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One of the things that has happened to our society recently, is that we isolate ourselves from the messy details of our actions. In the past, if our society had

One of the things that has happened to our society recently, is that we isolate ourselves from the messy details of our actions. In the past, if our society had capital punishment - it was done in public and society was exposed to it. Now, it is done in a private, almost clinical environment. Dissections now days are only ever really carried out in sterile anatomy labs. In the past, everyone who ate meat, probably was familiar with butchering an animal. Now, we eat meat that is nicely pre-packaged and are blissfully unaware of the details. This is the case even with war. In the distant past, if you went to war, it was a bunch or regular people who stabbed or slashed their opponents. Over time this became longer ranged with fire arms, bombs, artillery etc. Now, with no draft, we basically have a warrior class, and with the advent of combat drones, the operator can control a missile drone in a foreign country from their desk in the US.

ataturk 8y ago
Actually, it is barely done at all. Tar and feathering is another one that should be brought back--the Clintons and the other crime lords in our government would have second thoughts after the hot tar treatment. Don't get me started with the "warrior class"--a bunch of drunks, mainly. The MIC sucking the life out of our society for their endless wars.
agumonkey 8y ago
There's a clear gradient toward virtuality. Ultra HD, VR goggles, social network.. I see a natural process of risk/cost reduction at play. Nobody likes to die, nobody likes to have negative emotions due to social interactions .. the market boils the frog very nicely.
onemoresoop 8y ago
> In the past, if our society had capital punishment - it was done in public and society was exposed to it. I am grateful that capital punishment in the public is gone and gowning away away in places where it's still happening. This is not for everyone to see. Why gratify the curiosity of the curious? Once you see a person executed you're no longer the same person.
- emptybits 8y ago
  > Once you see a person executed you're no longer the same person. If witnessing what your society does in your name causes you distress, it's worth some contemplation, don't you think? For example, if society is doing things "for me" behind closed doors and all I see are sanitized benefits (e.g. cheap gasoline, less stinky sewage, garbage that just vanishes, easy pieces of meat, etc.) then I'm at risk of asking for more things with nasty side-effects and I'll never really be in touch with what I'm doing to other people or the planet. IMO, violence (against people or animals or the environment) should always be witnessed and if it's done "for us", we should have to see and do our best to understand it.
  - jrace 8y ago
    At first I was against the idea of public executions, but you made a strong argument. >>I'll never really be in touch with what I'm doing to other people or the planet that right there changed my mind.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      The coliseum didn't reduce people's tolerance for violence, it normalized it.
  - user982 8y ago
    The implication that distress from public executions will engender the better angels of our nature is not well-founded. Audiences at public executions, past and present, cheer. Photos of public lynchings from the Jim Crow South show throngs of smiling faces. Thousands of people traveled across state lines to witness the spectacle of the last legal public hanging in Kentucky. The crowd at the last public beheading in France (in 1939) exhibited such "hysterical behavior" that public executions were immediately banned. Regular public violence is not rejected by human nature, it is normalized.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- 8y ago
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I don't think our exposure or lack thereof has affected our appetite for capital punishment - now that we don't see it I'd say there's much less of an appetite for it than a hundred years previous. Also, the modern human is much more aware of the the ravages of war - we see it on our screens all the time. If you weren't overseas, you wouldn't see any details during the world wars. I don't think that warfare is changing in any way to become more isolated from our actions - if it was more effective to tie a hundred blades to ourselves and hug others I'm sure that we'd be using that now if we could.
- tropo 8y ago
  Lack of timeliness has affected our appetite for capital punishment. Consider Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated president William McKinley. The assassin was electrocuted just 45 days after the president died. Today, 45 days is unimaginable. You couldn't even get the trial started in that time frame. These days, we execute people for crimes done a few decades prior.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    That seems to be from a desire to ensure that the people who are being murdered are the ones who are guilty. Are you saying that a closer proximity to the act would cause us to desire it more? In that case, it seems more like bloodlust than anything.
  - nkrisc 8y ago
    There's also the innocent people we've executed. That has soured appetite for it as well.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
"Exposed to it"? Hah. One of the main reasons Britain abolished public execution in the 1860s is they were too damn popular. Less isolating from the messy details of the deterrent sentence being carried out, more ceasing a drunken family day out tradition that's getting way out of hand. Sometimes tens of thousands would turn up at Newgate (Outside the Old Bailey prison, which stood on the site of today's court. It's the UK's major criminal court so often on TV) or the other major gallows. Enough that it wasn't uncommon for there to be deaths in the crowd. Plenty of merchants selling food, beer and souvenirs. Perfect opportunity for the city's pickpockets to have a profitable working day out. Madame Tussaud’s would buy the executed's clothes and a death mask to ensure the fun spectacle was available for anyone who couldn't get there on the day. The broadsides[1] (single sheet news bills, not naval gunnery) for a particular execution might sometimes be printed in the millions. A couple of million were printed for the hanging of a banker executed for fraud. Hmm. The 2008 banking crisis might have turned out different if that law were still on the books. :) So in the 1860s when public execution (and hanging, drawing and quartering for treason) ended it was with typical Victorian double standard. Now, on meat sales I'm inclined to agree. The butcher showed the process quite plainly. Tesco and other supermarkets hide it to such an extent that knowledge of cut or what comes from where is minimal. Kid's especially, aren't learning where food is really from, and I think they should. [1] https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/broadside-grand-moral-spectacle https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/broadside-grand-moral-spe...

ataturk 8y ago

Actually, it is barely done at all. Tar and feathering is another one that should be brought back--the Clintons and the other crime lords in our government would have second thoughts after the hot tar treatment. Don't get me started with the "warrior class"--a bunch of drunks, mainly. The MIC sucking the life out of our society for their endless wars.

agumonkey 8y ago

There's a clear gradient toward virtuality. Ultra HD, VR goggles, social network.. I see a natural process of risk/cost reduction at play. Nobody likes to die, nobody likes to have negative emotions due to social interactions .. the market boils the frog very nicely.

onemoresoop 8y ago

> In the past, if our society had capital punishment - it was done in public and society was exposed to it. I am grateful that capital punishment in the public is gone and gowning away away in places where it's still happening. This is not for everyone to see. Why gratify the curiosity of the curious? Once you see a person executed you're no longer the same person.

emptybits 8y ago
> Once you see a person executed you're no longer the same person. If witnessing what your society does in your name causes you distress, it's worth some contemplation, don't you think? For example, if society is doing things "for me" behind closed doors and all I see are sanitized benefits (e.g. cheap gasoline, less stinky sewage, garbage that just vanishes, easy pieces of meat, etc.) then I'm at risk of asking for more things with nasty side-effects and I'll never really be in touch with what I'm doing to other people or the planet. IMO, violence (against people or animals or the environment) should always be witnessed and if it's done "for us", we should have to see and do our best to understand it.
- jrace 8y ago
  At first I was against the idea of public executions, but you made a strong argument. >>I'll never really be in touch with what I'm doing to other people or the planet that right there changed my mind.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    The coliseum didn't reduce people's tolerance for violence, it normalized it.
- user982 8y ago
  The implication that distress from public executions will engender the better angels of our nature is not well-founded. Audiences at public executions, past and present, cheer. Photos of public lynchings from the Jim Crow South show throngs of smiling faces. Thousands of people traveled across state lines to witness the spectacle of the last legal public hanging in Kentucky. The crowd at the last public beheading in France (in 1939) exhibited such "hysterical behavior" that public executions were immediately banned. Regular public violence is not rejected by human nature, it is normalized.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
8y ago

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

I don't think our exposure or lack thereof has affected our appetite for capital punishment - now that we don't see it I'd say there's much less of an appetite for it than a hundred years previous. Also, the modern human is much more aware of the the ravages of war - we see it on our screens all the time. If you weren't overseas, you wouldn't see any details during the world wars. I don't think that warfare is changing in any way to become more isolated from our actions - if it was more effective to tie a hundred blades to ourselves and hug others I'm sure that we'd be using that now if we could.

tropo 8y ago
Lack of timeliness has affected our appetite for capital punishment. Consider Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated president William McKinley. The assassin was electrocuted just 45 days after the president died. Today, 45 days is unimaginable. You couldn't even get the trial started in that time frame. These days, we execute people for crimes done a few decades prior.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  That seems to be from a desire to ensure that the people who are being murdered are the ones who are guilty. Are you saying that a closer proximity to the act would cause us to desire it more? In that case, it seems more like bloodlust than anything.
- nkrisc 8y ago
  There's also the innocent people we've executed. That has soured appetite for it as well.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

"Exposed to it"? Hah. One of the main reasons Britain abolished public execution in the 1860s is they were too damn popular. Less isolating from the messy details of the deterrent sentence being carried out, more ceasing a drunken family day out tradition that's getting way out of hand. Sometimes tens of thousands would turn up at Newgate (Outside the Old Bailey prison, which stood on the site of today's court. It's the UK's major criminal court so often on TV) or the other major gallows. Enough that it wasn't uncommon for there to be deaths in the crowd. Plenty of merchants selling food, beer and souvenirs. Perfect opportunity for the city's pickpockets to have a profitable working day out. Madame Tussaud’s would buy the executed's clothes and a death mask to ensure the fun spectacle was available for anyone who couldn't get there on the day. The broadsides[1] (single sheet news bills, not naval gunnery) for a particular execution might sometimes be printed in the millions. A couple of million were printed for the hanging of a banker executed for fraud. Hmm. The 2008 banking crisis might have turned out different if that law were still on the books. :) So in the 1860s when public execution (and hanging, drawing and quartering for treason) ended it was with typical Victorian double standard. Now, on meat sales I'm inclined to agree. The butcher showed the process quite plainly. Tesco and other supermarkets hide it to such an extent that knowledge of cut or what comes from where is minimal. Kid's especially, aren't learning where food is really from, and I think they should. [1] https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/broadside-grand-moral-spectacle https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/broadside-grand-moral-spe...