Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

[Donnadogsoth]

Are stories where evil wins, such as in Alien: Covenant, or at least one of the Phantasm films, or some of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, or the original version of Little Red Riding Hood, and I'm sure many others than I have forgotten or am unaware of, unique to late-Western civilisation? Red Riding Hood has a moral, of course, but the others? Nothing but blackness. Are they an indicator of a kind of decadence among audiences that the notion of "evil winning" is seen as enjoyable, even profound, or do they beg a kind of cynical expectation for a sequel? Are there non-Western cultures featuring such (fictional) stories, whether traditional tales or modern? If so, were such modern tales introduced from the West? I have a hard time imagining any traditional indigenous culture having a story like this, for example:

"And then the evil god slew the good god and his wicked kingdom stood forever and ever."

[comicshorse]

Depending on your definition of winning but I can think of several Hong Kong movies (' Bride With White Hair',' House of Flying Daggers', 'The Killer', Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon')) where everybody, good and bad, end up dead or with their lives utterly ruined. Does that count as a victory for evil ?


P.S
'Curse of the Golden Flower' is an absolute win for evil

[ArlEammon]

Depending on your definition of winning but I can think of several Hong Kong movies (' Bride With White Hair',' House of Flying Daggers', 'The Killer', Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon')) where everybody, good and bad, end up dead or with their lives utterly ruined. Does that count as a victory for evil ?


P.S
'Curse of the Golden Flower' is an absolute win for evil

Old Boy is the saddest movie I've ever heard of. It's Korean, I think.

[comicshorse]

Old Boy is the saddest movie I've ever heard of. It's Korean, I think.

It is. The director's,Park Chan-wook, films tend to both very dark and (IMHO) very good. Old Boy may be considered to have a happier end then say, 'Sympathy for Mr Vengeance' or 'Stoker'

[Donnadogsoth]

Depending on your definition of winning but I can think of several Hong Kong movies (' Bride With White Hair',' House of Flying Daggers', 'The Killer', Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon')) where everybody, good and bad, end up dead or with their lives utterly ruined. Does that count as a victory for evil ?

It's a victory for nihilism. On that count I would also add The Thing (1982).


P.S
'Curse of the Golden Flower' is an absolute win for evil

I would like to know where such nihilism and "evil wins" tropes came from. Are there psychological conditions common to globally extended European civilisation, that tend to give rise to such types of stories?

[Frozen_Feet]

Tragedies go back to times of Gilgamesh, so the answer is "No, why the Hell would you even think so?"

There are several reasons for the existence of such stories and none of them are particularly complex nor culture-specific. First they can be done as cautionary tales: "these people acted this way and it ended bad. Don't be these people." Second, it can be done as humour via breaking expectations: "wait, I thought it would end this way but it didn't. Ha! Funny." Third, it can be done as horror or tragedy, because negative emotions ib controlled environment can be cathartic. Fourth, it can be done as parody or mockery of prevailing social standard: "you say this guy's evil but I think he's cool, so up yours."

[Lacuna Caster]

It's a victory for nihilism. On that count I would also add The Thing (1982).
The Thing is a pyrrhic victory from the main cast's perspective, but aside from the slim possibility that Childs was infected and gets thawed out later, it can be counted as a win for team humanity (they at least manage to prevent a worldwide pandemic.) There's always another perspective (http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/), though.


I would like to know where such nihilism and "evil wins" tropes came from. Are there psychological conditions common to globally extended European civilisation, that tend to give rise to such types of stories?
I don't know if 'team evil wins' is really a uniquely western phenomenon, but I'd hazard that the scientific demolition of geocentrism and anthropocentrism had a lot to do with the development of cosmic horror and a general skepticism about the primacy of human value systems.

[comicshorse]

[QUOTE=Lacuna Caster;22370482]The Thing is a pyrrhic victory from the main cast's perspective, but aside from the slim possibility that Childs was infected and gets thawed out later, it can be counted as a win for team humanity (they at least manage to prevent a worldwide pandemic.)
/QUOTE]

Exactly. 'The Thing' is a victory for Humanity bought with courage and sacrifice. I'd say its wrong to call it Nihilism any more than the the destruction of the Death Star because it cost the lives of so many rebel pilots

[Yora]

Interesting title. I am always under the impression that the heroes always winning is a thing only common to American fiction. It's the main reason I am always on the lookout for specifically non-American works that cover my favorite niches.

[2D8HP]

...I don't know if 'team evil wins' is really a uniquely western phenomenon, but I'd hazard that the scientific demolition of geocentrism and anthropocentrism had a lot to do with the development of cosmic horror and a general skepticism about the primacy of human value systems.


Unhappy endings are hardly a new innovation (Beowulf, Greek and Shakespearean tragedies come to mind as do many of the The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, colleced by Francis James Child in the 19th century (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_Child_Ballads).

Judging by the tales of our ancestors that have survived, that so many stories now have happy endings seems like a modern innovation to me.

Also, while I'm not that familiar with non-western stories, off the top of my head the Chinese film Hero (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_(2002_film)),

based on the old story of Jing Ke (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_Ke) was tragic and AWESOME!

And the 1922 Japanese story In a Grove (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Grove)

(latter the basis of many films, most prominently Rashōmon (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_(film)))

...hardly qualifiers as "joyful optimism".

If your really looking for some good nihilism I suggest 19th century Russian novels, and post Second World War French novels and plays, "The Brothers Karamozov" by Dostoevsky, and "The Plague" by Camus, top my list.

Despite our legendary optimism Americans can write some tragic and nihilist as well!

Check out the novel or film of "Johnny Got His Gun", or my favorite The Mysterious Stranger (https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger) by Mark Twain.

[Eldan]

I would like to know where such nihilism and "evil wins" tropes came from. Are there psychological conditions common to globally extended European civilisation, that tend to give rise to such types of stories?

Curse of the Golden Flower has the added moral that it is a very empty victory for evil.

The Emperor survives a series of assassination attempts and coups by one family member after another, who all do it because they hate him, with the end result that his sons end up assassinated (by the Emperor), killed in battle (by the Emperor), beaten to death (by the Emperor) or killing themselves, while the Empress is slowly poisoned over the years. The Emperor is left triumphant with nothing whatsoever left except an empty ceremony to show off the prosperity of the royal family, which no longer exists.

I love this movie, by the way.

[Lacuna Caster]

Unhappy endings are hardly a new innovation (Beowulf, Greek and Shakespearean tragedies come to mind as do many of the The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, colleced by Francis James Child in the 19th century (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_Child_Ballads).
I wouldn't have your breadth of literary experience, but I would suggest there's a difference between 'tragic ending' and 'evil wins'. Plenty of tragedies have an underlying message or moral that serves to reinforce pro-social value systems (e.g, the lesson of Romeo and Juliet is that the Capulets and Montagues should have cooperated, and their prize offspring would still be alive. It's also implied that the families reconcile afterward, because Shakespeare is anvilicious like that.)

Your mileage may vary, but I consider this quite different from a lot of Lovecraftian narratives, where the underlying message is that bravery is futile and human value systems are a delusion. The only takeaway I personally get from The Descent, for example, is that humans are self-destructive animals.


Curse of the Golden Flower has the added moral that it is a very empty victory for evil.

The Emperor survives a series of assassination attempts and coups by one family member after another, who all do it because they hate him, with the end result that his sons end up assassinated (by the Emperor), killed in battle (by the Emperor), beaten to death (by the Emperor) or killing themselves, while the Empress is slowly poisoned over the years. The Emperor is left triumphant with nothing whatsoever left except an empty ceremony to show off the prosperity of the royal family, which no longer exists.

I love this movie, by the way.
Unfortunately, there's little or nothing to stop the Emperor from remarrying or boinking concubines to replenish the line of succession. I'm kind of hazy about the details of story by now, but my overall impression of theme was 'voyeuristic sadism'.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Good and evil are a western thing.

You can hardly blame the lack of something that doesn't exist to that culture.

[Donnadogsoth]

Tragedies go back to times of Gilgamesh, so the answer is "No, why the Hell would you even think so?"

Are all these tragedies victories of evil, though, or are they just failures of particular protagonists?


There are several reasons for the existence of such stories and none of them are particularly complex nor culture-specific. First they can be done as cautionary tales: "these people acted this way and it ended bad. Don't be these people." Second, it can be done as humour via breaking expectations: "wait, I thought it would end this way but it didn't. Ha! Funny." Third, it can be done as horror or tragedy, because negative emotions ib controlled environment can be cathartic. Fourth, it can be done as parody or mockery of prevailing social standard: "you say this guy's evil but I think he's cool, so up yours."

Does horror exist as a genre anywhere outside of the West?

[Lethologica]

Does horror exist as a genre anywhere outside of the West?
Did you watch Ringu? Or its Western adaptation, The Ring?

[kraftcheese]

Are all these tragedies victories of evil, though, or are they just failures of particular protagonists?



Does horror exist as a genre anywhere outside of the West?
Of course! There's horror movie scenes in Japan and South Korea, and I know that, historically, stories about scary monsters killing and eating people exist all over the world.

[Rodin]

Good and evil are a western thing.

You can hardly blame the lack of something that doesn't exist to that culture.

I would be very interested to hear your reasoning on this, because I absolutely cannot imagine that being true. Different cultures may have different interpretations of what specifically qualifies as "good" or "evil", but to say they don't have those concepts at all?

[ArlEammon]

I would be very interested to hear your reasoning on this, because I absolutely cannot imagine that being true. Different cultures may have different interpretations of what specifically qualifies as "good" or "evil", but to say they don't have those concepts at all?

Well, I mean yeah, that just sounds totally alien to me. Not to think about good and evil at all, is weird.

[Donnadogsoth]

Did you watch Ringu? Or its Western adaptation, The Ring?


The Thing is a pyrrhic victory from the main cast's perspective, but aside from the slim possibility that Childs was infected and gets thawed out later, it can be counted as a win for team humanity (they at least manage to prevent a worldwide pandemic.)



Unhappy endings are hardly a new innovation (Beowulf, Greek and Shakespearean tragedies come to mind as do many of the The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, colleced by Francis James Child in the 19th century.

Judging by the tales of our ancestors that have survived, that so many stories now have happy endings seems like a modern innovation to me.

I stand corrected on three counts. Thank-you.

[Donnadogsoth]

I don't know if 'team evil wins' is really a uniquely western phenomenon, but I'd hazard that the scientific demolition of geocentrism and anthropocentrism had a lot to do with the development of cosmic horror and a general skepticism about the primacy of human value systems.
...
Your mileage may vary, but I consider this quite different from a lot of Lovecraftian narratives, where the underlying message is that bravery is futile and human value systems are a delusion. The only takeaway I personally get from The Descent, for example, is that humans are self-destructive animals.

Intriguing. Could the development of cosmic horror itself herald the famous quote?

“The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

[Frozen_Feet]

Are all these tragedies victories of evil, though, or are they just failures of particular protagonists?

Of course not, but even if we take your narrow definition of "evil god kills good god, rules the world", you can find several examples from Hindu myth alone. The board rules don't like me going into depth about it, but do take a look at Wikipedia and various ledr-hand path versions of Vedic religions.


Does horror exist as a genre anywhere outside of the West?

Horror, as defined as "spooky stories meant to freak people out", is near-universal. I am aware of no culture which doesn't have its own boogiemen and ghost stories to tell around campfires. Native Americans had Wendigo, Chinese had Jiangshi, Japanese have their myriad Yokai, just to name few well-known examples.

---

@Re: "Good and evil are a Western thing."

That's as stupid an idea as claiming that any particular western view of morality is universal. Nearly all peoples have had concept of right and wrong, just because those concepts don't map exactly to some other people's versions doesn't mean the concepts were non-existent or non-communicable.

[Lacuna Caster]

Of course not, but even if we take your narrow definition of "evil god kills good god, rules the world", you can find several examples from Hindu myth alone... ...Nearly all peoples have had concept of right and wrong, just because those concepts don't map exactly to some other people's versions doesn't mean the concepts were non-existent or non-communicable.
I would suggest that earlier forms of polytheistic religous expression (which persisted much longer in non-eurasian societies) tended to be fuzzier about this. Compared with, say, legalism, buddhism and zoroastrianism, which emphasise self-discipline, non-violence and personified angels and demons, there's a bigger focus on nature-worship and warrior-virtues within a big cosmic family soap opera where the Gods have varying personalities and concerns and are rarely entirely good or bad.

In that sense the manichaean tradition isn't so much a western thing as an old-world thing, but the abrahamic religions and christianity in particular were, for various reasons, most effective at exporting themselves.


Intriguing. Could the development of cosmic horror itself herald the famous quote?

“The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
Well, sure. Lovecraft is the poster child, of course, but Frankenstein was similarly based on the terror engendered by a materialist explanation of life, and plenty of later sci-fi has kept the torch burning (e.g, The Way of Cross and Dragon.) Physics has already pieced together some terrifying vistas (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/654503-that-man-is-the-product-of-causes-which-had-no), but I think thus far society has been surprisingly adept at packing that knowledge into a certain corner of a few scientists' minds while the rest of the populace enjoy iPhones and microwave ovens.

There's an interesting trend in Lovecraft's stories themselves, which possibly parallels his xenophobia mellowing in middle age- stories like At the Mountains of Madness or the Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath have a definite element of 'sympathy for the devil', where the hideous Other can have motives that don't boil down to racial malevolence, but a will to survive or mutual comradery. I think that's the spiritual upside of materialism- if you can break down the human soul into inanimate parts, it can also be reconstituted in a variety of forms.

(FWIW, The Descent is one of my favourite cult films.)

[endoperez]

Reading Chinese fantasy novels (wuxiaworld.com, for example) does show a very different system of... Let's call them mores... than the Western system of opposing duality of good and evil.

A common concept is that mortals are fated to be mortals, and it isn't their place to seek ascension, heaven, or immortality. As such, those acts result in heavenly punishment. However, it's also accepted that power is its own reward - anyone powerful enough to resist the heavenly punishment deserves immortality.

Torturing a murderer horribly to exact punishment and revenge can be portrayed as good. Good tends to be close to Just / Righteous / Proper - or in D&D terns, lawful.

Good and evil exist, but their value is different. It's as if they describe things, but don't define them - as of 'a good Satan' is not an oxymoron. And the way Western values are portrayed is weird. In a story called Skyfire Avenue, a scifi-Europe is all old aristocracy bowing and kissing hands, divided between two religious factions, a church of light, angels and saints and a church of indulgement, corruption, evil monsters etc. Their heads are called the Pontiff and the Satan. The family of Hades used to be the head of the dark church.
The problem with Satan isn't that he's evil, but that he has problems controlling his desires and moods etc. Evil is what he does, as a job of a leader of a kinda-criminal, unscrupulous organization. The two churches are political enemies in a two-party system, and share a planet. Satan runs a sinful theme park. It's weird.

So while good/evil exist, the way they're seen and interpreted can be so different that the things they symbolise and stand for might be different.


I'm not sure if I'm supposed to give examples of stories where Evil, from Western perspective, wins...
.. Or if I should post a story where the outcome is the heroes' defeat in the hands of villains.

[Brother Oni]

Unfortunately, there's little or nothing to stop the Emperor from remarrying or boinking concubines to replenish the line of succession. I'm kind of hazy about the details of story by now, but my overall impression of theme was 'voyeuristic sadism'.


It's mentioned in the film, but as a reminder; he can't re-marry as long as the current Empress is still around, as her family was instrumental to his becoming Emperor and he's not powerful enough to rule without their help.

Because of this, he can't just divorce or otherwise remove her (exile, assassination, etc) as it would plunge the country back into a civil war again. This leaves him with one option to get rid of her without arousing suspicion from her family - drive her insane by poisoning her minutely over years under the guise of 'treating her illness' (lead or mercury would be my go-tos in that time period).

When she does go insane, the Emperor can have her quietly pensioned off to a remote rural estate or isolated part of the palace complex and re-marry/obtain a new heir with the tacit approval of his in-laws (she's still alive, but not in a fit state to be the mother of a Crown Prince).

I'd also like to point out that the Emperor wasn't responsible for the death of his eldest son and was truly fond of him, partially because the prince pre-dates his ascension to Emperor and large part due to the prince knowing his limitations and not wanting to be the Crown Prince.

I'm not sure, but I think the third son isn't the son of the Empress, so the Emperor's problems isn't in getting more heirs, it's dealing with a traitorous wife that has already tried to overthrow him, but can't deal with her directly because of her family's influence.



Back to the original topic, are stories where a protagonist's hubris becomes their downfall count as evil winning in this context?

There's a number of these in Chinese myth and stories, from the Monkey King (trapped for centuries under a mountain by the Buddha) to Hou Yi, the Magnificent Archer (he's separated from his wife and between grief and the lack of her stabilising influence, becomes a tyrant and is eventually assassinated).

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is fictionalisation of history where the 'good' side (the kingdom of Shu) doesn't win and the eventual winner (the 'bad' side, the kingdom of Wei) is usurped by an internal faction to form the Jin Dynasty.

[pendell]

.

Judging by the tales of our ancestors that have survived, that so many stories now have happy endings seems like a modern innovation to me.


That is my understanding as well, to the point that "Disney Ending' or 'Hollywood' ending is a bit of a joke. Grimm's Fairy Tales, in particular, were a lot less uplifting before the moderns got their hands on them.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Mikemical]

Well, in manga and anime there's plenty of examples where evil wins or is proven right:

- Samurai X/Rurouni Kenshin: Shishio was fighting against the westernisation of Japan fearing that it would lead to the loss of identity of the country. Guess what happened.

- Berserk: Griffith sacrificed the Band of the Hawk to become a demigod, sacrificed Guts and Casca's child to reincarnate himself into a more human-like form, built his own kingdom and became basically Jesus, with the CATHOLIC CHURCH supporting him as the lord and saviour of the world that he himself plunged into chaos.

- Devilman: The demons take over at the end of the OVA and turn everyone into hermaphrodite demons.

[Knaight]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is fictionalisation of history where the 'good' side (the kingdom of Shu) doesn't win and the eventual winner (the 'bad' side, the kingdom of Wei) is usurped by an internal faction to form the Jin Dynasty.

I was coming to the thread to list this one, while also noting that the Jin dynasty has a fairly negative portrayal in Ro3K and thus it works out very conventionally as a case of evil winning.

[Donnadogsoth]

Well, sure. Lovecraft is the poster child, of course, but Frankenstein was similarly based on the terror engendered by a materialist explanation of life, and plenty of later sci-fi has kept the torch burning (e.g, The Way of Cross and Dragon.) Physics has already pieced together some terrifying vistas (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/654503-that-man-is-the-product-of-causes-which-had-no), but I think thus far society has been surprisingly adept at packing that knowledge into a certain corner of a few scientists' minds while the rest of the populace enjoy iPhones and microwave ovens.

There's an interesting trend in Lovecraft's stories themselves, which possibly parallels his xenophobia mellowing in middle age- stories like At the Mountains of Madness or the Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath have a definite element of 'sympathy for the devil', where the hideous Other can have motives that don't boil down to racial malevolence, but a will to survive or mutual comradery. I think that's the spiritual upside of materialism- if you can break down the human soul into inanimate parts, it can also be reconstituted in a variety of forms.

(FWIW, The Descent is one of my favourite cult films.)

Also Nietzsche and Leo Strauss as advocates of the need for inner strength for the highly conscious to overcome the moral emptiness of existence.

Sounds like we need new Archetypes to help us bind the psychic forces that will otherwise upend everything as the locks on our moral fetters are picked by materialism. Such a model would need to be universal, cosmic even, that would set up a warning to humanity.

[2D8HP]

Are stories where evil wins, such as...

...unique to late-Western civilisation? .....


Also Nietzsche....


:confused:

Okay Donnadogsoth, now I'm more interested in your biography than in the original thread topic (which I think has been answered as "No", people have told those types of stories for millennia, but I still like to learn more good non-modern, and non-western stories).

How are you aware of Lovecraft and Nietzche (who referenced Greek myths), but not at some some of the works cited in this thread, which seem more well known to me?

Just who are you?
(Age and education please)

[Lethologica]

Lovecraft and Nietzsche are staples of any Western education. Journey to the West and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, less so.


Also Nietzsche and Leo Strauss as advocates of the need for inner strength for the highly conscious to overcome the moral emptiness of existence.

Sounds like we need new Archetypes to help us bind the psychic forces that will otherwise upend everything as the locks on our moral fetters are picked by materialism. Such a model would need to be universal, cosmic even, that would set up a warning to humanity.
Counterclaim: The claim to both cosmic scope and morality by those fetters has always been dubious. We have continually needed, and continually built, new archetypes for new societies and circumstances. What ought to be preserved from the old is worth preserving because it works, whether or not cosmic forces are involved.

I don't know how the heck one gets further into this subject on this forum, though.

[Manga Shoggoth]

There's a number of these in Chinese myth and stories, from the Monkey King (trapped for centuries under a mountain by the Buddha) to Hou Yi, the Magnificent Archer (he's separated from his wife and between grief and the lack of her stabilising influence, becomes a tyrant and is eventually assassinated).

Not sure that the Monkey King is an example. True, it is his pride that gets him stuck under the mountain, but in Journey to the West that happens at the start of the story, and by the end (some 95-odd chapters later in a 100 chapter story) he is made an Ahrat as a reward for his actions after his release.

[Fri]

:confused:

Okay Donnadogsoth, now I'm more interested in your biography than in the original thread topic (which I think has been answered as "No", people have told those types of stories for millennia, but I still like to learn more good non-modern, and non-western stories).

How are you aware of Lovecraft and Nietzche (who referenced Greek myths), but not at some some of the works cited in this thread, which seem more well known to me?

Just who are you?
(Age and education please)


I'm honestly more interested in how he could ever think that horror movie is a uniquely western idea. Even if he somehow lives under a rock for the whole of early 2000s where roughly half hollywood horror movie is a japanese movie adaptation, it's such a boggling idea to have that it's like asking if boiling food in water is a uniquely western, or stabbing is a uniquely western (or eastern, northern, southern, whatever. Stabbing is... just a thing, if you get what I mean.).

[2D8HP]

....early 2000s where roughly half hollywood horror movie is a japanese movie adaptation....


The only one of those that I've seen was "Dark Water".

Just so very disturbing.

And my wife brought home "Battle Royale", only a few minutes of which we could stand.

While one may interpret those films as inspired by "modern western nihilism", to me they're a whole 'nother level.

I miss Kurosawa.

[Lacuna Caster]

Reading Chinese fantasy novels (wuxiaworld.com, for example) does show a very different system of... Let's call them mores... than the Western system of opposing duality of good and evil.

...The problem with Satan isn't that he's evil, but that he has problems controlling his desires and moods etc. Evil is what he does, as a job of a leader of a kinda-criminal, unscrupulous organization. The two churches are political enemies in a two-party system, and share a planet. Satan runs a sinful theme park. It's weird.
Given that medieval (and much of modern) christian imagery models Satan off of Pan and Bacchus, this may be a surprisingly reasonable interpretation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian). (LeVayan Satanism tends to paint itself that way as well.)

But yeah, one could say a lot of east asian philosophies/cultures tended to emphasise conscientiousness more than agreeableness, so from their perspective the law/chaos axis might fall closer to traditional definitions of good/evil.


I'm honestly more interested in how he could ever think that horror movie is a uniquely western idea. Even if he somehow lives under a rock for the whole of early 2000s where roughly half hollywood horror movie is a japanese movie adaptation..
This doesn't really prove anything, though. Most of the planet has adopted huge chunks of "western" culture, philosophy, economics and governance by now, to the extent that it's hard to separate contributing factors.

[Potatomade]

In reply to the OP:

Harakiri (1962) is a pretty strong example of evil winning, and it's EXTREMELY Japanese. The bad guys kill someone to prove a point, the protagonist dies trying to get revenge for the first guy's death, and the bad guys get to spin HIS death as proof positive that they were right the first time. They come out looking like honorable, noble warriors, and the good guys are all dead.

EDIT: Also, it's a hell of a story. If you haven't seen it, watch it. Believe me, what I said hardly spoils the movie.

[Donnadogsoth]

:confused:

Okay Donnadogsoth, now I'm more interested in your biography than in the original thread topic (which I think has been answered as "No", people have told those types of stories for millennia, but I still like to learn more good non-modern, and non-western stories).

How are you aware of Lovecraft and Nietzche (who referenced Greek myths), but not at some some of the works cited in this thread, which seem more well known to me?

Just who are you?
(Age and education please)


No, with respect, it serves no purpose to humour you. I'm interested in the ideas, not the biographies of you or anyone else. If you have anything to say about my suggested need for new Archetypes, however, I'm all ears.

[Legato Endless]

How are you aware of Lovecraft and Nietzche (who referenced Greek myths), but not at some some of the works cited in this thread, which seem more well known to me? [/SIZE]

Lovecraft is an interesting aberration to bring even into a thread that asks about how old various literary concepts are, when HP himself is very much a regressive and reactionary to his time. The paranoia of moral degradation from interbreeding, the eugenics his worldview necessitates, the inheritance of mental instability. His fear and skepticism of science's broadening scope, the demoralizing realization that classicism's great aim of a clockwork universe was never to manifest, an infinite boundary of limitless possibilities...

Some of these things are, with some watering down, quite effective in the modern age. But more than a few, with their particulars emphasized, are somewhat quaint to postmodern inculcation. In that sense, Cosmic Horror is, unlike everything else discussed in this threat, imminently chained to recent history; the peoples' of antiquity had neither the privileges nor cultural conditioning to be properly horrified of it's core conceits or specific assumptions to have unmoored.

The gasping fear that one does not live in an orderly structure that will, with time and gumption, inevitably surrender to man's defined ascendancy wouldn't produce much to those who had conducted their lives in realms of inexplicable chaos. That the answers might unsatisfactory and beyond the ken is little anxiety to those who live in a world where they can't seem to find answers at all.

[Bohandas]

If so, were such modern tales introduced from the West? I have a hard time imagining any traditional indigenous culture having a story like this, for example:

"And then the evil god slew the good god and his wicked kingdom stood forever and ever."

I think that depends on how you define "evil". There's certainly plenty where from an outsider's or modern descendant's prespective they're clearly both evil.

[Lemmy]

With the advent of internet and globalization, I doubt anything is unique to anywhere. All that changes is how common it is.

[Lurkmoar]

Well, in manga and anime there's plenty of examples where evil wins or is proven right:

- Samurai X/Rurouni Kenshin: Shishio was fighting against the westernisation of Japan fearing that it would lead to the loss of identity of the country. Guess what happened.

- Berserk: Griffith sacrificed the Band of the Hawk to become a demigod, sacrificed Guts and Casca's child to reincarnate himself into a more human-like form, built his own kingdom and became basically Jesus, with the CATHOLIC CHURCH supporting him as the lord and saviour of the world that he himself plunged into chaos.

- Devilman: The demons take over at the end of the OVA and turn everyone into hermaphrodite demons.

To be fair, Berserk is still ongoing... at a glacial pace. Next update is sometime this winter!

[Legato Endless]

To be fair, Berserk is still ongoing... at a glacial pace. Next update is sometime this winter!

I too hope my grandchildren's grandchildren will live to see the conclusion.

[Vinyadan]

Late-Western? I am not sure of what that means. But "Lupus et agnus" is a pretty old story.

Also, +1 to the fact that tragedy isn't the same as "Evil wins". You can see it by, well, reading them. In Beowulf also evil doesn't win: Beowulf dies, but the dragon is dead. From the Athenian point of view, one tragedy in which evil won was Phrinicus' "Sack of Miletus", which was banned from theatres and whose author had to pay a fine for having reminded the citizens of domestic evils.

I also am quite sure that the Monkey being trapped by the Buddha is actually "good triumphs", what with the novel being something of a Buddhist pamphlet complete with comparisons to Taoism and justifications for the permanence of this foreign tradition in China. I must finish reading that book sometime, I'm still at chapter 32.


Lovecraft and Nietzsche are staples of any Western education. Journey to the West and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, less so.


You overestimate Lovecraft's reception. Around here, he's just a niche author, and absent from education programs (he might pop up in university-level courses, but, even then, it's likely rare). Gothic novels and Poe receive infinitely more attention. RPG players tend to know him, however.

[Lethologica]

You overestimate Lovecraft's reception. Around here, he's just a niche author, and absent from education programs (he might pop up in university-level courses, but, even then, it's likely rare). Gothic novels and Poe receive infinitely more attention. RPG players tend to know him, however.
Fair 'nuff. I mean, I remember hearing about him in high school, but my experience is not universal and I shouldn't have made the leap.

[Lacuna Caster]

The gasping fear that one does not live in an orderly structure that will, with time and gumption, inevitably surrender to man's defined ascendancy wouldn't produce much to those who had conducted their lives in realms of inexplicable chaos. That the answers might unsatisfactory and beyond the ken is little anxiety to those who live in a world where they can't seem to find answers at all.
But ancient societies had plenty of answers to those questions- specifically, mythological ones, in which humanity was crafted with a conscious purpose, much of the universe was fine-tuned for our benefit, astrologers had a narrative for every event, and even if the afterlife wasn't reliably pleasant it usually served to reinforce social values. That we now know such explanations to be empirically untenable and radically at odds with our apparent insignificance in the universe is an entirely modern development.


I'm interested in the ideas, not the biographies of you or anyone else. If you have anything to say about my suggested need for new Archetypes, however, I'm all ears.
I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by archetypes, but if you simply mean hero-figures of some form or other there's no shortage of those. I have to wonder if another set of heroes is really the solution, though. But there is a poem I'm fond of-

This is the one and only
firmament; therefore
it is the absolute world.
There is no other world.
The circle is complete.
I am living in Eternity.
The ways of this world
are the ways of Heaven.
-Metaphysics, AllenGinsberg

[Donnadogsoth]

I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by archetypes, but if you simply mean hero-figures of some form or other there's no shortage of those. I have to wonder if another set of heroes is really the solution, though. But there is a poem I'm fond of-

This is the one and only
firmament; therefore
it is the absolute world.
There is no other world.
The circle is complete.
I am living in Eternity.
The ways of this world
are the ways of Heaven.
-Metaphysics, AllenGinsberg

Jungian Archetypes map the mind. Suppose there is a deeper level or another set of archetypes mapping a complementary aspect of the mind? I don't know, we humans are in such a pickle conventional solutions are deadlocked. I wonder if cosmic horror has potential to save us, instead of destroying us. I always was fond of humanity rising up to become a Lesser Independent Race.

[Donnadogsoth]

Lovecraft is an interesting aberration to bring even into a thread that asks about how old various literary concepts are, when HP himself is very much a regressive and reactionary to his time. The paranoia of moral degradation from interbreeding, the eugenics his worldview necessitates, the inheritance of mental instability. His fear and skepticism of science's broadening scope, the demoralizing realization that classicism's great aim of a clockwork universe was never to manifest, an infinite boundary of limitless possibilities...

Some of these things are, with some watering down, quite effective in the modern age. But more than a few, with their particulars emphasized, are somewhat quaint to postmodern inculcation. In that sense, Cosmic Horror is, unlike everything else discussed in this threat, imminently chained to recent history; the peoples' of antiquity had neither the privileges nor cultural conditioning to be properly horrified of it's core conceits or specific assumptions to have unmoored.

The gasping fear that one does not live in an orderly structure that will, with time and gumption, inevitably surrender to man's defined ascendancy wouldn't produce much to those who had conducted their lives in realms of inexplicable chaos. That the answers might unsatisfactory and beyond the ken is little anxiety to those who live in a world where they can't seem to find answers at all.

If we're beyond cosmic fear then we are already insane or living in a new dark age.

[Legato Endless]

But ancient societies had plenty of answers to those questions- specifically, mythological ones, in which humanity was crafted with a conscious purpose, much of the universe was fine-tuned for our benefit, astrologers had a narrative for every event, and even if the afterlife wasn't reliably pleasant it usually served to reinforce social values. That we now know such explanations to be empirically untenable and radically at odds with our apparent insignificance in the universe is an entirely modern development.

Not really. At least, not in the way you're framing it. People weren't terribly more in consensus about the intricacies of life then, than they are now. But there's a much more fatal problem. Mythology can cover the broad strokes of life, the inevitably of death, your role in society, what we as a culture celebrate and why it's a good thing. But it can't readily answer the messy specifics that inevitably arise, because they exceed the limits of any canon, especially one limited to oral transmission. But these events are nonetheless earth shattering.

When the restorer of the Roman Empire had a massive economic crisis on his hands, he couldn't consult the sages for any good answer to how to deal with it. And no one could seemly answer why flooding the markets with more coinage only seemed to exacerbating the problems. Nor could one find an easy pat solution to why the water rites that had previously made the rains come from a bad year turned impotent against a climatological change. Or why your king, who'd done everything similar to what his legendary forebears had done wasn't capable of coping with these new invaders? There might be some broad consensus formed later on as to why that occurred, but it was usually well after the fact to give voice to some new narrative of convenience. The world kept changing, outpacing human perception of how it could or should.

And so the general public even into the 19th century readily believed various things. A fossilized statue of giant 10 feet tall. Beavers without tail (whose discovery has been published in a broad sheet!) have been seen on the Moon, which is teeming with exotic life. The world was very wide, and the horizons held wonders and no one really knew what would happen next, because strange and fantastical things were being mentioned every new day. Lovecraft is what comes next. When the map is filled. And so he teases the possibility of there are monsters in space beyond what you conceive!


If we're beyond cosmic fear then we are already insane or living in a new dark age.

I'm not wholly sure we've collectively moved beyond it, although that would require some indulgences in various taboo topics of modern philosophy. I would say I rather suspect should we deal with the threat of climate change and make it into the coming century, I'm skeptical Lovecraft classic remains fashionable. But to more than a few peoples merely a few short generations before Lovecraft, some of the things that left him aghast was kind of tactically accepted as general sanity even if they lacked the tools to properly elucidate it.

[Lethologica]

If we're beyond cosmic fear then we are already insane or living in a new dark age.
This is kinda backwards. Usually we call a society/historical period insane, or a dark age, if it is characterized by lots of dead bodies or tangible human misery, and then work backwards to assess the causes. You're declaring the cause of a dark age without the evidence of a dark age, let alone one caused by that factor. Indeed, we're not even sure if that factor exists.

[Rodin]

I never really realized when Lovecraft lived - I assumed it was mid-to-late 1800s, but it looks like he starts writing around WWI time going into the Gilded Age. There was a lot of existential despair going around at that time as the shock of the modern age arriving set in. The themes are suddenly much more fitting.

[Knaight]

I'm honestly more interested in how he could ever think that horror movie is a uniquely western idea. Even if he somehow lives under a rock for the whole of early 2000s where roughly half hollywood horror movie is a japanese movie adaptation, it's such a boggling idea to have that it's like asking if boiling food in water is a uniquely western, or stabbing is a uniquely western (or eastern, northern, southern, whatever. Stabbing is... just a thing, if you get what I mean.).

Some people are that clueless - and I'm talking about boiling food in water here, not horror. I have an uncle who was confused to learn that in Libya, they have the technology to make soup and grind flour.

[tensai_oni]

Good and evil are a western thing.

You can hardly blame the lack of something that doesn't exist to that culture.

Congratulations, thanks to you OP is no longer the most ignorant person in the thread.

[Crooked Man]

If we're beyond cosmic fear then we are already insane or living in a new dark age.

Yeah, the dark ages weren't as nearly as terrible or dark as people say. (https://youtu.be/Cqzq01i2O3U?t=37s)

[S@tanicoaldo]

Yeah, the dark ages weren't as nearly as terrible or dark as people say. (https://youtu.be/Cqzq01i2O3U?t=37s)

Not only on europe but on the rest of the world it was a great time for philosophy, art and science. (https://youtu.be/QV7CanyzhZg?t=3m33s)

It was the gold ages and times for the Islamic and Chinese. We call it dark ages becuase we are eurocentric. :smallwink:

[Bohandas]

Yeah, the dark ages weren't as nearly as terrible or dark as people say. (https://youtu.be/Cqzq01i2O3U?t=37s)

Compared to today's world the 1990's were dark and terrible, and the 1950's and earlier weren't even civilized

[Donnadogsoth]

This is kinda backwards. Usually we call a society/historical period insane, or a dark age, if it is characterized by lots of dead bodies or tangible human misery, and then work backwards to assess the causes. You're declaring the cause of a dark age without the evidence of a dark age, let alone one caused by that factor. Indeed, we're not even sure if that factor exists.

I'd say society's wholesale denial of universal principles of art, science, statecraft, and morality counts as insane. Of course if it hadn't denied principle in the first place there would have been no room for cosmic fear.

As to dead bodies and misery,
The century is young,
Give it time,
It will come.

[Slayn82]

Reading Chinese fantasy novels (wuxiaworld.com, for example) does show a very different system of... Let's call them mores... than the Western system of opposing duality of good and evil.

A common concept is that mortals are fated to be mortals, and it isn't their place to seek ascension, heaven, or immortality. As such, those acts result in heavenly punishment. However, it's also accepted that power is its own reward - anyone powerful enough to resist the heavenly punishment deserves immortality.

Torturing a murderer horribly to exact punishment and revenge can be portrayed as good. Good tends to be close to Just / Righteous / Proper - or in D&D terns, lawful.

Good and evil exist, but their value is different. It's as if they describe things, but don't define them - as of 'a good Satan' is not an oxymoron. And the way Western values are portrayed is weird. In a story called Skyfire Avenue, a scifi-Europe is all old aristocracy bowing and kissing hands, divided between two religious factions, a church of light, angels and saints and a church of indulgement, corruption, evil monsters etc. Their heads are called the Pontiff and the Satan. The family of Hades used to be the head of the dark church.
The problem with Satan isn't that he's evil, but that he has problems controlling his desires and moods etc. Evil is what he does, as a job of a leader of a kinda-criminal, unscrupulous organization. The two churches are political enemies in a two-party system, and share a planet. Satan runs a sinful theme park. It's weird.

So while good/evil exist, the way they're seen and interpreted can be so different that the things they symbolise and stand for might be different.


This little one greets fellow daoist!

I also like to read wuxia and fantasy novels. A expression that I have seen repeatedly in several works is "the winner is the King, and the loser becomes the thief". This idea seems to appear in a lot of Asian works, maybe because of the pervasiveness of the concept of the Order and Mandate of Heavens.

The Heavens, and what is understood as natural and just in the world, can be changed by someone who is able to defy them, and finally, make them submit to his will. In ancient times, several disasters or the decline of the kingdoms could be interpreted as the rulers losing the Mandate of Heavens, thus creating justification for another dynasty to make war and take over. The losers would them be vilified, while the winners becomes exalted.

Wuxia fantasy goes ahead, and techniques that are not approved by the current rulers of the Heavens become demonic and Evil, even if they used to be perfectly acceptable under the former rulers previously. Usually the Heavens will send tribulations (kind of like Paradox in Mage the Ascension) to punish those who defy the Heaven's Will. Of course, protagonists eventually manage to overcome such tribulations, taking those new powers into their own.

Often tribulations force the hero to spend time running away, hiding, accumulating forces to deal with them, but occasionally they can end up becoming an unexpected asset in a difficult battle, due to the hero triggering it when they are prepared and the enemy isn't. Some heroes even manage to conquer perfectly their tribulations, reaping major benefits - in the form of powers that others would consider demonic or devilish.

And as far as virtues of protagonists go, they tend to be very loyal and generous to their perceived friends, and very cruel (yes, as a virtue in their point of view) with their enemies. Being a good person is honorable, but being able to make monsters (and anyone else) explode make people very polite and appreciative of your distinguished person.

[Lethologica]

I'd say society's wholesale denial of universal principles of art, science, statecraft, and morality counts as insane. Of course if it hadn't denied principle in the first place there would have been no room for cosmic fear.

As to dead bodies and misery,
The century is young,
Give it time,
It will come.
You've replaced one nebulous cause with another, much broader one; replaced the uncertainty of a hypothetical with unsupported certainty; and explicitly refused to address the actual problem with your claim. Have fun with that.

[S@tanicoaldo]

I think the fact people complain about how horrible life is now from the comfort of their chairs and computers is hilarious.

[Donnadogsoth]

You've replaced one nebulous cause with another, much broader one; replaced the uncertainty of a hypothetical with unsupported certainty; and explicitly refused to address the actual problem with your claim. Have fun with that.

Society has principles? Do tell! I love principles. I collect 'em all.

[Crooked Man]

Society has principles? Do tell! I love principles. I collect 'em all.

The heck you're talking about? :smallconfused:

[Legato Endless]

The heck you're talking about? :smallconfused:

That a shift in social attitudes is prefiguring a time of reckoning.

[Crooked Man]

That a shift in social attitudes is prefiguring a time of reckoning.
Give me a break you can't be serious.

That's pure gold. A more equal and accepting society will bring the end times?

Run away while you can.

[Lethologica]

That a shift in social attitudes is prefiguring a time of reckoning.
People predicting reckoning from shifts in social attitudes have predicted 1000 of the last 5 reckonings.

EDIT: Also, when possible, shift the burden of proof for actually demonstrating the shifts and their causal link to reckonings.

[Gastronomie]

Are stories where evil wins, such as in Alien: Covenant, or at least one of the Phantasm films, or some of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, or the original version of Little Red Riding Hood, and I'm sure many others than I have forgotten or am unaware of, unique to late-Western civilisation?Uh, no.


I have a hard time imagining any traditional indigenous culture having a story like this, for example:
"And then the evil god slew the good god and his wicked kingdom stood forever and ever."You couldn't complain if people argue you're being potentially Eurocentric (regardless of whether you actually are, or mean to be). Stories where evil wins are found potentially everywhere. It's just that you have a hard time imagining it, because you don't have a clear understanding about other cultures, and in no means are your "imaginations" correct in this case.

[Legato Endless]

Give me a break you can't be serious.

That's pure gold. A more equal and accepting society will bring the end times?

Run away while you can.

I've heard at least 5 explanations for the real reason topical storms have been dumping rain where my Uncle lives this week alone.


People predicting reckoning from shifts in social attitudes have predicted 1000 of the last 5 reckonings.

EDIT: Also, when possible, shift the burden of proof for actually demonstrating the shifts and their causal link to reckonings.

What's interesting is, ignoring the old canard of social attitudes, we are having some doomsaying these days from people who actually do spend a lot of time showing their work, speculatively. Superintelligence, for example, is basically Godlike robotic intelligence is both plausible and inevitable unless we prepare for it. Or whether modern automation might actually upend existing economic trends and finally have technology remove far more jobs from the market than it creates. Of course time will tell if the Futurists are just Nostradamus in technocratic robes.

[2D8HP]

No, with respect, it serves no purpose to humour you. I'm interested in the ideas, not the biographies of you or anyone else. If you have anything to say about my suggested need for new Archetypes, however, I'm all ears.


Hardly the original topic, but I'm game.


Also Nietzsche and Leo Strauss as advocates of the need for inner strength for the highly conscious to overcome the moral emptiness of existence.

Sounds like we need new Archetypes to help us bind the psychic forces that will otherwise upend everything as the locks on our moral fetters are picked by materialism. Such a model would need to be universal, cosmic even, that would set up a warning to humanity.


:confused:

:annoyed:

Never mind.

I have no clue as to what you're asking


Jungian Archetypes map the mind. Suppose there is a deeper level or another set of archetypes mapping a complementary aspect of the mind? I don't know, we humans are in such a pickle conventional solutions are deadlocked. I wonder if cosmic horror has potential to save us, instead of destroying us. I always was fond of humanity rising up to become a Lesser Independent Race.


"Such a pickle situation"?


If we're beyond cosmic fear then we are already insane or living in a new dark age.


I'd say society's wholesale denial of universal principles of art, science, statecraft, and morality counts as insane. Of course if it hadn't denied principle in the first place there would have been no room for cosmic fear....


:smile:

Oh I think I get it!

Your doing an impersonation of someone who's lived through the World Wars who is suffering existential despair ala Nausea, No Exit, Waiting for Godot, etc.

I want to play too!


Purple Eisenhower mimeographs going through the stucco of my mind

Mustard gas, atomic blasts, squares are too sublime

*snaps fingers*

Espresso



The heck you're talking about? :smallconfused:


It's free verse!

Ya dig?


Compared to today's world the 1990's were dark and terrible, and the 1950's and earlier weren't even civilized


:sigh:

According to my grandparents, compared to the '30's and the war years the 1950's were great!

And according to me the '90's were (mostly) AWESOME!

The 1980's however were a dark, dark time.


Alright, here's some fictional heroes that I'd like to see more of their like:

The meteorologist in David Brin's The Life Eaters (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_Eaters),

Sam Gamgee in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings .

Both reject superhuman power.

[Bohandas]

I'd say society's wholesale denial of universal principles of art, science, statecraft, and morality counts as insane. Of course if it hadn't denied principle in the first place there would have been no room for cosmic fear.

There are no universal principles other than the laws of physics and mathematics (and much of the latter likely aren't really relevant to anything; a finite approximation of pi to a sufficient number of decimal places for example is sufficient given that distances lower than the planck length are meaningless and he observable universe is of finite size and will give you the exact diameter of any circle that can exist in the real world)


As to dead bodies and misery,
The century is young,
Give it time,
It will come.

This I agree with. That;s been clear since last november

[InvisibleBison]

As to dead bodies and misery,
The century is young,
Give it time,
It will come.

I feel obliged to point out that this century is actually rather tragically well-supplied with dead bodies and misery.

[Bohandas]

The absolute number of bodies is getting higher to be sure, but that's due to increased population resulting from people not dying of starvation, infected or poorly treated injuries, or complications from minor diseases

[Serpentine]

I can't believe someone actually tried to claim that horror is a Western thing.

If there is a universal constant that can be applied to humanity, it's that we like eatin', shaggin', and scarin' each other.

[2D8HP]

I feel obliged to point out that this century is actually rather tragically well-supplied with dead bodies and misery.


Yes, my great-grandmother, born in late 19th century Europe (who I knew in the early 1970's just before she died), was the only one of her siblings, or indeed any of her blood relatives who wasn't a descendent who wasn't killed by the wars and regimes of the 20th century, and always seemed downcast to me.

My grandfather who was born in 1917 (so he survived the Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression), and served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a test pilot, and was scheduled to fly a bomber to Japan in 1945, and thought he would probably be killed, when the Atomic bomb was dropped and the war ended..

He didn't suffer survivors guilt, he had survivors euphoria! I seldom saw him glum (unlike my born in '37 father, or me, born in '68 who are cranky coots).

See 1936's "Things to Come" (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=atwfWEKz00U) to see what my grandparents (most of the Forum's great-grandparents) generation feared war would bring, replaced by the fear of Atomic weapons by my parents and my generation. Those born before 1946 and have memories of those years knew terrible times.

Us?

Not so much, at that scale.

Yes they're many things I may complain about, but compared to my grandparents youth and young adulthood?

Easy street.

The times for existential angst was 60 to 102 years ago (during and after the World Wars), not now.

[Vinyadan]

Yeah, the dark ages weren't as nearly as terrible or dark as people say. (https://youtu.be/Cqzq01i2O3U?t=37s)

I was expecting a Monty Python video (the Medieval village in Holy Grail... :smallbiggrin:)

The Dark Ages were very bad when they started. Parts of Western Europe lost about half of their population within a century, due to loss of safety, destruction of commerce, war, plague, and plunder. There is e.g. a book about the development of Baetica during and after the end of Roman authority there, and it paints a very grim portrait of the situation.

Also, the heck is cosmic fear? Fear of the cosmos? Fear for the cosmos?

[Kantaki]

:smile:

Oh I think I get it!

Your doing an impersonation of someone who's lived through the World Wars who is suffering existential despair ala Nausea, No Exit, Waiting for Godot, etc.

I want to play too!


Purple Eisenhower mimeographs going through the stucco of my mind

Mustard gas, atomic blasts, squares are too sublime

*snaps fingers*

Espresso




Failed your SAN check?:smalltongue:

[Crooked Man]

Also, the heck is cosmic fear? Fear of the cosmos? Fear for the cosmos?

It's fear of the insignificance of humanity in the face of the vastness of the cosmos.

[Vinyadan]

Oh, OK, thank you. I probably already said this in another topic, but it's something I never understood. I regard the cosmos as our home, so I don't know why we should be scared of it being big. Maybe, if we one day were to find some sort of alien race capable of wiping us out, I would think about it, but it's not like we don't already have to worry about fellow humans endangering our safety.

[Eldan]

Purple Eisenhower mimeographs going through the stucco of my mind

Mustard gas, atomic blasts, squares are too sublime

*snaps fingers*

Espresso




I dig, but I Eisenhower is more of a blue or dark grey than a purple.

[Eldan]

Oh, OK, thank you. I probably already said this in another topic, but it's something I never understood. I regard the cosmos as our home, so I don't know why we should be scared of it being big. Maybe, if we one day were to find some sort of alien race capable of wiping us out, I would think about it, but it's not like we don't already have to worry about fellow humans endangering our safety.

Many people like to think they, personally, are significant. And if the universe is that big, there's that feeling that what they do will never influence most of it, or even be remembered, in time. That scares them.

*shrug*

I never felt it either.

[Lacuna Caster]

Hardly the original topic, but I'm game...
2D8, I am also somewhat unclear as to what Donna is looking for, specifically. But I don't think your tone of jeering condescension is remotely helpful.

[Lacuna Caster]

Jungian Archetypes map the mind. Suppose there is a deeper level or another set of archetypes mapping a complementary aspect of the mind? I don't know, we humans are in such a pickle conventional solutions are deadlocked. I wonder if cosmic horror has potential to save us, instead of destroying us. I always was fond of humanity rising up to become a Lesser Independent Race.
I'm afraid I'm not terribly familiar with Jung- heck, all I know of Freud is from webcomics (http://www.dead-philosophers.com/?p=1232)- so I'm not sure I can comment usefully on the idea. My gloss from skimming wikipedia is that some interpretations of archetypes making them into a genetic predisposition toward certain ideas and values, which I think is plausible, but by definition that wouldn't be much affected by changes in culture?

But why in particular do you feel that humans are in such a pickle? I can see various existential problems on the horizon (see below), but I'm not clear on how physical materialism per se is to blame. Unless you equate it with consumerism?


Not really. At least, not in the way you're framing it. People weren't terribly more in consensus about the intricacies of life then, than they are now. But there's a much more fatal problem. Mythology can cover the broad strokes of life, the inevitably of death, your role in society, what we as a culture celebrate and why it's a good thing. But it can't readily answer the messy specifics that inevitably arise, because they exceed the limits of any canon, especially one limited to oral transmission. But these events are nonetheless earth shattering.
Hey, I'm not saying that there aren't distinct benefits to having actual explanations for how the world works- obviously medicine and sanitation and transport and manufacturing, etc. have raised the bar for living standards. I'm clearly in no hurry to go back to a time when the miasma theory of disease was in vogue.

My main point is that, prior to the scientific revolution, the fringes of the map might say "here be dragons", but Marduk bested Tiamat and St. George slew the worm. Lovecraft takes a look at billions of years of geological time and the gulfs of distant stars and concludes- correctly- that any dragons who swim in that sea could swallow us without noticing if they were half a notch higher on the kardashev scale.

(An an aside, I'm not convinced that modern societies have been vastly more rational in dealing with, e.g, economic dysfunction or rampant deforestation or technological unemployment or other sweeping paradigm shifts, since narratives of convenience tend to obfuscate reasoning on these points as soon as vested interests get involved. Empirical knowledge hasn't really solved that problem.)

[comicshorse]

This little one greets fellow daoist!

I also like to read wuxia and fantasy novels. A expression that I have seen repeatedly in several works is "the winner is the King, and the loser becomes the thief". This idea seems to appear in a lot of Asian works, maybe because of the pervasiveness of the concept of the Order and Mandate of Heavens.



" Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason. "

[Kantaki]

It's fear of the insignificance of humanity in the face of the vastness of the cosmos.

A healthy dose of arrogance can help with that.:smallamused:

[Gastronomie]

Many people like to think they, personally, are significant. And if the universe is that big, there's that feeling that what they do will never influence most of it, or even be remembered, in time. That scares them.

*shrug*

I never felt it either.Regarding the underlined part, you could argue that Buddhism, as well as some parts of Hinduism, are in some ways similar in their main point.

Buddhism pretty much starts with acknowledging that you're an ugly, greedy jerk, living in a jerkish world full of jerks, and that your life is of no significance whatsoever... because you're a jerk.

I'm not an expert on Hinduism, but from what I heard the gods in Hinduism are so overpowered you could argue they can wrestle the Great Old Ones or even the Outer Gods... and win. Like, some god whose name I forgot, his "one blink of an eye" takes about the same time as the life span of five thousand universes or something. I'm sorry, my info might be incorrect or inaccurate, but anyways, the human race is insiginificant in a world with such powerful entities.

The difference between these religions and Cosmic Horror is prolly about whether there's a way to do something about it.

In Buddhism, after realizing you're a jerk, you proceed to start thinking about "how to escape your jerkishness".
In Hinduism, you can pray to the almighty gods. Given how powerful the gods are, if you could gain their blessings, that's great.
But in Lovecraftian Horror, there is no way to cure your lack of importance. The Great Old Ones don't even really realize they're destroying your planet (or solar system) as they make their morning stroll. So perhaps, the idea that "there is no hope" may have first originated in Europe (which is the first area in the world where nihilism somehow successfully spread and became a major movement in the society, if I'm not mistaken).

(No, this does not mean that "stories where evil wins are unique to the West". Stories are created for various purposes, by various people, with various beliefs and spheres of thought. Horror is a universal thing, and in most old horror stories, the evil, or unfathomable, side wins (note that most of the time, the reason here is not really because the world sucks, but simply because that way, the story's scarier).
However, it may mean that the West is the first place in the world where people actually took that type of horror seriously - instead of considering it simple entertainment - and connected it to the real world. Or to be more exact, "the first place in a very long time". Ancient people did the same thing, got scary, couldn't stand it, created religion to cover it up, and passed it on to their children. Western culture decided to strip it off, and as a result, re-discovered what their ancestors tried to hid from them.)

The main point of Cosmic Horror - "you're an ant, you suck" - is in no way peculiar to the West. Every culture has that.
It's just that while other cultures went on to cure their hearts with explanations or ways to escape that thought - mostly in the forms of philosophies and myths - the West eventually stopped doing that.

[kraftcheese]

This insignificance of human life doesn't seem so bad if you place it in the context of the human experience being the only experience we ever have, if that makes any sense?

Like, we're all significant on a person-to-person level as long as we have social interactions with people, and humans are the only thing we know of that even measures significance. Materialism doesn't necessarily mean we're insignificant.

[Brother Oni]

Not sure that the Monkey King is an example. True, it is his pride that gets him stuck under the mountain, but in Journey to the West that happens at the start of the story, and by the end (some 95-odd chapters later in a 100 chapter story) he is made an Ahrat as a reward for his actions after his release.

While you're correct, the Sun Wukong's 'origin story' is often told as a self contained tale and in my opinion, there's a big enough time gap (500 years) before the birth of the main protagonist of Journey to the West to reasonably regard it as separate.


The times for existential angst was 60 to 102 years ago (during and after the World Wars), not now.

Unless you remember the Cuban Missile Crisis or live within missile range of North Korea, but now we're veering into board rules territory.

[pendell]

I can't believe someone actually tried to claim that horror is a Western thing.

If there is a universal constant that can be applied to humanity, it's that we like eatin', shaggin', and scarin' each other.

Don't forget sleeping. Like, actual eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Aotrs Commander]

As to dead bodies and misery,
The century is young,
Give it time,
It will come.

Look, I'm trying, okay?

But no matter how much I submit my requests to the boss how humanity desparately needs to be orbitally bombarded into paste, vanishingly few good, many bad, and uncounted stupid and incompetant alike, he just won't let me do it, because it's "against regulations."

I appeciate the saner members among you realising that explosive death from above is the best way to deal with humanity's many, oh SO MANY, ills, but just give me frackin' chance, will you? Wearing away a 2700 Lich's resolve takes a while, is all.

Honestly.

You try to be a good Evil-doer, but there really is no rest for the wicked.

*sigh*

Right, I suppose I'd go submit request number... *checks* 4273, then hadn't I?

Are we happy now?

[SaintRidley]

Also, +1 to the fact that tragedy isn't the same as "Evil wins". You can see it by, well, reading them. In Beowulf also evil doesn't win: Beowulf dies, but the dragon is dead.

Point of order: it's a bit more than that. Now that Beowulf is dead the neighboring tribes will finally be able to invade without fear of losing, and Beowulf's entire people will be extinguished. It only deepens the tragedy and may not qualify as evil winning (unless in a very delayed sense), but it's not as simple as Beowulf and the dragon killing each other. Beowulf has also shortsightedly doomed his people.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there.

[eggynack]

Of course not. I've been on a reasonable Bong Joon Ho kick recently, and his films tend to end with Pyrrhic victories at best.

So, movies I saw were Snowpiercer, Okja, and Mother, in that order. Snowpiercer is arguably the movie where evil triumphs least, but that's just because the protagonist decides to likely destroy all of humanity rather than perpetuate the villain's problematic system. I'm inclined to say that a film where the only way to destroy evil is to make there be no humans to be evil is pretty close to the goal here.

Okja is kinda the middle ground here. The protagonist successfully saves her super pig, and a bonus pig on top of that, but she was only able to do so by directly participating in the system she was ostensibly opposing, and said system seems like it'll do just fine after the events of the movie. If anything, the interference of our heroes just made the system more evil, replacing the PR conscious sister with the one that couldn't care less about either morality or about how her morals are viewed.

Finally, you have Mother, which is a ridiculously dark film. The titular mother succeeds at getting her son not to go to jail, but said son turns out to have been the murderer, and she had to kill someone to keep that fact secret.
Moreover, all that effort and murder was utterly pointless because the police wound up pointing the finger at an even more disenfranchised kid. The mother in question is pretty evil, and she wins to the detriment of a buncha stuff.


Really gotta see The Host at some point. I've heard a bit about it, so I think it captures those same themes of futility and the durability of cruel and callous systems. And, of course, all of these movies are very much not the west.

[The Eye]

Just watch the darkest film I have ever seen:

"Sympathy For Mr Vengeance"

You can't get worse than that.

[Manga Shoggoth]

While you're correct, the Sun Wukong's 'origin story' is often told as a self contained tale and in my opinion, there's a big enough time gap (500 years) before the birth of the main protagonist of Journey to the West to reasonably regard it as separate.

Fair enough - I'm not aware of the story in any context outside Journey to the West (apart from one propoganda film that didn't get as far as the Mountain of Five Elements...).

[Frozen_Feet]

Cosmic Horror in the specific form popularized by Lovecraft is modern, but the feelings it's based on, Awe and Squick, are not. Both are all over the place in myths and religious stories alike. Both Abrahamic and Vedic myths have people throwing themselves on the ground in horror after viewing some ostensibly good supernatural creatures, because such transcendent beings are not for mortal eyes.

[Donnadogsoth]

There are no universal principles other than the laws of physics and mathematics (and much of the latter likely aren't really relevant to anything; a finite approximation of pi to a sufficient number of decimal places for example is sufficient given that distances lower than the planck length are meaningless and he observable universe is of finite size and will give you the exact diameter of any circle that can exist in the real world)

There is love. Seems to me certain influential people have talked about about this across the millennia. A society lacking that principle would be a society on its way out

The principle of TRANSFORMATION OF RESOURCES, the idea that there are no principled limits to human economic growth, which is powered by valid discoveries of universal physical principles, which have the effect of transforming useless or fallow parts of the world into valuable resources. *Since any given set of principles yields a fixed resource base which marginally depletes over time, economic progress lies in discovering new principles yielding new resources. *This can be as simple as discovering the principle of the yoke allowing fields to be ploughed more efficiently thus producing more food per acre per harvest, or as advanced as discovering principles of nuclear theory which transform useless rocks into the powerful element uranium. Societies rejecting this principle will necessarily put themselves on a trajectory towards collapse.

[Donnadogsoth]

I'm afraid I'm not terribly familiar with Jung- heck, all I know of Freud is from webcomics (http://www.dead-philosophers.com/?p=1232)- so I'm not sure I can comment usefully on the idea. My gloss from skimming wikipedia is that some interpretations of archetypes making them into a genetic predisposition toward certain ideas and values, which I think is plausible, but by definition that wouldn't be much affected by changes in culture?

As suggested by someone downthread, the possibility is that the West has moved into a primeval era of cultural darkness. The mythic shields are down, so to speak. The film industry, etc., senses a need and works to fill it, but the filling is aspartamic, not healthy stuff. Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings are good, but they're still substitutes for a real culture, like existed in the Middle Ages (or so my erudite Middle Ages friend tells me).

What I wonder about--what might be a hypothesis--is whether the primeval source, when we were half animals, living terrified by our newfound consciousness, might hold things very much like Cthulhoid entities that are lurking there, waiting for the time when man would "arrange his stars" and burn the clouds of mythology away like smoke from the waters, and see the Things Beyond Time, the archetypes that we need to know in order to become a space-faring species. Something's blocking us from becoming it, and coincidentally we are in a time of existential disarray, we in the West in particular have lost our nerve and confidence (see identity below).

And, because we've seemingly sealed over the skies, looking down towards our petty concerns and addictions down on Terra, we don't realise that we have become insane, that sane people feel cosmic fear, that insane people, people living in a Dark Age, don't, because they lack the imagination and are too ignorant of the situation--even the sophisticated people who rationalise away their lack of feeling such fear out of a sense of scientific-materialist self-satisfaction. But I think these Beings are down there and it is better to know them and fear them then to have them puppet you when the time comes that they return from their exile.


But why in particular do you feel that humans are in such a pickle? I can see various existential problems on the horizon (see below), but I'm not clear on how physical materialism per se is to blame. Unless you equate it with consumerism?

Economically we're collapsing (man-made disasters like Katrina and Harvey, gutting of the machine tool sector, haemorrhaging good jobs, an increasingly well-drugged population oblivious to what's going on), we're unprincipled (the idea of principle, scientific, artistic, moral, isn't even on most people's radar), and morally we're splintering into identity concerns, which means that the low culture and the high culture alike are on the chopping block along with the various disfavoured groups. Hard to get into it more because of The Rules here. Basically we're collapsing economically, scientifically, morally, and in terms of majority identity.

[georgie_leech]

As long as we're arguing for mythic shields that protect us from the darkness, I'm going to argue that same supposed vapidness of our stories protects us because horrible creatures from beyond can't notice us through the mind numbing fog that is The Order of the Stick. As long as we're making broad sweeping generalizations from the flimsiest of pretexts.

And congratulations on being one of the few I've seen apparently seriously argue that we're not scientific enough while claiming that doom is upon us for forgetting our ancient ways.

[Bohandas]

Basically we're collapsing economically, scientifically, morally, and in terms of majority identity.

Until the renaissance there was no science worth speaking of (except during a few decades in part of the middle east)

[Eldan]

And as for moral and economical, there have never been so few poor people, so few wars or so few dead from disease as there are now.

[georgie_leech]

And as for moral and economical, there have never been so few poor people, so few wars or so few dead from disease as there are now.

Well, proportionately at least, what with our population skyrocketing in the last 100 years or so after medicine and fertilizer were things :smallwink: But agreed.

[Bohandas]

The pro lem isn't that there aren't any modern mythoi or story cycles, the problem is that they're all owned by mammonic corporations

[georgie_leech]

The pro lem isn't that there aren't any modern mythoi or story cycles, the problem is that they're all owned by mammonic corporations

As oppose to when they were under the control of the priest castes, or the literate scribes, or dissappearing through fire and sword? Stories have often been not wholly free to develop as freely as we might like.

[Tvtyrant]

Economically we're collapsing (man-made disasters like Katrina and Harvey, gutting of the machine tool sector, haemorrhaging good jobs, an increasingly well-drugged population oblivious to what's going on), we're unprincipled (the idea of principle, scientific, artistic, moral, isn't even on most people's radar), and morally we're splintering into identity concerns, which means that the low culture and the high culture alike are on the chopping block along with the various disfavoured groups. Hard to get into it more because of The Rules here. Basically we're collapsing economically, scientifically, morally, and in terms of majority identity.

This reminds me of an argument my mother (who is barely functional) and my father had. My father was angry that my mother had lost another job, and she screamed that she was doing the best she can.

It was a powerful moment for me, because looking back nearly everyone and nearly all times is doing the best they can. Questioning why starving people couldn't find the time to invent spaceships or advanced mathematics is missing the point of reality. The universe is a dangerous, desolate place where 0 people ever "make it." Each of them has to muddle through life the best they can, and yet that collective struggle has led from bacteria all the way through the evolutionary mudpit to the elimination of famines, small pox and a massive reduction in military conflicts.

We aren't collapsing any more than any other civilization at any other point, we are struggling. The struggle is eternal, and it always feels like we are on the edge of disaster. Every person, every issue, every time stretching back to the dawn feels fragile and slipping because the margin for success is so narrow. But we always make it, because everyone is trying as hard as they can to do so.

[2D8HP]

2D8, I am also somewhat unclear as to what Donna is looking for, specifically. But.....(May I sig the part of the post I left out?)

Is it any clearer now? I need help understanding this post:



...Hard to get into it more because of The Rules here....


What rules, and why would they be a hindrance?


.Basically we're collapsing economically, scientifically, morally, and in terms of majority identity.


Whatever pray tell does "majority identity" mean and why would it be collapsing (which suggests that the diminishing of whatever-is-meant by "majority identity" is a bad thing)?

What does any of that have to do with storytelling archetypes?

Or is the OP a poet?

I like poems.

Here's one:


Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore

Doomed I tell you.
DOOMED!

Sports?
I don't like like 'em.




Failed your SAN check?:smalltongue:Yes.

[kraftcheese]

Good god Donna, not only have you got a supremely bad take on the nature of existence, you also have a talent for pontificating endlessly without saying anything of value!

[Bohandas]

Whatever pray tell does "majority identity" mean and why would it be collapsing

I think it might mean being sheeple

[Kantaki]

I think it might mean being sheeple

I'm not a sheep, I'm cattle.
No wait. That isn't any better...

[Bohandas]

There is love. Seems to me certain influential people have talked about about this across the millennia.

Yeah, but that's not universal, that's just earth for the past few thousand years.

EDIT:
Also it's less universal than pooping.

[Bohandas]

Economically we're collapsing (man-made disasters like Katrina and Harvey, gutting of the machine tool sector, haemorrhaging good jobs, an increasingly well-drugged population oblivious to what's going on), we're unprincipled (the idea of principle, scientific, artistic, moral, isn't even on most people's radar), and morally we're splintering into identity concerns, which means that the low culture and the high culture alike are on the chopping block along with the various disfavoured groups. Hard to get into it more because of The Rules here. Basically we're collapsing economically, scientifically, morally, and in terms of majority identity.

Unemployment's actually been way down since early 2016

[2D8HP]

I think it might mean being sheeple


Merriam-Webster

Sheeple: (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sheeple) people who are docile, compliant, or easily influenced*:people likened to sheep

Oh.

Well that's a bit cruel to say say of ones fellow humans.

I prefer "Eloi" (http://timemachine.wikia.com/wiki/Eloi),

as I feel it's a tastier (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloi) choice.
Yum!

[georgie_leech]

Merriam-Webster

Sheeple: (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sheeple) people who are docile, compliant, or easily influenced*:people likened to sheep

Oh.

Well that's a bit cruel to say say of ones fellow humans.

I prefer "Eloi" (http://timemachine.wikia.com/wiki/Eloi),

as I feel it's a tastier (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloi) choice.
Yum!

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wake_up_sheeple.png

[Reddish Mage]

As suggested by someone downthread, the possibility is that the West has moved into a primeval era of cultural darkness. The mythic shields are down, so to speak. The film industry, etc., senses a need and works to fill it, but the filling is aspartamic, not healthy stuff. Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings are good, but they're still substitutes for a real culture, like existed in the Middle Ages (or so my erudite Middle Ages friend tells me).

I wonder why you have a friend from the Middle Ages, but I assume you just mean a historian or some kind of scholare. Comparing "Star Wars" and "The Lord of the Rings" to "real culture" as it existed in the middle ages isn't exactly Apples to Apples.

Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are mainstream fantasy. They aren't exactly up for any prizes in literature. Literary circles and so on don't see it. "Culture" in the sense of the high-minded, top-educated classes, was never consumed on the mass levels like that.

The closest medieval equivalent, in terms of style, I can think of for Star Wars, would be knightly romances. But chivalric romance was really limited to the very upper class. So even that is way too posh.

Really, mainstream entertainment was dominanted by tall tales and folk stories told orally. There were a lot simplier than today's fictional narratives.

I tend to think Lord of the Rings, specifically, is quite a bit better than the latest tall tale. Tolkein, after all, was an Oxford scholar who took from the best of ancient myths to create his story.


And congratulations on being one of the few I've seen apparently seriously argue that we're not scientific enough while claiming that doom is upon us for forgetting our ancient ways.

[The Eye]

Sports?
I don't like like 'em.
In the name of God almighty, let it die!

It's not funny anymore

[Donnadogsoth]

Until the renaissance there was no science worth speaking of (except during a few decades in part of the middle east)

How much continuity is there between those pre-Renaissance cultures, countries, and empires and what we have today? Think of it in terms of the continuity experienced by the United States, for example, from 1776 to date.

[Donnadogsoth]

Yeah, but that's not universal, that's just earth for the past few thousand years.

EDIT:
Also it's less universal than pooping.

It's universal on the noëtic plane.

[Donnadogsoth]

I wonder why you have a friend from the Middle Ages, but I assume you just mean a historian or some kind of scholare. Comparing "Star Wars" and "The Lord of the Rings" to "real culture" as it existed in the middle ages isn't exactly Apples to Apples.

Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are mainstream fantasy. They aren't exactly up for any prizes in literature. Literary circles and so on don't see it. "Culture" in the sense of the high-minded, top-educated classes, was never consumed on the mass levels like that.

The closest medieval equivalent, in terms of style, I can think of for Star Wars, would be knightly romances. But chivalric romance was really limited to the very upper class. So even that is way too posh.

Really, mainstream entertainment was dominanted by tall tales and folk stories told orally. There were a lot simplier than today's fictional narratives.

I tend to think Lord of the Rings, specifically, is quite a bit better than the latest tall tale. Tolkein, after all, was an Oxford scholar who took from the best of ancient myths to create his story.

Do you detect any other differences between contemporary "folk stories" and historical ones? Is there more trash, or more high quality stuff, or both? Is our body of tales fragmented more, more murky, or refined and fulgent, in terms of conveying principle, mythic truths?

[Donnadogsoth]

Unemployment's actually been way down since early 2016

What about employment at good jobs? Are manufacturing jobs and service industry jobs fungible?

[Donnadogsoth]

Whatever pray tell does "majority identity" mean and why would it be collapsing (which suggests that the diminishing of whatever-is-meant by "majority identity" is a bad thing)?

What does any of that have to do with storytelling archetypes?

If you don't know what the majority identity is I'm not going to try to climb past this place's monkey bars of protocol to try to enlighten you.

I sense a disturbance in the myth cycles: we are going to experience a Great Purge of the old stories to conform to {Rules} made by {Rules}. Hint: Miss Piggy is going to die.

[Bohandas]

What about employment at good jobs? Are manufacturing jobs and service industry jobs fungible?

I think it's still mostly service industry jobs that people have here. Being reduced to the level of an automaton has long been on the decline.

[Bohandas]

Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are mainstream fantasy.

To be fair the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Doyle were mainstream in their time as well. Give Star Wars some time.

[georgie_leech]

If you don't know what the majority identity is I'm not going to try to climb past this place's monkey bars of protocol to try to enlighten you.

I sense a disturbance in the myth cycles: we are going to experience a Great Purge of the old stories to conform to {Rules} made by {Rules}. Hint: Miss Piggy is going to die.

Here, I'll do it for. Google says it's contrasted with Minority Identity. That is, the cultural identity of groups that donot make up most of the population of where they live. So a collapse of Majority Identity is at it's most benign just a change in cultural practices. At it's worst... well, suffice to say that it usually involves the sort of rhetoric that is most definitely disallowed on this board.

Do you mean something different?

[Amazon]

So you think there are universal truths?

Someone skipped post-modernism. :smallbiggrin:

[Bohandas]

Here, I'll do it for. Google says it's contrasted with Minority Identity. That is, the cultural identity of groups that donot make up most of the population of where they live. So a collapse of Majority Identity is at it's most benign just a change in cultural practices.

I could see how it could be bad if majority and minority identity don't both collapse. Then it's just a pointless 'meet the new boss same as the old boss' lateral shift.

[georgie_leech]

I could see how it could be bad if majority and minority identity don't both collapse. Then it's just a pointless 'meet the new boss same as the old boss' lateral shift.

Suffice to say I have a hard time viewing either "minorities influence culture more" or "under new management" as a collapse. :smallannoyed:

[2D8HP]

How much continuity is there between those pre-Renaissance cultures, countries, and empires and what we have today? Think of it in terms of the continuity experienced by the United States, for example, from 1776 to date.


Um... folkways can be pretty dang old Donnadogsoth:
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed) by David Hackett Fischer
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f5/David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg/220px-David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg

Now keep in mind that I reject your premises, both that we have sadly lost our cultural heritage, and that it was superior, and I reject that new archetypes are needed.

We still have "hero-gods" (Herakles, Achilles, Luke Skywalker), [lame]

We still have "crafty tricksters" (Odysseus, Danny Ocean) [better]

Rebel Outlaws (Robin Hood, Tom Joad) [still better]

Just plain lucky-ones (Grimms Tales, sit-coms) [meh]

But we have new "tropes" that extol common people team effort that I like better.

You must have seen World War 2 films featuring a Band of Brothers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BandOfBrothers), often anachronistically integrated (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveTokenBand), in a squad (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSquad), which I feel are a good fit for the virtues I commend for modern life.



In the name of God almighty, let it die!


But that would be rejectimg our cultural heritage, and the wisdom of the past which will make us doomed, DOOMED I tell you!

[Donnadogsoth]

Um... folkways can be pretty dang old Donnadogsoth:

Well, I know that, it's called the Bible, man. And that book you reference looks most interesting. But, you surely see that the countries and empires from 600 years ago have been washed away, nearly as much as the ancient Middle Eastern countries and empires have been washed away.


Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed) by David Hackett Fischer
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f5/David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg/220px-David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg

Now keep in mind that I reject your premises, both that we have sadly lost our cultural heritage, and that it was superior, and I reject that new archetypes are needed.

We still have "hero-gods" (Herakles, Achilles, Luke Skywalker), [lame]

We still have "crafty tricksters" (Odysseus, Danny Ocean) [better]

Rebel Outlaws (Robin Hood, Tom Joad) [still better]

Just plain lucky-ones (Grimms Tales, sit-coms) [meh]

But we have new "tropes" that extol common people team effort that I like better.

You must have seen World War 2 films featuring a Band of Brothers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BandOfBrothers), often anachronistically integrated (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveTokenBand), in a squad (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSquad), which I feel are a good fit for the virtues I commend for modern life.

Yes, the Archetypes bubble up no matter what we do. Do you think the anarchic corporate-mammonic state of cultural affairs we have is healthier or sicker than what existed prior to modern times?

[Slayn82]

I think it's wealthier, in both ways the word can be understood. There are many more works, and those works are somewhat locked by copyright to provide profits to the owners, while before the markets for those works weren't very big.

[georgie_leech]

Dagg, you're ascribing a preposterous amount of mysticism to patterns. When multiple cultures throughout history discovered such patterns as counting or squares and they work the same everywhere, it's because they're useful ideas in their own right. It is not because they somehow bubbled up from some deeper layer of thought that supposedly underlies all of reality. Likewise, archetypes aren't symbolic of some mental universe, they're just good story elements and stick around, while "Everyone I know is awesome and we have cool adventures and all the people I don't like have bad things happen to them" fades from memory. Unless your name is Dante. :smallamused:

[Bohandas]

Suffice to say I have a hard time viewing ... "under new management" as a collapse. :smallannoyed:

Not a collapse, just a different and largely interchangable brand of the same stupid. Like when the tsardom was replaced by the USSR, or when the ussr collapsed. Even the one that ostensibly was a collapse wasn;t a collapse, but it wasn't a meaningful change either, just a pointless change.

[Bohandas]

Yes, the Archetypes bubble up no matter what we do. Do you think the anarchic corporate-mammonic state of cultural affairs we have is healthier or sicker than what existed prior to modern times?

I agree with you that big content has definitely got to go.

[Lethologica]

Do you detect any other differences between contemporary "folk stories" and historical ones? Is there more trash, or more high quality stuff, or both? Is our body of tales fragmented more, more murky, or refined and fulgent, in terms of conveying principle, mythic truths?
At least one of these is easy to answer: our body of "folk stories" or popular culture or whatever you want to call it is way, way, way less fragmented than it was several centuries ago, thanks to instant and effectively free global communication. The only reasons to say otherwise are that we're exposed to much more of the world's culture by the same mechanism, and that we often only think about a vanishingly small segment of historical popular culture/s--indeed, precisely the segment whose principles we consider to have enduring relevance in our own culture. Talk about sampling bias!

[SaintRidley]

Whatever pray tell does "majority identity" mean and why would it be collapsing (which suggests that the diminishing of whatever-is-meant by "majority identity" is a bad thing)?




Based on prior statements, the meaning of this decline of "majority identity" business is a way of trying to get past the mods and say how terrible it is that white people are on track to no longer be the majority, but simply the plurality in the U.S. in three years, and that white people should be united to prevent this from happening but race traitors are destroying whiteness. It's all part of the usual poorly-coded white supremacist garbage that comes from donnadogsoth but is just unclear enough to evade a straight ban.

[2D8HP]

If you don't know what the majority identity is I'm not going to try to climb past this place's monkey bars of protocol to try to enlighten you....


Protocol keeps you from explaining your jargon?


I sense a disturbance in the myth cycles: we are going to experience a Great Purge of the old stories to conform to {Rules} made by {Rules}. Hint: Miss Piggy is going to die.

?????


Here, I'll do it for. Google says it's contrasted with Minority Identity. That is, the cultural identity of groups that donot make up most of the population of where they live. So a collapse of Majority Identity is at it's most benign just a change in cultural practices. At it's worst... well, suffice to say that it usually involves the sort of rhetoric that is most definitely disallowed on this board....


Thanks georgie leech!

From that explanation as a Californian who works in and for The City and County of San Francisco I find the fear of a "collapse of Majority identity" absurd.


Suffice to say I have a hard time viewing either "minorities influence culture more" or "under new management" as a collapse. :smallannoyed:


Agreed.


....But, you surely see that the countries and empires from 600 years ago have been washed away, nearly as much as the ancient Middle Eastern countries and empires have been washed away. Only 600 years?

Empires come and go but the land and peoples are still there.

I'm of mostly Irish descent, Ireland existed 600 years ago (granted most Irish only speak Irish at school, and usually speak English), but among my co-workers are immigrants from the Philippines, Russia, England, China, and Iran (Persia).

Tagalog is spoken in the Philippines by the descendents of the people who lived and spoke a similar language more than 600 years ago.
The Rus dynasty started from Rorik (an ethnic Swede) in 862, but Russians speak a Slavic, not a Norse language just like the people who were there when the Rus arrived.
The English language in England is from the Germanic invaders in the 5th century, but genetic testing reveals that most "English" are descended from Britons who were already there (genetically the English are virtually identical to the Welsh, the Scots on the other hand have more Scandinavian ancestors, but evenmore Irish and Picts).
China?
Persia?
Those cultures are millennia old.
I think there's for more continuity than you credit.


Yes, the Archetypes bubble up no matter what we do. Do you think the anarchic corporate-mammonic state of cultural affairs we have is healthier or sicker than what existed prior to modern times?


Yes.

Now they're some characters I like from before modernity, Hector, Odysseus, and Robin Hood come to mind, but the 20th century has given us Eowyn and Sam from LotR, Victor Laszlo, Ilsa, and Rick from Casablanca, and Jim Casey, and Tom Joad from The Grapes of Wrath, I like those characters and it's hard for me to imagine pre-modern civilisation coming up with them.

A bit of a request to you Donnadogsoth, please wait until you're my age before you further commit to pining for "Ye Auld days".

I'm also baffled by you criticizing modernity for not advancing Space Travel technology further?


Posted after I wrote the rest of my post:


Based on prior statements, the meaning of this decline of "majority identity" business is a way of ..


:eek:

If what SaintRidley posts is true (and I have no reason to doubt her) Donnadogsoth, than that means you're against my sons existence.

I most definitely have opinions about that.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Is Donnadogsoth defending white supremacy again? Really? Rigth in front of my salad?

[AMFV]

Yes, the Archetypes bubble up no matter what we do. Do you think the anarchic corporate-mammonic state of cultural affairs we have is healthier or sicker than what existed prior to modern times?

I think that in the past people had many of the same problems they do today. They had the same moral issues they do today. "should I lie, steal, or cheat to get what I want" is hardly a new question nor one absent from what I suspect you are referring to when you reference morality culture. In fact one only has to take a look at the development of the UK, even through fairly modern times, to see that "Western" culture is not absent murderous backstabbers or genocide or religious extremism. Those are products of all cultures. Which ironically suits well to answer your question, there is evil in all cultures, and people will have sometimes have it win stories, sometimes to make a moral point, sometimes because they are hopeless, sometimes because they're bucking to get a deal to write a sequel.


Edit: Also of note, cultures always have intermixed and shared stories. There's a cinderella story in Egypt and one in China, do you think it's likely those developed independently, hardly. I don't think that we have much to worry about in terms of losing our culture. And if you're worried about then then tell the stories of our culture, share our culture, that's how culture remains, not through some ridiculous attempt at extinguishing other cultures.

[S@tanicoaldo]

I think overal the point is.

No one think life sucks now more, only you do and that makes me think... Why do you do? What makes life now so aborent and repulsive to be compared to a time of plagues, blood and burning people alive?

What is bothering you so much? Plz share.

[2D8HP]

Sorry folks in a previous post I misspelled a characters name:


Jim Casey, and Tom Joad from The Grapes of Wrath, .


It should have been been "Jim Casy" not "Jim Casey"



2D8, I am also somewhat unclear as to what Donna is looking for, specifically. But I don't think your tone of jeering condescension is remotely helpful.


After finally start to understand some of the "dog whistling", I believe your correct Lacuna Caster, my jovial teasing of some opaque language was not appropriate, other responses were due.

Godwin's law is in effect!

Some of my family history;
My children are "only" half white, and the "white" half is Jewish on my mothers side, wheras on my fathers side my grandmother remembered how in the 1920's the Klan protested her existence because she was a Catholic immigrant.

I already posted that none of my great-grandmothers kin who stayed in Europe (that's all of them except for my grandmother and mother who were born in the USA) survived the 1940's.

My grandfather just barely escaped being sent to bomb Japan, and mostly spent 1941 to 1945 as a test pilot for the US Army Air Corps (he had been a pilot and airplane mechanic in the 1930's), but both my grandfathers little brothers went to Europe to fight, and one didn't survive.


""you don't know what the majority identity is I'm not going to try to climb past this place's monkey bars of protocol to try to enlighten you.

I sense a disturbance in the myth cycles: we are going to experience a Great Purge"...

"majority identity"?, "Great Purge"?, indeed some unclear language is now becoming clear to me.
"

Enjoy hugging those "heritage statues" Donnadogsoth, and please leave my family in peace, I promise likewise.

[Legato Endless]

Enjoy hugging those "heritage statues" Donnadogsoth, and please leave my family in peace, I promise likewise.

A Modest proposal for Southern Monuments (http://thememorypalace.us/2015/08/notes-on-an-imagined-plaque/)

[Vinyadan]

Honestly, I often have the impression that Donnadogsoth would like to discuss things that aren't allowed here, and it leads him to a lot of contorsionism and implied and cryptic stuff.

[Eldan]

Godwin's sake, people. Really?

Just generally. Everything in the last two pages. Really?

[pendell]

A Modest proposal for Southern Monuments (http://thememorypalace.us/2015/08/notes-on-an-imagined-plaque/)

I graduated from JEB Stuart High School, class of '89. There has been a great deal of uproar about the school's name in the past year or so, and they've decided to rename it "JEB" high school, at which i scoff.

I want them to rename it John D. Read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Read) high school , after a local person who was an abolitionist, fought with the union, and was killed out of hand by southern soldiers when captured.

Haven't made any headway, regrettably. But why not? He's local, he's also military, and he fought in a much better cause.

Besides, everyone knows that Stuart is often blamed for losing the battle of Gettysburg (https://www.raabcollection.com/robert-e-lee-autograph-jeb-stuart), and thus the war. Why do we want to name a school after him?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[AMFV]

I graduated from JEB Stuart High School, class of '89. There has been a great deal of uproar about the school's name in the past year or so, and they've decided to rename it "JEB" high school, at which i scoff.

I want them to rename it John D. Read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Read) high school , after a local person who was an abolitionist, fought with the union, and was killed out of hand by southern soldiers when captured.

Haven't made any headway, regrettably. But why not? He's local, he's also military, and he fought in a much better cause.

Besides, everyone knows that Stuart is often blamed for losing the battle of Gettysburg (https://www.raabcollection.com/robert-e-lee-autograph-jeb-stuart), and thus the war. Why do we want to name a school after him?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Well because he's a part of our history. There are people who owe their lives to the actions of Mr. Stuart. You can't just take a part of your history and remove it just because a person was involved with something unpleasant. When you start doing that you run out of people to honor very quickly. Jeb Stuart was loyal to his state, as were many at that time, and that's something to be celebrated, after a fashion.

I don't think that honoring a man with a clear history of valor is necessarily bad, just because he had one negative trait. After all Mr. Washington supported slavery, and we honor his contributions to our military. Patton had his problems as well, Andrew Jackson certainly did. Most of the people we honor as military heroes had darker sides, but most of the people we honor had darker sides in-general, you can't argue against honoring somebody because they did something you dislike, particularly if their reasons for doing so were duty and honor.

Also, as a side-note, I worked with a descendant of Gen. Stuart, who was very proud of the achievements of his ancestor. And that's something worth noting. Where we come from is important, especially to that group of people. To me it is for example, even though my (many greats) grandfather was wounded in a battle where Jeb Stuart was the principal Confederate general, I wouldn't want his statue removed and he directly was responsible for injury to my family, because remembering the honor and valor of a soldier on the other side in no way diminishes the honor and valor of a soldier on our side.


A Modest proposal for Southern Monuments (http://thememorypalace.us/2015/08/notes-on-an-imagined-plaque/)

As a historical note, there is some pretty strong evidence that the man in the statue in question did not later take on the role that people often believe he did and was slandered in that respect. Another reason that we should not rush to take down monuments is because modern historians are often wrong, particularly when they seek to point fingers because they are not lawyers nor are they experts in actually guaranteeing proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they're more masters of conjecture, and that should not be used to sully a name.

[Heliomance]

Edit: Also of note, cultures always have intermixed and shared stories. There's a cinderella story in Egypt and one in China, do you think it's likely those developed independently, hardly. I don't think that we have much to worry about in terms of losing our culture. And if you're worried about then then tell the stories of our culture, share our culture, that's how culture remains, not through some ridiculous attempt at extinguishing other cultures.

My favourite example of this is the Gaelic Argonauts, dating from no later than the 9th century. It's an Irish myth wherein a group of Irish heroes roam around Europe and the Middle East, beating up kings and taking their stuff. Among the treasures that they loot are explicitly three of the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. That means that an Irish storyteller must have heard of the Greek myth of the Hesperides, and decided it was cool enough to weave into their own tale. I don't know about the other treasures they steal, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they all existed in the mythologies of the places the treasures were stolen from.

[Bohandas]

Besides, everyone knows that Stuart is often blamed for losing the battle of Gettysburg (https://www.raabcollection.com/robert-e-lee-autograph-jeb-stuart), and thus the war. Why do we want to name a school after him?

I think you just answered your own question.

[pendell]

Well because he's a part of our history. There are people who owe their lives to the actions of Mr. Stuart. You can't just take a part of your history and remove it just because a person was involved with something unpleasant. When you start doing that you run out of people to honor very quickly. Jeb Stuart was loyal to his state, as were many at that time, and that's something to be celebrated, after a fashion.


All of those things were also true of Mr. Reed, except that he -- along with William Mahone, BGEN (CSA) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-confederate-general-who-was-erased-from-history_us_599b3747e4b06a788a2af43e) -- were erased from Confederate history from the period between the end of reconstruction and the Civil Rights era, because they didn't fit the Gone with the Wind/Birth of a Nation view of the south that white southerners of the time looked back to as the "good old days". Union sympathizers -- even when they were regimental strength, fighting for the union against the south (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Arkansas_Infantry_Regiment_(Union)) -- were inconvenient , and disappeared down the memory hole.

Every society has its events that it remembers very loudly at holidays and with statues. And every society also has a memory hole in which they drop all those things of which they are ashamed and wish to forget. No one will ever build a statue to William Hull (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hull) , for example.

That actually brings up a point of which the War of 1812 is a good example. The best known thing about that war is the exploits of the US frigates and the battle of new orleans, about which there is a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_iRIcxsz0).

No one sings about our invasion of Canada. Or about, during the civil war, our invasion of Texas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Campaign).

So , if the US really did keep objective history, I would agree with you, but it doesn't. The South's historical memory is a whitewash of men who fought in a terrible cause , and if we decide it's their turn in the historical memory hole along with Horst Wessel, I should say it's high time. There are other men -- and women -- who fought in that war and who made great sacrifices, who were themselves forgotten and erased. It's their turn in the sun, I think.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[AMFV]

My favourite example of this is the Gaelic Argonauts, dating from no later than the 9th century. It's an Irish myth wherein a group of Irish heroes roam around Europe and the Middle East, beating up kings and taking their stuff. Among the treasures that they loot are explicitly three of the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. That means that an Irish storyteller must have heard of the Greek myth of the Hesperides, and decided it was cool enough to weave into their own tale. I don't know about the other treasures they steal, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they all existed in the mythologies of the places the treasures were stolen from.

I would not be surprised by that fact either. It's certainly worth noting that this doesn't make the Gaelic Argonauts a story not worth telling.


All of those things were also true of Mr. Reed, except that he -- along with William Mahone, BGEN (CSA) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-confederate-general-who-was-erased-from-history_us_599b3747e4b06a788a2af43e) -- were erased from Confederate history from the period between the end of reconstruction and the Civil Rights era, because they didn't fit the Gone with the Wind/Birth of a Nation view of the south that white southerners of the time looked back to as the "good old days". Union sympathizers -- even when they were regimental strength, fighting for the union against the south (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Arkansas_Infantry_Regiment_(Union)) -- were inconvenient , and disappeared down the memory hole.

There is a monument dedicated to General William Mahone, a quick Google search finds multiple such statues, perhaps you should consider the level of agenda that your sources have and the amount of work that they are likely to do to perform to dispute their own biases.

http://stonesentinels.com/petersburg/eastern-front/stop-8/william-mahone-monument/

Interesting that that this took me only 6 seconds to find. Turns out that your biases about what people want to remember are WRONG. And I know that's probably harsher than it should be, but you're tarring and feathering and entire group as racists based on an argument that is flat-out wrong, that is unconscionable and ridiculous, and I am ashamed to be a part of it.

Edit: Also if you're trying to honor somebody you should never demote them.

Edit 2: Also the article destroys it's own premise by actually being aware that there's a monument to Major General Mahone. Meaning that literally the entire article is completely bull****. And it admits that... I mean as far as post-war careers go, we don't focus on those. I mean do we talk about Lee's work as a President of a university, not especially. Pretty much the only post-war we talk about it is Grant.



Every society has its events that it remembers very loudly at holidays and with statues. And every society also has a memory hole in which they drop all those things of which they are ashamed and wish to forget. No one will ever build a statue to William Hull (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hull) , for example.

Because Hull was an incompetent, that pretty much dampens your memory, he had no successes, and was so bad and so incompetent that he was court-martialed for it. Do you realize how bad as a general you have to be to be Court-Martialed for surrendering your post? Pretty bad. He was historically bad, you can't be remembered for acts of valor if you didn't have any. Stuart did.



That actually bringvs up a point of which the War of 1812 is a good example. The best known thing about that war is the exploits of the US frigates and the battle of new orleans, about which there is a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_iRIcxsz0).

Well the war of 1812 was shorter, less bloody conflict. We also don't talk about the Spanish American War as much, because it was smaller and less bloodied. I'm familiar with the things that you're discussing though.



No one sings about our invasion of Canada. Or about, during the civil war, our invasion of Texas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Campaign).

Well there's a reason that people want to forget the Western Campaigns on the part of the Union, and that's that they were absolutely brutal to civilians as well as to the soldiers involved. We choose not to remember things that paint our soldiers in a bad light. Which is unsurprising.



So , if the US really did keep objective history, I would agree with you, but it doesn't. The South's historical memory is a whitewash of men who fought in a terrible cause , and if we decide it's their turn in the historical memory hole along with Horst Wessel, I should say it's high time. There are other men -- and women -- who fought in that war and who made great sacrifices, who were themselves forgotten and erased. It's their turn in the sun, I think.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

So build them statues! Add to the memory, that's absolutely something I'm for. There's not a limited amount of room in the sun, there's plenty of room, we should remember them as well.

[Lacuna Caster]

Unemployment's actually been way down since early 2016

If you don't know what the majority identity is I'm not going to try to climb past this place's monkey bars of protocol to try to enlighten you.

Is Donnadogsoth defending white supremacy again? Really? Right in front of my salad?

I consider it a fairly neutral statement of fact that middle-to-working-class whites constitute a large fraction of the US population, and that while it's a complex topic (https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/02/95-million-american-workers-not-in-us-labor-force.html), the real unemployment rate is somewhat masked by dropping rates of workforce participation. It's also reasonable to point out that improvements in industrial automation and the general rising bar for technical skills, among other factors, have devastated a lot of rustbelt communities over the past thirty years, and that while the... particular expressions of their discontent are far from constructive, the underlying economic factors behind the phenomenon are not going away and need to be addressed regardless. (In part because those expressions are so politically problematic.)

I would point out, however, that many, e.g, urban black communities have been afflicted by exactly the same social problems, probably for similar economic reasons, and it hit them much sooner and harder given their position a little further down the bell curve of educational attainment. Conversely, many non-whites both within and outside the US have benefitted enormously from precisely the same widening job markets and comparative advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage) that gutted the anglo-american working class. So sure- some citizens of the west are in a pickle right now, and I don't think one should be entirely without compassion for their situation, but they're unlikely to actually starve, and humanity as a whole has seen massive reductions in poverty over the past few decades.

In any case I don't see that any of this has much to do with the "decline of western culture"- or to whatever extent you can say it "declined", it's largely a side-effect and not the cause. You can debate the importance of marriage or work ethic or whatever, but none of that is going to boot up average IQs by the 30 points needed to compete with the coming generation of industrial robots. (And even if it did, you'd just get smarter robot designers.) I think this is a technical and economic problem that needs technical and economic solutions.

[Bohandas]

What I think they should do with the confederate monuments is take them out of public squares and put them into art museums alongside other distasteful exhibits like the jar of urine full of religious icons and the machine that makes synthetic poop.

EDIT:
Like literally adjacent to whatever the other most offensive thing in that particular museum is

[AMFV]

-snip-

In any case I don't see that any of this has much to do with the "decline of western culture"- or to whatever extent you can say it "declined", it's largely a side-effect and not the cause. You can debate the importance of marriage or work ethic or whatever, but none of that is going to boot up average IQs by the 30 points needed to compete with the coming generation of industrial robots. (And even if it did, you'd just get smarter robot designers.) I think this is a technical and economic problem that needs technical and economic solutions.

The only people who I've met who were afraid of robot takeover have never worked with robots. I have worked with factory robots, they suck, they need constant human supervision. They need to repaired, sometimes every single shift if you're running them a lot. They need to be installed, they typically need an operator there to hit the button the instant something goes wrong.

Also, I've met a lot of really smart carpenters and factory workers, I think that unless you are a part of the culture, you should probably not degrade their intellect. And I doubt that you are a part of that culture.


What I think they should do is take them out of public squares and put them into art museums alongside other distasteful exhibits like the jar of urine full of religious icons and the machine that makes synthetic poop

No.

Because they have a lot more merit. Also why should the works of our ancestors not be on public display, both for bad and good?

[pendell]

There is a monument dedicated to General William Mahone, a quick Google search finds multiple such statues, perhaps you should consider the level of agenda that your sources have and the amount of work that they are likely to do to perform to dispute their own biases.

http://stonesentinels.com/petersburg...hone-monument/

Interesting that that this took me only 6 seconds to find. Turns out that your biases about what people want to remember are WRONG. And I know that's probably harsher than it should be, but you're tarring and feathering and entire group as racists based on an argument that is flat-out wrong, that is unconscionable and ridiculous, and I am ashamed to be a part of it.

Edit: Also if you're trying to honor somebody you should never demote them.


So noted; I don't enjoy the correction, but I thank you for it all the same.

ETA: Nonetheless, while he is somewhat remembered I think my larger point -- that union sympathizers were disappeared down the memory hole because they were inconvenient to the Birth of a Nation narrative -- still holds. He may have a statue or two, but nowhere near on the scale those who fought for the Lost Cause were. When I lived in Northern Virginia it seemed like every other street was named for Washington, Lee, Jackson, and there were statues and monuments everywhere. I had to go to Gettysberg before I could see a monument to a northern soldier that really stuck in my memory.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[AMFV]

So noted; I don't enjoy the correction, but I thank you for it all the same.

ETA: Nonetheless, while he is somewhat remembered I think my larger point -- that union sympathizers were disappeared down the memory hole because they were inconvenient to the Birth of a Nation narrative -- still holds. He may have a statue or two, but nowhere near on the scale those who fought for the Lost Cause were. When I lived in Northern Virginia it seemed like every other street was named for Washington, Lee, Jackson, and there were statues and monuments everywhere. I had to go to Gettysberg before I could see a monument to a northern soldier that really stuck in my memory.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Well, culture is different in the North than it is in the South as far as remembering Generals and Soldiers goes. You find a lot more monuments to World War 2 generals in the South as well. And you find more Douglas MacArthur High Schools in the south than you do in the North (two in Texas at a minimum from a cursory search). So that has more to do with cultural differences in how people in the South view their heritage and history than how people in the North do (although as a counter there are two Eisenhower schools north of the Mason-Dixon).

I know from my experience in the military that Southerners were much more likely to have visited civil war battlefields, particularly those where their ancestors fought, than people from the North. This is my own experience, but it's been fairly confirmed by what I've seen. So the South has a greater degree of focus on that sort of History, even after the Civil War. And before it as well.

And I think again, you'll find that it's the military exploits that are remembered not their post-war careers. Again we don't talk about Lee's career after the war, nor Sherman's, nor anybody else's. So I think that arguing that not talking about Mahone's post-war career is some sort of memory hell is disingenuous at best.

Edit: Also the reason why there are more monuments to Lee than there are to Mahone is because Lee was a General, Mahone was for most of the war a Brigadier, ergo he had less memorable stuff. And he also had less memorable actions during the war, so that's why we see less monuments. If he had as many memorable actions as JEB, or Lee we'd see some difference in monuments honoring him.

[Lacuna Caster]

The only people who I've met who were afraid of robot takeover have never worked with robots. I have worked with factory robots, they suck, they need constant human supervision. They need to repaired, sometimes every single shift if you're running them a lot. They need to be installed, they typically need an operator there to hit the button the instant something goes wrong.

Also, I've met a lot of really smart carpenters and factory workers, I think that unless you are a part of the culture, you should probably not degrade their intellect. And I doubt that you are a part of that culture.
I think you're missing the point. It's not that you need to be especially stupid to be threatened by automation, it's that you'll need to be unusually smart and creative to complete with the latest upcoming robot designs. Low-end lawyers are disappearing, cab and truck drivers are against the wall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&t=4m58s), the days of fast food vendors and supermarket tellers are numbered, lab technicians, accountants, call centre operatives- the list goes on.

Those factory robots do not suck. They were installed because paying a small number of supervisors and maintenance staff to keep them running is cheaper and more effective than hiring dozens or hundreds of industrial workers to perform repetitive tasks to uniform standards of quality. People love to trot out their John Henry anecdotes about humans doing a better job in specific applications, but the overall trend is inexorable. Robots get a little smarter every year, and humans don't. It does us no good to pretend otherwise.

[thorgrim29]

No one sings about our invasion of Canada.


Sure they do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsfz3f18NxU

Also we have a chain of chocolate stores named after a woman who warned the british forces of an american ambush.:smallbiggrin:

Doubtful historical accuracy (the burning of Washington was done by the british Navy not canadian irregulars for starters, though it was in retaliation for war crimes in present-day Ontario) and hyperbole aside, that's probably down to defeat not being really compatible with the American manifest destiny mythos. In a hilarious example of our cultural differences in 2012 our government tried to make national pride for the war of 1812 a thing... it didn't work out well.

Anyway, unfortunately it seems uncontroversial figures don't tend to make the history books, so the statue thing isn't likely to go away anytime soon., and it's not going to stop with confederate generals, for good or ill. For instance there is an embryo of a movement here in Canada to take down statues of our first prime minister and guy almost singlehandedly responsible for our country existing because he was fairly horribly racist towards First Nations.

I don't have a strong opinion on this other than that Good and Bad are too simplistic to apply to most regular people, let alone the kind of people who end up represented in a statue, and that historical context is important. Not being worse than your contemporaries should matter IMO. Whether confederate general number 22 (seriously how many generals do you need to wage a war? seems like there were too many in the american civil war) or John A Macdonald were or not is not something I feel qualified to answer.

[Legato Endless]

I want them to rename it John D. Read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Read) high school , after a local person who was an abolitionist, fought with the union, and was killed out of hand by southern soldiers when captured.

Haven't made any headway, regrettably. But why not? He's local, he's also military, and he fought in a much better cause.

Damn that's a shame. Still, I commend your efforts. :smallsmile:


Well because he's a part of our history. There are people who owe their lives to the actions of Mr. Stuart. You can't just take a part of your history and remove it just because a person was involved with something unpleasant.

I remain puzzled as to how this constitutes a removal of history. Perhaps in our ongoing examination of the mythic past in this thread, one may have forgotten that we now possess extensive record keeping technology. Books, and even more astonishingly, the Internet and modern media. You can go and discover lengthy and quite exhaustive depositories dedicated to keeping this (and more!) subject matter within the public consciousness.

Why the Civil War Trust (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmxfJqxwVIs&list=PLZrhqv_T1O1sdxRNm5SNc6cGSWr7xiWZs), which keeps actual historical memorials like battle sites in pristine condition, has a bunch of animated videos on youtube where you can follow the battles. I found it much more insightful than my old textbooks or staring up at a piece of bronze.


Jeb Stuart was loyal to his state, as were many at that time, and that's something to be celebrated, after a fashion.

I can't see how loyalty to an institution taking explicitly antidemocratic action is laudable. And that's ignoring the problems concerning the motive for why the action was even taken.


As a historical note, there is some pretty strong evidence that the man in the statue in question did not later take on the role that people often believe he did and was slandered in that respect. Another reason that we should not rush to take down monuments is because modern historians are often wrong, particularly when they seek to point fingers because they are not lawyers nor are they experts in actually guaranteeing proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they're more masters of conjecture, and that should not be used to sully a name.

Luckily we don't need to take the word of modern historians, whom I find to be generally as competent as most experts. A cursory glance over preserved documents usually gives a fairly compelling account for most facets concerning this subject matter. As for the General, my conclusion does not require one to even bother taking into account events after the war.


And I think again, you'll find that it's the military exploits that are remembered not their post-war careers. Again we don't talk about Lee's career after the war, nor Sherman's, nor anybody else's.

With the extreme exception of James Longstreet, a man who was vilified for post war actions by many keepers of history for generations. Whatever their beef with him, it can't be for his extraordinary competence in the war itself. There were certainly motives beyond valor and honor in treating these figures the way they are in memoriam.

[Hazyshade]

Donnadogsoth's "hypothesis" is really just the Unabomber Manifesto, isn't it? But with slightly less regard for the rules of English syntax.

How many people woke up this morning and thought "what I really need to get me out of this pickle is not more justice or more money, but more Jungian archetypes"?

The most generous assessment I can make, Donnadogsoth, is that you are overfitting the curve. You are playing Bourdieu-ian 26-dimensional wizard chess. You are predicting the past to such a fine level of detail that your model becomes totally useless at predicting the future.

[Donnadogsoth]

This reminds me of an argument my mother (who is barely functional) and my father had. My father was angry that my mother had lost another job, and she screamed that she was doing the best she can.

It was a powerful moment for me, because looking back nearly everyone and nearly all times is doing the best they can. Questioning why starving people couldn't find the time to invent spaceships or advanced mathematics is missing the point of reality. The universe is a dangerous, desolate place where 0 people ever "make it." Each of them has to muddle through life the best they can, and yet that collective struggle has led from bacteria all the way through the evolutionary mudpit to the elimination of famines, small pox and a massive reduction in military conflicts.

We aren't collapsing any more than any other civilization at any other point, we are struggling. The struggle is eternal, and it always feels like we are on the edge of disaster. Every person, every issue, every time stretching back to the dawn feels fragile and slipping because the margin for success is so narrow. But we always make it, because everyone is trying as hard as they can to do so.

History is littered with collapsed societies who didn't "make it" because said societies were insufficiently principled. They lacked physical and social principles to organise themselves properly and stave off ecological disaster. Indeed, is it the ideas or principles that create wealth in the first place. Gold is useless without knowledge of metallurgy. Ploughs choke horses without yokes. Rocketships don't visit Luna without knowledge of gravity. And, society itself doesn't organise towards justice without the General Welfare principle. My basic point here is that society is unprincipled, that most people don't even know what the word "principles" means. I certainly didn't learn a single principle throughout all of my schooling career as a young fellow. And without this commitment to principle, society will not be continually advancing its perpetually-depleting resource base, and it will be in a collapse mode, which we are in.

[Donnadogsoth]

Donnadogsoth's "hypothesis" is really just the Unabomber Manifesto, isn't it? But with slightly less regard for the rules of English syntax.

How many people woke up this morning and thought "what I really need to get me out of this pickle is not more justice or more money, but more Jungian archetypes"?

The most generous assessment I can make, Donnadogsoth, is that you are overfitting the curve. You are playing Bourdieu-ian 26-dimensional wizard chess. You are predicting the past to such a fine level of detail that your model becomes totally useless at predicting the future.

Wasn't the Unabomber against scientific progress? I don't see the connection. You are committing an incredible non sequitir.

Also, see my post above.

[AMFV]

I think you're missing the point. It's not that you need to be especially stupid to be threatened by automation, it's that you'll need to be unusually smart and creative to complete with the latest upcoming robot designs. Low-end lawyers are disappearing, cab and truck drivers are against the wall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&t=4m58s), the days of fast food vendors and supermarket tellers are numbered, lab technicians, accountants, call centre operatives- the list goes on.

Those factory robots do not suck. They were installed because paying a small number of supervisors and maintenance staff to keep them running is cheaper and more effective than hiring dozens or hundreds of industrial workers to perform repetitive tasks to uniform standards of quality. People love to trot out their John Henry anecdotes about humans doing a better job in specific applications, but the overall trend is inexorable. Robots get a little smarter every year, and humans don't. It does us no good to pretend otherwise.

Right, and the movable printed type is going to put us all out of work. With the domestication of cattle think about all the unemployed spreaders of seed. What about the cars killing the farrier industry. Unemployment has maintained itself fairly consistently throughout history. Society is very good at keeping people busy, I suspect that we'll keep it on doing that.

Also cab and truck drivers are NOT against the wall, since their supposed competition isn't even out of a theoretical stage. And computers can't take the bar exam or prepare legal documents in any real way, because you know... the litigation potential.

Now it's possible I'm less worried because I am in a job that will not likely be automated within my lifetime, and I suspect not ever, or at least not in the next hundred or so years.




I remain puzzled as to how this constitutes a removal of history. Perhaps in our ongoing examination of the mythic past in this thread, one may have forgotten that we now possess extensive record keeping technology. Books, and even more astonishingly, the Internet and modern media. You can go and discover lengthy and quite exhaustive depositories dedicated to keeping this (and more!) subject matter within the public consciousness.

Because reading about history is completely different than going out and experiencing history. My experiences reading about Gettysburg were very different than when I went there and saw the field where my ancestors had fought. I suspect that you don't care as much about that sort of experience as I do. But you should be understanding that there are people who care about that a great deal.




Why the Civil War Trust (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmxfJqxwVIs&list=PLZrhqv_T1O1sdxRNm5SNc6cGSWr7xiWZs), which keeps actual historical memorials like battle sites in pristine condition, has a bunch of animated videos on youtube where you can follow the battles. I found it much more insightful than my old textbooks or staring up at a piece of bronze.

You'll note that they do keep the monuments and memorials, so I suspect they would disagree with the idea that their YouTube channel can completely supplant that.




I can't see how loyalty to an institution taking explicitly antidemocratic action is laudable. And that's ignoring the problems concerning the motive for why the action was even taken.

The majority of the South at that time wanted slavery, so how would that be antidemocratic, it's only anti-democratic if you're stating that the entire Union did not agree with that position, and since Lincoln was nowhere near a clear majority, winning only 39.8% of the electoral vote, it would be difficult to argue that he was on the side of the angels in terms of democracy.

I think he was morally right, but the South would certainly have an argument in terms of pure democracy.




Luckily we don't need to take the word of modern historians, whom I find to be generally as competent as most experts. A cursory glance over preserved documents usually gives a fairly compelling account for most facets concerning this subject matter. As for the General, my conclusion does not require one to even bother taking into account events after the war.


If your conclusion is that he was the founder of the KKK, it would. Which is what has been disputed. Since he was not even in the right location for that to have been the case, and it appears to be an elaborate smear campaign, or potentially an attempt by that unpleasant institution to legitimize itself.




With the extreme exception of James Longstreet, a man who was vilified for post war actions by many keepers of history for generations. Whatever their beef with him, it can't be for his extraordinary competence in the war itself. There were certainly motives beyond valor and honor in treating these figures the way they are in memoriam.

http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/monuments-to-individuals/james-longstreet/

There's monuments to him as well. And I would say that he is certainly well remembered. The first time I've heard of him being remembered as anything other than an extremely competent general is in your post. And I spent quite a bit of time very interested in that particular branch of history.

[georgie_leech]

History is littered with collapsed societies who didn't "make it" because said societies were insufficiently principled. They lacked physical and social principles to organise themselves properly and stave off ecological disaster. Indeed, is it the ideas or principles that create wealth in the first place. Gold is useless without knowledge of metallurgy. Ploughs choke horses without yokes. Rocketships don't visit Luna without knowledge of gravity. And, society itself doesn't organise towards justice without the General Welfare principle. My basic point here is that society is unprincipled, that most people don't even know what the word "principles" means. I certainly didn't learn a single principle throughout all of my schooling career as a young fellow. And without this commitment to principle, society will not be continually advancing its perpetually-depleting resource base, and it will be in a collapse mode, which we are in.

Because horrible disasters like floods and plagues and invasions by foreign powers only happen to the unprincipled I suppose? :smallamused:

[AMFV]

Because horrible disasters like floods and plagues and invasions by foreign powers only happen to the unprincipled I suppose? :smallamused:

That is clearly the case, I mean in the histories written by the people that conquered those areas, we can hear all about how lazy and shiftless those societies were.

[Hazyshade]

Wasn't the Unabomber against scientific progress? I don't see the connection.

No. He was against *technological* progress, or more accurately he was against the pursuit of technological progress being divorced from some kind of natural Principles that humanity could discover if they stopped being so distracted by TV and looked within themselves. Exactly what you've just described!

[Donnadogsoth]

Only 600 years?

Empires come and go but the land and peoples are still there.
...
I think there's for more continuity than you credit.

Perhaps you're right. But, it's a tangle of threads, not a nice piece of cloth.

Still, when they go down these empires take a goodly chunk of the people with them. And, we can hardly say that the culture of ancient Rome is the culture of modern Italy. I'm not saying all threads of language, blood, etc., are lost, but the continuity of the culture is disrupted. Are the Irish the same culture they were 600 years ago? And who today speaks of the Akkadians or the Hittites? They've been washed away and blended into different forms. My point is that societies collapse for lack of principle, whether through internal strife and mismanagement or external invasion. Right now we are progressing on inertia, not on power, and we will eventually collapse and then there will be painful disorder.


A bit of a request to you*Donnadogsoth, please wait until you're my age before you further commit to pining for "Ye Auld days".

Pining? I pine for a functioning, mythically coherent society, one adapted to the Future while retaining the good of the Past. That means scientifically a drive towards fusion technology while at the same time a popularisation of Schiller. Right now the myths are in disarray, everything is in disarray, there is a blizzard of concepts and cultures—can we “level up” to higher level of looking at these things that will order us properly, or will we suffer from more aspartamic syncretism?

[georgie_leech]

That is clearly the case, I mean in the histories written by the people that conquered those areas, we can hear all about how lazy and shiftless those societies were.

Indeed. :smallamused:

But let's flip this about, since history abounds with examples of this sort of thing happenning more or less regardless of principle. Dagg, can you point to any society that didn't collapse because principles protected them? You know, not just rhetoric but an actual non-theoretical example of what you're arguing helps, actually helping?

[Lacuna Caster]

Right, and the movable printed type is going to put us all out of work. With the domestication of cattle think about all the unemployed spreaders of seed. What about the cars killing the farrier industry. Unemployment has maintained itself fairly consistently throughout history. Society is very good at keeping people busy, I suspect that we'll keep it on doing that.

Also cab and truck drivers are NOT against the wall, since their supposed competition isn't even out of a theoretical stage. And computers can't take the bar exam or prepare legal documents in any real way, because you know... the litigation potential.
You didn't watch the video, did you? Software bots are already being used to perform discovery during legal cases, which is a huge part of what the profession does, with higher speed and accuracy. And I think it's fair to say that self-driving cars are well out (https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15917180/self-driving-car-congress-bills-waymo-avis) of the theoretical stage. Seriously, have you been living under a rock?

I know that people have been complaining about technology displacing workers for centuries. This time it is different, but we're no longer seeing the replacement of human labour with other forms of human labour. We're seeing human labour- in the sense of our cognitive capabilities- being rendered economically non-viable in general.


What I wonder about--what might be a hypothesis--is whether the primeval source, when we were half animals, living terrified by our newfound consciousness, might hold things very much like Cthulhoid entities that are lurking there, waiting for the time when man would "arrange his stars" and burn the clouds of mythology away like smoke from the waters, and see the Things Beyond Time, the archetypes that we need to know in order to become a space-faring species. Something's blocking us from becoming it, and coincidentally we are in a time of existential disarray, we in the West in particular have lost our nerve and confidence (see identity below).
What you're talking about sounds very much like 'race memory', which I don't think has a lot of empirical support when you control for the usual definitions of genetics, culture and suggestibility. I don't personally believe in archetypes as any kind of objective force external to human thought and communication, so unless cthulhoid entities actually visited earth in the past and interacted with our distant ancestors, I don't think it's a built-in response. (Well, aside from the usual human aversion to scary new things and the loss of control.)


History is littered with collapsed societies who didn't "make it" because said societies were insufficiently principled... ...And without this commitment to principle, society will not be continually advancing its perpetually-depleting resource base, and it will be in a collapse mode, which we are in.
Again, I don't see great evidence that this is the case on a global scale. I mean, sure, I would like it, in theory, if people were more spontaneously concerned with 'the general welfare', but I don't see evidence that this value has really declined so much as that economics has made the general welfare a much more nebulous goal to pursue. And I'm skeptical you can inculcate it until that's fixed.

[2D8HP]

History is littered with....


And he's back!

Yes "history is littered", the world is big and old, and if you look long enough you will probably find an example of it, good or bad.

Perhaps your engaging in an elaborate multi-thread "What would someone with Lovecraft's attitude transported to the 21st century say" enterprise?


A Modest proposal for Southern Monuments (http://thememorypalace.us/2015/08/notes-on-an-imagined-plaque/)


I seldom listen to "podcasts", but I did that one, and it gave me tears.


Honestly, I often have the impression that Donnadogsoth would like to discuss things that aren't allowed here, and it leads him to a lot of contorsionism and implied and cryptic stuff.


He's posted as much:


....Hard to get into it more because of The Rules here. .


I now feel ridiculous for not earlier realizing that his opaque writing was deliberate.


...as a side-note, I worked with a descendant...


Many of us are descended from veterans of that war.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/find-a-grave-prod/photos/2012/128/80505394_133649962814.jpg

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

-William Faulkner


Anyway the OP posted that his original question had been answered:
I stand corrected on three counts. Thank-you.


Then a quote from L ovecraft:

Intriguing. Could the development of cosmic horror itself herald the famous quote?

“The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”


And then the "Archetype question:

Also Nietzsche and Leo Strauss as advocates of the need for inner strength for the highly conscious to overcome the moral emptiness of existence.

Sounds like we need new Archetypes to help us bind the psychic forces that will otherwise upend everything as the locks on our moral fetters are picked by materialism. Such a model would need to be universal, cosmic even, that would set up a warning to humanity.

And then other posts where if I'm not baffled, I'm appalled.

An interesting thread, I've laughed, I've cried, I've felt fear, and I've felt anger.

PM me if you like

[Donnadogsoth]

Because horrible disasters like floods and plagues and invasions by foreign powers only happen to the unprincipled I suppose? :smallamused:

The principle of innoculation has had something to do with staving off many modern plagues.

The principle of preparation for disaster, of proper financial investment principes combined with engineering principles and the principles embodied in concrete mixers and bulldozers would have helped avert disasters (https://larouchepac.com/20170901/harvey-disaster-made-wall-street) from Katrina to Harvey.

The principle of diplomacy and working towards a just world economic order instead of playing geopolitical games would have averted many wars.

[AMFV]

Indeed. :smallamused:

But let's flip this about, since history abounds with examples of this sort of thing happenning more or less regardless of principle. Dagg, can you point to any society that didn't collapse because principles protected them? You know, not just rhetoric but an actual non-theoretical example of what you're arguing helps, actually helping?

Well to be fair to his point, you could argue that there are plenty of societies


You didn't watch the video, did you? Software bots are already being used to perform discovery during legal cases, which is a huge part of what the profession does, with higher speed and accuracy. And I think it's fair to say that self-driving cars are well out (https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15917180/self-driving-car-congress-bills-waymo-avis) of the theoretical stage. Seriously, have you been living under a rock?

I know that people have been complaining about technology displacing workers for centuries. This time it is different, but we're no longer seeing the replacement of human labour with other forms of human labour. We're seeing human labour- in the sense of our cognitive capabilities- being rendered economically non-viable in general.

And it was different all those times too. Every time somebody has said that something was going to fundamentally change the way human society operates in any real way. They have been wrong. "Look this will eliminate war", Wrong. "This will eliminate the need for their to be a ruling class", Wrong. We can change in small ways, but what you're suggesting is unprecedented.

Also have they been laying lawyers off because they have computers to do discovery? I mean caseloads are increasing, it just means that lawyers who could not do their job effectively before, may now be able to. And that exactly what their job is will likely change. But I doubt it will change that much. It might be more writing and less reading. But jobs evolve over time.


The principle of innoculation has had something to do with staving off many modern plagues.

I would argue that's not really a fundamental principle for anybody.



The principle of preparation for disaster, of proper financial investment principes combined with engineering principles and the principles embodied in concrete mixers and bulldozers would have helped avert disasters (https://larouchepac.com/20170901/harvey-disaster-made-wall-street) from Katrina to Harvey.

It's possible, but I doubt it. There have always been disasters and it is literally impossible to prepare for all of them.



The principle of diplomacy and working towards a just world economic order instead of playing geopolitical games would have averted many wars.

I doubt it. Diplomacy and trying to work towards a "just world economic order" has caused a lot of wars as well, when those things were not equally mired in the self-interest of everybody involved.

[Hazyshade]

The principle of innoculation has had something to do with staving off many modern plagues.

The principle of preparation for disaster, of proper financial investment principes combined with engineering principles and the principles embodied in concrete mixers and bulldozers would have helped avert disasters (https://larouchepac.com/20170901/harvey-disaster-made-wall-street) from Katrina to Harvey.

The principle of diplomacy and working towards a just world economic order instead of playing geopolitical games would have averted many wars.

Oh come ON. Lyndon LaRouche?! America's second most prolific conspiracy theorist? Get in the sea.

Folks, Google Lyndon LaRouche. And then decide how original Donnadogsoth's brilliant hypothesis actually is.

[Lacuna Caster]

And it was different all those times too. Every time somebody has said that something was going to fundamentally change the way human society operates in any real way.
Well, the agricultural and industrial revolutions absolutely did fundamentally change how human society operates. And I think it likely the development of general AI (along with genetics and nanotech) is going to be at least as big.

And yes, in many case junior lawyers or minimally-skilled paralegals are getting the axe (https://www.law21.ca/2009/02/the-disappearing-associate/). In other cases, more skilled and experienced lawyers can use these software tools to free up time for other tasks and improve their efficiency and client base, but that essentially translates to more money being concentrated in the hands of the most qualified professionals.


It's possible, but I doubt it. There have always been disasters and it is literally impossible to prepare for all of them.
It should be pretty possible to prepare for disasters that are statistically guaranteed over time when experts are telling you to do exactly that. Which has been the case (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/predicting-katrina.html) for some recent US hurricanes.

.

[AMFV]

Well, the agricultural and industrial revolutions absolutely did fundamentally change how human society operates. And I think it likely the development of general AI (along with genetics and nanotech) is going to be at least as big.

Well they didn't really change society. Employment remained the same, we moved where people were kept busy, but we kept people busy. It's possible that this will be as big. But I think far less quickly than you are envisioning, and I suspect that society will evolve to keep people busy, because that's historically how society has handled things like this.



And yes, in many case junior lawyers or minimally-skilled paralegals are getting the axe (https://www.law21.ca/2009/02/the-disappearing-associate/). In other cases, more skilled and experienced lawyers can use these software tools to free up time for other tasks and improve their efficiency and client base, but that essentially translates to more money being concentrated in the hands of the most qualified professionals.

Fair enough, but there's other work that needs done, and eventually the most qualified professionals will have to pass on the torch.



It should be pretty possible to prepare for disasters that are statistically guaranteed over time when experts are telling you to do exactly that. Which has been the case (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/predicting-katrina.html) for some recent US hurricanes.

True, but there's not always the funding or the inclination or all sort of things. It's not simple, that's the problem here, you're boiling down major societal stuff and proclaiming that simple solutions are possible both in the case of automation fixing work and in this one. They aren't.

[Legato Endless]

Because reading about history is completely different than going out and experiencing history. My experiences reading about Gettysburg were very different than when I went there and saw the field where my ancestors had fought. I suspect that you don't care as much about that sort of experience as I do. But you should be understanding that there are people who care about that a great deal.

Than you suspect wrongly. I am all for keeping physical links to the actual historical events. But that's not what those statues are. They all came much later. They are not relics of the war, they are relics of the narrative people have tried to impose on the war. They don't belong on a pedestal. They belong at best in a museum to keep their actual intentions in context.

Most Confederate statues weren't built in the immediate aftermath of the war. A suspiciously large number of them were erected around Jim Crow and to a lesser extent, during the 1960s civil rights movement. That's the difference between this and George Washington. The motive for why the statue goes up matters. Because there's always a motive. And this one isn't so innocent as merely talking about martial courage.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6tukfg/this_graphic_shows_how_late_most_confederate/


The majority of the South at that time wanted slavery, so how would that be antidemocratic, it's only anti-democratic if you're stating that the entire Union did not agree with that position, and since Lincoln was nowhere near a clear majority, winning only 39.8% of the electoral vote, it would be difficult to argue that he was on the side of the angels in terms of democracy.

They lost an election. That happens to everyone. Most reasonable partakers of such government simply wait for the next one. Instead they decided to partake on a path that risked a staggering loss of lives. But the demographic trends weren't exactly favoring them concerning the population advantage the North had. This also ignores that the South had an overrepresented voice in legislative affairs, hence it's ability to getaway with decisions that weren't popular with the population as a whole in the lead up to the war. And as for majorities, had the Slaves been able to voice a matter on the dispute, I rather presume the election would have been more lopsided.


Total number of slaves in the Lower South : 2,312,352 (47% of total population).
Total number of slaves in the Upper South: 1,208758 (29% of total population).
Total number of slaves in the Border States: 432,586 (13% of total population).

After all, the South was perfectly content to have them count as matters of people everywhere it gave them some advantage. But that would be inconsistent. Besides, even if we adopt the idea that if a localized unified minority can declare freedom from a greater whole, that then leaves the Confedaracy's hypocrisy concerning West Virginia. State's rights huh?

I think Lincoln himself had a pretty good read on the situation.

"Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"
-The duly elected President on the South's tortured logic


If your conclusion is that he was the founder of the KKK, it would.

But it wasn't, so that's irrelevant.


There's monuments to him as well. And I would say that he is certainly well remembered. The first time I've heard of him being remembered as anything other than an extremely competent general is in your post. And I spent quite a bit of time very interested in that particular branch of history.[/QUOTE]

I'm not talking monuments. Jubal Early shortly after Lee's death in various speeches and letters attempted to fasten blame for the loss of Gettysburg onto Longstreet, partially one suspects to preserve Lee's hagiography. Whatever the motive, he opened the way for Longstreet as a scapegoat. William N. Pendleton followed up by fabricating accounts. Afterwards into the 20th century, various people from author Clifford Dowdey to historian Douglas Southall Freeman.

Early's letters for example can be found easily with a bit googling. This article gives a brief overview (http://www.americanheritage.com/content/general-longstreet-and-lost-cause)

[Tyndmyr]

I think you're missing the point. It's not that you need to be especially stupid to be threatened by automation, it's that you'll need to be unusually smart and creative to complete with the latest upcoming robot designs. Low-end lawyers are disappearing, cab and truck drivers are against the wall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&t=4m58s), the days of fast food vendors and supermarket tellers are numbered, lab technicians, accountants, call centre operatives- the list goes on.

Those factory robots do not suck. They were installed because paying a small number of supervisors and maintenance staff to keep them running is cheaper and more effective than hiring dozens or hundreds of industrial workers to perform repetitive tasks to uniform standards of quality. People love to trot out their John Henry anecdotes about humans doing a better job in specific applications, but the overall trend is inexorable. Robots get a little smarter every year, and humans don't. It does us no good to pretend otherwise.

Nah, unemployment rates are pretty much normal.

Yeah, what jobs people do will change. They always do.

And humans DO get smarter every year. That's what education and progress is about.

The west isn't really unique in this either. We may be at a different point or what not, but people are people.

[AMFV]

Than you suspect wrongly. I am all for keeping physical links to the actual historical events. But that's not what those statues are. They all came much later. They are not relics of the war, they are relics of the narrative people have tried to impose on the war. They don't belong on a pedestal. They belong at best in a museum to keep their actual intentions in context.

Most Confederate statues weren't built in the immediate aftermath of the war. A suspiciously large number of them were erected around Jim Crow and to a lesser extent, during the 1960s civil rights movement. That's the difference between this and George Washington. The motive for why the statue goes up matters. Because there's always a motive. And this one isn't so innocent as merely talking about martial courage.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6tukfg/this_graphic_shows_how_late_most_confederate/


Well notably we have again references to martial courage in the South that aren't dealing with the confederacy. Enough such that it is not unreasonable to take them at face value in their claimed motivations for the monuments. It is possible that there was at one time an untoward ideal behind the monuments, but if so, that particular ideology rarely applies to the monuments today. And that's pretty important here.

Also you're making some big presumptions about the motivations of others without any documents to back that claim, and I thought you were interested in History, you're making a claim based only on dates, with no primary sources, in ancient history that would be questionable, in modern history that's nearly unconscionable.



They lost an election. That happens to everyone. Most reasonable partakers of such government simply wait for the next one. Instead they decided to partake on a path that risked a staggering loss of lives. But the demographic trends weren't exactly favoring them concerning the population advantage the North had. This also ignores that the South had an overrepresented voice in legislative affairs, hence it's ability to getaway with decisions that weren't popular with the population as a whole in the lead up to the war. And as for majorities, had the Slaves been able to voice a matter on the dispute, I rather presume the election would have been more lopsided.

I certainly disagree with the South. My ancestors fought on the side of the North, and I likely would have as well. But I think that to argue that it's exclusively undemocratic is a gross oversimplification. As far as democracy goes both sides would have had points to make in their favor arguing that things had been done undemocratically. As a side note, not all CSA Generals were in favor of secession. I imagine Lee would not have been, but in the end raising your sword against your home is a very difficult thing.

If I were in the South, I would likely have fought for it, whether or not I agreed with the reasons behind that fight. I've went to war for reasons I did not fully agree with, so maybe I have a different perspective than most people here do. So I know that I would have in that case, I don't think that the reasons for the war diminish or impact the valor of the soldiers in that war in any way.




But it wasn't, so that's irrelevant.

But that was part of the argument for that particular statue being taken down, so it is important to make note of here, and that it's flawed.




I'm not talking monuments. Jubal Early shortly after Lee's death in various speeches and letters attempted to fasten blame for the loss of Gettysburg onto Longstreet, partially one suspects to preserve Lee's hagiography. Whatever the motive, he opened the way for Longstreet as a scapegoat. William N. Pendleton followed up by fabricating accounts. Afterwards into the 20th century, various people from author Clifford Dowdey to historian Douglas Southall Freeman.

Early's letters for example can be found easily with a bit googling. This article gives a brief overview (http://www.americanheritage.com/content/general-longstreet-and-lost-cause)

Interesting I was unaware of that. Although rivalries between commanders is not at all unheard of. And we've seen similar things before. I think that by the time I was reading material it was mostly on the side that Longstreet was a very capable General or at least so the writers at the US Army War college believed him to be so. (Most of my civil war knowledge when I was younger came from one of their books on the history of US warfare).

[Bohandas]

Right, and the movable printed type is going to put us all out of work. With the domestication of cattle think about all the unemployed spreaders of seed. What about the cars killing the farrier industry. Unemployment has maintained itself fairly consistently throughout history. Society is very good at keeping people busy, I suspect that we'll keep it on doing that.

When TVs were invented it was predicted that they would kill the film industry. Around a century later that still hasn;t materialized.

....Am I the only one who's angry about that?

Promises were made....

[Tyndmyr]

Eh, I'm sure any number of things were promised to kill books as well, and yet, they're still here.

[AMFV]

When TVs were invented it was predicted that they would kill the film industry. Around a century later that still hasn;t materialized.

....Am I the only one who's angry about that?

Promises were made....

I'm pretty sure that there are many people who would argue that the modern film industry is the death of the real film industry.

[georgie_leech]

Eh, I'm sure any number of things were promised to kill books as well, and yet, they're still here.

Amusingly, apparently (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/259062-if-men-learn-this-it-will-implant-forgetfulness-in-their) Plato once decried books for destroying our ability to actually remember things, because we would rely on the written word.

Personally, that doesn't seem to be the case; we need electronic information storage for it to be convenient enough to not remember things. :smallwink:

[Hazyshade]

Amusingly, apparently (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/259062-if-men-learn-this-it-will-implant-forgetfulness-in-their) Plato once decried books for destroying our ability to actually remember things, because we would rely on the written word.

Careful mentioning Plato around a LaRouche fan, they'll be back to lecture us on how the whole of history is a battle between Plato and Aristotle :smallwink:

[2D8HP]

Sorry, I didn't see these responses before my last post:


Perhaps you're right....


Nice to read.


....I pine for a functioning, mythically coherent society, one adapted to the Future while retaining the good of the Past....


Well then, I invite you to read a book from 1951:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f9/The_True_Believer%2C_first_edition.jpg/220px-The_True_Believer%2C_first_edition.jpg

[thorgrim29]

I looked at that Larouche fellow and wow that is some industrial strength get-off-my-lawn-ism (seriously, rock as a deliberate assault on american society by british intelligence?)

[Legato Endless]

Well notably we have again references to martial courage in the South that aren't dealing with the confederacy. Enough such that it is not unreasonable to take them at face value in their claimed motivations for the monuments. It is possible that there was at one time an untoward ideal behind the monuments, but if so, that particular ideology rarely applies to the monuments today. And that's pretty important here.


I mean, if one were to ignore the news considered various gatherings springboarded off of monument locations in recent years, that might be a reasonable conclusion. It's just happenstance when say, a white supremacist gathering had a rally around a statue of Robert E Lee this August? Sure, it was a protest to keep the statue up. The fact that it was an extremely racially charged group that did so was another unhappy coincidence? What of the NeoNazi's marching into Charlottesville to defend that statue?


Also you're making some big presumptions about the motivations of others without any documents to back that claim, and I thought you were interested in History, you're making a claim based only on dates, with no primary sources, in ancient history that would be questionable, in modern history that's nearly unconscionable.

I'm really not, nor do I appreciate the veiled character attack that constitutes. Nor the logical fallacy invoked in it's use. What kind of source would you like? It's a bit muddy because you opened with a preamble about the experts to be sourced on this subject are not reliable, which sounds like the preemptive attempt to delegitimize a countervailing majority accepted narrative on the subject. Furthermore, you appear to be begging for some kind of written text that explicitly says, we built these statues to show black people what their place was and salve the morally unconscionably cause we fought for.

If you're looking for something saying precisely that, than the askance itself reveals a historical lack of grounding. Racism in the US has a long history of codewords and obfuscation. After the Confederacy fell, you don't often get neat documents like the various States' declarations of independence saying how slavery is super necessary and awesome. Such documents are, overwhelmingly outnumbered by various metaphor's to package the uglier truth following the war's end.

So basically, first, there's the history of disguised racial animus that's been wallpapered. Second, there's the Southern Lost Cause, which is pretty accepted scholarship on the war. If you're contesting either of those, no one link I can provide will over write that. You might want to take a few weeks and delve into the extensive and widely available subject matter itself. Frankly that demonstrates a critical gap in any discussion concerning the Civil War to the present.

But if we do allow some experts to comment on the subject, well, here's a few historians thoughts in agreement with my rather obvious causal link between architecture and ideology:

[The majority of the Statues were erected between the 1890s and the 1920s], at "the height of Jim Crow, of state-sanctioned segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching," Purdue University history professor Caroline Janney

"I don't think there's much chance of history being wiped away, and these statues don't represent that anyway," "
"They come in waves...when there's a perceived threat to the South or within the South."
""They manipulate the memory through statues and other symbols,"
College of William and Mary history professor James Whittenburg

"... public monuments became a central means of rewriting history from the Confederate perspective — 'righting history,' their patrons said,"
-Cynthia Mills "Monuments to the Lost Cause." Amazon Link (https://www.amazon.com/Monuments-Lost-Cause-Landscapes-Southern/dp/1572332727?tag=bisafetynet2-20)

“[The memorials] celebrated two historical crimes. First, treasonous secession for the purpose of preserving and expanding slavery forever. Second, the violent and fraudulent creation of Jim Crow segregation.” -Gregory Downs, history professor University of California

"Most of the people who were involved in erecting the monuments were not necessarily erecting a monument to the past...But were rather, erecting them toward a white supremacist future."
"Who erects a statue of former Confederate generals on the very heels of fighting and winning a war for democracy? People who want to send a message to black veterans, the Supreme Court, and the president of the United States, that's who."
"I think it's important to understand that one of the meanings of these monuments when they're put up, is to try to settle the meaning of the war. But also the shape of the future, by saying that elite Southern whites are in control and are going to build monuments to themselves effectively."
-Jane Dailey, associate professor of history University of Chicago

"To make an equivalency between two of the Founding Fathers and Confederacy leaders is not only “absurd,” but also “unacceptable for the president of the United States...They accomplished something very important. Washington and Jefferson were central to the creation of a nation … Lee and Stonewall were not being honored for those types of accomplishment. They were being honored for creating and defending the Confederacy, which existed for one reason, and that was to protect the right of people to own other people.”
"These statues were meant to create legitimate garb for white supremacy."
"Why would you put a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson in 1948 in Baltimore?"
-Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association.

The statues are no more innocent than the Confederate Battle flag. It's no coincidence the flag became adopted by the KKK in reaction to civil rights.
“It means the Southern cause,” -Roy Harris, Georgia politician, 1951. “It is becoming … the symbol of the white race and the cause of the white people.”
Link (https://www.amazon.com/The-Confederate-Battle-Flag-Embattled/dp/0674019830)

“A lot of Southerners glorified Lee into something more than he was." "Lee has been portrayed as kindly to slaves, which he was not, and conflicted about which side to fight for, which is inaccurate.”
Associate Professor Michael Green of the University of Nevada Las Vegas


Two distinct periods saw a significant rise in the dedication of monuments and other symbols. The first began around 1900, amid the period in which states were enacting Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise the newly freed African Americans and re-segregate society. This spike lasted well into the 1920s, a period that saw a dramatic resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which had been born in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The second spike began in the early 1950s and lasted through the 1960s, as the civil rights movement led to a backlash among segregationists.

Source and more on the subject (https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/whoseheritage_splc.pdf)

Little known author records various statistics on the subject. The Red Record (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1508472084?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=1508472084)


I certainly disagree with the South. My ancestors fought on the side of the North, and I likely would have as well.

And I am quite confident that no, such motives or ideology has not largely disappeared. If it had, you wouldn't be at pains during this discussion to clarify your position on the morality of this 'dead history'. But you are. Because there is an active and unsavory element that is in the public consciousness and everyone has to be clear on their position because it's really not all that resolved.


But I think that to argue that it's exclusively undemocratic is a gross oversimplification. As far as democracy goes both sides would have had points to make in their favor arguing that things had been done undemocratically.

That would certainly be a minority opinion among various political historians. Not that the Union was a bastion of innocence, no nation ever is, such as Lincoln suspending Habeus Corpus, but the casus belli for the south is pretty much poppycock.


(Most of my civil war knowledge when I was younger came from one of their books on the history of US warfare).

That does explains a lot. Thank you. Apologies for formatting, posting on my phone is a bit difficult.


I seldom listen to "podcasts", but I did that one, and it gave me tears.

Missed this earlier. I'm elated you enjoyed it. :smallsmile:

[georgie_leech]

The principle of innoculation has had something to do with staving off many modern plagues.

The principle of preparation for disaster, of proper financial investment principes combined with engineering principles and the principles embodied in concrete mixers and bulldozers would have helped avert disasters (https://larouchepac.com/20170901/harvey-disaster-made-wall-street) from Katrina to Harvey.

The principle of diplomacy and working towards a just world economic order instead of playing geopolitical games would have averted many wars.

Now see, I look at these as a bit of a misleading idea. The native central americans didn't seek out conflict with the spanish conquistadors, but Cortez invaded and pillaged regardless. The native North Americans didn't fail to try and be healthy, the plagues the Europeans brought were far more destructive than their medicines could cope with. And a book you've previously held up as an example of enduring culture details a flood that no amount of preparation could save any civilization; indeed, that was sort of the point of said flood.

Perhaps it's just a mishmash of definitions, but it seems to me these are less principles and more "ideas that work." In contrast to ideas that don't work. Early USA society had the "principle" of Manifest Destiny. Imperial Britain believed in Mercantilism and the extraction of value from colonies. The ancient Assyrians believed they had a divine impetus to war and conquer; they had to do so regardless of if it was "right." And since Godwin's law has already been invoked, Nazi Germany was partly founded on the idea of the Übermensch, a term from Nietzsche's philosophy.

So forgive me if this seems less like insight into the rise and fall of cilizations, and more like you disagreeing with what society is like and your attempts at moralizing it. I have no qualms about the former. Heck, I think that society has problems too. But I don't need to act like my cynicism is cosmically justified, and neither do you. You can argue we need to do more to disaster-prep without calling on noetic planes and mythic archetypes for justification.

[AMFV]

I mean, if one were to ignore the news considered various gatherings springboarded off of monument locations in recent years, that might be a reasonable conclusion. It's just happenstance when say, a white supremacist gathering had a rally around a statue of Robert E Lee this August? Sure, it was a protest to keep the statue up. The fact that it was an extremely racially charged group that did so was another unhappy coincidence? What of the NeoNazi's marching into Charlottesville to defend that statue?

Are you drawing conclusions about what a majority of people in the South believe based on the actions of 150 people? That seems to be not an appropriate thing. I would answer in greater length, but suffice it to say that if your national rally has less than 300 people we can reasonably assume that you are not influencing political thought outside of medea hysteria. That's all I'm going to say on the topic, because that is clearly outside of reasonable discussion topics.



I'm really not, nor do I appreciate the veiled character attack that constitutes. Nor the logical fallacy invoked in it's use. What kind of source would you like? It's a bit muddy because you opened with a preamble about the experts to be sourced on this subject are not reliable, which sounds like the preemptive attempt to delegitimize a countervailing majority accepted narrative on the subject. Furthermore, you appear to be begging for some kind of written text that explicitly says, we built these statues to show black people what their place was and salve the morally unconscionably cause we fought for.

"Majority accepted narrative" that's a fallacy, if we're counting them. Yes, if you are saying that that is the reason they were put up then I'd like money where your mouth, cause it's all mouth and no money right now. You're making a lot of suppositions based on dates. Isn't possible that the same sentiment of Southern Pride that gave rise to the statues fed into other things. In which case you're assuming the racism is causal, rather than the racism is a reflection of a deeper cause, which is likely the case. So you'd need some proof yes, if you are going to make those allegations.



If you're looking for something saying precisely that, than the askance itself reveals a historical lack of grounding. Racism in the US has a long history of codewords and obfuscation. After the Confederacy fell, you don't often get neat documents like the various States' declarations of independence saying how slavery is super necessary and awesome. Such documents are, overwhelmingly outnumbered by various metaphor's to package the uglier truth following the war's end.

Which conveniently abdicates any burden of proof you had. Nicely done. You both claim victory and refuse to provide any real proof. I like that a lot.



So basically, first, there's the history of disguised racial animus that's been wallpapered. Second, there's the Southern Lost Cause, which is pretty accepted scholarship on the war. If you're contesting either of those, no one link I can provide will over write that. You might want to take a few weeks and delve into the extensive and widely available subject matter itself. Frankly that demonstrates a critical gap in any discussion concerning the Civil War to the present.

I'm not entirely sure that's true. I don't think that you can find solid proof of that allegation.



But if we do allow some experts to comment on the subject, well, here's a few historians thoughts in agreement with my rather obvious causal link between architecture and ideology:

[The majority of the Statues were erected between the 1890s and the 1920s], at "the height of Jim Crow, of state-sanctioned segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching," Purdue University history professor Caroline Janney

"I don't think there's much chance of history being wiped away, and these statues don't represent that anyway," "
"They come in waves...when there's a perceived threat to the South or within the South."
""They manipulate the memory through statues and other symbols,"
College of William and Mary history professor James Whittenburg

"... public monuments became a central means of rewriting history from the Confederate perspective — 'righting history,' their patrons said,"
-Cynthia Mills "Monuments to the Lost Cause." Amazon Link (https://www.amazon.com/Monuments-Lost-Cause-Landscapes-Southern/dp/1572332727?tag=bisafetynet2-20)

“[The memorials] celebrated two historical crimes. First, treasonous secession for the purpose of preserving and expanding slavery forever. Second, the violent and fraudulent creation of Jim Crow segregation.” -Gregory Downs, history professor University of California

"Most of the people who were involved in erecting the monuments were not necessarily erecting a monument to the past...But were rather, erecting them toward a white supremacist future."
"Who erects a statue of former Confederate generals on the very heels of fighting and winning a war for democracy? People who want to send a message to black veterans, the Supreme Court, and the president of the United States, that's who."
"I think it's important to understand that one of the meanings of these monuments when they're put up, is to try to settle the meaning of the war. But also the shape of the future, by saying that elite Southern whites are in control and are going to build monuments to themselves effectively."
-Jane Dailey, associate professor of history University of Chicago

"To make an equivalency between two of the Founding Fathers and Confederacy leaders is not only “absurd,” but also “unacceptable for the president of the United States...They accomplished something very important. Washington and Jefferson were central to the creation of a nation … Lee and Stonewall were not being honored for those types of accomplishment. They were being honored for creating and defending the Confederacy, which existed for one reason, and that was to protect the right of people to own other people.”
"These statues were meant to create legitimate garb for white supremacy."
"Why would you put a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson in 1948 in Baltimore?"
-Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association.

The statues are no more innocent than the Confederate Battle flag. It's no coincidence the flag became adopted by the KKK in reaction to civil rights.
“It means the Southern cause,” -Roy Harris, Georgia politician, 1951. “It is becoming … the symbol of the white race and the cause of the white people.”
Link (https://www.amazon.com/The-Confederate-Battle-Flag-Embattled/dp/0674019830)

“A lot of Southerners glorified Lee into something more than he was." "Lee has been portrayed as kindly to slaves, which he was not, and conflicted about which side to fight for, which is inaccurate.”
Associate Professor Michael Green of the University of Nevada Las Vegas



Source and more on the subject (https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/whoseheritage_splc.pdf)

Little known author records various statistics on the subject. The Red Record (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1508472084?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=1508472084)


I'm not sure that your sources are entirely unbiased on that subject. I can't go into greater detail, but there's not a lot of facts in those allegations either. 1890 to 1920 is a LARGE span of time, and again, you're assuming a causal relationship where there is not strong evidence (primary sources) that such exists. Historically even when something is hidden letters and journals have revealed the truth, because people are not good at keeping secrets. You don't have even that.



And I am quite confident that no, such motives or ideology has not largely disappeared. If it had, you wouldn't be at pains during this discussion to clarify your position on the morality of this 'dead history'. But you are. Because there is an active and unsavory element that is in the public consciousness and everyone has to be clear on their position because it's really not all that resolved.


Well a lot of it is being kept alive by what amounts to little more than conspiracy theories on the motives of people who put the statues up. This sort of thing is exactly as involved in this matter as other things are. And again, 300 people for a national rally, that's nothing, that's suggesting something that isn't forefront in the ideology of most people (and the 300 number includes opposition)



That would certainly be a minority opinion among various political historians. Not that the Union was a bastion of innocence, no nation ever is, such as Lincoln suspending Habeus Corpus, but the casus belli for the south is pretty much poppycock.

Well the South certainly thought it was substantial enough to secede over, so that's something, so at least at the time people did not believe that it was poppycock. I don't think that you're going to find argument that the South was in the wrong, but arguing that only those who fought on the side of the North were in the right, isn't really accurate, Soldiers, even generals, are not responsible for their nation, it's the other way around.



That does explains a lot. Thank you. Apologies for formatting, posting on my phone is a bit difficult.


You'll note that I said "most of my knowledge when I was younger" not my present knowledge. Although to be fair military matters should be remembered in their light as military history. I'm all for remembering those on the Union Side who fought, putting up statues to honor them, I think we should honor them more than we do. I'm all for honoring abolitionists with statues and monuments. I'm for adding to the experience of history.

Frankly, even if the statues were put in bad faith over a hundred years ago, I don't think that bad faith necessarily remains the primary object of their use.

[SaintRidley]

AMFV, it's impossible to take seriously the idea that the south fought for democracy because the institution of slavery is inherently anti-democratic. Fighting to preserve slavery is a direct attack on democracy, and it doesn't matter how many people who stand to benefit from slavery agreed that it was a good idea. You know who weren't asked in your "the majority wanted slavery so how could it not be democratic" example? The slaves.

Get out of here with that garbage.

[AMFV]

AMFV, it's impossible to take seriously the idea that the south fought for democracy because the institution of slavery is inherently anti-democratic. Fighting to preserve slavery is a direct attack on democracy, and it doesn't matter how many people who stand to benefit from slavery agreed that it was a good idea. You know who weren't asked in your "the majority wanted slavery so how could it not be democratic" example? The slaves.

Get out of here with that garbage.

You'll note that is not what I was arguing or even a close paraphrase. I was saying that there is more complexity to it than to simply say that South was "against democracy" or "anti-democratic" as I recall the exact words were. I'm not for Slavery, I wouldn't have likely been for slavery at the time. But I'm not for condemning somebody for fighting on behalf of their state because their state was for slavery. I'm certainly not suggesting that somebody who did is "anti-democratic" because it's too complex to boil down to that simple an idea.

Southerners were not monsters, they were soldiers. And Soldier's valor deserves to be remembered even when they were fighting a war for the wrong reasons. I want my ancestor's valor remembered even when they did not fight for the right reasons, so I can understand fundamentally how somebody from the South would feel the same.

[pendell]

Southerners were not monsters, they were soldiers. And Soldier's valor deserves to be remembered even when they were fighting a war for the wrong reasons. I want my ancestor's valor remembered even when they did not fight for the right reasons, so I can understand fundamentally how somebody from the South would feel the same.

I accept and respect that. Soldiers a lot of times fight for other reasons than whatever garbage is spewing out of politicians' mouths -- and if anyone out there is going to die for a politician's promise, I would say they are almost certainly very misguided.

People fight for all kinds of reasons, some good and some not. But some fight because they want to protect their families from war's desolation -- to go out on the trenches so their families can live in peace at home. As I climb into my forties, that reasoning becomes more and more important.

RE Lee was one such man. He fought for Virginia because, to him, his state was an extended family to be protected from any attacker, regardless of cause.

As I said, I accept and respect that. And I respect your ancestors, who perhaps fought in part to protect their homes.

Nonetheless ... I don't believe that is the reason all those statues went up. It's part of the long struggle for historical memory in the US, and since those statues were put up for such a reason I believe they can come right back down, and better ones put in their place.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Lethologica]

Remembering the valor of the common Southern soldier? Perhaps. Here's a draft of the plaque.


Here lie common soldiers of the Confederacy.
Conscripted to fight for an unjust cause in an unjust war,
Still they fought with valor for their brothers in arms,
For love of family and home.

The tragedy is not that they lost, but that their valor and their love were appropriated to serve such a terrible end. (I am, however, open to objections concerning my characterization of what common soldiers of the Confederacy fought for. 1/4 of Confederate households owned slaves.)

As for the people who did the conscripting; who authored the war; who stood to benefit from industrialized human misery; who resolved the contradiction between our nation's magnificent ideals and contemptible practices by decisively rejecting the principle that all men are created equal...Let them gather cobwebs in forgotten corners of obscure museums. They must be remembered, but they do not deserve a prominent, public place of honor in our memory.

[Legato Endless]

Are you drawing conclusions about what a majority of people in the South believe based on the actions of 150 people?

No, I kind of assume that racism is still an ongoing problem in general. Here's a random example. Statistics. (https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/141027_iachr_racial_disparities_aclu_submission_0. pdf)


Yes, if you are saying that that is the reason they were put up then I'd like money where your mouth, cause it's all mouth and no money right now. You're making a lot of suppositions based on dates. Isn't possible that the same sentiment of Southern Pride that gave rise to the statues fed into other things. In which case you're assuming the racism is causal, rather than the racism is a reflection of a deeper cause, which is likely the case. So you'd need some proof yes, if you are going to make those allegations.

Versus what? Your completely unsourced claims that everything here is totally innocent? That's not value neutral. It's more grandiose than mine. To hear you tell it, the fact that a nation was formed, fought and died for slavery, and then decades later erected figures celebrating men (some of whose only claim to fame was fighting for this cause) managed to somehow be magically removed from all that?


I'm not entirely sure that's true. I don't think that you can find solid proof of that allegation.

The lost cause of the South has no proof?


I'm not sure that your sources are entirely unbiased on that subject. I can't go into greater detail, but there's not a lot of facts in those allegations either.

Ah huh. So by your historiographical logic, all the lynchings that occurred during Jim Crow were really to protect White Women's virtue? Because that's what the executioners told themselves and others.


1890 to 1920 is a LARGE span of time, and again, you're assuming a causal relationship where there is not strong evidence (primary sources) that such exists.

No it's not. Historical trend mapping takes into account far greater spans of time.


Well the South certainly thought it was substantial enough to secede over, so that's something, so at least at the time people did not believe that it was poppycock.

By that rational any action approved by any crowd of people is...something.


I don't think that you're going to find argument that the South was in the wrong, but arguing that only those who fought on the side of the North were in the right, isn't really accurate, Soldiers, even generals, are not responsible for their nation, it's the other way around.

This is soft apologism. You're trying to portray a cause that fought to expand slavery to United States' territories as somehow not worthy of being defeated. That in itself sounds pretty morally praiseworthy. And then had it's opponent eventually take up the cause of emancipation in the middle of the war. Destroying the Confederacy was a moral end unto it's self. Preserving the great United States being selfishly convenient to the Union doesn't obviate that. We are all accountable for our actions.


The tragedy is not that they lost, but that their valor and their love were appropriated to serve such a terrible end. (I am, however, open to objections concerning my characterization of what common soldiers of the Confederacy fought for. 1/4 of Confederate households owned slaves.)

As for the people who did the conscripting; who authored the war; who resolved the contradiction between our nation's magnificent ideals and contemptible practices by decisively rejecting the principle that all men are created equal...Let them gather cobwebs in forgotten corners of obscure museums. They must be remembered, but they do not deserve a prominent, public place of honor in our memory.

Indeed. The other complicating narrative is that while not every Household owned slaves, a majority certainly wished to. Furthermore it was useful to White elites to provide impoverished whites with someone they could look down on to maintain the economic inequality of the era. That's societal classicism 101. Southern identity is not some separate rational for why the statues went up, as AMFV would have it. Racial inequality was intractably linked to Southern Identity of the age. And it didn't magically disentangle itself after the war ended.

[Lethologica]

Indeed. The other complicating narrative is that while not every Household owned slaves, a majority certainly wished to. Furthermore it was useful to White elites to provide impoverished whites with someone they could look down on to maintain the economic inequality of the era. That's societal classicism 101. Southern identity is not some separate rational for why the statues went up, as AMFV would have it. Racial inequality was intractably linked to Southern Identity of the age. And it didn't magically disentangle itself after the war ended.
It definitely wasn't just Southern identity at that time. Racial inequality was everywhere (and is, to some extent). However, the South, and especially the Deep South, had the bug a lot worse.

[Hazyshade]

In the interest of answering the conspiracy theorist OP's question, I thought immediately of Philip Short's biography of Pol Pot (https://www.amazon.com/Pol-Pot-Nightmare-Philip-Short/dp/0805080066) and its reference to the cpap, collections of traditional sayings taught to Cambodian children:


The cpap, at least in the form in which Sâr [the future Pol Pot] would have learnt them, had another particularity. They portrayed the Khmers [Cambodians] as honest and sincere but "foolish and ignorant", constantly being duped by their smarter Chinese and Vietnamese neighbours:

Your eyes are open and can see,
But see only the surface of things
Learn arithmetic with all your energy
Lest the Chinese and Vietnamese cheat you
The Khmers are lacking in judgement
They eat without giving thought for what is proper and right,
Each season they borrow from the Chinese,
And the Chinese gain control of the inheritance their parents have bequeathed.


(To clarify, I don't believe the Chinese and Vietnamese are evil! But from a historic Cambodian point of view they are definitely the designated villains.)

[pendell]

Meanwhile, answering the OP: Grave of the Fireflies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies). 'Nuff said!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Legato Endless]

It definitely wasn't just Southern identity at that time. Racial inequality was everywhere (and is, to some extent). However, the South, and especially the Deep South, had the bug a lot worse.

I never said it was exclusive? But the South's economic apparatus and wealth being explicitly tied to slavery, among other things, did create cultural divergences. That's why Northern factory workers could support abolition on pure economic incentives even if they didn't have egalitarian feelings towards African Americans.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Well I'm not from the USA but unfortunately I have to be side with AMFV on this one :smallbiggrin:

It makes no sense to tear down monuments, they are part of history, if anything they are a reminder of what NOT to be you can't just pretend terrible things didn't happened, they did happened and we evolved past that.

Think of Taj Mahal, a splendorous castle whose creator allegedly removed the hands of the masons so they couldn't create such perfection again.

Or the Egyptian pyramids build by slaves, many who died in the process.

Should those monuments be taken down too?

Just because something is a symbol doesn’t mean it can't change it's meaning, it's part of America history and you can't simply close your eyes and pretend it didn't happened.

And save some really messed up people, people are just that... People, they make mistakes, sometimes because of the social structure of their time but they are not evil monsters or demons, they loved, they had kids, they had a Mom and dreamed of things to come just like us, Genghis khan loved his wife and George Washington had some really messed up ideas about women, because they were people and we can't forget that.

For those who like to think of people as heroes or demons I recommend a big dose of Liev Tolstói literature and Hannah Arendt philosophy.

[Bohandas]

Southerners were not monsters, they were soldiers. And Soldier's valor deserves to be remembered even when they were fighting a war for the wrong reasons. I want my ancestor's valor remembered even when they did not fight for the right reasons, so I can understand fundamentally how somebody from the South would feel the same.

I can see this but even accepting this there's still bias. The south's ideology was bad enough that desertion among its soldiers would be at least as admirable as valor, and deserves equal celebration and commemoration.

Fun story, during WWII my grandfather was conscripted into one of the axis armies and his squad went out of their way to surrender to the allies without even having been first engaged in combat. That's admirable. That deserves a statue.


Or the Egyptian pyramids build by slaves, many who died in the process.

IIRC the pyramids were actually mostly built by a mix of professional builders and sycophants wishing to suck up the the royal family, slaves were used but only when they could not find enough of these first two groups

[S@tanicoaldo]

IIRC the pyramids were actually mostly built by a mix of professional builders and sycophants wishing to suck up the the royal family, slaves were used but only when they could not find enough of these first two groups

Shhhhh... Your facts are not welcomed in my emotional appeal comment. :smallbiggrin:

[Hazyshade]

IIRC the pyramids were actually mostly built by a mix of professional builders and sycophants wishing to suck up the the royal family, slaves were used but only when they could not find enough of these first two groups

Isn't all slavery everywhere basically the result of someone not being able to find enough non-slave labourers?

[Bohandas]

don;t underestimate the role of cheapness and greed

edit:
also power tripping and megalomania

[Donnadogsoth]

Well then, I invite you to read a book from 1951:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f9/The_True_Believer%2C_first_edition.jpg/220px-The_True_Believer%2C_first_edition.jpg

I already have a copy, but, have yet to read it. I'll bump it up my list, thanks.

[Donnadogsoth]

Now see, I look at these as a bit of a misleading idea. The native central americans didn't seek out conflict with the spanish conquistadors, but Cortez invaded and pillaged regardless. The native North Americans didn't fail to try and be healthy, the plagues the Europeans brought were far more destructive than their medicines could cope with. And a book you've previously held up as an example of enduring culture details a flood that no amount of preparation could save any civilization; indeed, that was sort of the point of said flood.

Perhaps it's just a mishmash of definitions, but it seems to me these are less principles and more "ideas that work." In contrast to ideas that don't work. Early USA society had the "principle" of Manifest Destiny. Imperial Britain believed in Mercantilism and the extraction of value from colonies. The ancient Assyrians believed they had a divine impetus to war and conquer; they had to do so regardless of if it was "right." And since Godwin's law has already been invoked, Nazi Germany was partly founded on the idea of the Übermensch, a term from Nietzsche's philosophy.

So forgive me if this seems less like insight into the rise and fall of cilizations, and more like you disagreeing with what society is like and your attempts at moralizing it. I have no qualms about the former. Heck, I think that society has problems too. But I don't need to act like my cynicism is cosmically justified, and neither do you. You can argue we need to do more to disaster-prep without calling on noetic planes and mythic archetypes for justification.

No, I can't. If the planet isn't viewed as a noösphere, how can efforts be successfully orchestrated to develop it as a planet rather than a higgledy-piggledy collection of countries and geographies? Let's not get into the politics here, but just the engineering aspect: if the NAWAPA (http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html) were to be successfully created, it would demand coöperation among Canada, the US, and Mexico. They would have to think in terms that are effectively identical to the noösphere, in their germane region. So, their economies would in a sense merge, collaborating in this geoengineering effort. The whole world is waiting to be developed like that, but it can't and it won't unless people think, at least implicitly, in terms of the idea of the noösphere.

As for innoculation, if that isn't a medical principle then what is? How about sterilisation? "Ideas that work" indeed, ideas that accord with the way the world really works, and therefore can be adopted and exploited to achieve the desired change.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Hey Donna, it doesn't matter how evolved and advanced we get we will always find something to be unhappy about.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKiko5L5CyE

[Knaight]

Well I'm not from the USA but unfortunately I have to be side with AMFV on this one :smallbiggrin:

It makes no sense to tear down monuments, they are part of history, if anything they are a reminder of what NOT to be you can't just pretend terrible things didn't happened, they did happened and we evolved past that.

Think of Taj Mahal, a splendorous castle whose creator allegedly removed the hands of the masons so they couldn't create such perfection again.

Or the Egyptian pyramids build by slaves, many who died in the process.

You're listing unequaled architectural marvels here, a more accurate equivalent would be paint by numbers paintings made in great abundance. Looking at the statues from a purely artistic perspective and staying out of politics, I'll just say that not everything is worth preservation, public art benefits from changing every so often, and these are exactly the sort of thoroughly mundane works that routinely get replaced with no commentary.

[Amazon]

America needs to get over what doesn't represent it anymore and pull that down, just like they did it with the Statue of George III.

[georgie_leech]

No, I can't. If the planet isn't viewed as a noösphere, how can efforts be successfully orchestrated to develop it as a planet rather than a higgledy-piggledy collection of countries and geographies? Let's not get into the politics here, but just the engineering aspect: if the NAWAPA (http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html) were to be successfully created, it would demand coöperation among Canada, the US, and Mexico. They would have to think in terms that are effectively identical to the noösphere, in their germane region. So, their economies would in a sense merge, collaborating in this geoengineering effort. The whole world is waiting to be developed like that, but it can't and it won't unless people think, at least implicitly, in terms of the idea of the noösphere.

As for innoculation, if that isn't a medical principle then what is? How about sterilisation? "Ideas that work" indeed, ideas that accord with the way the world really works, and therefore can be adopted and exploited to achieve the desired change.

Frankly, I'm not sure "convince people that everyone is the same thing on a mytical thought plane underlying reality so we should work together" is a more achievable goal than "convince people to work together."

[ArlEammon]

I never had the feeling of the 90's.
It was a pretty **** time for me.

[Frozen_Feet]

Isn't all slavery everywhere basically the result of someone not being able to find enough non-slave labourers?

Actually it's closer to being the other way around. When you have surplus of people via conquest, immigration or other means, you can afford to solve problems by throwing loads of people at them. When you do not have surplus of people, suddenly you need to be much more carefull about managing your human resources.

[Vinyadan]

The only people who I've met who were afraid of robot takeover have never worked with robots. I have worked with factory robots, they suck, they need constant human supervision. They need to repaired, sometimes every single shift if you're running them a lot. They need to be installed, they typically need an operator there to hit the button the instant something goes wrong.


I've never worked with robots and I was kinda scared by the fact that you could have crazy medical robots taking over and performing random operations on humans. Especially since there exists robot-assisted vaginoplasty. Penile inversions for everyone!

[Bohandas]

You're listing unequaled architectural marvels here

Pretty sure there's replicas of both in Vegas

[Knaight]

Pretty sure there's replicas of both in Vegas

There's cheap imitations.

[Hazyshade]

No, I can't. If the planet isn't viewed as a noösphere, how can efforts be successfully orchestrated to develop it as a planet rather than a higgledy-piggledy collection of countries and geographies? Let's not get into the politics here, but just the engineering aspect: if the NAWAPA (http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html) were to be successfully created, it would demand coöperation among Canada, the US, and Mexico. They would have to think in terms that are effectively identical to the noösphere, in their germane region. So, their economies would in a sense merge, collaborating in this geoengineering effort. The whole world is waiting to be developed like that, but it can't and it won't unless people think, at least implicitly, in terms of the idea of the noösphere.


Do you get any of your news from non-LaRouche sources? Or have you transcended the mainstream media, like Donald Trump has?

Anyway, this is exactly what I mean by overfitting the curve. The idea of the noosphere is DE-scriptive. You can analyse events post hoc and detect the idea of the noosphere at work, if you really want to, but it contributes nothing to our understanding of the future. How is implicitly thinking of the noosphere distinguishable from the unremarkable daily workings of the universe? Countries sometimes cooperate with each other. Look at the Montreal Protocol. Did the Montreal Protocol come about because people grasped the idea of the noosphere? Was the noosphere the function that generated the Montreal Protocol as a point on the graph? No. The architects of the Montreal Protocol would look blankly at you if you started talking about the noosphere to them. So drawing a line labelled "noetics" through that point on the graph is a pointless exercise, because that line is going to diverge from reality as soon as you try extending it into the future.



Actually it's closer to being the other way around. When you have surplus of people via conquest, immigration or other means, you can afford to solve problems by throwing loads of people at them. When you do not have surplus of people, suddenly you need to be much more carefull about managing your human resources.

When you say "you" can afford to do X or Y: who is this "you"? Are you talking about a planned economy, or is this an aggregate "problem-solving" that emerges out of millions of people acting in rational ways? When unemployment goes up in Western countries, there doesn't seem to be a problem-solving agent, a national HR department, that takes those people and throws them at a problem. There are problems, and there are unemployed people, but they don't necessarily find each other. So there has to be another term in the equation if you want to explain slavery from the supply side.

[shadow_archmagi]

Think of Taj Mahal, a splendorous castle whose creator allegedly removed the hands of the masons so they couldn't create such perfection again.

Or the Egyptian pyramids build by slaves, many who died in the process.




Actually, the pyramids were built mostly by farmers during the off season, cooperating with professional stonemasons, and the Taj Mahal thing is generally regarded as a myth.

[Eldan]

Yeah. Half the purpose of the Egyptian monuments was to occupy farmers during flood and growth seasons when field work couldn't be done. The workers were also reasonably well paid and got reasonably good food.

[Vinyadan]

BTW, having many different jobs and diversifying wasn't unusual for farmers in the antiquity. A Roman farmer with a little plot of land would tend to his own vegetable and fruit garden, and maybe have a small cereal field, but he wouldn't be able to survive on those alone. So he would occasionally work in the mines, and would surely help out the large landowners during harvest seasons. This way he was paid in money, with which he could buy ready-made clothes, pottery, and food.

[Bohandas]

No, I can't. If the planet isn't viewed as a noösphere, how can efforts be successfully orchestrated to develop it as a planet rather than a higgledy-piggledy collection of countries and geographies? Let's not get into the politics here, but just the engineering aspect: if the NAWAPA (http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html) were to be successfully created, it would demand coöperation among Canada, the US, and Mexico. They would have to think in terms that are effectively identical to the noösphere, in their germane region. So, their economies would in a sense merge, collaborating in this geoengineering effort. The whole world is waiting to be developed like that, but it can't and it won't unless people think, at least implicitly, in terms of the idea of the noösphere.

Wouldn't NAWAPA devestate the natural environment?

[Bohandas]

Actually, the pyramids were built mostly by farmers during the off season, cooperating with professional stonemasons, and the Taj Mahal thing is generally regarded as a myth.

Yeah, a better example would be the architecture of the Aztecs, which often incorporated body parts taken from human sacrifices, like the big racks of skulls that adorned tbe walls of the temples

[Friv]

It makes no sense to tear down monuments, they are part of history, if anything they are a reminder of what NOT to be you can't just pretend terrible things didn't happened, they did happened and we evolved past that.

The problem is, they aren't.

Civil War monuments weren't raised in the Civil War. Most of them weren't raised in the aftermath of the Civil War.

https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/timeline-whoseheritage.png

In case you can't read that, a handful of monuments to the Confederacy were raised throughout the years. A whole whack of them went up around the 1900-1915 period, during the founding of the NAACP, especially on courthouses where blacks were in the process of fighting for their rights. Another massive chunk went up in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights movement, especially in and around schools where blacks were fighting against desegregation. Soldiers in the South who fought for the Union, or who supported Reconstruction, were not given statues at these times, and those statues are most of them.

The big difference between something like the Washington Monument, which was probably built by slaves, and these statues is that these statues were built specifically to cow and intimidate black people, by saying "You are not welcome here, and we still hold to the values that these men represent".

That's why people want them removed.

[pendell]

The problem is, they aren't.

Civil War monuments weren't raised in the Civil War. Most of them weren't raised in the aftermath of the Civil War.

https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/timeline-whoseheritage.png

In case you can't read that, a handful of monuments to the Confederacy were raised throughout the years. A whole whack of them went up around the 1900-1915 period, during the founding of the NAACP, especially on courthouses where blacks were in the process of fighting for their rights. Another massive chunk went up in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights movement, especially in and around schools where blacks were fighting against desegregation. Soldiers in the South who fought for the Union, or who supported Reconstruction, were not given statues at these times, and those statues are most of them.

The big difference between something like the Washington Monument, which was probably built by slaves, and these statues is that these statues were built specifically to cow and intimidate black people, by saying "You are not welcome here, and we still hold to the values that these men represent".

That's why people want them removed.

All I wanted to say with half my words. Thank you.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[2D8HP]

Wouldn't NAWAPA devestate the natural environment?


Please forgive my "senior moment" perhaps it's just because I'm an old guy who's read a lot of sci-fi, but I'm reminded of the 1940's to 60's plans to pave over San Francisco Bay (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan), and the 1950's to early '70's plans to use atomic bombs to dig canals (https://www.wired.com/2009/04/yourfriendatom/) among other "peaceful uses", such as Project Orion (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)) in which thousands of bombs would be exploded under vehicles to send them to outer space (which I'm sure the OP would approve).

It all really seems like someone was somehow trapped in a room and given 1950's issues of Popular Mechanics and Astounding Science Fiction (plus some vintage ideas about segregation), and has no memory of why the "Whiz-bang-golly-gee" era of big engineering and science without regard for ecology ended (Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the Cuyahoga River catching fire!).

I'm getting the impression of a youngster who has encountered time capsule mid-century American utopianism and prejudices but has no memory of the humility and inclusiveness learned in the 1970's.

Maybe too much Heinlein and Lovecraft?

More make the mistake of confusing the Science Fiction of Ayn Rand with reality (which most grow out of), and in the 20th century Edward Bellemy, but this is special.

I kind of get it, in the '70's and '80's I read the old books that my school library had (they didn't buy many new ones after the 1979/80 school year due to cutbacks), and I.could see that the plans for space travel and colonies was increasingly behind schedule, though exactly how one goes from being "Where's my jetpack?" mad to deciding that medieval civilization was better puzzles me (maybe Poul Anderson's The High Crusade?).

Or maybe these are the ideas and attitudes of a really old man (LaRouche?)

"Science advances one funeral at a time."

-Max Planck (paraphrased)

I understand living in the past (I'm pretty much stuck in the 1980's, Dead Kennedys FOREVUH!), but when one excavates old ideas, it's good to learn why they're not current.

[S@tanicoaldo]

The problem is, they aren't.

Civil War monuments weren't raised in the Civil War. Most of them weren't raised in the aftermath of the Civil War.

https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/timeline-whoseheritage.png

In case you can't read that, a handful of monuments to the Confederacy were raised throughout the years. A whole whack of them went up around the 1900-1915 period, during the founding of the NAACP, especially on courthouses where blacks were in the process of fighting for their rights. Another massive chunk went up in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights movement, especially in and around schools where blacks were fighting against desegregation. Soldiers in the South who fought for the Union, or who supported Reconstruction, were not given statues at these times, and those statues are most of them.

The big difference between something like the Washington Monument, which was probably built by slaves, and these statues is that these statues were built specifically to cow and intimidate black people, by saying "You are not welcome here, and we still hold to the values that these men represent".

That's why people want them removed.

Oh.... I didn't knew that. Huh. Americans are weird.

[Friv]

Oh.... I didn't knew that. Huh. Americans are weird.

Yep. The people who originally did this had really bad motives, but they covered their tracks pretty well. As a result, the history of these things has gotten kind of murky. The information is all there, it's just not in common circulation.

One of the really frustrating things in the whole situation, without delving into politics, is that a lot of the people (possibly even most of the people) supporting keeping the monuments aren't bad people, they just haven't heard the whole story, and there's a lot of misinformation flying around under the theory that if you yell loudly enough, you don't need to back up your story with facts.

[Hazyshade]

Wouldn't NAWAPA devestate the natural environment?

I think that's rather the point - thinking of the world as a noosphere means not thinking of the world as an organic, physical entity. Because as soon as you think of the world as an organic, physical entity your reaction to NAWAPA would be "wow, that's a terrible idea". So what LaRouche is saying (okay, what donnadogsoth is saying, but donnadogsoth is really just here to sell LaRouche to us) is let's adopt a way of thinking that consciously ignores the natural environment, because that's the only way progress is going to happen (under a proprietary definition of "progress" that can be obtained from the LaRouche foundation for the low low price of $199.99).

[Tyndmyr]

The big difference between something like the Washington Monument, which was probably built by slaves, and these statues is that these statues were built specifically to cow and intimidate black people, by saying "You are not welcome here, and we still hold to the values that these men represent".

Historic pedantry: Available evidence indicates that the Washington Monument was not built by slaves.

I mean, half of it wasn't even constructed until post-abolition. And there's a complete lack of evidence of it being built by slaves. Plus, it was largely completed by skilled, specialized workers. Steam engine folks and what not. Not generally the sort of jobs slaves were used for at the time and place.

So, it's probably not accurate to describe it as being built by slaves. At most, there might have been some indirect labor for small parts that nobody bothered to document.

Anyways, this is a bit off the topic of stories where evil wins, but...honestly, the whole topic seems to have drifted around quite a bit, so I don't feel overly bad about my pedantry.

Edit: That said, if you want historical sites in the US that were *definitely* made by slaves and not torn down, there are many examples.

[Friv]

Historic pedantry: Available evidence indicates that the Washington Monument was not built by slaves.

I mean, half of it wasn't even constructed until post-abolition. And there's a complete lack of evidence of it being built by slaves. Plus, it was largely completed by skilled, specialized workers. Steam engine folks and what not. Not generally the sort of jobs slaves were used for at the time and place.

So, it's probably not accurate to describe it as being built by slaves. At most, there might have been some indirect labor for small parts that nobody bothered to document.

Thank you for the correction! I must admit, that one popped to mind first largely due to the scene in the most recent Spiderman (which, to be fair to the movie, was itself not entirely conclusive.)

[Donnadogsoth]

No. He was against *technological* progress, or more accurately he was against the pursuit of technological progress being divorced from some kind of natural Principles that humanity could discover if they stopped being so distracted by TV and looked within themselves. Exactly what you've just described!

(1) If so, why, then, do you think the Unabomber chose to become a homicidal maniac and both I and Lyndon LaRouche (and all of his followers) did not? What is the essential difference between the two sets?

(2) What exactly were the principles the Unabomber advocated, other than just "some kind"?

[Donnadogsoth]

Please forgive my "senior moment" perhaps it's just because I'm an old guy who's read a lot of sci-fi, but I'm reminded of the 1940's to 60's plans to pave over San Francisco Bay (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan), and the 1950's to early '70's plans to use atomic bombs to dig canals (https://www.wired.com/2009/04/yourfriendatom/) among other "peaceful uses", such as Project Orion (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)) in which thousands of bombs would be exploded under vehicles to send them to outer space (which I'm sure the OP would approve).

It all really seems like someone was somehow trapped in a room and given 1950's issues of Popular Mechanics and Astounding Science Fiction (plus some vintage ideas about segregation), and has no memory of why the "Whiz-bang-golly-gee" era of big engineering and science without regard for ecology ended (Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the Cuyahoga River catching fire!).
...
I understand living in the past (I'm pretty much stuck in the 1980's, Dead Kennedys FOREVUH!), but when one excavates old ideas, it's good to learn why they're not current.

Seems to me one or two human habitations were built on drained swamps. What's the difference between that and diverting water from Alaska to green the deserts of Southwestern America--including stopping California from drying up and blowing away? Again we face the lack of principles, here the unprincipled notion that the planet is not ours to develop for our benefit, but that which we must preserve the way it is by allowing our civilisation to collapse back into the caves, an ecological Massada, for the greater glory of...ducks and bugs and cat tails?

[Donnadogsoth]

Wouldn't NAWAPA devestate the natural environment?

Did building your home devastate anything? I suppose it did, from the perspective of the animals that were killed or driven off, the plants that were uprooted and paved over, and the empty space that your home occupies that could formerly have been flown through by birds and flying insects, not to mention the devastation wrought by the need to have an entire world economy to produce the goods you consume.

But, what of it? There is a huge desert area in the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico that has good soil...except it's dry as a bone and consequently useless. Why is the integrity of the Rockies, the billions of tons of waste fresh water pouring in the Arctic Ocean, and the surplus populations of caribou and birds in Alaska, worth more than the new, lush green forests and their fauna that could be grown in Arizona, the revitalisation of the Californian fruitbasket economy, the greening of Mexico, and the massive economic returns including work for steelmill and construction workers?

The Tennessee Valley Authority thought big, and built big in the Roosevelt era, and has it devastated the local ecology? Is the South a wasteland with no animals or flowers? Why couldn't NAWAPA be done as beautifully?

The contemporary ecologist's notion is that Terra is perfect and that anything men do to is a detraction from perfection. This is based on the (false) principle that man is not made in the image of the creative potency of the Universe but is a kind of parasite. When hegemonic in society, this principle ensures that mankind does not progress in developing the Universe but instead chooses to live on lesser and lesser amounts of his ever-depleting resource base, until billions have perished and he returns to the supposedly ideal “hunter-gatherer existence”. This is a philosophy of emptiness.

Contrast with the fullness of the Classical humanist philosophy: man is not a parasite but the chief end of Creation, destined to explore and transform the entire Universe instead of leaving it perpetually fallow for the pleasure of the interstellar dust motes. When hegemonic in society, this (truthful) principle, that man is made in the image of the creative potency of the Universe, causes him to reorganise Terra to his benefit, treating it not as perfect but as an organism, much like the human body, that can be improved through implementation of scientific discovery. This way, billions do not perish, but have a chance at a better life.

[Bohandas]

I think that's rather the point - thinking of the world as a noosphere means not thinking of the world as an organic, physical entity. Because as soon as you think of the world as an organic, physical entity your reaction to NAWAPA would be "wow, that's a terrible idea". So what LaRouche is saying (okay, what donnadogsoth is saying, but donnadogsoth is really just here to sell LaRouche to us) is let's adopt a way of thinking that consciously ignores the natural environment, because that's the only way progress is going to happen (under a proprietary definition of "progress" that can be obtained from the LaRouche foundation for the low low price of $199.99).

At least he's got better prices than L.Ron Hubbard

[Bohandas]

Did building your home devastate anything? I suppose it did, from the perspective of the animals that were killed or driven off, the plants that were uprooted and paved over, and the empty space that your home occupies that could formerly have been flown through by birds and flying insects, not to mention the devastation wrought by the need to have an entire world economy to produce the goods you consume.

But, what of it? There is a huge desert area in the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico that has good soil...except it's dry as a bone and consequently useless.

America already produces enough food for most of the country to be morbidly obese.

I will however cede that hydroelectric power is better than the fossil fuels we use now. They both **** the environment but at least hydroelectric is renewable

[Kantaki]

Wait.
Not destroying the planet we live on to make our lives a bit more comfortable is unprincipled?:smallconfused:
Okay...

I look forward to the „fun” side effects of that approach.
I mean never mind the potential effects on the climate or the biotopes*, if something goes wrong- like if when let's say... a dam breaks the results would be catastrophic.

I mean, this year we had a bit much rain over here. Resulted in some reservoirs overflowing.
That resulted in nearby towns having rivers where the streets should be and the houses getting indoor pools.

That was from a bit rain. Storms do even worse to things in their path.
If something really goes wrong with that plan of yours- and with a project this size it inevitably will - everything in the way of the water will be gone.

*Actually I do mind. Weather's bad enough already. Don't need it worse.
And if the wrong species falls victim to this it will take others with it.
I mean sure, mother nature will adapt eventually unless humanity really messes it up.
But we? We could easily go the way of the dinosaurs.
And as hilarious that would be in hindsight, I would rather not have it happen due to our own stupidity.

[Fawkes]

Is Donnadogsoth defending white supremacy again? Really? Rigth in front of my salad?

Seriously, how has not gotten a ban yet?


Wait.
Not destroying the planet we live on to make our lives a bit more comfortable is unprincipled?:smallconfused:
Okay...

Doing things I like = principled
Not doing things I like = unprincipled

This is science.

[georgie_leech]

Did building your home devastate anything? I suppose it did, from the perspective of the animals that were killed or driven off, the plants that were uprooted and paved over, and the empty space that your home occupies that could formerly have been flown through by birds and flying insects, not to mention the devastation wrought by the need to have an entire world economy to produce the goods you consume.

But, what of it? There is a huge desert area in the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico that has good soil...except it's dry as a bone and consequently useless. Why is the integrity of the Rockies, the billions of tons of waste fresh water pouring in the Arctic Ocean, and the surplus populations of caribou and birds in Alaska, worth more than the new, lush green forests that could be grown, the revitalisation of the Californian fruitbasket economy, the greening of Mexico, and the massive economic returns including work for steelmills and construction workers?

The Tennessee Valley Authority thought big, and built big in the Roosevelt era, and has it devastated the local economy? Is the South a wasteland with no animals or flowers? Why couldn't NAWAPA be done beautifully?

Um, earlier you were talking about "man made" disasters, citing the recent hurricanes, as evidence of the importance of your position. Said "man made" disasters aren't deliberately created but are a byproduct of our impact on the environment: as we pump extra greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, bad storms will tend to get more frequent and energetic.

So I find it a little bit inconsistent when on the one hand you say we're failing to consider the environment, and then actively disregard environmental concerms. That's not building your castle on a swamp, that's looking at a sinking castle and deciding a swamp is no place to build a castle but that lake looks like a wonderfully sturdy surface.

[Kantaki]

Seriously, how has not gotten a ban yet?



Doing things I like = principled
Not doing things I like = unprincipled

This is science.

Yeah, I thought it was something like that...:smallsigh:

Still makes my head hurt.
It's kinda like criticising others for not tearing a random wall of their house down to improve aircirculation.
I mean if it works you still have a huge hole in your house with isn't that practical, really.
And if you are unlucky you tear away something loadbearing and your neighbours have a laugh.
Only in this case the house will collapse on theirs and damage them too.
Giving the next neighbourhood something to laugh.

Also, I need to sleep. I'm starting to talk sense.:smallbiggrin:

[Hazyshade]

Did building your home devastate anything? I suppose it did, from the perspective of the animals that were killed or driven off, the plants that were uprooted and paved over, and the empty space that your home occupies that could formerly have been flown through by birds and flying insects, not to mention the devastation wrought by the need to have an entire world economy to produce the goods you consume.

But, what of it? There is a huge desert area in the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico that has good soil...except it's dry as a bone and consequently useless. Why is the integrity of the Rockies, the billions of tons of waste fresh water pouring in the Arctic Ocean, and the surplus populations of caribou and birds in Alaska, worth more than the new, lush green forests that could be grown, the revitalisation of the Californian fruitbasket economy, the greening of Mexico, and the massive economic returns including work for steelmills and construction workers?

The Tennessee Valley Authority thought big, and built big in the Roosevelt era, and has it devastated the local economy? Is the South a wasteland with no animals or flowers? Why couldn't NAWAPA be done beautifully?

Because it's completely insane on every conceivable level. And we could have a more in-depth discussion about it than that, but what's the point? You don't actually have the authority to take on board any feedback to the world-view you're putting forward, because it's not yours, you don't own that world-view in any way - it consists entirely of the half-baked theories of a 95-year-old anti-Semitic race-baiting homophobic 9/11 conspiracy theorist and convicted fraudster whose last intrusion into the mainstream American consciousness involved his disseminating pictures of Obama sporting a Hitler moustache.

[Donnadogsoth]

{Scrubbed}

[Donnadogsoth]

{Scrubbed}

[Lethologica]

the world's greatest economist
Now that is amusing. Are we restricted to economists who are still living? Have you reviewed the work of Sowell, Stiglitz, Lucas, Arrow, and other people who, er, might have a stronger claim to that title? Is LaRouche even an economist by training, body of work, or legacy?

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Locked for...well, most of the reasons that exist.