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JoshuaZ comments on Rationality Quotes May 2012 - Less Wrong
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Not much revolutionary or counter-revolutionary terror, no death camps, comparatively little secret police. Little police and policing in general, actually; you could ride from one end of Europe to another without any prior arrangements, and if you looked alright everyone would let you in. The high and mighty being content with merely existing at the top of traditional "divinely ordained" hierarchy and not having the Will zur Macht that enables really serious tyranny, not attempting to forge new meanings and reality while dragging their subjects to violent insanity.
I agree that it was a cruel, narrow-minded and miserable world that denied whole classes and races a glimpse of hope without a second thought. But we went from one nightmare through a worse one towards a dubious future. There's not much to celebrate so far.
It argues for a thought pattern and attitude to life that Christianity also exhibits at the best of times, but against the belief in supernatural.
Much of this is simply not the case or ignores the largescale other problems. It may help to read Steven Pinker's book "The Better Angels of Our Nature" which makes clear how murder, and warfare (both large and small) were much more common historically.
I've read a summary. I'm mostly playing the devil's advocate with this argument, to be honest. I have a habit of entertaining my far-type fears perhaps a touch more than they deserve.