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How to Enter a City Like a King

worldhistory.substack.com

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Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#71

Post by lo_zamoyski »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #38
quacked wrote: post #14

I often think about how much human labor there is available at any given moment, and how in any minute some percentage of "available labor" is bound up doing something. Back in the day, with billions fewer people, you could still bind up some percentage of available labor making beautiful gates for the coronation, or staging mock battles for the king as he passed. Today, I guess people make marketing copy for cat foo…

Indeed - I often feel like the vast majority of the internet is effectively our pyramids. How many very smart, motivated folks do we have working on essentially ads and related indirect monetization strategies for the very small amount of the internet is the "good stuff"

Don't insult the pyramids.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#72

Post by lo_zamoyski »

WalterBright wrote: post #56
quacked wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtedly, but productivity does not directly equate to beauty, health, happiness, satisfaction, morality, civic engagement, justice, etc.

A life of indolence does not lead to any of those things. We simply are not built that way. We were built to struggle.

But for what end?

"Productivity" for the sake of what?

Work for the sake of work is worthless.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#73

Post by nlitened »

rsyring wrote: post #3

How to enter a city like a king? Humbly, on a donkey. As one who comes to serve instead of one who comes to be served. What a difference from what we can expect from our current leaders, kings or king wannabees alike.

“If you want to become a philosopher king, first become a king, then a philosopher”

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#74

Post by renewiltord »

quacked wrote: post #14

I often think about how much human labor there is available at any given moment, and how in any minute some percentage of "available labor" is bound up doing something. Back in the day, with billions fewer people, you could still bind up some percentage of available labor making beautiful gates for the coronation, or staging mock battles for the king as he passed. Today, I guess people make marketing copy for cat foo…

Probably society would look worse. Almost everything in the world is search-dominated. E.g. one might as well say “if I didn’t have to inspect every element in arrays imagine how much faster I can sort them”. Well then there are lots of arrays you can’t sort. That’s life.

A large amount of labour is dedicated to the search problem. “What is valuable?” is a tough question. Pepper, nutmeg, mace made us a seafaring people. Easy to think “what if we only did the stuff we need” but is meaningless sentence. “What we need” is not something someone can state.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#75

Post by rurban »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #45
rurban wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Jesus was executed because he came armed with swords, after spending 2 years in the north building up his group in Lebanon, wanting to overthrow the local priestship. A pretty deviance of his previous pieceful principles.

What? He came armed with swords? (I mean, yes, his followers had two "swords" - which may have been something far less than military swords. One of them used one when Jesus was arrested, and got rebuked for it.) No, he didn't come to militarily overthrow the priestship.

We don't know that exactly, because that was left out conveniently from the scripts. I rely solely on historians

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#76

Post by lo_zamoyski »

Before I read the article, I was reminded of a somewhat relevant quote attributed to Vincent Scully lamenting the replacement of old Penn Station with MSG.

"One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat."

What an insult to human dignity ugly architecture is. You can infer the manner in which human life is valued in a culture by the architecture and the art it produces, especially relative to its means.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#77

Post by IAmBroom »

FabHK wrote: post #32
quacked wrote: post #14

I often think about how much human labor there is available at any given moment, and how in any minute some percentage of "available labor" is bound up doing something. Back in the day, with billions fewer people, you could still bind up some percentage of available labor making beautiful gates for the coronation, or staging mock battles for the king as he passed. Today, I guess people make marketing copy for cat foo…

Somewhat related thought: World power consumption is around 20 TW (of which around 3 TW electricity), that's very roughly 2 kW per person (obviously not equally distributed). A human consumes around 8600 kJ of energy in their food per day, or roughly 100 W (search for "basal metabolic rate"). Most of that is needed just to keep the body running, but around a quarter or so can be converted to physical work: an average…

It took me a reread to realize what you were saying.

If 745 is one horsepower, is 25 W one personpower?

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#78

Post by IAmBroom »

moffkalast wrote: post #24
quacked wrote: post #14

I often think about how much human labor there is available at any given moment, and how in any minute some percentage of "available labor" is bound up doing something. Back in the day, with billions fewer people, you could still bind up some percentage of available labor making beautiful gates for the coronation, or staging mock battles for the king as he passed. Today, I guess people make marketing copy for cat foo…

About 1% of people are involved in farming, add a few more percent for food distribution, building maintenance and water bottling and you have your rough answer. Pretty much all of us are doing frivolous nonsense in survival terms.

Survival also requires medicines, trained doctors and nurses, and medical devices. For starters.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#79

Post by IAmBroom »

churchill wrote: post #13
bombcar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has someone run the numbers on how likely you are to be murdered/killed in war/assassinated as a King, historically?

Can't say for all monarchs through human history (nor is it even possible to), but for the Roman emperors, 70% died violent deaths via assassination (actual and suspected), execution, suicide, or being KIA. You had some particularly colorful episodes like the year of the four emperors where Nero's regional governors revolted and he committed suicide. Galba, a general, was declared imperator by his troops, only to be…

> Can't say for all monarchs through human history (nor is it even possible to)

Since human history is by definition what has been recorded, a small subset of what has happened, it is roughly possible. Granted, there exist records of monarchs whose deaths were not recorded, but we can still make pretty good estimates I think.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#80

Post by IAmBroom »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #45
rurban wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Jesus was executed because he came armed with swords, after spending 2 years in the north building up his group in Lebanon, wanting to overthrow the local priestship. A pretty deviance of his previous pieceful principles.

What? He came armed with swords? (I mean, yes, his followers had two "swords" - which may have been something far less than military swords. One of them used one when Jesus was arrested, and got rebuked for it.) No, he didn't come to militarily overthrow the priestship.

rurban, you aren't relying soley on historians, because there's precious little information about the historical Jeshua aside from biblican and non-canonical religious texts.
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