The main things that stuck in my head after all those years was that stuff like assault, rape, murder, torture, entertainment-based animal abuse all used to be much worse. He said that people used to nail cats to posts around town so they would flail around until they died, just for the hell of it. I never fact-checked these claims.
I certainly believe it! Colonization and Imperialism in particular have an absolutely brutal history. Japanese soldiers occupying China and Korea used to catch babies on bayonets, and had quotas for how many ears they cut off. Dutch occupiers of the Congo would cut off the hands of underperforming workers, including children, and give the hands to their parents.
The thing is, generally, humans are guided and shaped by material conditions, and material conditions improve with democratization and industrialization.
