At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. Army soldiers. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12.
only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., the leader of 1st Platoon in C Company, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering 22 villagers and originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house arrest after his sentence was commuted.
Research has highlighted that the My Lai Massacre was not an isolated war crime. Nick Turse places it within a larger pattern of American atrocities enabled by deliberate policies from commanders, such as “free-fire zones” and “body counts”, as well as widespread racism amongst American military personnel. Many other atrocities were also covered up by commanders.
Why you should know about this: It is important to know about history so that we can learn from it, avoid the mistakes and atrocities of the past, and know which institutions have a history of performing atrocities, trying to cover them up, etc. and what that looks like.
So both are true. Humans are the most co-operative. But if you look at the achievements, most are done to better one group of humans over another. Rarely is something done for the good of all humans. I’m actually struggling to think of even one thing that was done for the good of all humans. There must be a few, but I just can’t think of any.
Yeah, I get it. The most modern examples I can think of are probably things like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. I guess you can make the argument that those ultimately benefit those in power too, which I would understand.
You are basically right that the problem we have is that we allow our society to elevate some people over others, which is why I am an anarchist. I believe that we should abolish all unjustifiable hierarchies, and make all humans equal, through a social revolution. If you’ve not encountered this philosophy before, I’d encourage you to check it out. I think it is a very comprehensive analysis of the problems we have, and the only ideology I’ve encountered which actually takes into account human nature to take advantage of any power they have to gain benefits over others.
I finally had a chance to take a look. But I didn’t last long on the first link. Lots of fancy words, but it wasn’t really coherent. At the same time as it talked about removing the hierarchy, and not necessarily listening to the experts, it was spending a lot of time name dropping and raising people up on a pedestal. They only real path forward is to stop idolizing individuals.
The second link was much better. I correctly identified that the issue isn’t the hierarchies themselves, but the people drawn to them and such. And there in lies the rub. You can’t just change the instincts of all humans on the planet. It would take hundreds or thousands of years, assuming there was any pressure to change. But their isn’t. So right now, through luck of mutation, some people are born who don’t want to idolize a powerful leader and such. But those people are at a disadvantage currently. So they are essentially selected against.
A change is needed, but I don’t think we can make it happen. Something external would need to do that. In the mean time, I think we should simply try to ensure noone gets selected against. That way at least the pressure to be more authoritative is removed.
Overall, I support much of what anarchists support in general. But I don’t think tearing down the hierarchy is going to do anything but make room for a new hierarchy. And that will probably happen naturally anyway. It seems to have in the past, it probably will again. The quesion at hand is mainly about if we will cause our own extinction before it does.
I can understand that an Anarchist FAQ’s writing style is aimed more at leftists than the general population and is kinda unapproachable, I totally get that. It’s meant to be a reference work with cited references, a bit like an Anarchist Wikipedia I guess, the quotations and so on are from a very broad range of writers, building on their work, not idolizing anyone in particular.
This isn’t something which is in our biology, this is a social issue. Human cultures very different from our own exist, we were raised in one culture and thus we have one set of cultural beliefs, but the existence of another culture doesn’t mean those people are genetically different from us. Societies can and do change. It’s not something we need mutations for, it’s something that can change in the time span of a human life.
I was born in an extremely conservative area to conservative parents. I used to support the military, heck at one point I was borderline neo-nazi. Now, I am an avowed anti-fascist and anarchist. For your claim to be correct, I would have needed to somehow evolve, to change my innate instincts, while still living. Sorry, but on the face, it’s an absurd claim. Obviously these are socially constructed beliefs and values which can change.
Again, you are fundamentally missing the point of a social revolution. The entire basis of it isn’t to “tear down the hierarchy”, it is to build a system from the ground up that makes hierarchies irrelevant, so that they just collapse under their own weight.
I feel like you might get more out of a more accessible format - there’s a pretty fun video series called Q&Anarchy by Thought Slime, maybe check that out instead.
While there are plenty of cultures on the planet, they all seem to trend towards authoritative leaders. There are probably some very small cultures that are exceptions. But it seems to me if you get a group big enough, it goes that way.
As for you personally. I mentioned mutations. You had some differences that allowed you to escape the societal pressure to be a conservative. And likely without that pressure, you wouldn’t have come so far to the other side. The issue is that not enough people are born able to do that. And often they end up persecuted for even trying. So the mutation doesn’t propagate as much as those without it.