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A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

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Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#101

Post by lazide »

quesera wrote: post #98
lazide wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bwahaha. So not Anglo-Saxon. Not Protestant. But somehow he is. But white. How is this not just blatant racism again?

WASP was always a pejorative way of saying "established white European-ancestry American aristocracy". It never applied to poor white people. It is just a label for the most common and most established phenotype in early America, up to and including the mid-20th century. The label has lost salience over the intervening decades, but it has not faded down to be lost in the ambient level of population wealth and power.…

Read the thread. People definitely are applying it to white as a race, and trying to portray everyone (including poor whites) as benefitting.

It’s part of the general race war type rhetoric which has been building for awhile.

What do you think my point is?

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#102

Post by lazide »

quesera wrote: post #99
lazide wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let me recap. Your plan here is to lump a bunch of people together by skin color (but with labels theoretically only tangentially related to skin color), and blame them for a bunch of stuff most don’t really benefit from - near as I can tell, for instance, Musk made his fortune by having rich parents and being a manipulative asshole, and being white only helped a little bit - and you don’t expect a portion of them…

I have no plan. I didn't create the label. And it's not a robustly defined sociological group anyway. It's just a popular label that got applied to real and very visible thing. Musk was born in South Africa under apartheid. Do you think his life would not be very different if he was born with different skin? Historically, yes, white males of (select) Euro descent have wielded disproportionate power in America. Do you…

Sounds like you should start working on a plan, since the same folks you seem insistent on antagonizing are the same people whose protection you are probably dependent on.

There is such a thing as being ‘dead right’, eh?

So, what is your plan?

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#103

Post by quesera »

lazide wrote: post #102
quesera wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no plan. I didn't create the label. And it's not a robustly defined sociological group anyway. It's just a popular label that got applied to real and very visible thing. Musk was born in South Africa under apartheid. Do you think his life would not be very different if he was born with different skin? Historically, yes, white males of (select) Euro descent have wielded disproportionate power in America. Do you…

Sounds like you should start working on a plan, since the same folks you seem insistent on antagonizing are the same people whose protection you are probably dependent on. There is such a thing as being ‘dead right’, eh? So, what is your plan?

Seriously, what the hell are you talking about?

I'm not antagonizing anyone, except possibly you (and in ways I have not been able to figure out -- What's your damage, Heather?).

If "white people have done bad things" is enough to start a race war (or whatever you are obliquely suggesting), than it's not I who will be the trigger.

I get the sense that you are hyper hyper sensitive to the word WASP. It never meant much, and isn't worth your time.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#104

Post by quesera »

lazide wrote: post #101
quesera wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WASP was always a pejorative way of saying "established white European-ancestry American aristocracy". It never applied to poor white people. It is just a label for the most common and most established phenotype in early America, up to and including the mid-20th century. The label has lost salience over the intervening decades, but it has not faded down to be lost in the ambient level of population wealth and power.…

Read the thread. People definitely are applying it to white as a race, and trying to portray everyone (including poor whites) as benefitting. It’s part of the general race war type rhetoric which has been building for awhile. What do you think my point is?

I have no idea what your point is.

AFAICT, you intentionally goaded this thread into a dissection of WASP-vs-white, which serves zero purpose except to give you a chance to espouse something which you still haven't done, but strikes me as likely to be pretty boring after all of this.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#105

Post by roarcher »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #86
roarcher wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the degree to which you owe something credit for your success is the degree to which it guarantees that success. If my society/group/family guarantees my success, no matter my actions, I owe it everything. If it makes no difference at all, I owe it nothing. If it merely improves my odds, then I owe it something , but there must have been at least one other factor at play, and that factor is also ow…

Assuming free will actually exists, and that everything is not actually just cause and effect back to the big bang.

For the purposes of this thread we are obviously assuming free will exists. If it doesn't then achievements have no meaning and credit belongs to no one, making the whole conversation moot.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#106

Post by godelski »

api wrote: post #10

In the debate between self made and team effort my opinion is “both.” Nobody starts from zero. Everyone builds on the work of others with help from others. At the same time, individuals can make unique contributions and are not just interchangeable parts. You see this over and over again in art, music, engineering, science, literature, etc., or really anything requiring skill. People aren’t interchangeable. I think b…

  > Everyone builds on the work of others with help from others.
It is why we have societies. Coalitions.

In game theory a coalition is a group where the group's utility is greater than the sum of each member's utility. In other words: "we're stronger together".

The problem with the self-made man myth is that it frames things as if it is shameful to have help. Having had help does not diminish your accomplishments. Having had help just means you're human.

The same goes for luck. Just because you got lucky doesn't mean you didn't work hard nor deserve the rewards. There's a saying I like

  The harder I work, the luckier I get.
The way I read that is "by working hard you are able to take advantage of lucky opportunities as they come by." We all require luck in this world. Some are luckier than others. But you have to "strike while the iron is hot" and if you don't work hard then you won't be able to strike in the right moment. Like the having had help part there is no shame in having had luck.

Being able to recognize these things helps us do better and help more people do better. But if we pretend we just did it all on our own then we can't actually recognize how things came to be. Which means we're going to have a hard time replicating that success. By pretending that everything is all on us and nothing else then we'll fail while trying to repeat the successful strategy, we'll fail when offering advice to others, and we'll just be blind to the world around us. We'll never recognize that we have to make the iron hot! Even the best blacksmith in the world can't hammer frozen iron into shape.

Again, having had luck or help doesn't mean you didn't work hard or that you don't deserve what you have. Things aren't binary. There's not a single causal factor to any complex phenomena. The problem is seeing things in black and white. There's a million things that go into success and while most of that will be on you, you can't ignore things like the environment and those that helped you along the way. After all, we're all in this together.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#107

Post by cyberax »

card_zero wrote: post #79
cyberax wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. I'm not talking about technical advances. How about abolishing slavery? A representative government? Right to a fair trial? > I don't know why we worry about historical bad deeds, and seek reparations from people's descendents. The idea is that some things are just bad and can't be excused by mere history. It doesn't mean that we should automatically pay reparations, but it DOES mean that pretty much all histor…

Much the same applies to moral advances, like other ideas they're produced by the zeitgeist rather than "made from whole cloth". So it's a valid defense to say that they didn't know any better. What purpose does considering them tainted serve? They're bad by modern standards, yes, and good by historical standards, and we ourselves are bad by future standards. So what is this even about, something to do with level of…

> Re-thinking: you might also be saying that any celebration of even a long-dead king might really be jingoism. But then I think it's the jingoism itself that should be done away with, not the celebration.

I think that we should celebrate people who advanced the society _on_ _purpose_ and not accidentally. Intentionality matters.

Such people were rarely in positions of power, and I'm not aware of any "good kings". Partly because effecting changes is never easy and partly because "good kings" could never grow when surrounded by rotten institutions.

But there have always been a lot of good people! Yet most are unknown to the public. For example, Thomas Paine or John Locke in the US history. There were even more fascinating stories, like this one about Beccaria: https://www.exurbe.com/on-crimes-and-punishments-and-beccari...

Edit: when talking dismissively about "good kings" I mean the ones that held absolute power. Not the modern European monarchs that are either figureheads or hold very little direct power.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#108

Post by samdoesnothing »

godelski wrote: post #106
api wrote: post #10

In the debate between self made and team effort my opinion is “both.” Nobody starts from zero. Everyone builds on the work of others with help from others. At the same time, individuals can make unique contributions and are not just interchangeable parts. You see this over and over again in art, music, engineering, science, literature, etc., or really anything requiring skill. People aren’t interchangeable. I think b…

> Everyone builds on the work of others with help from others. It is why we have societies. Coalitions. In game theory a coalition is a group where the group's utility is greater than the sum of each member's utility. In other words: "we're stronger together". The problem with the self-made man myth is that it frames things as if it is shameful to have help. Having had help does not diminish your accomplishments. Hav…

> The problem with the self-made man myth

Is that it's a complete straw man. It's not about not having help - every great achiever has had a figurative (sometimes literal) army of supporters behind them. Including those in history.

What the "theory" actually posits seems trivially true - that the people who do super extraordinary things are extraordinary themselves. Whether it's talent, hard work, both, insanity, etc. The idea that these people are just normal and very lucky or whatever is absurd.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#109

Post by samdoesnothing »

Atlas667 wrote: post #59
anon291 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many kings were strong and admirable. Not sure why you are so down on individual kings even if monarchy is not a great system of governance and prone to tyranny. Good kings provided protection from the very real threat of foreign barbarians, provided a common legal framework, and eased commerce, and thus human flourishing. Good kings deserve commendation even if monarchy has issues. Ascribing only vices (chopping hea…

You know, I am not a historian. And I'm not gonna talk as if I know anything about how kings were viewed by the people. But in my mind kings can be "good" in the same way slave owners can be "good". Not that much, if any at all, contextually.

Why not compare them to their modern equivalents? They seem mostly the same as politicians today, except some actually cared about the people the ruled.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#110

Post by astrange »

lazide wrote: post #83
astrange wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely Musk isn't a WASP. I think he's from Northern England (don't know why I know this.) You might as well call Paul McCartney a WASP billionaire.

Musk was born in South Africa to a wealthy diamond mine owner (Dad) and Canadian model+dietician (Mom), and is a ‘confirmed non believer’ per his own public statements. His whole family seems not particularly religious. The extended musk family is from all over, however, including Canada, England, American, etc. but he seems pretty clearly a mongrel.

> Musk was born in South Africa to a wealthy diamond mine owner (Dad)

This is something like ~4 steps away from what happened, to the point it's not true at all. (He was a part owner in an emerald mining operation in another country, it wasn't his main business, and they were middle class.)

Btw when I say from Northern England, I mean by descent, not where he grew up.

Not that I want to get into defending him since he's killed 600k people this year.

> and is a ‘confirmed non believer’ per his own public statements.

That's as Anglican as it gets. It's like a version of Protestantism you're not supposed to believe in.

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