You can make a laundry list equally as terrible for any civilization that has ever existed. Atrocities are not limited to one particular culture, they are a shared human failing. I would argue that the character of a culture is not set by its lowest points but by how it claws its way back towards the light of liberté, égalité, fraternité.
>You can make a laundry list equally as terrible for any civilization that has ever existed.
A lot of civilizations at worse were at war with some other. This list is like a cancer spreading over the whole planet -- including some of its "achievements" that can wipe out the whole planet literally, like nukes.
The Holocaust, for example, doesn't leave much to trivialize. Plus at least those other civilizations had a lot of excuses (ignorance etc). Most of those things in the list have done in the era of "lights" and "science" with no excuse but pure greed.
>I would argue that the character of a culture is not set by its lowest points but by how it claws its way back towards the light of liberté, égalité, fraternité
I would argue that liberté, égalité, fraternité is just a way of seeing the world of a particular culture, not the be all end all of morality and civilization.
Plus it has been a hypocritical slogan for centuries, one used to beat other peoples to make them "civilized" or "bring democracy" (the white man's burden), when underneath it was profits and greed doing the work.
