Can History Decline?

foreign [Applause] the pope needed to convince Europeans to embark on a crusade evil Persians Urban II told a French crowd in 1095 were a foreign race a race absolutely alien to God that have invaded the land of those Christians and have reduced the people with sword rapine and Fire they've burned God's churches tortured Christians desecrated religious icons and furthermore Europe is too small for us there's not enough Farmland it's bound by mountains and sea and so we squabble amongst ourselves he said enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher he said rest that Land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves Urban and the priesthood raised an army of a hundred thousand men from all walks of life Nobles and peasants to march on Jerusalem led by a monk called Peter the hermit what resulted was unimaginable Muslims and Christians on both sides hung the slain enemies to rot to Long walls skewered their heads on Spears and catapulted those heads over each other's defenses raped burned and terrorized cities killed children amputated Limbs and left each other to die slowly in agony there were reports of soldiers wading through pools of blood up to their ankles when winter came and the soldiers began to starve they ate the Dead rumors spread that the coming Christians were cannibalistic Savages Terror set in one Crusader wrote some of the pagans were mercifully beheaded others tortured for a long time and burnt to death in searing Flames piles of heads hands and feet lay in the houses and streets they were stabbing women who had fled into palaces and dwellings seizing infants by The Souls of their feet from their mother's laps or cradles and dashing them against the walls and breaking their necks they were slaughtering some with weapons or striking them down with stones when the pope heard all of this he expressed some doubts about ordinary Christians motives for joining the Crusade but he drew on a doctrine that he was helping to develop what we'd Now call just War Theory stemming from Christian thought back to Saint Augustine that some Wars are necessary God needed defending yes Jesus had told Saint Peter to sheath his sword but he had not told him to discard it altogether Urban told Christendom that the Soldiers of Christ would receive Eternal reward in the afterlife Millions died in the Crusades but a few centuries before in China somewhere between 10 million and 30 million died during the Anne Lucian Rebellion one of the worst recorded catastrophes in history but the vast majority of the deaths weren't directly from the violent Civil War they were from the resulting collapse of canals and irrigation systems that peasants relied on for food similar famines happened in Bengal under British colonialism during the Holocaust the murders were more deliberate but even then as the philosopher Hannah Arendt famously observed it was often banal bureaucrats doing their job checking off lists running the trains ordering gas following orders being told we're at War it's a horrible but necessary evil from Aristotle to the Atlantic slave trade the justification was the same a necessary evil look how incapable these native men and women are if they weren't under our care like animals they just wouldn't survive [Music] these few examples illustrate the diversity of ways evil murder Warfare catastrophe torture and genocide have been rationalized throughout history and the differences in how they were caused and this leads to a question how do we make sense of this diversity the Dark Side of History suggests violence death destruction sadism slavery famine in short human pain but it also includes unintended consequences like the famine during Mao's Great Leap Forward or maybe psychological Darkness prisons of the Mind as much as the body depression anxiety fear variable much more difficult to measure there's also the matter of perspective death and illness that's the result of a life of poverty say is rarely placed in the same category as murder but why if pain is the criteria then pain is pain is a long life of boredom any better than a short one of war is a long torturous life in a Victorian Factory worse than a quick death a deaths from pollution any different to her deaths from war any attempt to judge history assumes certain biases certain starting criteria ideological perspectives in a pioneering French study for example Jean-Claude Chesney looked at the Historical Trends in violent death in France and realized that things like suicide and car accidents had to be included as much as violence from things like War car accidents today are the eighth leading cause of death worldwide but it's unlikely that we call them an evil I think then that it's useful to start from a common assumption that the world has got better that violence and pain have declined and that freedom wealth and comfort have all increased this is what's often referred to as wiggish history a so-called civilizing thesis it's a narrative in historian Philip Dwyer's words that's wrapped in a constant triumphalist linear march across history towards a better less violent future we've evolved biologically socially culturally psychologically from Savages to the Civilized from grunting cavemen to polite ladies and gentlemen from superstitious pagans to enlightened scientists from kallus torturers to empathetic teachers really true if so why if not why does it seem so the idea that history improves over time has taken many forms in 1931 the historian Herbert Butterfield published a book criticizing what he called the wiggish interpretation of History named after the Progressive Party in Britain at the time describing it as the tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs to praise revolutions provided they have been successful to emphasize certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present we can see the tendency in many thinkers before and since Hegel Marx Kant the idea of the end of History Stephen pinker's work recently on the decline of violence and many more for these thinkers in various ways history has progressed through the unfolding of Reason through Economic Development the overcoming of logical or social contradictions or through the Triumph of liberal ideas through Innovation through scientific and technological progress so where in hell do we start there's quite a history to choose from those Crusades were ironically justified by Christian ideology of turning the other cheek a set of ideas that were themselves responding to a world of Roman violence crucifixion was so common in Rome that 6 000 slaves were crucified along 120 mile stretch of road after spartacus's Revolt to take just one of the most gruesome examples each with nails through the wrists and feet the weight of the body pulling The Wretched down making it difficult to breathe the legs sometimes broken each death taken somewhere between a few hours and a few days I think it's safe to say we're unlikely to see something like this today and that's the progressives point that we have in some ways improved but I think it does no good to look so far back the more interesting historical cases are the ones where despite supposed progress we seem to have also degenerated in some way like how science technology and modern methods of bureaucracy were necessary for the holocles to take place in the way that it did or how nuclear fission leads to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima these are Frankenstein moments when progress becomes Faustian when Enlightenment reverts to mythology when Innovation trips itself up when Prometheus gives us fire and gets punished for it by having his liver pept out by an eagle for eternity these moments are where wisdom lies these are the moments when we're caught out as a species by tripwires of our own hubris after all what is the first technological innovation the first use of Fire by our ancestors around 400 000 years ago it might have been the first step on a path of historical development it gave us the ability to unlock energy by cooking and warming lengthen the hours of light LED to metal work and much more but fire also Burns it kills it led to violence and death and the destruction of ecosystems each Innovation from agriculture to nuclear energy contains both the seeds of Liberation and the possibility of Destruction the neutral release of energy can be used for both good and evil discoveries can be used to both emancipate and dominate the poet James Merrill said that the powers at the heart of matter that we have hacked through Thorns to kiss awake will open baleful sweeping eyes draw breath and speak new formulae of Mega Death Darkness has long been associated with the irrational with demons monsters dread and fear and light with the reasonable Angels Vision Clarity many enlightenment philosophers and scientists were interested in Optics sight light many like Goethe and Descartes experimented with color and rainbows the image of light and vision was a symbol for reason it's common in Enlightenment images like this one reason thinking rationally about causes and effects and the qualities of things leads to understanding that if I understand the physical world around me I can invent light bulbs and heat my house and construct better buildings and ships and Technology modernity so is it the sleep of reason that produces monsters well it's not quite that simple mathematics geometry engineering can of course be used and misused it can lead to light bulbs or guns it can lead to running water or poison you can also make rational arguments to pursue selfish or evil ends the art of perverse persuasion Cicero complained of those who make contorted conclusions to speak filthily to use petty little arguments a powerful critique of rationalism was made by the enlightenment philosopher David Hume who argued that reason could only ever be the slave of the Passions what he meant was that thinking logically can tell us how to do something but it cannot tell us what to do in the first place we feel we want to do something then reason how to do it reason is a means to an end it might tell us how to cook a meal for example But ultimately with cooking it because we feel hungry reason might Aid Us in designing a new car but then I jump in that car and use it to run someone over but let's not abandon reason as something that can lead us from the darkness too quickly reason tells us that witchcraft is superstition that Alchemy is a misguided Pursuit it tells us how to perform surgery and understand weather systems it helps us understand the causes of things and so the light of the Enlightenment was to be shown in all dark Corners Emmanuel Kant wrote that the Land of Shadows is the paradise of dreamers here they find an unlimited country where they may build their houses as they please hypochondriac Vapors Nursery tales and a monastic Miracles provide them with ample building materials he argued that the spirit seers who claimed to have access to divine revelation were like a sick man's dream creating vain phantasms vacant metaphysicians going Beyond Reason applied to our immediate senses created fantasies he said in one of his Wittier moments if a hypochondriac wind clamors in the gut it all comes down to the direction it takes if it goes downward it becomes a fart but if it goes upwards it is an apparition or a holy inspiration so if reason is the simple mechanism we use to pursue goals surely we just want more of it while also being wary that it can be used for good and Ill and we must be careful to remember that those things that fall outside of logic and reason are not automatically dangers lurking in the Darkness as the philosopher Justin Smith writes at the individual level irrationality manifests itself as dreams emotion passion desire effect enhanced by drugs alcohol meditation and at the social level it's expressed as religion mysticism storytelling conspiracy theory Sports fandom rioting rhetoric Mass demonstration sexuality when it bursts out of its prescribed roles music when it breaks away from the notes on the sheet and takes on a life of its own dreams can be irrational but can Inspire religion can be a force for good and evil emotion is at the core of our lives so if the irrational can be both good and bad maybe we have to dig a Little Deeper to understand the Dark Side of History [Music] do we have insatiable appetites do our desires go beyond having just enough Do We crave wealth Prestige and power are these things inherent to us as a species we're all hungry thirsty in search of safety guarantees and comforts Empire and colonization were not an exercise in the pursuit of essential Goods but luxury tastes sugar tobacco silk spices Smith says Commodities Europeans naturally did not know they needed until they knew they existed we seem to be a species that wants to push at the limits the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment rationalized and mathematized the world around us but this new way of looking at the natural world and ourselves replaced an older set of values virtues religious beliefs traditional norms for many Europeans including a group of ambitious Brits setting up the new East India Company in a Dusty old office in London older ethical guidelines were replaced by the pursuit of profit and self-interest this unleashing of energy was something new the Bible had said be on your guard against all kinds of greed life does not consist in an abundance of possessions but the early Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Hobbes instead argued that all of our actions are in the pursuit of power this was a common change in sensibilities at the time as one periodical claimed in 1730 the love of power is natural it is insatiable Enlightenment thinkers like Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith made the case that private vices and the pursuit of self-interest led to public good by the 18th century the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham argued that all of our actions are in the pursuit of pleasure and happiness in 1817 he had to invent a new word to describe this maximize seeing the world mathematically and seeing humans as just calculating machines acting on their own interests naturally led to a new Force greed has always existed but profit systematized this was new human desire could become superhuman we were capable of more than we knew where we live and what we have it started laying the foundations of the Industrial Revolution in building new Innovations but like rationality more broadly our insatiable desires can have a dark side explorers colonists and capitalists used ships guns technology to bring Comforts and luxuries home while on the other hand as one commentator of the British in India wrote permit themselves all sorts of Liberties in the pursuit of private profit or in the hope of impunity I've seen some so far forget their Duty that they beat to death the unfortunate Indians to extract money not owed to them the country lies groaning under the Anarchy laws have no power of sanction morals are corrupt the ultimate degree the people grown under a multitude of vexations all caused by the Decay and confusion into which this once great Empire Has Fallen make a scene the new album of Bengal complaining to a British East India Company official wrote that the English forcibly take away the goods and commodities of the merchants for a fourth part of their value and by way of violence and oppression they obliged the farmers to give five rupees for goods that are worth but one private gains for the British led to India's GDP stagnating for almost 200 years while the enlightenment was happening across Europe gains for some led to apartheid for others to the deaths of Native Americans to the systematic enslavement of millions of Africans India was conquered by an unregulated private Corporation with profit as their sole motive underwritten by the desires of millions of Europeans in 1830 parliamentarian James Buckingham said in a speech that the idea of consigning over to a joint stock Association the political administration of an Empire people with a hundred million Souls is so Preposterous that if it were nigh for the first time proposed it would be deemed not merely an absurdity but an insult to the meanest understanding of the realm the growth of All European Empires in the modern period were underpinned by a change of attitudes that now focused on profit and reason and rationalism and insatiable appetites that brought both good for some and much pain for others historian William Dalrymple calls the expansion of the East India Company and the Takeover of the subcontinent as the Supreme Act of corporate violence in world history if you look to some of the worst periods in history the events with the largest death tolls you'll see that like the Anne Lucian Rebellion against the Tang Emperor many of the deaths were not the result of direct war or domination but of famine another of the worst famines in history happened in China in the 19th century during the taiping Rebellion around 60 million died in India in 1770 a famine hit East India Company ruled bengu a third of the bengalese population perished around a million people bodies floated down Rivers parents old children to protect others one Observer wrote that dogs jackals vultures and every bird and Beast of prey grow fat and unwieldy on the Flesh of man traditionally the rulers of India used to dealing with bad harvests droughts or flooding had managed crises with Reserve grain systems and public relief measures the ruling East India Company provided no support and continued unorthodoxly to enforce tax collection hanging many who resisted in the worst famine year 100 million pounds worth of goods in today's money was transferred from India to London the governor of the East India Company Robert Clive became one of the richest self-made men to have ever lived fast forward to the middle of the 20th century and Mao Zedong is embarking on a campaign of communist reform in China he wanted to transform agriculture in China and modernize and he wanted to do it as quickly as possible the goal of Mao's Great Leap Forward was to industrialize and urbanize the country and he ordered 90 million peasants to move from the countryside to factories grain production dropped by a quarter Pig farming by about 50 percent in just a few years and as a result around 40 million died of starvation so here's a question does this make Mal as bad as Hitler is it as bad to kill intentionally as it is to kill through gross negligence historian Morris Meisner writes Mao Zedong the main author of the Great Leap obviously Bears the greatest moral and social responsibility for the human disaster from the adventure but this does not make Mao a mass murderer on the order of Hitler and Stalin as is neither fashion to portray him there is a vast moral difference between unintended and unforeseen consequences of political actions and deliberate and willful genocide a similar famine had happened in the 30s in the Soviet Union where around 7 to 10 million perished as grain was seized by Stalin but it wasn't just gross negligence Stalin and Mao both sent Millions to labor camps the Khmer Rouge murdered between 1.5 and 2 million and while the numbers aren't as high the Jacobins made good use of the guillotine during the French Revolution Stalin's head of the nkvd the secret police led the Great Purge of around a million executions seven million arrests and 2 million deaths in the gulag Stalin Mao pole Parts Rob's Pierre and many others were all Accords and a spiral of Suspicion paranoia blame and like Urban II used the just War theory that the violence was necessary to secure the revolution one new ideology tries to entrench itself against the ghosts sometimes very real and sometimes very imagined of the past here we have two different measures of Darkness one was rationalization that new ideologies have to be protected another of negligence or even in the case of some famines just the horrific accident of unintended consequences abrupt and violent changes in governance ideology ideas can often lead to Great catastrophe in 1768 the German poet and philosopher Johann herder urged his fellow countrymen to stop speaking French he said spew out the ugly slime of the saying speak German oh you Germans in Geneva many argued that the city was being corrupted by frenchification the Russian nobility spoke French across Europe French culture stood for elegance and luxury speaking French meant one was cultured enlightened rational but herder thought it was a way of imposing so-called Universal values on German distinctness and that one's local culture beliefs arts and ideas were fundamental to one's nation's character herder is now known as the father of nationalism for good and for bad throughout history in Endless places we see a question about the relationship between a dominant culture and a dependent one high and low cultures master and servant Invader and invaded Voltaire the prototypical enlightenment man of Reason science and progress told the empress Catherine of Russia that she was justified in conquering the polls because they were a backward people that Enlightenment should be forced upon them for their own good the combination of using reason technology and the pursuit of interest for one person or group at the expense of another has always resulted in the production of an ideology to justify the actions of the dominant group in both Jim Crow America and the British Raj for example the ideological justification was that African Americans and Indians needed caring for that they were incapable of self-governance and needed guiding and educating like children magazines and cartoons often caricatured African Americans as childlike easily frightened dirty and lazy Take On The White Man's Burden Kipling urged America in his 1867 State of the Union Address Andrew Johnson said that it must be acknowledged that in the progress of Nations Negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people no independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands on the contrary whenever they've been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism the philosophers Theodore adorno and Max hawkheimer argued in the wake of World War II that quote domination is in effect whenever the individual's goals and purposes and the means of striving for and attaining them are prescribed to him and performed by him domination can be exercised by Men by Nature by things it can also be internal exercised by the individual on himself and appear in the form of autonomy they saw the roots of reasons powers to dominate in the simple domination of man over nature of humans bending the natural world to our own ends they wrote Reason constitutes the court of Judgment of calculation which adjusts the world for the ends of self-preservation and recognizes no function other than the preparation of the object from Mere sensory material in order to make it the material of subjugation in that they provocatively claim that Enlightenment becomes totalitarian it becomes about standardization about commanding and controlling about dictating the one way of doing things they write the more dominant the complex social organism becomes the less it tolerates interruptions of the ordinary course of Life today as yesterday tomorrow is today everything must follow the same course in searching for the universal Rules of Nature Enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as the dictator to human beings other thinkers had made similar claims the philosopher turned Nazi Martin Heidegger argued that technology entraps us and Frames us pushes us cools us they argue in different ways that we become trapped in psychological cages of our own or of others making and some suffer from this more than others the ideology of reason and domination can insidiously seep into the mentalities of both oppressors and oppressed alike the Dark Side of History might be measured in death War slavery and pain but it begins in ideology and discipline in the excited Soldier marching off joyously to war in subtle cultural jingoism in the Deep rooted entrenchment of the status quo that limits protests and stops change [Music] the most obvious way the status quo at home and abroad is maintained is through the creation expansion and militarization of the modern police force humans lived without being policed for Millennia and police forces seemed so normal to us now that it's useful to remember how controversial they were when they were introduced at the beginning of the 19th century the media of the time newspapers and politicians all protested vehemently The Gazette newspaper in Britain called the introduction of a police force a base attempt upon the liberty of the subject and warned that the purpose of the police state was to drill discipline and Dragoon us all into virtue a parliamentary inquiry concluded that such a system would of necessity be odious and repulsive and one which no government would be able to carry into execution the very proposal would be rejected with abhorrence and some decades after the commentator Walter bagot wrote that the natural impulse of the English people is to resist Authority the introduction of a factual policeman was not liked I know people old people I admit who to this day consider them an infringement of Freedom if the original policeman had been started with the present helmet the result might have been dubious there might have been a cry of military tyranny and the inbred insubordination of the English people might have prevailed over the very Modern Love of perfect peace and Order and in the U.S the police force grew out of slave Patrols the justification for the introduction of a modern force was that murder and crime was on the rise but research has shown that the opposite was the case and that most crime was petty theft associated with poverty much more interesting is the rationalization bureaucratization and consolidation of state power the regulation of efficient order and the protection against radical change in the wake of the French Revolution governments across Europe increasingly turned their attention to maintaining order the street became the site of surveillance political radicals were spied on and groups infiltrated street fairs were suppressed the introduction of criminal records photography fingerprinting police vehicles radios expanded the surveillance state once statistical data and a focus on the abnormality of One's Own citizenry is introduced we see a new form of subjectifying power discipline punish routinization burgeoning bureaucracy a quantitative population with an average normal citizen the abnormal category could then be normalized or eradicated the unclean the unfit the undesirable The Immigrant eugenics sterilizing the unfit and the criminal was explored to varying degrees in America and Europe but reached its Zenith in the Nazi regime which passed a law in 1933 that declared that anyone with hereditary diseases may be rendered sterile by surgical means when according to Medical experience it's highly probable that The Offspring of such person will suffer from severe inherited mental or bodily disorders at least four hundred thousand compulsory sterilizations were carried out during Nazi rule on those with anything from alcoholism to blindness epilepsy to quote feeble-mindedness and homosexuality three hundred thousand were killed in what came to be known as action T4 as doctors were given permission to kill those deemed incurable in the middle of the 19th century the anarchist Pierre Joseph prudon had warned that to be governed is to be watched inspected spied upon directed law-driven numbered regulated enrolled indoctrinated preached act controlled checked estimated valued censored commanded by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor The Virtue to do so each year Millions tried to commit suicide countless Millions more report depression millions of subjects to abuse mental and physical any exploration of the dark side of History has to shine a light in the dark corners of the human mind too in the middle of the 19th century the philosopher saw in Kierkegaard commented on the changing world around him and the freedoms and possibilities it brought and argued that deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world forgotten by God overlooked by the millions and millions in this enormous household it was a period of Crisis Darwin showed that humans were just another animal Nietzsche commented on the decline of religiosity Romantics rallied against industrialization and urbanization people moved in droves from the predictability of Rural Life to cramped and dirty cities cake God said anxiety may be compared with dizziness he whose eye happens to look down into the yawning Abyss becomes dizzy but what is the reason for this it's just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom the word panic was coined at around the same time by the psychiatrist Henry maudsley he used it to describe the increasing cases he was seeing of extreme agitation trembling and Terror doctors were describing a new condition too neurothenia a precursor to what we now call stress or anxiety term stress wouldn't be used until the middle of the 20th century borrowed from the idea of a physical object being stressed pooled metal in factories train tracks Alloys tools pushed and dragged hammered and bashed and formed neurosthenia the Dr Charles beard wrote was characterized by nervousness and there were five main causes steam power the printing press the telegraph The Sciences and the mental activity of women this may seem laughable to us today but beard was making quite a profound point for the time that there were social causes to physiological symptoms and ensured that the noise and speed of the modern world was becoming too much for some people he wrote for example that the Perfection of clocks and the invention of watches have something to do with modern nervousness since they compel us to be on time and excite the habit of looking to see the exact moment so as not to be too late for trains or appointments before the general use of these instruments in Precision in time there was a wider margin for all appointments we are under constant strain mostly unconscious often times in sleeping as well as in waking hours to get somewhere or to do something at some definite moment there was simply too much going on the demands of democratic politics of business of family life of your own salvation of keeping up with the latest news and Innovations it was all pressure on the mind he writes of America that the experiment attempted on this continent of making every man every child and every woman an expert in politics and theology is one of the costliest of experiments with living human beings some of the observations may seem strange and outdated now but beard had a point fast changes have fast demands modern ideas progress technology could have a mental dark side let's return to that wiggish belief in progress and end with maybe the biggest challenge to that thesis the Holocaust to either simplify throughout history we see the emergence of increasing complexity and complexity is difficult Hegel the most well-known proponent for the March of reason and progress said that the finest and noblest individuals were likely to be emulated on the altar of history that the contradictions wars and violence of History were the cost paid the lessons to be learned from the Battle of ideas the education through bloodshed but the philosopher Hannah Arendt responded who would dare reconcile himself with the reality of extermination camps or play the game of thesis antithesis synthesis until his dialectics have discovered meaning in slave labor and the philosopher Hans Jonas wrote the disgrace of Auschwitz is not to be charged to some all-powerful Providence or to some dialectically wise necessity as if it were an antithesis demanding a synthesis or a step on the road to Salvation it remains on our account and it is we who must again wash away the disgrace from our own disfigured faces indeed from the very countenance of God don't talk to me here about the cunning of reason in other words we cannot be complacent we cannot just say that the Holocaust was a product of progress unfolding that it's part of history as if history was something above us we are responsible for what we do in the moment we didn't have to wait for history to change the Holocaust was an expression of so much of what we've looked at here that the jury of Germany were engaged in a plot to destroy the nation that Germans had enemies on all sides was used as the rationalization for a just war against them the ideology that dehumanized Jews was built upon that rationalization the bureaucratization technologization militarization of state power the unquestioned power of one group of men these are all problems not for history but for all of us now we are all responsible for understanding them the tripwires laid down by innovation technology our capacity for reason have grown the stakes have gotten higher history now makes demands of all of us to take an interest in our own Survival the post-modern world has challenged our faith in progress we've discovered that primates are naturally more violent than any other mammal we've come to terms with the death of God and find ourselves scrambling around in the dark for meaning we live in an age of anxiety depression drug use screen addiction and the shadow of great Wars and apocalypses of climate change AI Singularity and nuclear destruction the history just presented has of course not been anywhere near exhaustive but what I've tried to sketch in outline as examples are periods where Innovations and progress uncovered that opposite Darkness depression slavery famine what moments like this sometimes show with something we've always really known that things that seem good can lead to excess seven deadly sins Pride gluttony sloth that the positive can uncover its own negative that the light side of History sometimes produces its own darkness and the terrible warning is that as we become more powerful as a species that power gets directed back at us so if we don't learn from the Dark Side of History the next dark spot could be the darkest foreign thank you to all of these incredible patreon supporters these videos take a long time to research write and make I do a lot of reading they're always sourced and there's a bibliography in the description 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Channel: Then & Now

Views: 199,142

Keywords: history, violence, dark, war, does history repeat itself, philosophy of history, hegel, crusades, holocaust, torture, slavery, empire, colonialism, prison, foucault, discipline and punish, nuclear war, genocide, famine, india, slave trade, does history decline, declinism

Id: Ou7DpUpqoNQ

Length: 46min 38sec (2798 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2023