In this sober and provocative book Glover examines the atrocities
of the 20th century, such as Hiroshima, Nazism, the Chinese
Cultural Revolution, Bosnia and all those others that are so
depressingly familiar, in order to construct a kind of moral
history of the period. Although these have been already extensively
documented, Glover's approach is to look at the psychological
causes that seem to provide a common thread. He explores the impact
of increasingly sophisticated weapons on people's attitudes,
finding that technological developments have facilitated a moral
distancing on the part of those who develop and employ the various
engines of war. Running in parallel with modern technological
developments, Glover draws on the accounts of victims and
perpetrators to show how potentially fatal, even primitive
tendencies are also continually at work. Despite the awfulness of
what he describes - and much of it inevitably makes for very grim
reading - Glover remains optimistic that by understanding ourselves
better we can create a better world and that, technology being now
so advanced and efficient, any changes can and must come only from
within and among ourselves. (Kirkus UK)
A unique and compelling study of history and morality in the twentieth century, this book examines the psychology which made possible Hiroshima, the Nazi genocide, the Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia. In modern technological war, victims are distant and responsibility is fragmented. The scientists making the atomic bomb thought they were only providing a weapon: how it was used was the responsibility of society.
The people who dropped the bomb were only obeying orders. The machinery of political decision-taking was so complex that no one among the politicians was unambiguously responsible. No one thought of themselves as causing the horrors of Hiroshima. One topic of the book is tribalism: about how, in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia, people who once lived together became trapped into mutual fear and hatred. Another topic is how, in Stalin's Russia , Mao's China and in Cambodia, systems of belief made atrocities possi ble.
The analysis of Nazism looks at the emotionally powerful combinat ion of tribalism and belief which enabled people to do things otherwise unimaginable. Drawing on accounts of participants, victims and observers, Jonathan Glover shows that different atrocities have common patterns which suggest weak points in our psychology. The resulting picture is used as a guide for the ethics we should create if we hope to ove
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