PTSD in Pre-Modern/Perpetual Conflict Societies

[Ideologue]

I thought all the violence on TV and in video games was supposed to have desensitized us into murderous barbarians. 

Only works in air war.

[Razgovory]

Yeah, but these people lived in an alien moral and societal framework to what we have today. We live in a society built on a mix of two universalist moral frameworks, the Enlightenment  and Christianity. In Classical antiquity there is no moral, religious or philosophical value placed
on things like the universal brotherhood of man, mercy, forgiveness, tolerance, etc. It's a selfish society where extreme othering of individuals outside one's own locale and class was the norm and seen as a positive good. Killing people probably did less psychological damage to people with that kind of world view.

A good point. To my mind there's a bit of a chicken and egg thing going on with that. Perhaps the brutality of the age led to a what might be termed PTSD today; the coping mechanism became expressed the kind of penchant for brutality, xenophobia and so on that you're talking about.

I think a lot of it has to do with our expectation of soldiers and the rise of standing armies made up of citizens as opposed to warlords, mercenaries and special warrior classes.

[dps]

I don't know though Tim. The soldiers of ancient times still had humanity, families, could probably relate to their enemies as being somewhat similar to them and so would have some empathy. On the other hand, when we read of towns and cities being razed for resisting, everyone being killed, as for example Romans did at times during their civil wars, it does make me wonder how they could be so cold bloodedly brutal. So I'm sure your points stand as well, to some extent anyway, and maybe even the dominant views given how easily brutal the ancients could be.

It seems that most of you are talking about the explosions, noise, and physicality of war affecting a soldier and those things causing mental stress, PTSD, etc. I've also wondered how ancient, medieval type soldiers dealt with war/battles. They were using hand weapons mostly, close up and personal, seeing the other guy face to face, seeing the light go out of his eyes as they killed him. Remembering those faces long after the fighting is over, and years later. That all will often have an affect on a soldier remembering it, and I have to think such memories, dreaming of them, can have a big affect.  And of course, that has the same affect on WW2 and contemporary soldiers.

Yeah, but these people lived in an alien moral and societal framework to what we have today. We live in a society built on a mix of two universalist moral frameworks, the Enlightenment  and Christianity. In Classical antiquity there is no moral, religious or philosophical value placed
on things like the universal brotherhood of man, mercy, forgiveness, tolerance, etc. It's a selfish society where extreme othering of individuals outside one's own locale and class was the norm and seen as a positive good. Killing people probably did less psychological damage to people with that kind of world view.

I'm not sure that I buy that.  I think it's true to an extent, but not to the extent that you imply.  Lidice was only a bit over 70 years ago, and similar stuff happened in Bosnia after the breakup of Yugoslavia.

[Razgovory]

I don't think anyone thinks Yugoslavia had much of a 20th century mind set.

[Martinus]

In Classical antiquity there is no moral, religious or philosophical value placed
on things like the universal brotherhood of man, mercy, forgiveness, tolerance, etc.

What a crock of bullshit. Ever read Seneca?

Yes, I know it's a rhetorical question. I can bet you never read Seneca.

[PDH]

So Seneca defines all classic cultural reactions to such things as group identity, human interaction, violence, roles of family?  I would argue that the stoics while important, were not the end-all when describing the human condition in the classical world...

While overstated in the earlier post, the inherent violence, morality of retribution, willingness to endure (and cause) pain when mores were breached implies a different viewpoint from latter cultural systems.  Seneca was favored by so many Christians for a reason, and that might be that his morality calls to later systems.

[Ideologue]

So Seneca defines all classic cultural reactions to such things as group identity, human interaction, violence, roles of family?

Especially for the decisionmakers during the Punic, Peloponnesian, and Persian wars, by whom he was widely fucking read, to be sure.

[jimmy olsen]

Also, lets not forget all the brutal public executions that people would have seen from a young age and would have clearly affected children and their developing views on the acceptability of violence.

Marty, Seneca was from the 1st Century AD, and was one of the first philosophers to posit that kind of ideology. Hardly representative of the whole classical period.

[Martim Silva]

Are there records and studies of anxeity disorders in people who lived in areas as conflict-stricken as Medieval or Early Modern Europe?  Do we have references to post-battle anxiety dating back a long period?

The best I can contribute is that we Portuguese engaged in some pretty brutal warfare during our Colonial Wars of 1961-1975. Killed millions (but nobody cares because we're not Germans) of blacks, who in turn still saw the world in terms of 'tribes' and 'warriors'.

It was common to napalm whole areas, or go into villages and slaughter whomever we could, regardless of age or gender, by knife or bullet.

After the war, some of our soldiers, feeling intense guilt about having machine-gunned helpless elderly couples in cold blood, our impaling babies with their bayonettes, returned to those villages to ask for forgiveness.

The locals reacted with a big 

And then just told them to forget it, those things "happen in war".

And they were the victims. So I suspect societies where human life has little value don't really grasp the concept of PTSD.

[Razgovory]

Also, lets not forget all the brutal public executions that people would have seen from a young age and would have clearly affected children and their developing views on the acceptability of violence.

Marty, Seneca was from the 1st Century AD, and was one of the first philosophers to posit that kind of ideology. Hardly representative of the whole classical period.

This is a good point.  We should remember the Romans were a people who forced people to fight and kill one another for fun.

[Queequeg]

To be fair, that was somewhat exceptional.  The Ancient Greeks considered such sports to be barbaric. 

[crazy canuck]

I dont know much about mental trauma associated with battle.  I know a bit about mental trauma experienced by emergency response people when they witness death and dying.  Even such people who are trained to expect to see such things and see them often can be adversely affected.