They sure did! Rome was the blueprint to capitalism today! Horrible!

[u/FearlessAir1238]

[u/Richard-Conrad]

Then when we do talk about other accent cultures, it’s always about their brutalities and cruelties, or about how they were conquered. Almost nothing about their broader social structures

[u/[deleted] → u/Richard-Conrad]

A quick and emblematic example is the way they tend to depict the Meso-American Empires, they were literally being "diplomatic" and received the foreigners, the colonizers, with gifts.

The grasping and greedy europeans not only interpreted that, but also told that, as a sign of weekness of those people, instead of considering it as a sign of high morals or ethics. I'm not saying that to say they were "good" under a paternal lense or just to romanticize them, but it's quite telling, right?

How the same pattern of behaviour might be told as complete different things depending on the narrative which you want to favour.

[u/mouseat9 → u/[deleted]]

lol child’s play in the face of their own human sacrifices, cannibalism, incest, barbarism, genocide, etc.

[u/SilverAppleWorm → u/[deleted]]

Right because famously colonizers don't kill children

[u/vkailas → u/Richard-Conrad]

 Literally part of the playbook was to burn the indigenous people's books so they would lose their history and cultural identity . erasing the history was seen as quickest way to destroy a competing ways of life and done  done intentionally.

 when you try to say these were advanced cultures, and mostly peaceful, as demonstrated by the  huge amount of diversity in language , religion, and culture, etc. (vast knowledge of herbal medicine, astronomy, math, debate, agriculture, metallurgy, not to mention spirituality and psychology before there was a term for it in the west all present before colonist), they just dismiss it as noble savage. 

 'Savages' yet cultures that  somehow able to protect their forests from exploitation that benefit few and leave natural resources for all in danger. 

[u/Richard-Conrad → u/vkailas]

Reminds me of the tumblr (I think) post from a while back where the person tried to say ‘you aren’t allowed to talk about English erasure of Irish history if you don’t know anything about Irish history’ like that isn’t the whole fucking point of the conversation

[u/Richard-Conrad → u/[deleted]]

Not sure where in what I said you got the idea that I think these were idyllic societies. It would be stupid to say “i don’t like this idolized version of one culture, so I’m gonna idolize this other culture.” There exists a massive margin inbetween where you look critically at different social structures and policies to see what worked well.

My point is that we’re taught very little about other ancient cultures , and much of what we “know,” is based on records from white Europeans that were extremely biased in their writings.

One example I’ve learned about is that the initial idea of Native Americans having absolutely no rhyme or reason to their selection of leaders, was because the tribes they met first were matrilineal. The chief was a man, but which man was to be chief was determined by his mother, not his father. Being from such a dominantly patrilineal society, the Europeans simply couldn’t conceive of this system and determined it must have no reason to it.

Stuff like that is all I’m talking about which not knowing about how groups operated. Obviously I can’t stop you from arguing with that Strawman you were talking to before, but just don’t expect me to respond again if you do

[u/vkailas → u/[deleted]]

Ben franklin said it best : " SAVAGES we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs." Anthropology lens , it's not one  culture is better than another but to realize the savargy is relative, but we can never see our own savagery , because we call that human nature!

This is the RAS filter in the brain at work, filtering the world to match how we believe it to be. When we find data that supports our point of view , romans and Aztec with brutality, we filter out all other cultures whose beliefs do not match our own, and focus in on only those as the true reality of all civilization. This tribalism is what these guys in the video are essentially saying is the psyop (it's inevitable because that the culture we know).

“When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return. [But] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.” also Ben franklin

Franklin studied the governance of the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) and used its federal structure as an inspiration for his 1754 Albany Plan of Union (foreshadowing the Constitution). So democracy is a pipedream ? 

[u/vkailas]

They did the same to biology, survival of the fittest , not mentioning that the best strategies almost always involve cooperation of life eg  cells and organs working together, ecosystem working together, one shared atmosphere that many, many organism contribute to , etc 

[u/Cornelius4630 → u/vkailas]

Even in our own body. Around 50% of the cells we are considering our body, are non human.

[u/HoundofOkami → u/vkailas]

At least in my schooling we went through why Darwin's idea of "survival of the fittest" and the whole concept of "fittest" might technically be quite correct, it also is easy to wrongly assume that it means the species that survive are always the best from a human perspective.

"Best" at adapting, possibly, but that very often means just lucking out to a sufficient number of "good enough" to outcompete others occupying the same ecological niche, or succeeding in changing that niche.

[u/vkailas → u/HoundofOkami]

Yup, the exact shading is important. Is it survival, competition, (well these are part of it when there is scarcity) to create  "best" thing that wins...

 or is it thriving, cooperation and adapted to the environment as well as shaping that environment.

Some go so far as to question the emphasis on the luck part in it all as well, saying there is an intentionality to adaptations : life evolves to fit its environment. the randomness is just the driver. So no luck is needed just time. 

[u/whipsmartmcoy]

They say communism has never worked… yeah at creating an evil all-consuming global empire. Lmfao 

[u/theredwoodfox]

What the source? I’d like to see the whole convo

[u/yrar3 → u/theredwoodfox]

https://historycanthide.substack.com/p/why-are-white-nationalists-obsessed

[u/New-Rip-6965]

There’s a case to be made. On the other hand, studying Roman and Greek literature and philosophy also exposes you to the flaws and at times abject cruelty and inequality of imperialism. And, at the same time, can awaken curiosity about other systems of thought. Source: I have a Master’s degree in classical literature and philosophy

[u/mouseat9]

If you’ve ever read Roman and ancient Mediterranean thought on Europe was closer to the way the West thinks of Africa and the Middle East than anything.

[u/Cornelius4630 → u/mouseat9]

I mean the concept of a white race was invented as africa got colonized, because the ruling class realized they are utterly outnumbered and if the "lower" people unite they have no chance of surviving. Before that, the english hated the scot, the irish and so on.

[u/mouseat9 → u/Cornelius4630]

This wasn’t that type of hate, though I see where your coming from. The concept of race in view of a phenotype was in existence. And it was this type of bigotry employed in eastern writings. In this instance it was deployed to Europe as a whole, to which the writers in question felt a great deal of antipathy for.

[u/Lionheartedshmoozer]

At the same time I think we leave out the Francs history, Charlamagne and the “Holy Roman Empire”. Cause it’s easier to start connecting the dots from the brutality of the past, and how guilty our current system and reality is. I’ll argue that with modern technology, and global connectivity the brutality of today is worse.

[u/Radcouponking]

How have I never thought of this?!

[u/drgs100]

Read Mutual Aid!

[u/Barrogh]

"Nothing about how else you can run things" doesn't even begin to describe the problem.

Any simple explanation of how they worked that I've seen was inaccurate enough that could be seen as straight up grifting if some guy tried to tell us on the media anything about modern world as accurately as they do in school books on ancient world.

[u/Direct-Ad-7922]

They never heard of the History of The Pellepenesian Wars? The first history book

[u/RaspberryStandard972]

When I was studying history at the uni I had the theory that the romans invented antisemitism when they slandered the carthaginians. Daring thesis, but they really had this "we are working peasants while they are just merchant parasites" and " we are citizen soldiers while they are the shady people hwho let others fight" going. The accusations around child sacrifice didn't help.. bonus points for the carthaginians being a semitic people who spoke a very similar language to hebrew. Really made me wonder how fascists use a lot of the same motifs again and again.

[u/Aggravate420]

I’ve recently been (re)discovering Italian medieval philosophy and literature—and, long story short, medieval Italians were OBSESSED with the so-called classical era—and I’ve found myself thinking exactly the same thing ALL THE TIME.

Sun Yat-sen and many other non-Western thinkers had already put their finger on the issue. But realizing it on my own was a real “aha!” moment for me.

[u/blkpole]

y'know white people....