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The original was posted on /r/askhistorians by /u/charge_your_phone on 2023-09-08 01:09:05+00:00.
Violence was clearly significantly more prevalent historically than it is today. Did this violence exist among everyday people like you and I, or is this seemingly high prevalence attributable to the simple fact that most popular/ common historical records relate to rulers and leaders, not everyday people.
Historical accounts seems to consistently highlight how prevalent and common place serious violence was. For example, I am reading an article about the history of Japanese Shoguns, and reading this article would make you think that every third person back in these times was beheaded or violently killed.
I understand being a military sort of complex, the Shogun system would be more prone to violence, but it seems that even among other systems and geographic places, serious violence was so common among ruling parties.
It seems that the human capacity to commit violence like that back in the day was high. So many people seemed capable of doing such things. It would seem rare today to find people capable, internally, of committing these acts. Yet back then it seemed like every man and his dog could behead someone without blinking an eye.
My question is, did this extreme prevalence of violence (by todays standards) extend to everyday people like you and I? Or does it just seem this way because most popular historical accounts relate to rulers and leaders. Were ordinary members of society more capable of violence than they are today, or was it really just ruling parties committing these acts, and everyday people would have been just as averse to such things as modern humans are today?