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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1629 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 16, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything has raised expectations, but it remains to be seen if it will fulfill them. So far they have tried to reconsider the Enlightenment in light of discussions missionaries had with the natives of the New World, on the assumption that the records of these discussions are sincere and not just European uses of "Indians" as characters to project their own subversive beliefs.

The topic of indigenous influence on what we call western culture has been on my radar ever since I read Felix Cohen's brilliant 1952 paper Americanizing the White Man. Normally I would consider these kinds of things to be proto-woke nonsense, but Cohen immediately struck me as a man of intelligence, dedication and nerve, so it has stayed with me. He posited that core American traits existed before the settlers ever came:

As yet, few Americans and fewer Europeans realize that America is not just a pale reflection of Europe - that what is distinctive about America is Indian, through and through. American cigarettes, chewing gum, rubber balls, popcorn and corn flakes, flapjacks and maple syrup, still make European eyebrows crawl. American disrespect for the authority of parents, presidents and would-be dictators still shocks our European critics. And visitors from the Old World are still mystified when they find no peasants on American soil. But the expressions of pain, surprise and amused superiority that one finds in European accounts of the habits of the "crazy Americans" are not new. One finds them in European reports of American life that are 200 and even 400 years old. All these things, and many things more important in our life today, were distinctively American when the first European immigrants came to these shores... Something happened to these immigrants. Some, to be sure, remained European, less hungry, perhaps, but equally intolerant and equally submissive to the authority of rulers and regulations. But some of these immigrants became Americans, tolerant and neighborly, as strong and self-reliant men may be, and for the same reason disrespectful of all authority. To such Americans, a chief who forgets that he is a public servant and tries to tell other people what to do has always been an object of ridicule.

Cohen goes on to describe what he sees as native contributions in various domains including democracy, agriculture and sport. I have also found it amusing that he mentions " the golden tan of an Indian skin" given that arguably the most famous trait of Donald Trump is that he is orange.

I finally read The Road by Cormac Mcarthy. Great book, and hard to put down, with no chapters or any other breaks at all. I don't know why I mentally associated Cormac Mcarthy with abstruse James-Joyce-style "literary" fiction, but while the book has a large vocabulary and was semi-poetic at times it was not hard to follow. Might check out some of his others.

The Orchard Keeper is much more similar to the near-inaccessible fiction you describe (I tried to get through Ulysses and failed.) It took me a while to get used to McCarthy's style. I'd say The Road is one of his more readable books, though of course it isn't light reading.

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