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Nick and David,
It is fear, and a fear I understand. Faith overcomes fear but faith must be learned. When love is protected there is no fear. The people of that time were trained to be resilient but the children are even more resilient. We need to seek God’s righteousness and his kingdom.
To nick I would say only the stupid welcome torture. I’m not even talking about the kind of torture Jesus went through. I’m talking about the Middle Ages. These seems to perfect evil back the. Tie a person to a plank. Cut a slit in his stomach. Put a rat on the stomach with a metal cage on top. Then heat the cage so the rat eats its way through the persons stomach to escape the heat. Or being drawn and quartered. Having your intestines shown to you and burned while you are still alive. Today we have a couple of capital offences. Back then there were hundreds. And many of them first involved torture.
Less accountability? People chopped off hands for theft. Death sentence for petty crimes. 10 minute trial and then slow torture to death.
This is still common place david. There in Canada you may not have this so it might seem like things have got better, but then again, it probably wasn’t present there 2000 years ago either.
And in New Zealand, there was just the natural world without man. No one to have their hands cut off.
mmm. No. Death sentences for petty crimes isn’t common. Death sentences for murder isn’t even that common. In the US they still have the death sentence but in a land where there are 18000 homicides a year how many death sentences?
And death sentences are different than torture. Death by torture used to be common. Now it isn’t. Stoning to death was the biggest less way. This was the torture death for many crimes. Has that stayed the course? No. While almost all cultures used to be able to legally and openly torture it’s citizens, now it has to be done clandestine, in the dark. And it’s not that common. It’s true that the Muslim world still does this stuff to some extent. But it used to be not just them.
Here in Canada, our national sport is croquet. (Not hockey) In the past it was played on horseback and covered many miles and lasted days. And if a team mate wasn’t playing to his full potential he was beaten to death by his own teammates.
I think this illustrates nicely the difference between now and then.
In Canada go back just 105 years and we were still lynching black people (and Asians and even white people) and we could legally beat our wives. It was a family affair. Travelling back through time we have slavery and the Indian wars. And back then it may have been burnt alive for my beliefs. I’m sure it was swell. Exempt infant mortality was much much higher and infectious diseases seemed unstoppable and there was no doctors like nick to give me pain killers. If I had an operation where were the anesthetics. People seem to think it was easier. It may have seemed peaceful but there was a lot of suffering and hardship daily. If I was born 500 years ago I get the feeling I would have already died 3 or 4 times by now. And some of them would have been horrible deaths.
I have no looked at new Zealand. Seems peaceful now. I have considered tribal. Societies of today and what they likely were like in the past. If the average holds true then new Zealand a few hundred years ago was much more violent than today. Genocides were how tribal wars seemed to work. Get them before they get you. And no rescue team to stop disputes.
david, I wonder if you are comparing apples with oranges. While such horrid crimes existed in the past, they are still with us today and there is more technology to inflict such terror.
Some places have got better (Great Britain perhaps) while other places are getting worse, (Syria).
All up there are usually trends that fluctuate. But if you believe the world is corrupt, then you will believe that it will get worse because that is the definition of corruption. When an apple is corrupt, there is no turning back. It will get worse. Remember that once men believed in God even if they didn’t give him the glory. Now look at that fruit. Many honestly do not believe in a creator, an after life, or a judgement.
If the world appears to you as being more friendly, then perhaps you need to look at stats to see if this is the case.
We should never look upon the world as a friend of course and the darkness will get darker and the light brighter as we head to the end.
That doesn’t mean less darkness, it just means more intense darkness but light also. Don’t let more light confuse you about the darkness and its nature
I have no looked at new Zealand. Seems peaceful now. I have considered tribal. Societies of today and what they likely were like in the past. If the average holds true then new Zealand a few hundred years ago was much more violent than today. Genocides were how tribal wars seemed to work. Get them before they get you. And no rescue team to stop disputes.
In Canada go back just 105 years and we were still lynching black people (and Asians and even white people) and we could legally beat our wives. It was a family affair. Travelling back through time we have slavery and the Indian wars. And back then it may have been burnt alive for my beliefs.
No doubt some places have become better, even much better. But that doesn’t make the world better overall. Let’s take tribulations, there have been a number of them, but the world is heading for tribulation such as the world has never seen nor will see again. Sure there are fluctuations as you see with anything. Look at earthquakes, if they are getting more powerful or frequent, then we still know that the past had some bad ones and even compared to say this year, they were worse. But what about the overall graph, does it go up or down.
I think before you substantiate that the world is a better place now, you might need to look at some stats. Does the graph go up or down overall. You might find that the number of violent deaths may be on the increase overall for example.
This topic is about terrorism and who would deny that this has increased.
Perhaps I need to look at stats to see if this is the case?
I feel like devoting the next several pages to me laughing.
i havent been been putting graphs down but maybe I should start doing that. I’m not sure I know how. You should genuinely read Steven pinkers “the better angels of our nature–why violence has declined.” It’s an 800 page book with 100 graphs outlining the decline in violence over the millennia, centuries and even last few decades. Each area has different time scales. War for example didn’t really begin the massive decline until right after ww2. It was one of the last things to begin this decline. But interpersonal violence also affects people wife beating Poisoning husbands Beating children Capital punishment Judicial toerure. Slavery Racist attitudes Human sacrifice dueling homicide
Yes It’s important to look at the whole because it’s the whole world we are concerned with. Britain and ALL of Europe got massively better European countries started 2 new wars a year with each other for the 600 years prior to 1945 after 1945, zero. 2 a year on average to zero 500-700 years ago The average Italian had a 90 times chance of violent death as opposed to their modern counterpart today It was 35 times more likely to die in England as today from homicide. So yes all of Europe is way better Better in every way as is ALL of the world EXCEPT Latin American countries and 2 or 3 middle eastern ones So there is a handful where They are getting worse And the rest are getting better
Yes. The horrible crimes are still with us today. I would never argue otherwise. I’m merely saying violence is declining. Not that it has vanished.
In America there is still the odd black hate crime mirder. But there isn’t 150 lynchings as an example. So yes. Racism still exists. But we don’t have 4 million kkk. We have 4000. So it still exists. I am not suggesting everything is perfect at all. I am saying the trend is not what most believe. And this is because of the availability heuristic cognitive illusion, the way the news business works, and a lack of evidence based research.
David,
I happen to know that since the middle of the 19th Century the birth rate has been declining which leads to an aging population.
I also know that younger people are more prone to violence.
The result of these is that the decrease of young people in proportion to the total population would correspond to a decrease in violence.
I have studied earthquakes in ways you can’t even imagine. About 13 years ago they picked up in intensity and magnitude. The USGS says the is nothing special. Bumps Come and go. Some religions have been saying how much worse they were when there was zero evidence of this. You can argue that the devastation is worse because of things like the Japan earthquake and the nuclear reactors. But the average earthquake–today we have rescue teams. We have medical help. There have been earthquakes in China and India 1000 years ago that killed almost a million people. A lot of this was because they just had no help. No ambulance or rescue team or medication to fight infection. They just payed there and died. I can’t imagine the distress. I spent months studying earthquakes. And pestilence. And years on the trend in morality, which I’m more interested in.
Kerwin. I thought that for the first couple years I was looking at this. The baby boom in Canada and the US. From is a young persons game.
But it’s been pointed out by people much smarter than me that this mathematically can’t count for it. It likely contributed to it but the contribution is actually pretty small given the decline. There are many possibilities and probably a combination of them are responsible. Expansion of the circle of empathy due to cosmopolitanism and literature and literacy is one. It’s harder to mirder someone when you can empathize with them. It’s easy when you think blacks or natives have no soul or are half animal.
As for earthquakes the graph goes flat for about 100 years with bumps up and down and then about 13 years ago spikes upwards.
This is for great earthquakes. Ones with magnitude of 7 or greater I believe.
I I can’t think of anyone that wrote a more complete book on the history of violence than Steven pinker. It is an 800 page book but hugely fascinating and filled with 100 graphs.
He he also has many videos on YouTube. And some of them are video presentations with a few of the graphs.
Moor find Manuel Eisner. He studied homicide in Europe for 30 years. The last 700 years of homicide. He has a projection for the future and a video that is long but looks at a ton of graphs I can’t think of anyone more knowledgable than him on homicide Watch his video on YouTube
Kerwin. This is why when watching police shows they try to personalize the hostage. Because it’s much harder to shoot a person who you can name and empathize with. The explosion of literature and literacy a couple centuries ago contributed greatly to the expanding Circe. The global village effect. We can relate more.
also people have gotten better at abstract thinking. They are getting smarter. The flinn effect. And when people get smarter they stop the stupid dumb violence. Like getting in bar fights or stabbing someone over a pool game.
I really really really thought and actually was telling people just what you told me. It made so much sense. It was so easy to understand. But it just doesn’t work.
Mad really the downward trend is much longer than this couple decade old trend. There was a counter trend in the Us and Canada before that that lasted a coupe decades. I Blaime this on cocaine. Lol.
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