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 -
How much do we actually know about Bronze Age morality?
This is an honest question from someone who doesn’t know a ton about the era.
People here and elsewhere sometimes point out that the Bronze Age Mindset is a bit of a LARP, its followers mostly white collar workers idealizing an unrealistic world they would hate if they inhabited. It’s hard to take people seriously whose main experience with conflict is arguing on Twitter when they exalt the warlike morality of the Iliad or the Odyssey.
My question is: were the actual people writing the Odyssey and the Iliad also LARPing? These are books portraying the height of the Bronze Age civilizations by people who emphatically did not live in them, but rather in their ruins. Today we’re apparently Tanner Greer-maxing because I’m quoting another piece of his to you: “How I Taught the Iliad to Chinese Teenagers.”
Do we expect the illiterate, post-apocalyptic Greeks to be the same morally and socially as their highly advanced ancestors? Can we be confident their portrayal of those societies is how the ancients would have portrayed themselves, or could they just be later cultures trying to insert themselves and their customs into that time period? I imagine ancient Greece was a more violent place than modernity, but the portrayal of its inhabitants as people who killed, looted, and enslaved without a second thought - was this really how they felt back then? Or was this the tribal, warlike peoples who came after them back-projecting their contemporary values onto the golden age? When I look up ancient literature in the Bronze Age I don’t see anything from Greece - how much do we really know about these people, how they felt, and what they thought?
Parts of their morality can be inferred, mainly from the time period's namesake: Bronze.
Some minor background for people that don't regularly go on history binges:
The people in the civilizations using Bronze were likely soft trader types. They likely had a morality that allowed for trading and interacting with foreign cultures. They probably weren't very war like (which would have made them bad traders, and it might have allowed them to fight off the invasion that ended the Bronze age).
Most of the rest of the world was full of hunter gatherers and pastoral farmers. The exceptions being in the other cradles of civilization, Indus valley, China, and possibly Mexico/South America.
I don't really know what Bronze Age Pervert, or any of the other "larpers" say about bronze age mentality. It would be interesting if they have come to similar conclusions, but what little I have heard makes me think they have a very different understanding.
Willingness to trade is not orthogonal to war-waging ability. Exhibit A: this message, written to you using military-grade technology.
Go back 200 years, and it’s gunboat diplomacy. 400, and the European powers are wiping out whole legions of natives to set up their mercantile empire. 600 and we see the early “Free Companies” of roving sellswords, but the concept of mercenaries goes back much further.
Getting closer to the Greeks, Romans didn’t shy away from conquest or trade. They had a bunch of social and economic technology that let them fold ridiculous amounts of territory into their sphere of influence.
The idea that trading civilizations tend to be soft and conflict-averse probably owes a lot to our sense of fair play. (Uncharitably, that means video game balance teams.) But there’s a reason war is called “spending blood and treasure,” and acquiring more of their treasure without spilling your blood is usually a good deal.
Its a comparison to the people they are around.
Civilizations that trade with others civilizations are softer than civilizations that only engage in war and conquest.
Ancient China was by no means soft compared to people today. But they were softer than the neighboring Mongolians, so they kept getting invaded and conquered every few centuries.
The same happened to the Romans, who were certainly a hardy and war like people during the expansionist phase of their empire. But turned rich and soft, then had to rely increasingly on foreign mercenaries, until those mercenaries turned on the Romans.
I don't think the bronze age civilizations were peaceful by our standards, but they probably were peaceful by the standards of the "hill people" or whatever Barbarian tribe invaded them all and tore down their civilization.
There's a really strong "This is Their Super Bowl" effect in the historiography of barbarian invasions. In the same way that when a shitty team plays a rival who is having a good season, they show up and give their all, the barbarians get vastly excited about a victory, while the civilized shrug after defeating the barbarians. When the Chinese armies defeat a steppe confederacy that wasn't quite ready for prime time, it goes in the annals as "The emperor defeated a steppe army. Now about tax collection that year..." When the Mongols get a world-historic leader and win one, they never shut up about it for a thousand years.
Same pattern holds in Rome, where defeating barbarian armies was "mowing the grass" duty until the last years of the empire. Right up to today, where weirdoes will insist that American failures to impose their will in Vietnam or Iraq indicates the superior martial ability of third-worlders, when it mostly reflects an increased willingness to die for the cause of local independence.
Great post. Also, almost every single country gets invaded ‘every few centuries’, including the US, it’s an absurd standard.
Depends on the definition of "few". Rome had an 800-year run from Brennus to the Fall. Constantinople similarly from the founding of the city as a purposes-built capital of the Eastern Roman Empire to the 4th crusade. On a strict definition of "invaded", England is at 950 and counting. In China, based on a quick wiki-check, all changes in dynasty from Jin to Song are due to Chinese domestic politics, not foreign invasion - about a 1000 year run.
Yes, but the fact that everyone knows these examples, and that such a core part of the British mythos is that it's been a thousand years since that invasion are kind of the point. Much of the rest of the world has been invaded rather more recently (a lot of it by Britain).
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link