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

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

#291

Post by photojosh »

Malarkey73 wrote: post #248
avn2109 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of editorializing, the article's author took to Twitter [0] to defend her article's reverent/respectful tone and (nowadays-common) unspoken premise that all cultures and ideologies are equally good and valid. You'd think it'd be easy to use ritual vivisection, human sacrifice at scale, organized child murder, and cannibalism [1] as an absolutely unambiguous black-and-white line by which to demarcate civiliza…

The article uses the same "tone" that we regularly use to write about the Romans - who crucified people, ritually strangled prisoners during their triumphs, kept slaves, and made people fight to death for their fun. That said I'm not sure the Gauls or Parthians or Carthaginians were saintly. I don't think the author is implying that the Aztecs were better or the same or worse than Tlaxcala or Cortez conquistador. The…

Agreed! Am currently reading Charles McCann's '1491' and '1493' which are about the "discovery" and colonisation of the Americas.

A major point he makes is that the Spanish Inquisition and the European religion wars were underway at the same time, and that both American and European societies were horrifically violent, in comparison to modern day.

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

#292

Post by mike00632 »

nradov wrote: post #109
mike00632 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raccoons don't have the capacity for moral judgement but humans do. It doesn't make sense to think of a raccoon's actions as a part of a moral framework but it does for humans. In fact, we already do. What vegans/vegetarians are doing is extending that logic to be more consistent in our diet.

Prove to us that raccoons have no capacity for moral judgment. Those clear dividing lines between humans and other animals are in reality not supported by much evidence.

"Prove to us that raccoons have no capacity for moral judgment."

Is that something I really need to prove? My argument is that we SHOULD make moral judgement about human behavior regardless of what raccoons do. I agree that there is not much difference between humans and others animals if we choose to examine it.

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

#293

Post by DoreenMichele »

mike00632 wrote: post #289
DoreenMichele wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they claim. But: A. I'm an environmental studies major and anytime I present evidence that plants are aware of suffering, it is ignored and dismissed. B. I was homeless for nearly 6 years. A so-called ethical vegan I knew (who wasn't actually a full-time vegan and ate vegetarian, not vegan, as convenience suited them) happily and enthusiastically added to my suffering during that time. Given how often ethical vega…

"I'm an environmental studies major and anytime I present evidence that plants are aware of suffering, it is ignored and dismissed." As it should be. When you say "pain" and "suffering" you mean in in no similar way to your own pain and suffering whereas vegans do. You're co-opting the language of ethics to try and point out hypocrisy. Also, let's apply some logic here and acknowledge that far more plants are "harmed…

No, she wasn't "mean to me once." She was consistently cruel over quite a long period of time at a time when my life was very much in the toilet.

Downplaying what was done to me when you were not there in no way fits with your claim of superior kindness and caring. It quite contradicts it.

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

#294

Post by Semirhage »

mike00632 wrote: post #292
nradov wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove to us that raccoons have no capacity for moral judgment. Those clear dividing lines between humans and other animals are in reality not supported by much evidence.

"Prove to us that raccoons have no capacity for moral judgment." Is that something I really need to prove? My argument is that we SHOULD make moral judgement about human behavior regardless of what raccoons do. I agree that there is not much difference between humans and others animals if we choose to examine it.

Anytime you make a significant claim, especially a disputed one that is central to your thesis, it is helpful to at least attempt to back it up. Most people won’t call you on not doing it or talk about burden of proof, they’ll just dismiss your claim with the same lack of effort you put into making it.

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

#295

Post by PakG1 »

sorokod wrote: post #239
PakG1 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. It's a logical option to consider in a vacuum. It's not logical with context.

Correct me if I am wrong - it looks like you rely for context on a new testament book written by an unknown author over a thousand years latter.

No, Hebrews 11 only provides an interpretation for what happened in Genesis 22. Coincidentally, it's also the interpretation that's the most logical in light of the context; one can come to a similar conclusion without ever reading Hebrews 11. The context is provided by Genesis chapters 15 to 24, as well as all criticism on child sacrifice for the purpose of worship in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc. Now infanticide does happen in the Bible, and some of it is condoned by God, while some of it isn't. The times it is condoned by God, there are interesting situations and reasonable explanations. The times it isn't condoned by God, there is consistent logic as to why it was OK one time but not OK another time.

Now of course, all of this understanding by people of faith could be completely wrong. But there is often difficulty having dialogue on the matter because when skeptics criticize what they find to be odd behaviour or odd contradictions in the Bible, they often lack comprehensive knowledge of the Bible needed to come to logically valid conclusions (note I said logically valid, not logically sound). Bertrand Russell did it when he criticized Jesus for making the fig tree wither, he didn't understand what was happening there. He lacked Biblical context of certain passages about fig trees in the Old Testament, and he also lacked botanical context of how fig trees grew in Palestine.

When people make conclusions without getting the full picture, it is natural to come to strange conclusions. This applies to any area or body of knowledge and analysis from the study of physics to language acquisition. We wouldn't say that Bilbo was an evil character because his true colours were revealed when he saw the One Ring in Frodo's possession in Fellowship of the Ring. No, we'd understand what Bilbo went through with the ring and what kind of person he really is because we read The Hobbit first. And there are aspects of the One Ring and The Hobbit that we cannot fully understand without reading The Silmarillion first.

I believe I shouldn't try to have these types of discussions on HN. Sorry if it is too much. If you're interested in taking this discussion offline to really dig into it, let me know. :)

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

#296

Post by sonnyblarney »

tptacek wrote: post #280
sonnyblarney wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ... among the relatively small number of Europeans there around about that time, there probably was rape, which is bad; though you do realize that you're making this point in an article that is literally about the total, systematic and full cultural integration of mass slavery, mass murder, mass infanticide etc. by one group of aboriginals of their immediate aboriginal neighbours, on a scale approaching modern h…

No, I think you've lost the plot of this subthread. I'm not making a comparative argument about which civilization is better. I'm saying that Cortes didn't rescue Central America so much as perpetrate a genocide on it. We're talking about a movie, for what it's worth.

No, we're talking about historical (i.e. real) Cortez, which is evident from your very own reference to his 'rape' which has nothing to do with the film 'Apocalypto'.

The reference to 'rape' I interpreted metaphorically, and you indicated you meant it literally - which I don't think applies given the historical facts of Aztecs, Cortez et. al. in real history ... whereas one could arguably use the 'rape' in the metaphorical sense and it would in fact apply within reason, at least as a creative description.

Also, nobody has suggested Cortez was a great dude, rather, that he wasn't part of a 'death cult' that pulled the beating hearts out of hundreds of thousands of slaves, women, and children, and inserted straws for the gods to drink blood, skinned them alive and wore their skin for good luck etc. ... which is altogether another level of crazy. It requires a hefty dose of moral equivalence to even try to equate regular colonization/conquest, which is the most common type of geopolitical activity in history by far, with the 'death cult' Aztec stuff, which doesn't really seem to have any real historical parallel.

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

#297

Post by sonnyblarney »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #177
tptacek wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

In addition to the 'not even comparable' level of atrocity, the scale of the direct victims of the Inquisition also paled in comparison to the full and complete systematic mass murder of the Aztec rituals.

At very least the eradication of the craziest death cult in history was a bonus for everyone.

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

#298

Post by sonnyblarney »

gjpr wrote: post #132

Choice tweets from the author: Thanks for reading and sharing my story on Tenochtitlan's tzompantli, the rack where the skulls of the sacrificed were displayed. But it's time for a discussion on why this practice was not "horrific" or "loaded [with] evil," as some of you have said https://t.co/GBZW1TXflv https://twitter.com/lizzie_wade/status/1010178681334050822 It's hard for me to imagine that people wanted to be s…

"but that's my own biases and cultural conditioning talking. How I see the world, filtered through centuries of colonial oppression and destruction, is irrelevant to understanding how they saw the world."

This is an utterly disturbing thought.

To think that 'wanting to be sacrificed' can be part of, you know, a normal kind of cultural artifact, like 'coffee' or 'metallurgy' - and that her ostensible view that 'I probably shouldn't sacrifice myself' is a function of 'colonial oppression'.

It's maximally postmodern and beyond bizarre.

Literally mass murdering children, peeling their skin away is now 'cool' - you know - so long as it's 'really authentically part of your culture' , and not, of course something some white guy did!

2018.

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

#299

Post by sonnyblarney »

coginawheel wrote: post #26
coding123 wrote: post #20

I know this comment won't be accepted too well here, but as people become vegetarians/vegans even, but more importantly start seeing animals as other beings with souls - it becomes clear how barbaric our society STILL is. Again, only visible to some people that have rejected some pretty common norms. It is interesting because in those times it was politically and socially acceptable to be OK with other humans being s…

Do you believe all other forms of life have souls? I'm curious because you made the vegetarian and vegan argument which I always find interesting. I was raised Hindu (now atheist) and the religion has a belief that all forms of life have a soul and have consciousness. As a consequence of this you accept that in order to live, your life relies on extinguishing other forms of life. I always find it weird that when peop…

" The concept of a soul is an abstract non-scientific belief, so given its an abstract concept with no scientific basis, why do we make a distinction between one form of life and another?"

A 'soul' is a rational and scientific concept, it's just not materialist or rather, the kind of science we are used to daily.

As far as souls, more complicated, but maybe one simple answer is that more complex and intelligent forms of life have a deeper access to 'the soul' and that it's not like a step function, rather ... some kind of increasing gradient from inanimate matter, to plants, to animals, to humans, to the 'next level' of life.

My second answer relates to the first, i.e. 'Scientific' in sense that his is literally how we divide the universe at least biologically, i.e. life/not life, then domain, kingdom etc..

Please reconsider the notion that 'soul' has no scientific basis, as many would consider that the 'soul' or 'spirit' or 'animus' or whatever is literally the thing that distinguishes us from inanimate material - otherwise - according to a purely materialist perspective you cannot be alive i.e. there is no such thing as life - you are merely a random bag of particles that appears to be alive :).

If you believe that you are alive, that there is love, intelligence, happiness, experience, consciousness, and that you are not simply a purely random bag of particles, then it logically follows you must 'believe in something' that is not bound by strict materialist ideals. This metaphysical concept is not new, and we have some words for that, usually: 'soul' or 'animus' or 'spirit' or whatever. It's not irrational and it's not unscientific, it just by definition does not fit within materialist framework. And to be more clear - materialist science holds as a presupposition that 'everything is a random wave/particle/big of energy' - it is not a 'proof' kind of thing. It holds as a presupposition that 'there is nothing more'. In essence, materialist science starts with a premise of denying all other views, and then goes on to try to explain everything through the lego-blocks of matter type theories. Which don't explain life very well at all.

Sorry for all that. Short answer: Animals are on the spectrum of life, as are we, and there's clearly a relationship there and we can therefore infer a degree of their experience and status in all of this to some extent.

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

#300

Post by sonnyblarney »

michaelmrose wrote: post #57
DoreenMichele wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the west, the generally accepted public narrative is that only humans have souls, not other organisms. And whether or not it is acceptable to eat something is frequently more or less tied to intelligence. I really enjoyed your above comment. I sometimes give push back to the vegan moral superiority stance where they act like eating animals is evil, but eating plants is totally fine. I tend to view all organisms as…

There is no reason to believe anything that would be described as a soul exists. Logically everything is an emergent property of complex systems including plants, animals, and us. Not being able to distinguish eating an orange, a chicken, a human, a human in a vegetative state etc is just a failure of analysis. There is no moral dimension to eating an orange and we don't eat people even when their brain is irretrieva…

" Logically everything is an emergent property of complex systems including plants, animals, and us."

I'm sorry, but I fully disagree, please see my note above.

This is a materialist view that presupposes that there is only matter/energy and laws that govern it - and only with that (unproven) presupposition first in place, can anything such as you have described be 'logically inferred'.

For example - you mention 'morality' - from the purely physical perspective, you are merely a random wave form, there can be no intelligence, experience, consciousness - let alone morality from that perspective.

It is considerably logical that our current version of materialism is a very helpful tool for understanding some material aspects of the universe, but that by it's own definition is not very useful in terms of understanding life itself.

Materialism is like a ruler we can use to measure stuff. But it gives us little information on 'who is using the ruler'.

'Soul' or 'spirit' or whatever - are the words that we use to crudely describe that which seems to otherwise differentiate life from other stuff, beyond merely 'complexity'.

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