Yes
have you never listened to johnny cash in your whole life?Dilbert_X wrote:
I don't know, is there much in rock and roll or Elvis about killing and robbing people?
“i shot a man in reno just to watch him die”.
but ‘this current youth generation are the worst ...’ blah blah blah. do you even fucking listen to yourself? you are beyond parody.
i thought fake scientists like yourself, with their penchant for bland theories of everything, would be up to date with the work of steven pinker et al. don’t they all trumpet the fact that violence in western society is actually in widespread decline compared to decades and generations past?
Last edited by uziq (2021-03-25 20:50:34)
Is it though? Seems to be cyclical and back on the upswing.
Once again your ignorance of reality shines through.
Once again your ignorance of reality shines through.
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All that nasty rap but here's a chart where one of the highs was in the mid 30s. There must be something to blame if not rap. Ahh, the economy Minnie the Moocher, degenerate material right there.
The point its not really in a general decline looked at over the long term.
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i think steven pinker, like malcolm gladwell, are full of shit. but they're your sort of thinker and writer. a smidgeon of stats, cooked favourably, and some scientific pretensions. my original post was clearly not in support of pinker.Dilbert_X wrote:
Once again your ignorance of reality shines through.
also i'm quite sure pinker's book takes a longer perspective than '1960s to present'.
Last edited by uziq (2021-03-26 00:54:36)
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I read somewhere that there were 4 million first time gun buyers in 2020On Monday, the F.B.I. released preliminary statistics showing a major increase in murder last year, with a 25 percent rise in agencies that reported quarterly data. The F.B.I. did not receive data from several cities with known big increases in murder like New York, Chicago and New Orleans, but cities of all sizes reported increases of greater than 20 percent.
A 25 percent increase in murder in 2020 would mean the United States surpassed 20,000 murders in a year for the first time since 1995. (The final official numbers for 2020 will not be released until late September.)
Although it’s not clear what has caused the spike in murder, some possibilities are the various stresses of the pandemic; the surge in gun sales during the crisis; and less belief in police legitimacy related to protests over police brutality.
i hate to keep defending a thesis i don't even fundamentally agree with, but i'm pretty sure his sweeping idea encompassed wars and mass slaughter, too, not gun crime.
Big brain dilbert: murder rates are cyclical
Next he'll develop a murder forecasting app lmao
Next he'll develop a murder forecasting app lmao
I bet Copernicus had to deal with exactly this kind of shit.
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I have mixed feeling about the whole "we live in the safest time in history" stuff. It feels very college freshmen.uziq wrote:
i hate to keep defending a thesis i don't even fundamentally agree with, but i'm pretty sure his sweeping idea encompassed wars and mass slaughter, too, not gun crime.
On the one hand I can see reminders of the safety of our time period as response to paranoia politics that is used to trojan horse corporate deregulation and tax cuts. On the other hand people celebrating New Years in 1914 felt really good about living in the apex of western civilization and had no idea what was coming towards them. I can see the post-war peace being a lull in warfare before we blow up half the planet. The Concert of Europe was about 100 years. World War 2 ended only 75 years ago. I have grandparents older than that. I feel like every about 100 years the western world has a big war that determines politics for the next century before it blows up again.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr … -committed
To me it just illustrates that many can't look at the past on its own terms, and that our interpretation of the past is often entirely subject to current conceptions of good and evil. We latch onto people like Bartolomé de las Casas for example, a lone advocate for civil rights during an era of colonialism, to point out that there's some sort of objective morality and that we all knew that colonialism was wrong all along. But really, it wasn't t so. To the overwhelming majority of the time conquest by itself bestowed upon the victor the right to subjugate, even enslave, the conquered. This notion persisted for hundreds of years until it was dismantled. Only when world war 2 came about did we really hit the monumental turning point that definitely established a new sense of morality, which still took decades to actually be widely understood and accepted in the west. And now that it is the case, you see so many who feel absolutely vindicated in the retroactive application of that morality to all the hundreds or thousands of years of history before them. To a dogmatic degree: no, I know how I should have behaved during WW2. Gimme a break.
It's always nice to see amateur historians pontificate about the morality of history and wholly deny that there is such a thing as an evolving sense of right and wrong. The entire article swoops from the crimes of world war 2 to colonialism and slavery, blanketly stating that 'it's all wrong and u know it's wrong!'.Beyond the complexity of historical contexts and the grey areas of any human endeavour, there are actions that were as wrong yesterday as they are today. Taking refuge in moral relativism while facing the shadows of history is an easy escape, but it leads to a dead end. Yet how many countries are stuck in denial under the pretext that they refuse to judge their imperial past by today’s standards?
To me it just illustrates that many can't look at the past on its own terms, and that our interpretation of the past is often entirely subject to current conceptions of good and evil. We latch onto people like Bartolomé de las Casas for example, a lone advocate for civil rights during an era of colonialism, to point out that there's some sort of objective morality and that we all knew that colonialism was wrong all along. But really, it wasn't t so. To the overwhelming majority of the time conquest by itself bestowed upon the victor the right to subjugate, even enslave, the conquered. This notion persisted for hundreds of years until it was dismantled. Only when world war 2 came about did we really hit the monumental turning point that definitely established a new sense of morality, which still took decades to actually be widely understood and accepted in the west. And now that it is the case, you see so many who feel absolutely vindicated in the retroactive application of that morality to all the hundreds or thousands of years of history before them. To a dogmatic degree: no, I know how I should have behaved during WW2. Gimme a break.
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You ever notice it is only white guys who ever argue 'you can't judge people in the past for atrocities'? Strange.Larssen wrote:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/02/nazi-history-crimes-committedIt's always nice to see amateur historians pontificate about the morality of history and wholly deny that there is such a thing as an evolving sense of right and wrong. The entire article swoops from the crimes of world war 2 to colonialism and slavery, blanketly stating that 'it's all wrong and u know it's wrong!'.Beyond the complexity of historical contexts and the grey areas of any human endeavour, there are actions that were as wrong yesterday as they are today. Taking refuge in moral relativism while facing the shadows of history is an easy escape, but it leads to a dead end. Yet how many countries are stuck in denial under the pretext that they refuse to judge their imperial past by today’s standards?
To me it just illustrates that many can't look at the past on its own terms, and that our interpretation of the past is often entirely subject to current conceptions of good and evil. We latch onto people like Bartolomé de las Casas for example, a lone advocate for civil rights during an era of colonialism, to point out that there's some sort of objective morality and that we all knew that colonialism was wrong all along. But really, it wasn't t so. To the overwhelming majority of the time conquest by itself bestowed upon the victor the right to subjugate, even enslave, the conquered. This notion persisted for hundreds of years until it was dismantled. Only when world war 2 came about did we really hit the monumental turning point that definitely established a new sense of morality, which still took decades to actually be widely understood and accepted in the west. And now that it is the case, you see so many who feel absolutely vindicated in the retroactive application of that morality to all the hundreds or thousands of years of history before them. To a dogmatic degree: no, I know how I should have behaved during WW2. Gimme a break.
While there might not be objective right or wrong you can write a book explaining, modern psychology recognizes that people have inherent senses of fairness and empathy. Even animals it seems. People 4000 years ago were smart enough to realize someone wouldn't like to get hit over the head with a hammer and understood that other people felt pain like they do. Rousseau in the 1700's wrote how 'the first feeling man ever had was pity for the suffering of others'.
Circling back to white people, I understand you are an ethnic German, a group that set the gold standard for human suffering in the 20th century (*chef's kiss*, good show), but the world is bigger many times bigger than the western world. About 600 years before Socrates had to drink hemlock, the Jainist in India came to the conclusion that animals don't enjoy being eaten and you should avoid killing even bugs.
The whole point I'm making is that this morality didn't really get a good foothold until about 70 years ago. The exceptions in history aren't reflective of some constant in human moral consciousness. Those who conquered weren't secretely aware of the 'criminality of their behaviour', on the absolute total contrary: they were convinced their mission was the right one and their actions completely justified, often divinely inspired even. Genghis Khan and the mongol horde appealed to the gods of those they butchered in the notion that if their god really cared for their well-being he wouldn't have sent Genghis to kill them. A thoroughly asian man, by the way. You can reference the crusaders, the muslim conquests, the aztecs, the japanese empire - make a list - and the constant you will see is that people are perfectly capable of rationalising slaughter without ever really feeling conflicted about it. It's not about realising that others don't like to get hit over the head with a hammer, it's the belief that they deserve to get hit over the head with a hammer. If that is a commonly accepted at a certain point in time, you'll have a hard time denying that it's part of the norms and mores of the day.
It's great that you grab the opportunity to make this into a racially charged argument by the way, how very american of you. Ah, this isn't an argument about history - it's just me defending my whiteness against all the poor other-coloured people my ancestors have oppressed!
I have no problem distancing myself from practices of the past: yes, colonialism wasn't all that fantastic, racist hierarchies weren't a step forward. Though I'm not about to label all those who lived in history and who were part of those events as criminals, bigots, opportunists and hypocrits, as the author gladly does. That's dogmatic, that's blind, that's precisely un-empathetic and prevents us from actually understanding history as it was, more importantly WHY it was. It may even cloud our judgment of the present. It's the sort of moral pompousness that has no place in any serious discussion of the past.
It's great that you grab the opportunity to make this into a racially charged argument by the way, how very american of you. Ah, this isn't an argument about history - it's just me defending my whiteness against all the poor other-coloured people my ancestors have oppressed!
I have no problem distancing myself from practices of the past: yes, colonialism wasn't all that fantastic, racist hierarchies weren't a step forward. Though I'm not about to label all those who lived in history and who were part of those events as criminals, bigots, opportunists and hypocrits, as the author gladly does. That's dogmatic, that's blind, that's precisely un-empathetic and prevents us from actually understanding history as it was, more importantly WHY it was. It may even cloud our judgment of the present. It's the sort of moral pompousness that has no place in any serious discussion of the past.
Last edited by Larssen (2021-04-02 10:01:26)
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You know not everyone had the ability to read and write in the past?
Make your point.
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You are claiming to know how people generally perceived right and wrong based off of the writings of a tiny group of people.
You might as well throw out the entire historical record as untrustworthy. Just what. There was plenty of writing going on in the middle ages, renaissance, enlightenment or even roman times.
Morality is innate - experiments with monkeys have shown that.
Juadism has had a morality for 4,000 years - Do right by your fellow jews
Christianity has had a morality for 2,000 years - Do right by everyone
What 'right' is is fairly static, there's not much doubt about it.
Various groups oscillate between 'Do right by everyone' and 'Do right by your owngroup', its when group A comes up against group B that trouble starts, worse when group B is allowed to infiltrate group A
An interesting point is that its relatively recently, the last few hundred years, that international behaviour has been codified, prior to WW2 crimes against humanity didn't exist making the Nuremberg trials problematic for example.
Now we have China and Russia as group B and most of the rest of the world as group A, if they aren't forced to change or beaten down its going to be trouble for all of us.
Juadism has had a morality for 4,000 years - Do right by your fellow jews
Christianity has had a morality for 2,000 years - Do right by everyone
What 'right' is is fairly static, there's not much doubt about it.
Various groups oscillate between 'Do right by everyone' and 'Do right by your owngroup', its when group A comes up against group B that trouble starts, worse when group B is allowed to infiltrate group A
An interesting point is that its relatively recently, the last few hundred years, that international behaviour has been codified, prior to WW2 crimes against humanity didn't exist making the Nuremberg trials problematic for example.
Now we have China and Russia as group B and most of the rest of the world as group A, if they aren't forced to change or beaten down its going to be trouble for all of us.
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-04-02 22:14:07)
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yes, christians, that group who have ‘done right by everyone’ for 2,000 years.
maybe the first churches in anatolia and the middle-east lived according to the gospels only. but the church has dealt with worldly power, including conquest and subjugation, for over a thousand years. jews didn’t do that.
maybe the first churches in anatolia and the middle-east lived according to the gospels only. but the church has dealt with worldly power, including conquest and subjugation, for over a thousand years. jews didn’t do that.
LMAO The jews have slaughtered there way into the Levant twice now, and there's a whole lot of slaughtering and subjugating still to come.
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the church literally extended itself over the globe. of course jews aren’t blameless but to say their morality is ‘look after your own’ and christians is to ‘look after everybody’ is laughably naive.
LOL OK
Pretty funny to be carrying a tablet with "Thou shalt not kill" engraved on it in the vanguard of your army as a token of divine right to slaughter all before you.
Pretty funny to be carrying a tablet with "Thou shalt not kill" engraved on it in the vanguard of your army as a token of divine right to slaughter all before you.
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How the fuck do you juxtapose judaism as a warlike religion, against 'peaceful' christianity with stuff like, oh I don't know, the CRUSADES, the inquisition, the persecution of eastern european pagans, the destruction of native cultures everywhere by zealous missionaries?
How did you ever get through secondary school
How did you ever get through secondary school
dilbert is fucking retarded.
let’s not forget that most of european colonialism and imperialism was ‘christian’ in ethos too.
so kind and generous.
https://twitter.com/africa_archives/sta … 49220?s=21
let’s not forget that most of european colonialism and imperialism was ‘christian’ in ethos too.
so kind and generous.
https://twitter.com/africa_archives/sta … 49220?s=21