Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital • Hacker News Board

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#171

Post by DoreenMichele » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:02 AM UTC

throwawayqdhd wrote: post #168

DoreenMichele wrote: post #41

This article doesn't specifically mention cannibalism, but in my twenties I read a book that posited that "the lamb" of Christianity being a symbol of peace, as well as the Hindu reverence for the cow, were based on their ability to provide food security because they are grazers who are able to turn grass into protein. Grass is not a human food source. So this means they don't compete for the same food sources we do.…

Hundreds of millions of vegetarians in India thrive without eating meat just fine

Yes, the cow is revered by Hindus, but not consumed. From what I have read, it nonetheless helps provide food security in the form of dairy products.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#172

Post by jcims » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:12 AM UTC

dTal wrote: post #141

jcims wrote: post #63

When I see a bunch of skulls in one place like this, or in the catacombs, it makes me think of the accumulated experience of people. Not because of the brains in the skulls or whatever, but just that each skull represents a single human life. Most of the time these are adult skulls, guessing 30+ years each. That's a lot of living. I just asked google to solve a couple of problems for me. What is the current populatio…

You inspired me to calculate the total amount of human experience, ever. I arrived at a figure of about 2.7 trillion years, ten times as many years as there are stars in the Milky way. In seconds it's 10^20 - 0.1% of all the stars in the entire universe. I can't even comprehend the scale.

That's nuts

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#173

Post by barking » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:13 AM UTC

avn2109 wrote: post #166

shoo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in modern western society, we tend to have a regard for the lives of [certain] individuals in the short term, at the expense of lives of others in the longer term, not to mention relatively little regard for the environment, or other species. other societies may have been held together as engines that required the input of thousands of human lives to be sacrificed to appease the gods, our society functionally appears…

If your cultural relativism/multiculturalism/whatever-you-want-to-call-it leads you to equate/compare "institutionalized torture killing of children" with "pollution," that's a hint that you've made some drastic reasoning errors. It's such a silly, unreasonable ideology that it basically refutes itself when you get anywhere near a corner case like this. Some cultures/ideologies really are better than others. If you n…

Western Civilization considers it a human right to be able kill the most vulnerable humans under the pretext that they aren't ready yet to have human rights.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#174

Post by shoo » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:14 AM UTC

avn2109 wrote: post #166

shoo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in modern western society, we tend to have a regard for the lives of [certain] individuals in the short term, at the expense of lives of others in the longer term, not to mention relatively little regard for the environment, or other species. other societies may have been held together as engines that required the input of thousands of human lives to be sacrificed to appease the gods, our society functionally appears…

If your cultural relativism/multiculturalism/whatever-you-want-to-call-it leads you to equate/compare "institutionalized torture killing of children" with "pollution," that's a hint that you've made some drastic reasoning errors. It's such a silly, unreasonable ideology that it basically refutes itself when you get anywhere near a corner case like this. Some cultures/ideologies really are better than others. If you n…

for people who are dying of starvation versus people who are being explicitly human-sacrificed, from their perspective do you think it particularly matters if they are dying from the neglect and sheer indifference of others, or from direct intentional malice?

i would argue that for those on the receiving end, the difference matters very little.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#175

Post by Turing_Machine » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:25 AM UTC

shoo wrote: post #174

avn2109 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your cultural relativism/multiculturalism/whatever-you-want-to-call-it leads you to equate/compare "institutionalized torture killing of children" with "pollution," that's a hint that you've made some drastic reasoning errors. It's such a silly, unreasonable ideology that it basically refutes itself when you get anywhere near a corner case like this. Some cultures/ideologies really are better than others. If you n…

for people who are dying of starvation versus people who are being explicitly human-sacrificed, from their perspective do you think it particularly matters if they are dying from the neglect and sheer indifference of others, or from direct intentional malice? i would argue that for those on the receiving end, the difference matters very little.

Oddly enough, the people who are actually dying of starvation always seem to be located in Marxist countries rather than the evil capitalist Western countries. Just bad luck, I guess.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#176

Post by avn2109 » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:27 AM UTC

barking wrote: post #173

avn2109 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your cultural relativism/multiculturalism/whatever-you-want-to-call-it leads you to equate/compare "institutionalized torture killing of children" with "pollution," that's a hint that you've made some drastic reasoning errors. It's such a silly, unreasonable ideology that it basically refutes itself when you get anywhere near a corner case like this. Some cultures/ideologies really are better than others. If you n…

Western Civilization considers it a human right to be able kill the most vulnerable humans under the pretext that they aren't ready yet to have human rights.

Though I don't agree, I acknowledge this as likely the best counterargument to my point above.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#177

Post by Turing_Machine » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:35 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #126

remarkEon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's also worth keeping in mind that Cortez and those who got off his ships would've been rightly disturbed by the scale of human sacrifice and savagery displayed by the Aztecs. That doesn't justify enslavement, certainly, but their mindset would've been one of fear and defense and that's totally understandable to me.

And, a generation later, their domination of the area firmly established and plainly evident, what then was their mindset? Was it their "fear" and "defensiveness" that led them to continue wholesale rape and slaughter across Central America?

Being enslaved and raped is bad, but not quite as bad as being enslaved, raped, and also being used as a source of meat.

I think it was one of Neal Stephenson's characters who observed that it really brought into perspective what assholes the Aztecs were when you consider that bringing in the Spanish Inquisition was actually an improvement, vis-a-vis the cruelty of the dominant religion.

The Inquisitors tortured their victims, true enough, but they didn't eat them.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#178

Post by int_19h » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:36 AM UTC

shoo wrote: post #174

avn2109 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your cultural relativism/multiculturalism/whatever-you-want-to-call-it leads you to equate/compare "institutionalized torture killing of children" with "pollution," that's a hint that you've made some drastic reasoning errors. It's such a silly, unreasonable ideology that it basically refutes itself when you get anywhere near a corner case like this. Some cultures/ideologies really are better than others. If you n…

for people who are dying of starvation versus people who are being explicitly human-sacrificed, from their perspective do you think it particularly matters if they are dying from the neglect and sheer indifference of others, or from direct intentional malice? i would argue that for those on the receiving end, the difference matters very little.

Depends. If it's the Aztecs we're talking about, I'm sure they'd prefer to die of starvation in at least some cases - Aztec deities were fairly inventive as far as their sacrifices went, and at least one of them required the victim to be flayed alive, for example.

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#179

Post by int_19h » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:38 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #160

duxup wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can get giving people in different situations various levels of leeway as far as comparing my decisions sitting at my computer here to their decisions and such. But damn... what does she even mean by "horrific"... how is that even a thing you would bother to dispute?

Because what "horrific" means depends on your culture. So sure, it's horrific for you and me. But it arguably wasn't horrific for Aztecs back then. Or even for their victims. Analogous in the Western tradition is the belief that honorable soldiers should freely give their lives to protect comrades and country. To me, that's also horrific, but whatever.

That's non-controversial, but it's not the argument that the linked Twitter feed makes. It says that not only that culture didn't see it as horrific, but that we can't morally judge what they did "through our Western colonial lens" by saying that it was horrific.

Last time I've seen similar reasoning, it was when a person was attacking the term FGM (female genital mutilation) on the basis that it is "colonialist misjudgment of a different culture".

Re: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

#180

Post by int_19h » Sun, Jun 24, 2018, 6:41 AM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #89

jack9 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fundamentally a philosophical question. I think it's a surprisingly insightful observation.

I disagree. What god is capital punishment meant to appease? It's supposedly there for people who are too dangerous to keep alive right? Human sacrifice seems to me like it was meant to bring better harvests or otherwise give the illusion of controlling a chaotic/random natural process.

"Civic religion" is a concept that some people subscribe to. It doesn't have gods per se, but it has abstract concepts (like e.g. justice) that can be similarly worshiped.