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Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

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Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#21

Post by boxed »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #16

Civilization is violent. The Roman Empire maintained it's economy through slavery. The Catholic Church started the crusades. This is article is the usual dumb reductionist thinking that people have been spewing every year I've been alive. > But I feel the deeper threat is internal. A generation of critical theory and identity politics has captured universities, media, and cultural institutions. The Western tradition…

> The left is destroying Western Civilization. How can anyone believe this bullshit when it's 2026 and the Right is firing professors, silencing the press, and arresting people for publicly disagreeing with them

The "left" also reduced Venezuela from the richest country on the continent to a brutal regime not long ago.

Seeing the world as "left" vs "right" is imo not helpful. It's too easy to fall into the trap of defending the "left" because you also identify with sane progressive taxes for example, and then identity confuses you and now you're trying to pretend that people getting physically assaulted on campus is ok because the left is mostly right about progressive taxes or whatever.

The crazy-left are evil because they are confused.

The crazy-right are evil because they are confused.

Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#22

Post by bryanlarsen »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #17
sapphicsnail wrote: post #16

Civilization is violent. The Roman Empire maintained it's economy through slavery. The Catholic Church started the crusades. This is article is the usual dumb reductionist thinking that people have been spewing every year I've been alive. > But I feel the deeper threat is internal. A generation of critical theory and identity politics has captured universities, media, and cultural institutions. The Western tradition…

Two things can both be true. The left was also firing professors. They weren't arresting people for publicly disagreeing with them; they were just showing up as "black block"/antifa and trying to physically intimidate them. Neither side are angels. Neither side really believe in your free speech if you disagree with them. Now, if you want to argue that the right is currently the greater threat, then sure, I can proba…

> Neither side really believe in your free speech

Only one side claimed to be "free speech absolutists".

Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#24

Post by boxed »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #22
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things can both be true. The left was also firing professors. They weren't arresting people for publicly disagreeing with them; they were just showing up as "black block"/antifa and trying to physically intimidate them. Neither side are angels. Neither side really believe in your free speech if you disagree with them. Now, if you want to argue that the right is currently the greater threat, then sure, I can proba…

> Neither side really believe in your free speech Only one side claimed to be "free speech absolutists".

Cherry picking. The other side claimed to be the only ones to care about "black lives" while at the same time supporting burning down black owned businesses, and spreading covid during the worst of the pandemic, while being super angry about the people who didn't wear masks.

Don't fall into the trap of grouping into left/right. Individual behaviors must be judged separately: going into crowded spaces unmasked during the high of covid? Bad. Burning down a business? Bad. Getting someone fired for speech? Bad. Etc.

See how easy and clear that is? Nothing about left or right.

Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#25

Post by coldtea »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #16

Civilization is violent. The Roman Empire maintained it's economy through slavery. The Catholic Church started the crusades. This is article is the usual dumb reductionist thinking that people have been spewing every year I've been alive. > But I feel the deeper threat is internal. A generation of critical theory and identity politics has captured universities, media, and cultural institutions. The Western tradition…

>Civilization is violent. The Roman Empire maintained it's economy through slavery.

So? Slavery was the baseline back then. The question is whether the Roman Empire was more peaceful/less violent than the alternative, not whether they had slavery or some degree of violence.

>The Catholic Church started the crusades.

After centuries of arab expansion conquering over 6 centuries pre-existing Christian cities and populations in the wider middle east.

Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#26

Post by coldtea »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #22
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things can both be true. The left was also firing professors. They weren't arresting people for publicly disagreeing with them; they were just showing up as "black block"/antifa and trying to physically intimidate them. Neither side are angels. Neither side really believe in your free speech if you disagree with them. Now, if you want to argue that the right is currently the greater threat, then sure, I can proba…

> Neither side really believe in your free speech Only one side claimed to be "free speech absolutists".

Which makes them hypocrites.

But a hypocrite that pays lip service to free speech might be better than someone who openly doesn't care for it. At least the principle remains respected.

Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#27

Post by groundhogstate »

Hm. I'm no historian but I think a broader view (ironically a relatively new one) runs counter to the claim that violence is the default. This might be more (*edit) true between empires but as far as humans and nations or proto-states go, archaeological anthropology leans away from the bthe Hobbesian view of the "state of nature" (Solitary, nasty, brutish, and short).

Possibly outside the author's Canon but D Graeber and D Wengrow's book make a pretty compelling case that most human modes of organising, historically speaking, were remarkably amicable (not universally of course) and maintained without such institutions as a monopoly on violence, property rights, and currency.

I'm not going to disagree with the forecast of increasing violence in the near future. I hope against it but the zeitgeist does not favour my wishes. But I do think that it is worth remembering that we have a history of political creativity we have somehow collectively forgotten, which happens to be very convenient (not in an by conspiratorial sense) for folks on the upper rungs of modern power structures.

Anyhow, the aforementioned book was the first I've read in a while that really rewired my personally held mythos (lowercase) and I do recommend it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything?wprov=s...

Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#28

Post by boxed »

bagxrvxpepzn wrote: post #19

The answer to Liberalism dying isn't more Liberalism. Liberalism is dying precisely because Liberalism is wrong or at minimum, unsustainable. The attitude of the writer is exactly like the fetishists of every dead ideology, in particular Libertarians who argue "Real capitalism hasn't been tried yet!" or Communists who argue "Real communism hasn't been tried yet." These people, Liberals (capital L) included, need to g…

That anti-liberalism was born out of liberalism doesn't make liberalism wrong.

It's like saying all dinosaurs were birds because birds evolved from dinosaurs. It just doesn't follow that a weird offshoot now defines the entire group retroactively back in time. It makes no sense to think like this logically.

Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#29

Post by AnimalMuppet »

coldtea wrote: post #26
bryanlarsen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neither side really believe in your free speech Only one side claimed to be "free speech absolutists".

Which makes them hypocrites. But a hypocrite that pays lip service to free speech might be better than someone who openly doesn't care for it. At least the principle remains respected.

Meh. The principle remains "respected" with lip service. That's not respecting the principle; that's respecting the principle's ability to persuade people to vote for you.

I mean, look, there are conservatives who actually do care about free speech for everyone, not just their allies. But the "conservatives" currently in power, who claimed to be "free speech absolutists", seem more interested in control of speech as a source of power, rather than in actual free speech for all.

Re: Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is

#30

Post by orwin »

Do people read this unironically? I am at the beginning and already is factually wrong. European population continuously grew from the 7th to the 14th century. And the rest seems to have been written by a 19th century 'historian' or someone who only read their books.

I've read a bit more. It's worse. Charlemagne was the grandson of Charles Martel, who famously stopped the largest Umayyad razzia in Europe (and used it to take power, and consolidate both Neustria and Austrasia). His empire was never threatened/invaded by the Umayyad, even after his death. He created the Gascony march, that did threaten the Vascon and the Umayyad before Louis le pieux was defeated by the Vascons, who created the Navarre realm, basically creating a buffer state between the Umayyad and the Carolingian empire. So for sure, they had no impact on wether the Carolingians could maintain power or not. Also, the reason Martel could take power was that the Franks already had a feudal society since at least Clovis. Also, the Carolingians did maintain power, everywhere. The successions divided the realms, but they kept power for a long, long time (I still count Capetian as Carolingian for obvious reasons)

And I'm really not a specialist of this era, I find the 16th-19th century more interesting overall. Basing any arguments on that shaky knowledge is uninteresting to me, so I will stop there, his point might be good, but the argument to reach it will be bad.

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