4 ms·
It used to be common knowledge that a great™ ruler is the one who conquers new lands and kills his enemies, and it used to be common practice to kill or enslave
by staunton 3y ago
It used to be common knowledge that a great™ ruler is the one who conquers new lands and kills his enemies, and it used to be common practice to kill or enslave most civilians upon occupying a settlement. These things have changed, wouldn't you say?
- rayiner 3y agoHow much of that is moral progress and how much is technological and economic change? Do you need to conquer land when you could use drone strikes and economic sanctions to maintain hegemony? And did we stop enslaving people because people found Jesus—which I’d like to think is true—or because mechanization rendered unskilled slave labor much less valuable?
- staunton 3y agoI don't think separating these is that relevant here. People get told that certain things are good and right, which they then mostly do, these things have changed over time, I would claim to the better, and this is the claim I'm debating. Generally, such memetic evolution arises from competing drives to be adversarial or cooperate with others. Over time, people have found that cooperation is better in a vast variety of environments and economic or technological conditions. We are very slowly solving the Prisoner's dilemma. Even if the goal of maintaining hegemony doesn't change, the people being occasionally bombed with drones will still prefer that situation to being conquered by Gengis Khan. Maybe one day the hegemon will only need to brainwash them using propaganda instead of bombing them, and then maybe one day just have a reasonable discussion with them and still be able to achieve the goals. This in my view constitutes progress. Neither am I claiming that this progress is monotonous, eternal or inevitable. It's an observation about human history.