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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Daly who wrote (421190)	10/19/2019 10:43:03 AM
From: neolib	1 Recommendation Recommended By research1234 Respond to of 541859

Well in terms of % though, it might be rather different.

To: Tom Daly who wrote (421190)	10/19/2019 11:23:41 AM
From: koan	Respond to of 541859

My point Tom, is with "intent" versus "capability". What if the war mongers before the last century had the fire power of the last century? We most likely would not exist today. There was only more killing because technology made that possible, not because people were less humane in the last century. Capability is an important variable. Imagine if Hitler had nuclear weapons! To measure intent it is much better to look at norms and mores and human behavior of the last centuries e.g. slavery, racism, attitude toward the LGBT community and general morals. If you read books of the centuries before the last century people were barbarians e.g. public floggings and hangings, torture was common all over the world. In the old west men carried Indian scalps on their horses and terrible abuse of women and minorities was common. And if you read books by guys like Larry McMurtry about the old west, they describe people who are so callous and unaware of ethics they come across as very dull. We are behaving better than we have ever done in history, it is just that we have also created the means of our destruction which never existed before. Just like we are now extincting so many species----because we can---and we can also end life on earth as we know it. And not because we are behaving worse. We have always behaved badly. "There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war." Will Durant <<The last century was not any worse than any other preceding century as far as general conflict goes. My guess is that the 80-100 million war dead corpses would disagree with you. That body count was probably the highest of any century since we all climbed down from trees & walked on 2 legs. And this all occurred in a century in which we were all supposedly more "civilized" than ever before. << The last century was not any worse than any other preceding century as far as general conflict goes. My guess is that the 80-100 million war dead corpses would disagree with you. That body count was probably the highest of any century since we all climbed down from trees & walked on 2 legs. And this all occurred in a century in which we were all supposedly more "civilized" than ever before.

To: Tom Daly who wrote (421190)	10/19/2019 1:13:39 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541859

Yeah, our methods of killing have really improved. At the beginning of the first World war, the Brits were ordering men to march in formation, upright, into machine gun fire, and charging them with cavalry! They quickly learned that was foolish and stupid. That was with mechanized warfare. Now, we've got nuclear weapons no one wants to use, and mechanized warfare aided by computers and AI. We're making drones like crazy because the future battlefield will be so deadly, you'd have to be insane to even be on it, as mere human.