On Maintaining Social Order.

I often tell people, in later ages, this age will be remembered for how brutal and unfeeling it was. And also, people will recall the things we took for granted, like eating meat and (humane) capital punishment, that they will find shocking. Just 30 years ago, people in the United States would have intelligent discussions about whether AIDS/HIV was God's punishment for homosexual acts. Now a majority of practicing Catholics in the USA support gay marriage, and think their church should too. Moral norms change over time.

But I was reading some time back, before what we call the modern industrial age, oftentimes life was hard. Life was brutal, and people were brutal too. The state needed to maintain order. Many of the people punished back then did nothing wrong. Like the so-called witches in the witch hunts in Europe from the 15th and to the the 17th centuries. They were obvious scapegoats at the time. Even back then, some people thought that was wrong. But some of the people were pretty evil by our standards, even the ones who received brutal punishments. Treason was defined as opposing, or sometimes just criticizing, the government. That seems pretty stupid by our standards. But I was reading a while back, most of the so-called traitors were evil men in other ways. Often sociopaths, who were guilty of many crimes. Treason was the just the last straw by then, the authorities said.

Joan of Arc general and advisor Gilles de Rais was executed October 26, 1440 by hanging and burning. He was guilty of "the abominable and execrable sin of sodomy, in various fashions and with unheard-of perversions that cannot presently be expounded upon by reason of their horror, but that will be disclosed in Latin at the appropriate time and place". After being tortured, he confessed, and agreed he should be executed. But probably he was really just covering up a corruption scandal in the Catholic church and trying to protect Joan of Arc's reputation. (I also read when I was a young man, by being executed that way, he saved his children's inheritance.) De Rais was probably guilty of killing at least a hundred boys, which was no big deal back then. For him at least. He was a knight, a famous general, and a lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou. But, when he committed sorcery and homosexual acts too, some people back then thought that just crossed the line.

As I said, treason, or sometimes just criticizing the state, was the worst thing you could do. It required the most horrible punishment. They said because there was no crime worse than that. And the punishments for treason involved dismemberment, burning and torture. Certainly at least death, unless you were a royal, or got a pardon from your monarch. England was a little more civilized. They say the English always have been. Being Hanged, drawn and quartered was the punishment for treason since 1352 there. It involved all I just said. But the hanging part rendered the victim semi-conscious or even dead by the time they got to the other stuff. Most of the punishment was just meant to horrify the onlookers. But they had no choice, they said.

In later years, we usually realize that much cruelty is not necessary. Not even to maintain order. But as for the other problem, people in society being lawless and brutal themselves. The solution is to change that society, and people's attitudes. Not for the state to be cruel and evil itself.