Lloyd deMause

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

I've been reading his work for a few months now, and it's staggering. If you're not familiar with it, a lot of it is just a frakkload of evidence that mass child rape/torture/murder were normal throughout pretty much the entire world for most of the last 2000+ years. For example, deMause found out that there were areas (not sure how vast) in Europe where parents could hire people to beat their children for them.

We're talking billions of very young people abused and killed, all things considered. It makes me wonder: was massacring a village back then as immoral as it is today, seeing how maybe most of the people in older-times villages were apparently sadomasochistic pedophiles? Has most of humanity (historical relativism aside) historically deserved to be executed for what it has done?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Has most of humanity (historical relativism aside) historically deserved to be executed for what it has done?

Yes. Pick any nation or ethnic group at random. At some point in time, the group you picked has committed acts that we would recognize today as "crimes against humanity".

Our modern sensitivities and technology have given us a thin veneer of civility but lurking underneath that we are pretty much all orcs. *shrug* I don't like it but I do have to recognize it as the truth.

[Avatar]

Agreed. What is moral or immoral is a fluid concept. In Europe, rape and pillage of a besieged city or fortress was still common during the Napoleonic wars at least, if not later.

--A

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

But, supposing for the sake of argument that being a child molesting infanticidaire merits capital punishment, then should we conclude that most people (not just groups, mind you, but really virtually all people even thought of as individuals, apparently) throughout history ideally would have been executed for their way of life?

I'm reminded of vague information I had on the 1994 Rwandan genocide, something like 3,000,000 Rwandans could've been charged with murder, or about half the surviving population (I think). When applying the death penalty itself would in principle lead to massive death, would it really be moral to apply the thing? Is there some way to make amends for even the worst kinds of crimes?

(Keep in mind as far as deMause is concerned that the psychological cause of the scale of what he documents was transmitted from generation to generation in precisely the way that we understand child abuse to perpetuate itself from abuser to abused to abused-becoming-an-abuser, etc.)

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Is there some way to make amends for even the worst kinds of crimes?

Only when individuals or small groups are concerned. If one person commits heinous crimes then you catch them, try them, and let justice system render its verdict. If a dozen people commit heinous crimes then you catch them, try them, and let the justice system render its verdict. If 10,000 people commit heinous crimes there isn't a whole lot that can be done other than trying to identify and capture the leaders because you will never catch everyone and bring them to justice.

For the most part, punishing people for crimes isn't about making amends or providing restitution. You cannot bring a murder victim back from death, you cannot unshoot someone, unrape someone, or undo the emotional damage a crime inflicts. Even when you consider slavery here in the United States there is no "making amends"; the only thing that can be do is to do what we already do--admit that it was a horrible mistake and never do it again.