What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
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What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
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Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#2The Fall of Civilizations podcast does a very good long-form story-telling about the invasion and collapse of the Aztec empire. I really do recommend it and the rest in the series.
Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#3Somehow it doesnt feel good for me to try to learn from Aztec philosophy, werent these the guys with the appaling human sacrifices?
Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#4Somehow it doesnt feel good for me to try to learn from Aztec philosophy, werent these the guys with the appaling human sacrifices?
I only know as much from the podcast I mentioned in the sibling comment, but it seem they were somewhat caricaturized. If you listen to the Podcast you learn the other side of how they were massacred by Cortes, which doesn't really cast the Spanish in a good light. (But surely we can learn from the Spanish despite the acts of Cortes?)
Edit:
A cursory wiki search leads to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_cultu...
Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#5Somehow it doesnt feel good for me to try to learn from Aztec philosophy, werent these the guys with the appaling human sacrifices?
Ehh, not even trying to be snarky - the US was basically sacrificing children during the industrial revolution, purely in the name of profit.
AFAIK, the aztecs at least thought they were appeasing all powerful gods when doing it. Don't think the same could be said of us...
Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#6Somehow it doesnt feel good for me to try to learn from Aztec philosophy, werent these the guys with the appaling human sacrifices?
Were they worst then Ancient Greecks, Romans, Sparta, whatever church done in European history, genocide of native Americans called for by American founding fathers? Human sacrifice was a real thing and Aztecs were cruel toward those they dominated. So were those above mentioned - and many colorful reports of human sacrifice are result of torture and paranoid imagination.
Some dominant groups are more appaling then others - nazi and Stalin come to mind. But we are not throwing away everything German or Russian either. Nor we are throwing away everything Sparta despite them being literally violent totalitarian state.
Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#7Somehow it doesnt feel good for me to try to learn from Aztec philosophy, werent these the guys with the appaling human sacrifices?
Not sure where I came across this info but there's a theory that observations of sacrifices may have been at a time of great despair for Aztec society, sacrifice being an act of desperation.
Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#8Somehow it doesnt feel good for me to try to learn from Aztec philosophy, werent these the guys with the appaling human sacrifices?
Not sure where I came across this info but there's a theory that observations of sacrifices may have been at a time of great despair for Aztec society, sacrifice being an act of desperation.
Yeah, I vaguely recollected (again that podcast I linked) while their civilization was under siege by Cortes, they wondered why the gods had forsaken them. The whole thing is really tragic.
Edit: The wiki article states around 20k prisoners per year were captured for sacrifice, though perhaps the number might have been inflated to intimidate their enemies.
> Every Aztec warrior would have to provide at least one prisoner for sacrifice. All the male population was trained to be warriors, but only the few who succeeded in providing captives could become full-time members of the warrior elite. Accounts also state that several young warriors could unite to capture a single prisoner, which suggests that capturing prisoners for sacrifice was challenging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_cultu...
Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#9Somehow it doesnt feel good for me to try to learn from Aztec philosophy, werent these the guys with the appaling human sacrifices?
Were they worst then Ancient Greecks, Romans, Sparta, whatever church done in European history, genocide of native Americans called for by American founding fathers? Human sacrifice was a real thing and Aztecs were cruel toward those they dominated. So were those above mentioned - and many colorful reports of human sacrifice are result of torture and paranoid imagination. Some dominant groups are more appaling then o…
Good question, but to counter: we do not throw away everything German, but everything in the Nazi ideology, dont we? It is not that I say we shouldnt learn from the successors of the culture, but isnt this post saying we should learn from that culture itself? To me (bringing back in the German example) it sounds like (trying to transfer the example) 'learn how to get organized with nazi ideology'.
Adressing your first point, I really think that human (including children) sacrifice is quite unique and not present in the cultures you mentioned.
Re: What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were they worst then Ancient Greecks, Romans, Sparta, whatever church done in European history, genocide of native Americans called for by American founding fathers? Human sacrifice was a real thing and Aztecs were cruel toward those they dominated. So were those above mentioned - and many colorful reports of human sacrifice are result of torture and paranoid imagination. Some dominant groups are more appaling then o…
Good question, but to counter: we do not throw away everything German, but everything in the Nazi ideology, dont we? It is not that I say we shouldnt learn from the successors of the culture, but isnt this post saying we should learn from that culture itself? To me (bringing back in the German example) it sounds like (trying to transfer the example) 'learn how to get organized with nazi ideology'. Adressing your firs…
> we do not throw away everything German, but everything in the Nazi ideology, dont we?
No, we did not. To large extend, people don't even know what Nazi ideology and goals actually were except that they killed most Jews. But first here, you would have to show they were overall like Nazi.
> Adressing your first point, I really think that human (including children) sacrifice is quite unique and not present in the cultures you mentioned.
Soldiers working for colonial Britain would cut kids hands if parents did not worked fast enough. Columbus did cut peoples hands too, I think that including children hands if locals did not produced as much as he wanted. He also took kids as sexual slaves for his men. Cortes behavior was not normal either. Hunting witches and torturing old people assumed is not generally normal either.
American slavery routinely involved kids being sold away from parents before age of 10 .. and quite a lot of them died.
None of it is exactly same as human sacrifice, but not much better either.