[shadowprofile77]

>there's no moral compass for society anymore

What? And there was more of such a compass a century ago when lynchings were much more common for "racial defilements"? Or two centuries ago when slaves were considered bad by the general public for escaping from the brutality of ownership? Or perhaps 600 years ago when witch burning was remarkably common in much of Europe?

Not criticizing your defense of Assange (his treatment really is deplorable, petty and cruel), but This phrase has never been anything less than absurd, and particularly so is to claim it of today's society in comparison to some mythical past morality..

[Chris2048]

> witch burning was remarkably common in much of Europe

Is that a moral issue, or one of knowledge / technologies?

You can only go on the best information you have, and many theistic beliefs are currently acceptable in the modern world despite being no less plausible than a belief in witches.

[shadowprofile77]

A common mistake of modern humans is to presuppose that people from earlier times were somehow less capable of thinking than we are today. No evidence suggests that this was the case. They could be just as rational, they just knew less upon which to base their notions of reason. Even in a 16th century context, it was not hard to see that a lot of supposedly real witch burning was repressive control politics masquerading behind imposed superstitious strictures of morality around women, just taken to murderous degrees.

More basically: if your morality means decisions to justify or reject the torture and killing of another person, then you'd better set some damn high criteria for whether your information is complete enough.

Even medieval humans understood a surprising amount of this. A Book I highly recommend that demonstrates as much: "The Faithful executioner: Life and death, Honor and Shame in the turbulent 16th century" by Joel F. Harrington. It records a lifetime of personal observations through diary entries from a public executioner in the Germanic city of Bamburg during these times. and gives wonderful insights into how well even those charged with the job of killing could reason about the dirty ambiguity of what they were doing.

[tenbino]

The fact that society isn’t perfect doesn’t dispel my point.

It’s easy to dispel any argument by hand waving and saying “but look at all these other problems therefore you’re wrong!”

I stand by the assertion that 60/70 years ago western society had a more unified sense of what is right and wrong.

No doubt there were some major missing elements of that but the point stands.

[shadowprofile77]

A "unified sense" of right and wrong was often exactly the problem with many societies in history, because they often fall into absolutism and simplistic notions of morality. I'd call our more nuanced and diverse views of what's moral in today's society an improvement, not the opposite.

If anything, a case like Assange's just 60 years ago would have much more easily been condemned as simple treason and with wide U.S public approval of either a long prison sentence or the death penalty, on the grounds of then much more prevalent and simplistic "patriotic" sentiments in society. Today, there's far more divergent debate on this that is exactly why so many across internet and media defend his actions despite this despicable rigidness from the court.

[watwut]

> I stand by the assertion that 60/70 years ago western society had a more unified sense of what is right and wrong.

That would be 1950-1960. Speaking of America, Montgomery bus boycott started in 1955. Which took a year and started whole civil war movement. President Nixon’s red-baiting campaigns were at exactly that time too.

In Europe, IRA started their border campaign in 1956.

And that is just me going from top of head.

[dogma1138]

Continental Europe during the post world period until the late 80’s had terrorist bombings, political assassination, dictatorships and plenty of other crap going around, I’m really not sure what level of understanding people have of history these days.

70 years ago was just after Europe decided to murder millions of Jews, Roma, Gays and a bunch of other groups.

[watwut]

> I’m really not sure what level of understanding people have of history these days.

People go by what they gathered from movies and what their older relatives talk about.

[dogma1138]

Yeah I don’t know, Portugal was a dictatorship until the coup in 1974 which ended the Estado Novo regime and the colonial wars Portugal was waging in Africa, ffs you had European powers conducting outright massacres in Africa in the 70’s still.

And somehow today its feels that everyone thinking that the European Union was formed on Tuesday following the pyramids and its been the bastion of human rights and civilization since.

[arethuza]

"60/70 years ago western society had a more unified sense of what is right and wrong."

I'd agree that 60/70 years ago Western countries certainly thought they were right and other people were wrong.