Is human viciousness changing over time?

Great Debates
21

Evil Captor: That’s a very interesting hypothesis. Infant mortality is obviously a huge influence on someone’s psychology, and having to go through it multiple times must have a correspondingly large impact on how the person develops mentally.

I suppose the best way to test it would be to reduce the infant mortality in a population and study the incidence of violent crime. (Does that book have any information from such studies, by the way?)

scule: Another interesting hypothesis. My only problem with it is that it’s possible to be cruel to people you live around all the time, as slaveholders were cruel to slaves. This is perhaps not a representative case, but slavery was so common in the ancient world that it’s hard to dismiss it. I have a hard time believing that increased travel and communcation are really the cause of our reduction in cruelty.

22

Perhaps, but I think that cruelty now is the exception rather than the rule. Slaves were treated cruelly because they weren’t regarded as equal, or even human. And even then, many societies had rules for the treatment of slaves that were often much better than how they treated other tribes/nations. I don’t think it’s really just increased communication and travel itself that makes the difference, so much as I think it’s an increased understanding of other cultures and peoples, as well as an understanding of the need to work in harmony to achieve and then maintain a high standard of living. I really think that the development of much of this modern attitude is the result of Renaissance thinkers like Rousseau and Locke and Kant (I guess even post-Renaissance) who’s introspective philosophizing broke down barriers to self-identification and blind faith in dogma (of course, the advancement of science is a big part of that, but then it was all called philosophy not too long ago).

23

As people become more comfortable, they become, I think, less likely to commit wanton violence. Not only do they have too much to lose, they haven’t as much to gain. And while I can’t speak for anyone else, I can say that I’m just too content and apathetic to be driven by, or passionate about, things that could make me violent.

Yes, there are cruelties in the world, but they seem far removed from rural Ohio. I may not be safe, but I feel safe. Violence is what happens to “other people.” Sure, I can come in contact with it, and it can fill me with rage, but I don’t have constant contact and constant rage. I can get worked up, but then there’s my comfy sofa and my comfy bed and my central air and my central heating and my cable TV and my cable internet and there’s ice cream in the freezer and a cat on my lap and ooh! Shiny.

24

Ding, ding, ding! I think we have a winner. And it should be easy enough to find data linking socioeconomic status of individuals, communities and countries to violent crime rates.

I’d also add that with large scale prisons and law systems, we simply lock people up for things that would have gotten them gruesomely executed years ago. We really don’t know if folks in the 1300s would have rather locked people away forever if housing and food were as cheap to come by as today.

I also wonder if religion has anything to do with it. When you and everyone around you is of the same mindset regarding death and afterlife and heaven and whatnot, it’s easy to agree that whacking John Doe’s head off isn’t really that big a deal because he’ll just go to be with god, or be reincarnated, or whatever the prevailing viewpoint is. Since we’ve taken religion out of courts (not that that’s a bad thing!) and out of public discourse, and we live around people who believe very different things, at the same time we’ve removed death to become a mysterious process that happens in hospitals and other places we don’t see it, there are arguments aplenty as to why death and violence might be a very bad thing, or at least a thing better left out of our hands.

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scule: That’s a good point about slaves. They really were thought of as property. As to the value of communication, well, I won’t write it off completely, but I recall that there have been very vicious civil wars and other conflicts between people who share a language and a culture. Humans can divide themselves into small, petty factions rather easily, and such divisions can become the basis for protracted feuds. For starters, you can look at the Chinese civil war (1911-1948), the Irish Troubles, and, to a lesser extent, the Israeli-Palestinian War.

Philosophy, too, can be subverted and used to prolong, instead of shorten, conflicts. Communism as idealized by Karl Marx, that Golden Road to Utopian Socialism, has never been implemented fully but the people in charge have ruined the country they ruled. There is no chapter or verse of Marx that advocates the subjugation of the masses under the steel boot of governmental oppression, but that is what always ends up happening.

I like how your philosophies would point, the idea that a rational and well-connected world would of necessity be less cruel, but I simply cannot see the world as being quite so amenable to my wishes.

jsgoddess: Even more good ideas! Your theory, if I understand it, essentially posits a fundamentally lazy nature to mankind, and I think we can all agree with that. Why bash my neighbor’s brains in when I have 250 channels and unlimited Internet time per month? As a programmer, I view a certain kind of laziness as a virtue (look up some of the writings of Larry Wall on the subject), and this idea fits right in with my observations of myself and others.

(That could be seen as bias. So be it. I am a somewhat pessimistic person, and I don’t see humans as being excessively noble or philosophic. Since I see even less virtue in governments, I suppose laziness can serve as a natural cap on the brutality of the majority.)

26

Bah. This should teach me to post off-the-cuff. The Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, not 1948.

WhyNot: Good simulpost!

27

Laziness plus selfishness plus sufficient entertainment to be had elsewhere plus the whole ignorance is bliss thing.

I don’t need to set dogs against each other because I’ve got so many fun things to do already that are so much easier. And I don’t need to go bash my neighbor’s head in because I only see him for a few minutes and I can barricade myself in my housej and play “City of Heroes” all evening. That’s where having enough entertainment (most of the time) comes in.

What I think is really telling is if you pay attention to the vitriol some people start spewing about, say, something like this message board or an online game or a TV show. Listen to what happens if the boards go down, or if a show gets pre-empted. People are filled with rage and despair. Over a message board. And when serious matters get bandied about here, that same rage and despair bubbles to the surface, not just from the people who are angry about a political point, but from people whose simple enjoyment of the board is being tarnished. (I’m not pointing fingers at anyone more than myself. I hate when the boards slip into a quagmire of politics not because the politics themselves infuriate me, but because the discussions are interrupting my serenity with too strident arguing!)

Last night, I went home from work pretty whiny. I wanted to do something “fun.” We needed to go to the grocery. That wasn’t “fun.” My husband wanted to go out to eat. That wasn’t “fun.” I have books and movies and TV and computers and message boards and I was standing around pouting about not having any fun. At times, I wonder if I were some Roman emperor and had seen it all, perhaps I would be enjoying whatever new entertainment someone was willing to provide for me, no matter how cruel or violent. That’s where being too lazy to provide these things for myself comes in.

I don’t read local papers. That’s where ignorance is bliss comes in.

I’ve got mine, why should I worry about you? That’s where selfishness comes in.

I think all of these things are pretty fundamental to much of humanity’s nature. There’s probably an overarching term that would work. Unenlightened self-interest?

Am I rambling? I am! I am! Because I’m bored at work. But work keeps me off the streets and wealthy enough that I won’t conk my neighbor over the head for a Twinkie. It’s all good.

28

Just what do you call the beheading of hostages?

29

I believe the word the OP is looking for is “civilization.”
Not being snarky; the main idea behind of pretty much every religion, all forms of government and pretty much every philosophical system (up until the last hundred years or so) as been recognizing that human beings have this propensity for being mean, trying to explain it, and proscribing how and why this meanness should be controlled. We’ve come a long way, and we can do even better and hopefully will.

But like so many things, the solution starts with admitting you have a problem; and nothing scares me more than the fact that some people seriously deny that innate meanness is a part of the human condition.

30

{QUOTE=mks57]
I
Dog fighting and cock fighting are still popular sports.
[/QUOTE]

I thought so too, but there’s a thriving organization of cockfight enthusiasts right here in Northern Virginia. A co-worker of mine (from Peru) showed me their newsletter. This was about six years ago; I doubt they’ve gone away.

We’ve changed insofar as we don’t admit stuff in public that we used to, but beyond that, we’re still basically savages at heart.

31

I thought so too, but there’s a thriving organization of cockfight enthusiasts right here in Northern Virginia. A co-worker of mine (from Peru) showed me their newsletter. This was about six years ago; I doubt they’ve gone away.

We’ve changed insofar as we don’t admit stuff in public that we used to, but beyond that, we’re still basically savages at heart.
[/QUOTE]

Cockfighting is still legal in three state. Dog fighting (to the death) is very popular among the inner city gang set. That is why some people get Pit Bulls, chain them up, beat them, and feed them red meat.

32

Something that was much more common a few thousand years ago.

Shagnasty, Krokodil: Well, I suppose we aren’t quite as civilized in this country as I thought. That saddens me, and the only response I really have is that cockfighting is illegal in most states, and I think dogfights are illegal everywhere in the US. In fact, it’s a felony offense in ‘almost every’ state, according to this Humane Society website.

furt: The Romans and the Aztecs had large and powerful civilizations and they committed horrible cruelties. Otherwise, point gladly taken. Humans have just as much meanness to them as chimps and every other animal.

jsgoddess: ‘Unenlightened self-interest’ sounds pretty reasonable.