| > Do you know how scathingly critical the French and English were of each other for centuries? Which was exactly my point, it was the de-facto standard for the longest time and one of the major factors for colonialization, that went on until the Third Reich and at that point, most of humanity decided: "Nope, don't want anything like that anymore". That still didn't excuse the Third Reich or their crimes, it still serves as a "negative example" and will most likely do so for the foreseeable future. In that regard you are vastly underestimating the importance of the Nürnberg trials in the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its influence on the world community. > The idea of world peace and equality in general was laughable until nuclear proliferation made total war among the world powers suicidal somewhere around the mid 20th century. Nuclear proliferation mostly impacts governments behavior imho you are overestimating its impact on social progress and people generally becoming more accepting. Factors like globalization and the Internet play a way bigger role in facilitating understanding between different people, it's also helpful to have a generally accepted standard of "Universal human rights", applying to every human being regardless of ethnicity or nationality. MAD, with it's attached red scare, only generated generations of paranoid and distrustful people whos paranoid fear rules most of their worldviews, in some cases to this day. |