levels of Atrocity (Modern/SF vs. Bronze Age/Iron Age)

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well I was in a discussion on another board, and the question of just how bad were atrocities, in comparison to each other, while one strain of throught was about bodycount, including killing whole universes, just to have a place to stow your gear (Wildstorm, Amber) the question on the other side what about those very personal atrocities. You know most of human history is full of them, We win, we kill your people except for those we keep as slaves, rape or work them to death, salt the earth so nothing can grow where your city once was, etc.

[Setzer]

It might be worth pointing out that (on average) as societies grow more reluctant to commit atrocities, they also gain the ability to create greater ones. So while the Assyrians may see nothing wrong with slaughtering entire villages and enslaving the survivors, they wouldn't cause nearly as much death as, say, an army with artillery and machine guns.

[The Yosemite Bear]

True, when one consideres that Bosnia, Darfur, and Rowanda pretty much was the way the whole world worked about a thousand years ago. But is the Dropping of an atomic bomb (End of WWII), or a massive artillery or firebombing campaign (Dresden/Stalingrad), or sending your troops in like Dark Ages sociopaths (Nanking) worse?

[Samuel]

while one strain of throught was about bodycount, including killing whole universes, just to have a place to stow your gear (Wildstorm, Amber)

This is worse. Exterminating quadrillions to have more room for your bling beats out anything anyone in human history has ever done.

Dropping of an atomic bomb (End of WWII), or a massive artillery or firebombing campaign (Dresden/Stalingrad), or sending your troops in like Dark Ages sociopaths (Nanking) worse?

Nanking is worse because the others served legitimate military purposes. It was needless violence and carnage.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well when one considered that Chaos destoryed thousands of universes, just to slow down Amber's forces.

Of course Amber states they have no more comoulsion i killing an entire univers, as you do, killing bactewria while makig tea...

[Samuel]

Of course Amber states they have no more comoulsion i killing an entire univers, as you do, killing bactewria while makig tea...

They don't live in a universe? I don't have any knowledge of the series you are talking about.

[Surlethe]

FYI: If this turns into a discussion of SF in particular, I'm going to move it to OSF.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Of course Amber states they have no more comoulsion i killing an entire univers, as you do, killing bactewria while makig tea...

They don't live in a universe? I don't have any knowledge of the series you are talking about.

The Chronicles of Amber, an excellent fantasy series by Roger Zelazny. There are two worlds, Amber and Chaos that they consider truly real; and an infinite number of Shadow worlds that they don't consider truly real; like ours. And one of the main villains, Brand tried to erase all of them ( he intended to recreate all, or perhaps just some in his image ). Some factions of Chaos wanted to destroy all of Shadow, full stop. Note that the truth of their view of things is highly debatable at best.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course Amber states they have no more comoulsion i killing an entire univers, as you do, killing bactewria while makig tea...

They don't live in a universe? I don't have any knowledge of the series you are talking about.

They live in a multiverse. They're casual about destroying someone else's universe.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I would say that a better general metric for the awefulness of an atrocity is to look at the proportion of the population (at whatever scale the atrocity affects) that is killed/raped/enslaved. The null hypothesis for this sort of thing is based upon scaling of population size. A huge city being slaughtered back in the bronze age is equivalent really in death count to a stray blockbuster bomb being dropped on a suburb. The added death count in raw numbers is a technological and population size issue. Not a moral one.

[Frank Hipper]

I think atrocity can best be gauged by the intended amount of suffering; shooting X number of innocent people in the back of the head is a nightmarish scenario.

Skinning X number of innocent people alive is much worse.

[Anguirus]

I think that humans are wired so that it's not natural to act in a manner consistent with utilitarian ethics. It's much easier to hit a button or give an order to kill thousands than to kill one man yourself. IIRC Hitler was quite squeamish.

Also, think about how easy it was for George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq (even falsifying evidence to do it, so it was clearly a calculated decision). This isn't to say that the decision was trivial for him (either right or wrong) but I'm willing to bet that it was easier on his conscience to set that in motion than, say, it would have been to personally shoot Saddam Hussein in the forehead. And yet it unquestionably would have been morally superior to shoot one guy instead of start the Iraq War.

Small but up-close atrocities may be less severe than big but distant ones, but I think in a visceral manner they FEEL worse, both to the actor and, before proper thought is applied, to the student of history.