[mburbank]

I find the basic premiss of the article faulty. It is a common modern fallacy that we (by which we always mean whatever group we personally belong to) gave 'evolved' and 'civilized'.

IF the author were talking about sanitation and modern medicine, I might agree. But he's talking about behavior.

To my mind, there is nothing in the 'Dark Age' lexicon of horrors that keen even begin to compare to the Holocaust, and the dropping on two atmic bombs on populated cities, both of which were events that, at very least in scope, could never have been carried out in the pre-modern world, and certainly match beheadings for callous, casual, normal horror.

I am not here making any sort of case about why either of these things were done. I'm quite certain beheaders think they are doing it for a reason.

I am saying that I see no serious evidence that we have matured away from barbarity as a species. In certain rich parts of the world, we have moved our barbarity to less viceral, more removed practices, because our technology and economy allow it. Like the consumption of meat (something I do almost daily) we no longer need to personally engage in slaughter, it's done for us by proxy. We pat ourselves on the back and claim to be more civilizaed than folks who beat each other to death with sticks and rocks.