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While I agree with your cultural differences conclusion, there are many examples of cruel authoritarians with absolute power in the history of almost all nation

by consp 7y ago

While I agree with your cultural differences conclusion, there are many examples of cruel authoritarians with absolute power in the history of almost all nations in at least most of Europe. Shared sentencing was common in feudal times though I do not know if capital punishment was among them. There are many examples in all regions of the world with respect to authoritarian cruelty and they are not solely an Asian thing.

namelosw 7y ago
I just found I forgot to attach the link for Nine_familial_exterminations[0] in the original reply. Shared sentencing was common, but I believe there's nuance between European feudal kingdoms and eastern empires. In Machiavelli's Price, he compared the French kingdom and the Ottoman empire. The former was based on the traditional feudal model - Nobels are powerful. And the latter was based on province model, there are officers but they don't own things, and can be replaced by the Sultan or the Emporer without any problems. I found for empires like China, Ottoman, people usually respect authoritarian more. My guess people might fear their local lords because they are cruel, but that's not consistent for every place and every decade in Europe because it's too divided. But for China, this continuously goes on for thousands of years. PS: I believe the shared sentencing is much more important than other cruel sentencings on this topic. Because it's not because it affects the criminal by his sense of responsibility for families. But instead, it's because other family members will first stop him, if they failed to stop him they will report directly. When I was a kid every time I tried to say something about politics everyone else's response was "stop that, don't ask for trouble". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations

by consp 7y ago

namelosw 7y ago

I just found I forgot to attach the link for Nine_familial_exterminations[0] in the original reply. Shared sentencing was common, but I believe there's nuance between European feudal kingdoms and eastern empires. In Machiavelli's Price, he compared the French kingdom and the Ottoman empire. The former was based on the traditional feudal model - Nobels are powerful. And the latter was based on province model, there are officers but they don't own things, and can be replaced by the Sultan or the Emporer without any problems. I found for empires like China, Ottoman, people usually respect authoritarian more. My guess people might fear their local lords because they are cruel, but that's not consistent for every place and every decade in Europe because it's too divided. But for China, this continuously goes on for thousands of years. PS: I believe the shared sentencing is much more important than other cruel sentencings on this topic. Because it's not because it affects the criminal by his sense of responsibility for families. But instead, it's because other family members will first stop him, if they failed to stop him they will report directly. When I was a kid every time I tried to say something about politics everyone else's response was "stop that, don't ask for trouble". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations