This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
An anonymous substacker has written up a good piece on the Rise of the West. Essentially, he comes to the conclusion that the divergence began in the 1000-1500 A.D. period and that subsequent colonisation efforts by Europe of the rest of the world was simply an outgrowth of those earlier advantages.
This of course upends the familiar trope of "the West got rich by the backs of the Third World" so popular with leftists in the West and in countries like India, across the political spectrum. I bring this up because if the poor countries of the world today have any hope of catching up, they should first re-examine honestly why they fell behind in the first place. Yet I see precious little of that, except mostly moral grandstanding about the evils of the exploitative West.
This also has domestic political implications because a lot of white guilt-driven narratives are sprung from the narrative that the West got rich by exploitation and thus the logical corollary is that evil white people should repent (preferably through monetary reparations). The narrative that colonisation was simply a natural outgrowth of European pre-existing advantages that grew over time naturally undermines it. One could also note that the Barbary slave trade, or the slave auctions in the Ottoman Empire, shows that the Third World was far from innocent. But of course these historical facts don't have high political payoffs in the contemporary era, so they are ignored or underplayed.
I am not sure that there is anything particularly new here. Even without analyzing Europe vs. the rest of the world between 1000 and 1500 CE, the most likely theory by far to explain why multiple different small European countries came to dominate most of the rest of the world soon after 1500 CE is that those European countries had massive advantages compared to the rest of the world. There is no other plausible explanation. The idea that Europe had no advantages but still somehow came to conquer almost the entire planet is so implausible that there is not much need to counter it. I think it would be pretty hard to find any leftist who is even in the least bit capable of intellectual thought who actually believes that Europe somehow conquered the rest of the world without having already had an advantage over the rest of the world. It is just that, for example, they generally do not think that the advantage was genetic.
Also, even if Europe was already wealthier than the rest of the world in some ways before 1500 CE, it is nonetheless true that Europe got part of its wealth through exploiting the rest of the world, so the case for reparations is not seriously affected by this line of argument. If a wealthy successful guy steals from a less successful guy, is the victim owed any fewer reparations as a result? Even if the wealthy guy later helps the victim to get richer than he would otherwise have been, is the victim owed any fewer reparations as a result? In my view, no. There is a perfectly logical line of argument that says that reparations are owed for the original victimization and it does not matter whether the victim came to later in some ways benefit from the victimization.
If the "victim" has already been compensated, why would he deserve additional compensation? Furthermore, the situation here is very different, in that neither the "victim" nor the "wealthy guy" are still around; we're talking about the often-distant descendants of people who merely share a nationality.
More options
Context Copy link
What 'massive' advantages ? China was vastly richer and more populous.
During most of the era in question, the Ottomans were far stronger than western European countries.
About the only non-political advantages Europeans had was superior naval technology, which they invented themselves out of necessity, that promoted trade.
Later, Britain gave itself massive advantages by turbocharging the accumulated efficiency improvements over the rest through industrialisation, and thus got vastly richer. Nowhere in this process of increasing efficiency or use of fossil fuels the rest of the world mattered much.
Notably, the countries that obtained the most wealth from abroard, such as Spain, were least good at this and the most backward ones.
And cannon and other firearm technology, where Europe pretty quickly outstripped the rest of the world, post-1500. And the printing press, which was essentially nonexistent in the Ottoman Empire for centuries after its widespread use in Europe.
How curious that both of these are Chinese inventions too!
On print, China had a similar revolution of letters in the Early to High Middle Ages, and on cannon, not only did they first discover gunpowder and invent the cannon all the way back in the 12-13th centuries, they kept up with European advances at least until mid-late 17th century*!
So there must be something different here at play that either enabled Europe to dominate the world, and/or incentivised them to, that for one reason or another did not happen in other societies.
*Granted, mostly from importing European technology and specimens, though the Chinese would come up with e.g. composite metal casted cannons that Europeans would adopt. Albrecht Herport, a Dutch soldier fighting on Taiwan (against Ming dynasty remnants) noted that the Chinese “know how to make very effective guns and cannons, so that it’s scarcely possible to find their equal elsewhere” — likely an exaggeration, but indicative that the Chinese were not complete laggards in this regard. The original source is afaik Voyage to Java, Formosa, India and Ceylon (though I might be wrong), and the English translation of that quote is found in Tonio Andrade’s The Gunpowder Age.
Or, something that prevented China from taking complete advantage of their initial lead, which is the standard explanation.
Or both!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is just kicking the can down the road though, from "What advantages did those nations have" to "Why did those nations have those advantages and other nations didn't" or "Why did those nations capitalise their advantages when other nations didn't?"
China had thousand-year-plus advantages over the West in terms of urbanisation and per capita GDP and raw population and paper money and yadda yadda yadda before 1000. "Having massive advantages" is clearly not sufficient to BTFO the world.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link