. In the days of hand-to-hand combat one person could be a lot better or a lot worse than another. For more so than with firearms. It’s not for nothing that an early slang term for a pistol or revolver was an ‘equalizer’.
And small trained and disciplined army could be a lot better than a large disorganized rabble.
I have to disagree with this as well. In Elizabethan England, you could try publicly voicing a dissident religious opinion, or criticising the Queen, or printing an unapproved book, even at the other side of the country. You’d end up on the rack, or the gallows, or in prison, or whipped through the streets. There was no freedom of speech.
Feudal states could be very totalitarian too. Read Froissart’s account of his visit to Count of Foix where it seems like everyone in this small independent state lived in terror. It was only with great difficulty that Froissart could get anyone to say anything critical of the Count, and then only in secret, and one-on-one. Medieval rulers could project their authority better than you might think, because they had vassals, retainers, officials, etc. all over the place.
When they crucified Jesus, they didn’t send his parents and siblings to be tortured. In North Korea they punish your parents, siblings, kids, grandkids, cousins, etc. Also being crucified for a few hours or days sounds preferable to years in a concentration camp.
Plus in modern society the state has better tools to control people. In ancient times the control wasn’t as powerful just because they couldn’t project power.
I’d say North Korea is worse.
I think any system of decentralized power is weaker overall. In order for a king to project his power throughout his kingdom, he needed to have a bunch of vassals who had the power to enforce his decisions. But once the king had these powerful vassals spread throughout his kingdom, they represented a major threat to his power. Especially when the vassals had a common interest in preserving the strength of local power from royal interference.
In theory, yes. But how much oppression was there in practice? Mary I, for example, had a reputation as “Bloody Mary” for her excessive executions of religious dissenters. But in reality, during the five years of her reign less than three hundred religious dissenters were executed.
Same thing with the French Reign of Terror; less than seventeen thousand people were executed. The Spanish Inquisition; less than five thousand. Compare that with the Twentieth Century, where government atrocities killed tens of millions. At Auschwitz in 1944, the SS was killing six thousand people a day.
No organized Secret Police, mostly, in Ancient Times.
During the Albigensian Crusade in southern France from 1209-1229, between 200,000 and 1,000,000 ‘heretics’ were killed.
A lot of European nations, particularly the Scandinavians, became Christian to avoid the threat of a crusade against them, because the crusaders were drawn on the promise of looting, rape and murder condoned by the Pope and ‘forgiven’ by the Pope in God’s name.
It’s probably a lot close to 200,000. The 1,000,000 came from a 1902 source which was close to the pre-Delbruckian era. And the campaign against the Albignesians lasted for twenty years.
Most nations became Christian when their king decided to convert. Cuius regio, eius religio was the recognized policy long before it was codified at Augsburg. But you can’t project the king’s fear of being the wrong religion down to his subjects; the king is a target who would be singled out for heresy.
Certainly, which makes a fine argument that totalitarianism as we know it is fundamentally predicated on modern force projection. But that doesn’t mean that on a local level, power couldn’t be absolute.
I get what you’re saying ITT, but part of “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” surely arose from power differential, no? I’m not sure sheer numbers dead is a useful metric.
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I guess it would be but only in conjunction with a lot of other ones to form some kind of overall picture.
Well there’s a lot of social laws and attitudeswe have or had that Rome and Greece would be astounded by
Yup. The Babylonians for one would be absolutely astonished at our primitive attitude towards gays and transexuals.
I felt this thread was distinguishing between the bad things that happen due to the government actions and the bad things that happen due to general economics or just human nature. Keep in mind that the existence Hobbes was describing was brought about by the lack of a strong government and he saw a dictatorship as the cure for the problem. (I don’t agree with Hobbes on this; I’m more of a Locke fan.)