I wish there were traffic sign like that in my home town. I'm not sure which direction I would take in order to answer your question.

The artist was smart enough to use the same symbol for war and civilization.
(And I seriously doubt about his ‘increasingly equal income distribution - in Europe.’)

Civilization stands for being healthy and wealthy? Live boring and die old?

Barbarism begins at home, the Smiths:

Unruly boys
Who will not grow up
Must be taken in hand
Unruly girls
Who will not settle down
They must be taken in hand

A crack on the head
Is what you get for not asking
And a crack on the head
Is what you get for asking

I think civilisation is adapting yourself to the other. This doesn't have to be as narrow as I present it, but what civilisation truely is, I think, is the denial of the self.

From sinful to sacred bodies

I am not sure whether you still read comments to "old" postings, Arnon, but then for any other reader: this immediately reminds me of Lynn Hunt's book "Inventing Human Rights: A History". Here, Lynn describes a major paradigm change in European civilization. From the time in which the human being and consequently the human body were regarded as sinful by nature, and torture was seen as the proper response to purify men and cosmology from this sinfulness - or at least restore the balance. To a time in which the body is regarded as a person's private property. That person being by nature of good intention and of own will. In this time, protection of the body against all kind of mutilation, torture or violence is regarded as thé token of civilization.

How things can change...

@Annette
I do not think a body is seen as a private property, but more as a private responsibility. Your body shall always be suspect.
(Authorities can search or invade your body to take blood and other samples and clean torture can easily return, if it has not already, for example in life time imprisonment and isolation, the so called ‘clean’ torture).

Annette

Well, for once civilization has a point and a positive influence. I’m very much in favor of considering the body sacred. That’s why I also object mildly to tattoo’s etcetera.
The “soul” (whatever we mean with) this word) is less sacred for me , torturing your own soul is necessary from time to time

@ Jan

I think you are right. Some people would nowadays even prefer bodily torture from 'clean' torture as you put it. Or a death penalty to life time imprisonment. The difference Hunt tries to point out - if I read her well - is that the concept of 'clean' torture is a response to a fundamental different view of mankind: as beings that are inherently intending to do good, and could progress in their behaviour. Thus, imprisonment or punishment is nowadays regarded as re-education or correction. The person is good, his acts were bad, but (s)he gets a second chance.

In 17th century Europe, however, punishment was not directed at restoring the balance of the criminal's personality or psyche, for the criminal was considered a lost person, by nature bad or evil. Punishment was meant to serve as a pre-warrant for the other millions of sinful people (that is why it was performed in public) and to restore order in a (Christian) cosmology.

@ Arnon

And that is precisely what intrigues me: why it is that you feel the body should be regarded as sacred and that you object mildly to tattoos? Why it is that I experience instant feelings of disgust and nausea if confronted with (images of) torture? While in 17th century Europe, crowds, the majority of whom women according to Hunt, would gather on the main square of the city to watch public torture, humiliation and heads being chopped off by the guillotine. It is just so amazing to realize that those feelings of disgust are culturally conditioned, while they feel as if coming from basic instincts. I would also be running to those public torture performances if I was born and raised that time. And you...?

Torturing the "soul": yes, I recognize that addiction. Though I learn more and more that I do not really need to go out and search for those torture opportunities, but that they come naturally, as a free gift of life ;-).

Annette

You wonder why you feel torture is abhorrent?
There are people who really enjoy torture. Mostly we call these people psychopaths.
There are other people who enjoy torture and being tortured as a game, within certain limits. This is called SM.
I’m not sure how people felt seeing other people being tortured five hundred years ago. Have you read research about this?
From what I recall from paintings depicting the Crucifixion most bystanders were not gloating.
Not taking pleasure from other people’s severe bodily pain is a sign of being less primitive than others who love to watch other people being tortured.
You seem to wonder why you are not more primitive? There is a hint of self-congratulation in this question.

Arnon

I would love to believe that it is an issue of being less or more primitive - thank you for the compliment :-) - but am hesitating... Research about how people were feeling 500 years ago? I could continue quoting from Hunt's book, where she in turn quotes newspaper articles, pamphlets and literature of late 18th century France to show that empathy at least, is a recently young invention. Yes, people would fear bodily pain, but did not regard it as something un-civilized or abhorrent, including - initially - well-educated people like Voltaire. Would he really be more primitive than I am?

And, to stay with my own time and experience: what about all those Chinese who will mostly start laughing loud when a passers-by is seriously hurt in a traffic accident - are they all less primitive than I am? Or my dear Acehnese friend who will always want to stop and look at an accident or fight in the street, and who laughs when people fall over. I discuss Marx and poetry with him and he joins me to classical concerts. Is he?

Or the Afghan chief, who talks with a soft voice, and has this bright , intelligent look, who responds to the mediator when he is told that the 13-year old girl he wants to marry, threatens to burn herself out of misery, responds: "That is ok, I will pay her parents a reimbursement in that case".

Annette

Your anecdotal evidence is impressive but not completely convincing.
Why do the Chinese laugh when they see an accident? Do they always laugh? Are they just happy that they themselves are not in an accident? Or is it Schadenfreude? And do you trust the reliability of this observation? Are you sure that this observation isn’t the equivalent of a complete foreigner observing that westerners pick their noses when they see an accident?
By all means indifference is a human right. And yes, maybe even a certain degree of Schadenfreude.
I don’t know enough about Voltaire to discuss his position on torture.
And yes our insistence on “security” and our position that life is under all circumstances an entitlement could and should be discussed.
Needless to say that there are circumstances when life is short and brutal and people adjust.
Yes we can discuss the question why we consider human life sacred and the lives of lobsters and cows not sacred. All this can be discussed.
But I’m afraid you are making the case for an extreme cultural relativism.
And I don’t follow you there.
There is a beautiful documentary by Werner Herzog about a young man who goes living with bears.
His position seems to be yours; the bears are as good as men, maybe even better. At the end the bears eat him. They had different thought and different priorities when it comes to the human body than he had.
Should we call the bears primitive?
Isn’t it a terrible thing to call a bear primitive? Well, yes, maybe.
Let’s call them just bears.

Arnon

I don't have all the answers yet (surprisingly enough !), and don't mean to imply that this anecdotal evidence is proof, shows "I am right" or makes a case for cultural relativism. My "quest" is a long - maybe a life long one - and circles around questions about how brain and socialisation interact and direct our (response to) violent behaviour. Details of that 'quest"of mine are too long for a format like this, but let me at least explain that when I mention these anecdotes, I do so because they at least tell me, that I should maybe doubt the universality or "humanity" of my feelings of disgust and horror in response to torture, however "original" or "natural" they appear to me.

I do not mean to embark on the `slow questions' like "is human life sacred" - that is indeed a very general philosophical or ethical question worth asking, but - as you rightly put it - without end. I am interested in the fact that at least our validation of the body, and how we should treat it, has significantly changed over time. There has been a point in (European) history, in which we gradually developed the idea that peeing or shitting in the same room, spitting on floors, not washing, burping, and - finally - torturing, was "not civilized". And this idea developed into a conviction which installed in our brain a direct response of disgust or nausea when confronted with it. (Ok, with most of us, of course there are acceptions, and feelings differ per person as you show pointing to SM practices and the like).

Although I am not a neurobiologist, I think I know that our brain did not significantly change during this same period of time. I also know that where it concerns violent behavior, our amygdala plays a major role in decision-making about violence, but socialisation adds to that and teaches our brain in which circumstances it is effective to use violence, and in which ones not. Thus, to again use a rough example, using violence in the current Dutch society would for most people lead to loss of social status or excommunication, and would not improve our chances of mating and survival. While in other cultures , violence can be the only way to maintain social status (honor killing ).

So what? - you may be inclined to respond. I guess that my feeling is that in order to effectively decrease the number of violent conflicts, we might get some additional directions by acknowleging that violence is as human as it can be, and invest in trying to better understand how brain and socialisation guide decision-making on violent behavior. This may contribute to better understand and maybe predict , prevent or mitigate violent behavior. Rather than simply do away with violent behavior and war by calling it "inhuman" or trying to beat it with "just wars".

And of course here I am a product of my own culture in wanting to reduce wars, but I am at least not so naive to say that I would never be able to kill or torture someone, or that I want to exclude wars and build endless peace forever.

Annette

Yes in our society using violence is probably not the best option for a social climber.
There are societies where the use of violence pays off. Fair enough.
I do think it can be wise to discuss the urge of violence, an urge that we might not be able to overcome completely, although I insist that giving in to this primitive urge is primitive.
But please don’t forget that most violent conflicts are not the result of spontaneous violent acts of individuals. We are not speaking here about a husband coming home seeing his wife with another man and killing both man and wife in rage.
Using violence in violent conflicts is mostly a duty, not so much the result of rage. Of course violence out of rage happens there as well, but this is considered amoral.
Your mistake is to think that people kill because they feel like killing, they need to relief themselves. Most people in armed conflicts kill because they are told to kill. They are doing their job.