Violence and Greed in Human History

The number and degree of atrocities that have been committed throughout the ages in various countries of the world, many of them in the name of God, are truly unimaginable and indescribable. Millions of soldiers and civilians have been killed in wars and revolutions of all times or in other forms of atrocities. During his unparalleled military campaign, Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian empire and conquered all the countries between Macedonia and India. Secular and religious ambitions - from the expansion of the Roman Empire to the spread of Islam and the Christian Crusades - found their expression in the merciless use of sword and fire. In ancient Rome, countless Christians were sacrificed in the arenas to provide a highly sought-after spectacle for the masses.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent victims were tortured, killed, or burned alive in the autos-da-fe by the medieval Inquisition. In Mesoamerica, countless soldiers of the tribes defeated by the Aztecs, who had not died in the battle, were slaughtered on sacrificial altars. The Aztec cruelty found its match in the bloody ventures of the Spanish conquistadores. Genghis Khan's and Tamerlan’s Mongolian hordes swept through Asia killing, pillaging, and burning towns and villages. The colonialism of Great Britain and other European countries and the Napoleonic wars were additional examples of violence and relentless greed.

This trend has continued in an unmitigated fashion in the twentieth century. The loss of life in World War I was estimated at ten million soldiers and twenty million civilians. Additional millions died from war-spread epidemics and famine. In World War II, approximately twice as many lives were lost. This century saw the expansionism of Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust, Stalin's reckless domination of Eastern Europe and his Gulag Archipelago, and the civil terror in Communist China. We can add to it the victims of South American dictatorships, the atrocities and genocide committed by the Chinese in Tibet, and the cruelties of the South African Apartheid. The war in Korea and Vietnam, the wars in the Middle East, and the slaughter in Yugoslavia and Rwanda are some more examples of the senseless bloodshed we have witnessed during the last hundred years.

The human greed has also found new, less violent forms of expression in the philosophy and strategy of capitalist economy emphasizing increase of the gross national product, “unlimited growth,” reckless plundering of nonrenewable natural resources, conspicuous consumption, and “planned obsolescence.” Moreover, much of this wasteful economic policy that has disastrous ecological consequences has been oriented toward production of weapons of increasing destructive power.