4 ms·

It doesn't seem like the world has changed that much in 60 years!

• lostlogin 13y ago
  You need to look at a longer time frame. Humans are slowly, but surely becoming less violent. Way too slowly though. The below link is probably the most interesting thing I've stumbled across on the Internet, although this is in a different form compared to how I first found it. http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker
  • kendalk 13y ago
    Quark: "Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don’t believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes." -- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Siege of AR-558 (#7.8) (1998)
    • vacri 13y ago
      Meh, it's not particularly insightful: "make someone fight for their survival and they'll fight for their survival" is what that quote boils down to. A sci-fi race that doesn't fight for survival when pressed is usually depicted as an uber-pacifistic race.
      • lostlogin 13y ago
        The fascinating thing about the Second World War is that several countries weren't fighting for survival, but for victory and power. Surely the big winner was the US. However Britain was in it to win from early on, as survival wasn't really the issue. The richer you were, the better you fared, unsurprisingly.
        • Kociub 13y ago
          Very well put
        • simonh 13y ago
          Survival wasn't really the issue? At the height of the U-Boat campaign we had a only few weeks worth of food supplies left in the country. We were loosing well over half a million tons of ships a month. If Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbour, the US would have just sat on it's hands and watched Britain collapse. Yes we broke the U-Boat codes, but without US ships and aircraft covering the western Atlantic, we wouldn't have been able to use that information to mount an effective anti U-Boat campaign.
          • lgieron 13y ago
            > Yes we broke the U-Boat codes The Enigma encoding was actually cracked by Polish mathematicians and handed to the UK during the summer of 1939. In exchange, Poles expected the UK to join them, were they to be attacked by Germans. Unfortunately, that part of the bargain never materialised.
          • philwelch 13y ago
            Britain kind of volunteered to join the war in the first place though.
          • lostlogin 13y ago
            And yet the army was built up and arms manufacturing was built up, at the expense of food production. Troops and tanks were being sent to Africa, even as Germany looked poised to in invade Britian. Yes, it was tight, but Britain was in it to win, not defend. British production outstripped Germany and when the Empire was included, it was vastly superior. It took time to ramp up, but Britain wasn't facing defeat. The tonnage of ships controlled and owned by Britain actually increased (though numbers fell), and additionally those controlled by not owned by Britain also helped. The actual loses weren't that big. In a bad patch, Nov 1940 to June 1941 it was 3.4%. There were later times when it reached similar rates. The British diet was vastly better than those on the continent by and large. Britain wasn't starving.
• kolev 13y ago
  Why the downvotes? This just reminded me about the ruins in Syria I saw earlier this week!