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Sounds on brand for people who regularly tortured children to death so that their tears would placate the gods and fertilize the Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org

Sounds on brand for people who regularly tortured children to death so that their tears would placate the gods and fertilize the Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%A1loc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%A1loc Spicy take: Aztec society was right up there with Sparta in terms of being some of the most fucked up shit ever on this planet.

dyauspitr 2y ago
It’s always insane to notice that anything can be normalized. I bet those people weren’t strongly affected by death, murder, rape, gore etc.
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  Indifference isn't a virtue. If you try to pursue it, know that wherever the lines are, someone can push them even further. The sadist will always outpace the stoic.
- berndi 2y ago
  I’m not a vegetarian or animal rights advocate, but an argument could be made that cruelty to non-human animals is similarly normalized in today’s world, perhaps seen as a necessary evil to satisfy our appetite for food or fashion items.
  - jorvi 2y ago
    “Cruelty” is the default state of things. It is not a behavior we lower ourselves to, it is who we are. What we must do is rise above it. > The Patrician took a sip of his beer. ‘I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.’ - Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
    - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      Cruelty isn't common in the animal world, but it is very common in humans. Some animals play with their food, but they're not doing it because they get joy from inflicting pain, like we do. As far as "an otter eating a fish alive", that's not cruel or evil, that's survival. Weird quote, man.
      - fasa99 2y ago
        bro animals can be vengeful see- https://www.fox26houston.com/news/elephant-kills-indian-woman-and-returns-to-her-funeral-to-attack-her-corpse https://www.fox26houston.com/news/elephant-kills-indian-woma... that, and cats, cats can be very vengeful creatures
      - jorvi 2y ago
        Joy is a release of serotonin. I can promise you orcas toying with their prey are getting huge releases of it. And just to give another data point that some animals chase joy: there are certain types of dolphins and monkeys that use animal toxin to get high. Time for you to go back to the school benches, man.
      - hollerith 2y ago
        Yes, people and their inventions belong to the Malign Realm and are completely different from animals and nature, which belong to the Wholesome Realm.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
I don't know if Sparta would crack the top 10 for me. The Celts, if the Roman authors are to be believed, were pretty metal. Sacrifice, impalement, hanging severed limbs or running into battle with them (naked, drenched in their blood), etc. Vikings were pretty brutal, both in their raiding/raping/pillaging/murder, and their treatment of slaves, their enemies, and people who committed crimes. Slaves [typically female] were killed and buried with their masters (similar to Egyptian and other ancient cultures), but not before being gang-raped in a drug/alcohol stupor and stabbed to death. Medieval Europe could be pretty atrocious. Besides the harshness of life for most of the population and their indebtedness to the nobility and church, punishments were often incredibly brutal for even minor crimes, and many punishments extended to not adhering to religious dogma. Plenty of ethnic and religious cleansing to go around then too. The Maori, Hawaiians, and other polynesian groups could be pretty brutal, torturing, killing and eating their victims. Ritual sacrifice of slaves was common, sometimes throwing children into the sea (the Guanches). African American slaves (you know, the people whose labor we built our nation on, during/after which we committed ethnic genocide against all the native peoples here?) were worse treated than Helots. At least Helots got to live quasi-normal lives, keeping some of their produce, raising families, having homes. We killed something like three Nazi Holocausts-worth of African Americans, after brutalizing them for centuries. So Western Culture definitely is up there with the most brutal societies. Native Americans could be pretty brutal too, regularly involved with scalping, skinning, torturing, on occasion forcing their victims to consume... themselves. Nazi-era Germany and the USSR were also pretty brutal, with Russia having a muuuuch larger death toll, literally starving their own citizens in addition to the work/death camps for crimes such as political disagreement, wrong ethnicity/gender/sexual identity, and various crimes. But, yeah, Aztecs win the most-fucked-up-practices-in-history award.
- caesil 2y ago
  The systematic, public aspect of the killings and the fetishization of maximal pain and suffering is the fucked up part. Few societies ever where public delight in unthinkable cruelty was so off-the-charts.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago

dyauspitr 2y ago

It’s always insane to notice that anything can be normalized. I bet those people weren’t strongly affected by death, murder, rape, gore etc.

schmidtleonard 2y ago
Indifference isn't a virtue. If you try to pursue it, know that wherever the lines are, someone can push them even further. The sadist will always outpace the stoic.
berndi 2y ago
I’m not a vegetarian or animal rights advocate, but an argument could be made that cruelty to non-human animals is similarly normalized in today’s world, perhaps seen as a necessary evil to satisfy our appetite for food or fashion items.
- jorvi 2y ago
  “Cruelty” is the default state of things. It is not a behavior we lower ourselves to, it is who we are. What we must do is rise above it. > The Patrician took a sip of his beer. ‘I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.’ - Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    Cruelty isn't common in the animal world, but it is very common in humans. Some animals play with their food, but they're not doing it because they get joy from inflicting pain, like we do. As far as "an otter eating a fish alive", that's not cruel or evil, that's survival. Weird quote, man.
    - fasa99 2y ago
      bro animals can be vengeful see- https://www.fox26houston.com/news/elephant-kills-indian-woman-and-returns-to-her-funeral-to-attack-her-corpse https://www.fox26houston.com/news/elephant-kills-indian-woma... that, and cats, cats can be very vengeful creatures
    - jorvi 2y ago
      Joy is a release of serotonin. I can promise you orcas toying with their prey are getting huge releases of it. And just to give another data point that some animals chase joy: there are certain types of dolphins and monkeys that use animal toxin to get high. Time for you to go back to the school benches, man.
    - hollerith 2y ago
      Yes, people and their inventions belong to the Malign Realm and are completely different from animals and nature, which belong to the Wholesome Realm.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

I don't know if Sparta would crack the top 10 for me. The Celts, if the Roman authors are to be believed, were pretty metal. Sacrifice, impalement, hanging severed limbs or running into battle with them (naked, drenched in their blood), etc. Vikings were pretty brutal, both in their raiding/raping/pillaging/murder, and their treatment of slaves, their enemies, and people who committed crimes. Slaves [typically female] were killed and buried with their masters (similar to Egyptian and other ancient cultures), but not before being gang-raped in a drug/alcohol stupor and stabbed to death. Medieval Europe could be pretty atrocious. Besides the harshness of life for most of the population and their indebtedness to the nobility and church, punishments were often incredibly brutal for even minor crimes, and many punishments extended to not adhering to religious dogma. Plenty of ethnic and religious cleansing to go around then too. The Maori, Hawaiians, and other polynesian groups could be pretty brutal, torturing, killing and eating their victims. Ritual sacrifice of slaves was common, sometimes throwing children into the sea (the Guanches). African American slaves (you know, the people whose labor we built our nation on, during/after which we committed ethnic genocide against all the native peoples here?) were worse treated than Helots. At least Helots got to live quasi-normal lives, keeping some of their produce, raising families, having homes. We killed something like three Nazi Holocausts-worth of African Americans, after brutalizing them for centuries. So Western Culture definitely is up there with the most brutal societies. Native Americans could be pretty brutal too, regularly involved with scalping, skinning, torturing, on occasion forcing their victims to consume... themselves. Nazi-era Germany and the USSR were also pretty brutal, with Russia having a muuuuch larger death toll, literally starving their own citizens in addition to the work/death camps for crimes such as political disagreement, wrong ethnicity/gender/sexual identity, and various crimes. But, yeah, Aztecs win the most-fucked-up-practices-in-history award.

caesil 2y ago
The systematic, public aspect of the killings and the fetishization of maximal pain and suffering is the fucked up part. Few societies ever where public delight in unthinkable cruelty was so off-the-charts.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago