Your confusing the issue. Charity in Africa is common but economic ability is stifled. What has that to do with mercy?

War is and always has been a failure of man,what has that to do with the act of mercy?

We have empathy with each others suffering, look how we react to each others suffering. Look how we have conventions on the treatment of prisoners. Look how we take prisoners and don't kill them or make slaves of them. Look how slavery has been abolished in the majority of countries. Look at the labour laws, if you dont see these improvements in mans humanity,I'm amazed.

If we were more merciful there would be no starvation. Economic ability would not be stifled, it would be encouraged at the expense of some of our own wealth. That would be merciful. If we were more merciful we would address this failure of war. But we are not more merciful. We kill more people than before. The failure has worsened.

Look at the suffering in Zimbabwe and Tibet and look how we react to their suffering. And then we create war in Iraq for political gain. Mercy? We have indeed got conventions for pow but what does it matter when you kill most of them along with civilians during battle? There is more slavery now than ever before. The hands of the Western nations are not clean from this either, despite their labour laws. Is this merciful? For every good thing you've listed, you could name a bad thing, an exploitive measure to take its place. We've become more creative and subtle in how we hurt people. The very few people/companies who own the media have the masses under their influence, yet they throw out a highly sexualised image of society, causing harm for financial gain. Wouldn't it be merciful to not do this and earn less money?

Perhaps you're right, I'm confusing the issue here. But when I look at the state of humanity, I can't see a whole lot of mercy. Or maybe I just have a very negative view of the world. :depressed:

You are right in saying there are many horrors in the world but as individuals we do have more empathy for each other. Starvation has always occurred in Africa and India, its just that we still have not learnt to treat our neighbours with the same feelings as our family. Weapons have become more effective but the ethics to use them have improved. Mass bombing of civilians is condemned now, unlike sixty years ago.

If when you say "more wars and more civilians being killed" you mean the 20th century... I don't think there's any arguing with that... the 20th century was the big Kahuna of human self mutilation. But out of that: political boundaries faded.

I think our remorse for the events of the 20th century is also new. I see mercy close to home in the changes in the way children are raised. The days of accepting child abuse and exploitation silently, as if it's normal, have gone. Who knows how the next generation will be, in view of this change.

I think you are right. Perhaps we are more remorseful, and soon our actions will catch up with our feelings and as humans we will be more merciful to one another.

If you trace most value concepts through history linguistically you normally notice that the value hasn't progressed, the value has changed. We impose a progression on the value because we experience the value through the prism of the present (more accurately recent past). To trace a value word through history given our current opinion on said value/word, prsents the some of same traps that haunts most social sciences that broach diachronic issues.

For example, the problem of authoratative tranference. Talk to any credible north american archaeologist and they will tell you that except for in south florida bird feathers were not used as head dresses by Native Americans until the mid 1800's. However, talk to a plains Elder and s/he will tell you otherwise. Reconstruct what anthropologists think that happened is a complex story about Catholic monks in South America and the Caribbean who wrote about the "indians" and sent it to Europe then that trend of what was expected by settlers and north american govt became what the Natives did to exploit maximum gain from their situation as they saw it. And now the headresses are iconic both to Native Americans and Non.

Another problem with this sort of romance for the now is that there is no credible way to make a direct theoretical link between now and then in regard to behavior and concept definition. In the matrix of then they someone who held slaves and dehanded theives may have been wholly merciful. One cannot trace ethical progress without experiencing the context in which the "formerly merciful" may have practiced mercy.

Archaeology often runs into this problem when interpreting digs. Lets say I'm on a dig and I run across something that lacks definite functional utility, like an eaglehead rod (decorative stick with and eagle's skull, commonly used as shamanistic relics currently) I have no direct context in which to place this artefact and cannot reliably say that in X housepit where eaglerod was dug up there lived/practiced/or at any time visited a shaman/medicine person.

The view that "hey just look at the past, and look at how merciful we have become" is the other side of the coin from the romatacism that people portray "hey lets get back to nature like our forefathers, it was good back then", although one has only to take a look at the context of the destruction of small scale slash and burn farmer societies to establish an analogical relativistic frame.

Meant to do this first some of what the NIV Holy Bible Old Testament has to say in its concordance and my way under 'mercy'. (Will do the New upon responce)

Ex 33:19 And the Lord said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass infront of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

Ok so mercy and compassion go hand in hand but are different and distinct of the other enough to give them their own space.
Gods name here might well have been 'Sword of Justice'

Ne 9:31 But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.

Grace and mercy closer in space.

Ps 25:6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love,
for they are from old.

I love the Psalms they try for a people who are dependant upon law to describe love, (for they are from old and know their age).

Pr 28:13 He who conceals his sins does not prosper,
but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

This could easily be translated as those who are earning of mercy shall receive it, but for those who dont work are pretty much fluffed, but does not at least our more present (modern, New T) depiction and grasp of what mercy (true mercy) contains, means to give further, means to give to even the unworthy?
Is it our responsibility? or is it theirs? or even Gods not ours?

Am 5:15 Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph.

Again another example of how law overwrit what was to be permissioned as mercy, it must be weighed by the recipiants measure, not as what is Newer we weigh the mercy of what we are able/capable to give/gift and bear/cary rather than for what it is worth, it becomes for whom it is worth, which is first the self and the gifter of such as mercy.
'Perhaps' is no longer an issue with my God, (God knows we are worth every minute) my God knows we are more than worth it and less than prepared to sentence us singularly upon a judicial system, if only this passage talked more of pure justice rather than what justice is contingent upon (or not as the matter is stricken).

Mic 6:8 He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

Showed by example (just didn't do, so why should we?).
Does the lord require it of me or should i require mercy from of myself?
(Lord denote possession, Christ means member, old and new)

Mic 7:18 Who is a God like you,
who pardons sins and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.

This is just fantastic and true ascribed, mercy should be a delight.
Gives us the chance to be God if we give it.
(anything given is more than first a reception of the self, to be given there must be soemthing to give)
Does mercy have anything to do with forgiveness pardon? (apart from the want or need for it?)(possibly the only want that is acceptable is that of redemption?)

Zec 7:9 "This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.

Another law if you wish to look at mercy as a form of administration.
I am not sure what this means 'true justice' here, perhaps someone out there could enlighten me?

This is not a matter of Christianity specifically this is matter of how we have measured our understanding of mercy and what it is worth for from our beginnings not all our religious endings.
Not evangelising.
One Best True reference.

The word mercy is an easy word to use but is far difficult to comprehend in a universal sense. It can be used to describe charity , forgiveness, empathy. In my opinion it can only be described by example rather than giving a defined meaning. God should not be merciful but understanding, if he can comprehend the reasons for sin. If you know the man was hungry when he stole that gives you understanding and it should moderate your judgement.

If you, in battle have six men opposing you and you kill five but spare one, is that mercy? Is it the empathy you have for baby fox but not its father? You pass by beggars in a street and one pathetic face urges you to give,is that mercy?

I hate this sentimental view of mercy, it has to be more, a lot more. We try to define it with rules, moral or ethical rules to govern our behaviour but those rules are driven by the compassion, the ideals of mercy. This is mercy, the understanding that we are obliged to act with compassion towards our fellow man.