We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures • Hacker News Board

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#61

Post by dismantlethesun » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

mhurron wrote: post #55

pipio21 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we abort children legally, so it is not like we have improved so much. In Spain and other countries it is legal to abort creatures that would live if taken out of the womb. We rationalize it, because the mother will not be able to give a good life to her child or whatever. What makes us think that people from Carthage could not also rationalize with more powerful reasons than us? It was way harder to live back…

> we abort children legally No we do not, that is illegal because murder is illegal. It is not a child until it is born.

https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2016/bills/house/1337#digest-...

Indiana General Assembly, House Bill 1337

> Requires physicians to provide information about perinatal hospice care to a pregnant woman who is considering an abortion because the unborn child has been diagnosed with a lethal fetal anomaly.

The terminology of referring to the unborn as children has a long legal history.

There's a similar history concerning how personhood is determined via paperwork: i.e. if you do not fill out the paperwork for an abortion, the unborn child is considered a person for cases of its death---such as if a pregnant woman is killed, it's considered a double homicide.

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#62

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #7

namaemuta wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A significant portion of modern Americans regularly enjoy blood and carnage in video games and movies Yeah. it's called fiction and a more significant portion of people in the world consume all that without committing mass murder. So please, stop associating video games or movies with whatever crazy people do.

I enjoy those games and movies myself. It's not my intention to suggest that enjoying those means that our socialization has failed or that we are dangerous (which I do not believe), but that those games and movies appeal to something in our nature that still exists in many of the most well socialized Americans.

[deleted]

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#63

Post by vkou » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

ewzimm wrote: post #45

turc1656 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. Have you ever seen the movie The Imitation Game? There's a great quote from Turing's character when he is talking about being picked on and beaten up by bullies at school - "Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying" It's that simple, really. It is in our nature, just like sex. We like it. It feels good. The only reason we try to eschew an…

I think you might misunderstand just how love is stronger than anger and hate. Love is reinforced by interaction with all types of others. Anger and hate can be socially reinforced but usually at most tribally against another group. It has a more limited virality because eventually it hits a limit. Feelings are heavily interpreted. Some people find sexual stimulation painful, not just physically, but emotionally. In…

Anger and hate is socially reinforced just fine inside a group - no tribalism is required. Just look at the cycle of physical and emotional abuse in any broken household.

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#64

Post by XparXnoiAx » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #4

Carthage is much closer to western culture yet still earns its share of WTFs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Carthage#Child_sac...

Most cultures of the world had some form of human sacrifice in their past history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice

It's kind of a strange aspect of humanity.

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#65

Post by jackmaney » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #27

Mostly, this reminded me of one of my favorite short stories - "Von Neumann's Second Catastrophe", by Robert Anton Wilson. This story changed my view of why we have wars. The story is told from the point of view of a general in an insane asylum. He argues that war has been ruined by golems, creatures without souls. By golems, he means computers. The computers run scenarios for nuclear war, and always say don't do it…

> Because when you can deliberately kill a child, you become a superman, beyond morality. Nuclear weapons should be used just because we can, because it's amoral.

Settle down, there, Trump!

:P

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#66

Post by XparXnoiAx » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #29

I think there's something else going on here, other than the humility of researchers who claim to be unable to understand Mexica culture. Failure to imagine what it's like to be someone else, from a different place, a different time, with different ways of thinking -- is perhaps the biggest reason why we have so much violence and hatred in this world, and modern scholars are just as guilty of it as warmongers and pro…

So......do you understand what they were doing with all those human sacrifices? Because I sure don't. I can make guesses, just as the article does, but I sure don't understand it.

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#67

Post by lappet » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

I feel that the article is missing something that is very important - the violence of the Spaniards. Did not the Spaniards stamp and erase the culture & religion of the Mexica? If the Mexica culture had been allowed to exist could we not understand them better? I feel the title is a little clickbaity and would wager most civilizations can barely fathom their own past.

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#68

Post by ewzimm » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #63

ewzimm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might misunderstand just how love is stronger than anger and hate. Love is reinforced by interaction with all types of others. Anger and hate can be socially reinforced but usually at most tribally against another group. It has a more limited virality because eventually it hits a limit. Feelings are heavily interpreted. Some people find sexual stimulation painful, not just physically, but emotionally. In…

Anger and hate is socially reinforced just fine inside a group - no tribalism is required. Just look at the cycle of physical and emotional abuse in any broken household.

Yes, it's reinforced at small scales too. I said usually it's reinforced at most tribally against another group, meaning that this is about the largest scale you can take anger and hatred as a social force. At that point, you're on the edge of war. These kinds of emotions can be very easy to exploit to build a movement, and they scale very quickly, but at some scale, they inevitably sabotage the cause and turn it against itself. Building a movement based on love and empathy does not hit these same limits.

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#69

Post by XparXnoiAx » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 6:07 PM UTC

adsharma wrote: post #38

I'm not an expert on Aztec culture, but this has signs of what some call "atrocity literature" in the garb of scientific study of other cultures.

The article itself addresses your point, saying, "modern writers have tried to show that the Spanish conquistadors exaggerated the human sacrifice; archaeology has shown that, if anything, they lowballed it."

Sometimes 'atrocities' are real.

Re: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures

#70

Post by XparXnoiAx » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 6:08 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #20

calibraxis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our own cultures are mysterious to us. Why are we hurtling towards climate change? Why do we sacrifice countries full of people, like in Iraq? Why must we release toxins in water that lower people's IQs? Why do we need to cage so many humans? Few have satisfactory explanations. (The most common ones don't stand up to basic scrutiny. Folk answers, ideological answers to explain away the ideology's problems, etc.)

Another question I'd like to add to your list: why are the current presidential elections such an incredible mess? The answer to all these questions could be that democracy has stopped working.

Democracy works as well as the voters.

It hasn't stopped working, for an example close-to-home, look at the corruption in SF, that has been there for over a century. As long as voters don't pay attention, we'll have lousy government. Voters are the watchdogs.