Historical Atrocities Comparisons

Why do you add the 'today' caveat? I think you again need to add an asterix to 'some of the worst atrocities committed' to instead be commonly recorded or the 'if the tree fell' analogy. What did the sacrifice culture of the Aztecs require to be sustained? Many many peoples of Europe were wiped from the earth (Old Prussians as an easy example). It wasn't about killing non-Europeans as Europeans were just as happy to genocide Europeans. How many many black slave

The author makes some good points, but I still disagree. If you look through history, people did barbaric things. Slavery happened. Genocides happened. In wars, the winning side would sometimes rape all the women in the conquered village before killing them. Don't even get into medieval torture devices.This quote from HPMOR is a bit long, but relevant and completely sums up the problem:"A few centuries earlier - I think it was definitely still around in the seventeenth century -

I meant far closer to the present than "past few hundred thousand years" but yes, that's why I used the past tense "did" rather than the present tense "does."Slavery? Genocide? Plunder? Rape? Religious violence? Slaughter of peoples they considered inferior? The "civilized" Christian cultures of the time did everything the Aztecs did, minus the human sacrifice.

So, let's consider the colonization of the Americas.Most people today would probably agree that mass murder and torture of aboriginal americans is bad. This was _not_ true at the time it happened.Bartolome de Las Casas is known _because_ he was an exception, and yet he thought a perfectly legit idea to use african slaves rather than americans, until his late years.Do bad things still happen? Yes. The difference is that more people now have a framework by which they would consider

Were they worst then Ancient Greecks, Romans, Sparta, whatever church done in European history, genocide of native Americans called for by American founding fathers? Human sacrifice was a real thing and Aztecs were cruel toward those they dominated. So were those above mentioned - and many colorful reports of human sacrifice are result of torture and paranoid imagination.Some dominant groups are more appaling then others - nazi and Stalin come to mind. But we are not throwing away everything

I think a part of the West could indeed understand (if not approve). Many things such as you mentioned happened in a large part of Europe as well, 19th century included: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_HorrorsYou can justify many things if you go digging through history this way.

While the parent comment is heated and not factually incorrect, the reason for the down-votes has to do with the willful ignorance of the west towards some of the worst atrocities committed by places from where it derives its value systems from.The Nazis were the bad guys and they are gone. The Soviets and USSR were the baddies after, and they are gone.The west and esp. US+UK pride themselves in never having been that evil. In the mean time, the EIC committed atrocities on a scale rivaling

Oh, sure; they did awful things. I'm just not sure that decimation is reasonable evidence for "Likewise, ancient culture and justice must be almost incomprehensible to us."; the Nazis did far, far worse, say.For that matter, their behavior in Gaul isn't evidence of it either; again, we unfortunately have many recent parallels.

It's fascinating to see how certain groups and civilizations like the Vikings end up being acceptable, even venerated in our society despite their horrific behaviour (by current standards at least).For example:- Roman empire, slavery, crucifixion, invasions ... where to start, perhaps 400,000 deaths in the Colosseum alone https://darkrome.com/blog/Rome/7-b

Yeah, but you have the luxury of judging the actions of people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago from the comfort of your living-room recliner.According to your extremist logic, the following were all pretty much Hitler as well:- Mayans- Egyptians- Chinese- Mongols- Romans- Macedonians- Persians- Russians- Omayyad Caliphate- Ottoman Empire/Turkey- All african tribes who sold their brethren into slavery- French- British- Portuguese-