So, how long have people had empathy?

When I started reviewing history I noticed how no matter who was involved in a conflict the victors would always do unspeakable monstrous things to their enemies. Nevermind just killing them, but killing them in needlessly tortuous ways. Personally I couldn't imagine doing such things to even my worst enemies or any kind of creature. So I am wondering when did we all become a bunch of empathic pussies? I imagine it was a slow gradual process but what was the big turning point in history? Was it the proliferation of Christian Doctrine?

>worst enemies or any kind of creature. So I am wondering when did we all become a bunch of empathic pussies? I imagine it was a slow gradual process but what was the big turning point in history? Was it the proliferation of Christian Doctrine?


Constantine, go to bed, you're drunk.

I'm a newfag on this board. I didn't even understand what your objection was.

It's only a thing in the West, really.

Since the enlightenment before that (and even today outside the west) people were/are animals

Rulers tend to be psychopaths, this is true today and was even more true in the past. Humans have had empathy since long before we were humans, other mammals and even birds demonstrate empathy so it's clearly a very ancient adaption.

Because modern man champions the weak, you can't imagine the strong.

Are you edgy faggots really trying to say mass rape, murder, and or slavery of a defeated people(including children) is a "cool" manly thing? If so, I feel sorry for you.

You're all idiots, the point of being cruel to conquered peoples was to demoralize them so you wouldn't have to fight them again.

If you march into someone else's territory, kill them, take their stuff, and then just left, they'd simmer for a bit, then get pissed off and attack you back at the earliest convenience.

Doing sick messed up shit like building a pyramid of skulls was so that the survivors would go "Fuck that shit, I'm not fighting the Assyrians, they'll cut our skin off if we lose, lets just pay taxes and keep our noses down."

The reason we don't do that kind of thing anymore isn't because we're so much nicer, its because modern western powers are so OP compared to desert-dwelling goat-fuckers that such a tactic is superfluous. Instead, they use it on us [with some moderate success].

As to enslaving the fallen, this was a simple matter. There wasn't exactly POW camps in the bronze age. Plus free slaves.

>You're all idiots, the point of being cruel to conquered peoples was to demoralize them so you wouldn't have to fight them again

Except it has the opposite effect. If you want to defeat your foes completely, then treating them fairly OR genociding them are your only options.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with that assessment, but yes many empires made great strides through benevolency instead.

In any case I'm not justifying or critiquing the tactic, merely explaining it.

Portugal, The Netherlands, The Delian League, the Ottoman Empire and the Han Dynasty all say 'hi'.

>I have never once read a single account of war by any diplomat, general, great leader, or even historian: The Post

This is why you will never rule beyond your bedroom, because you have every notion of how to make enemies and no idea of how to pacify a populace.

Since the Jews flipped morality on its head to sabotage the goyim

t. machiavelli

since women went on pills and peed in our drinking water.

>Rulers tend to be psychopaths, this is true today and was even more true in the past. Humans have had empathy since long before we were humans, other mammals and even birds demonstrate empathy so it's clearly a very ancient adaption.

how convenient that many of us developed freedom from guilt so that we can enjoy our privilege at the expense of the sentients we enslave and exterminate every single day for us to enjoy sausage and technology made of coltan

the human behavior that we see today I think is belived to have started popping up 100,000 years ago. Before that point there were humans who physically looked like humans but lacked the personality finesse to be socially adept. Humans are highly adaptable, ancient war was brutal and they adapted to accommodate that brutality

But I ain't know historian im just some highshcool kid who was taught that the founding fathers stole the constitution from the Iroquois Indians XXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDX

There's basically no consequences for soldiers committing war atrocities like mass rape and murder of civilians (it just gets treated as "collateral damage"), and since the people they do it to are the despised enemy and therefore subhuman, it really doesn't leave much of an imprint on their conscience.

That being said, not everyone is like that of course. There will be those who want nothing to do with it, but the majority of soldiers will. Vae victis and all that.

Empathy is natural selection started long before humans were a thing. Its even present in mammals.

I would say empathy is what allowed humans to form groups and evolve past small tribal groups.

Only some people have empathy

I used to be a "hurr hurr fifty shades of gray" faggot

But all the evidence says yes, some people really are just evil

Fortunately most of the really sick fucks killed each other in the wars

Emptying the prisons of all the sick fucks, sticking them in the army or navy and shipping them abroad to die is something that most countries have done for millenia. It means you don't have them smashing the crap out of your own civilisation and they hopefully take out a few of the nutters that other civilisations are pointing your way. When you have long periods of peace, this stops and civilisations tend to tear themselves apart by their own self polluting gene pool.

No I didn't mean to paint empathy in a dirisive way. that last comment about us being pussies was kind of just fired off. If anything I can't really emphasize how grateful I am to not live in a time with this kind of barbarism and savagery but on the other hand it terrifies me that everyday people would be inclined to act like this if all that was a different was their cultural milieu. It seems, well, inhumane.

>how long have people had empathy?
Since access to basic food and housing stopped being an issue for 99% of the population.

Soft lives create soft people, while hard lives create hard people.

The big turning point was WW2, with the unprecedented media coverage of the war we needed to sanitise the bloody thing for the public and of course that war was simplified to good vs evil like no war before.
So since we've told everyone we're the goodies we need to act like it (or at least present it that way).

That's literally the entire point of Christianity: eradicating violence by destroying the myth that violence is justified and caused by gods, and revealing that the persecuted is innocent and the persecutor always responsible for his violence and in the wrong.

Of course it hasn't completely eradicated violence yet, but it has massively reduced it and continues to do so including in its secularised form.

really makes u think

being hard doesn't mean being a fucking sociopath

Only the most dramatic events are documented in history. For the majority of human civilization, we've been getting along just fine.

It does if you're a sheltered autist who never had a relationship with your father.

>all this Christian slave morality
y'all motherfuckers need Nietzsche

damn, now that was just uncalled for

more like Nietwit

>hey guys Schopenhauer was actually wrong guys because I want him to be but we're not going back to the solidarity of a common christian identity because I think we should just jerk ourselves off instead.

Since Christianity

But why can't I touch my peepee?

Normies still don't have empathy though

How's being 14 going for ya?