Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
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"As early as the year 1000, for example, Huron, Neutral, Petun and Iroquois villages were increasingly fortified by a timber palisade that could be nearly 10 metres in height, sometimes villages built a second or even third ring to protect them against attacks by enemy nations."
I was going to say. First Nations did not have some amazing peaceful utopia. They killed each other for resources too.
Almost as if they were human, doing human things
Damn humans. They ruined humanity!
You humans sure are a contentious people
There’s no way humans didn’t have human problems. This seems like an extension of the “good ol’ days” that views the past with rose tinted glasses. There absolutely would have been theft, murder, laziness, have-nots…whatever. People are people.
Ninja edit: found this.
Banishment, execution, murder, and theft among other things were absolutely a thing.
I would go so far as to say this is some classic “noble savage” bullshit that only serves to dehumanize people.
Yeah, in a big way. The European colonists committing genocide on the Native Americans does not have to have the Native Americans as inhuman angels to be a massive atrocity and grievous wrong, and trying to take the position that the Native American societies were is nothing more than a xenophilic form of cultural conservatism and chauvinism.
Native American peoples were people, like any other, with human problems common to any society, unlike what this quote implies. They do not have a 'magic' history for outsiders to aspire to become 'as good as', they do not have the secrets to the elimination of the dastardly social ills of 'civilization'. They're people. They're people who deserved better than the atrocious treatment that they got, but the 'Noble Savage' stereotype is no more humanizing or acceptable than the 'Ecological Indian' stereotype.
It kind of goes both ways. Just because "people are people" doesn't mean any comparison of the savagery of two cultures is suddenly invalid. Native Americans had war, rape, disease etc. but then they got colonized by one of the most brutal, violent cultures in the world at the time.
If I lived with a spouse and kids in the suburbs and a murderer came in and killed my family. It would be pretty silly for my friend to say "stop trying to paint your old life as perfect. You and your wife were people. You fought often and you were hiding a gambling addiction. I swear this "noble domestic bliss" stuff is really not helping your cause."
but then they got colonized by one of the most brutal, violent cultures in the world at the time.
The past is filled with cultures which commit genocide, mass mutilations, torture, systemic rape, etc. The Europeans are only notable because they had unusual success, because that success came at the same time as philosophical development which began to make that treatment towards other Europeans taboo, and because that success eventually was leveraged into a system of strict hereditary privilege we're still dealing with today.
The Europeans were not more torture-happy than the Natchez, not more murderous than the Aztecs, not more mutilatory than the Sioux.
What the Europeans were was hypocrites. At a time when humanist notions of basic dignity and universal brotherhood were being preached by scholars and theologians, European soldiers were murdering and enslaving Mesoamerican peoples en masse. In an era when tolerance was quickly becoming the watchword of the day, European priests burned ancient texts in the Americas for the suspicion of pagan notions. In an era when 'all men are created equal', American colonists denied not only the right of the Native American tribes to be equal polities, but even denied them the ability to be equal citizens.
It's less jarring when a culture which believes that incorrect ritualism will doom the universe murders people for religious reasons, or when a culture admits that it finds the murder of women and children to be an honorable deed to slay civilians, or that a chauvinistic culture extols itself above all inferiors; compared to one that preaches one value and acts according to another entirely. Not even in a selfish manner, but in a manner suggesting a total reversal of their claimed principles.
When American colonists murdered American tribes from the youngest to the oldest, saying 'nits make lice', that was not some exceptional deed that had never happened before in the history of the world; a scant few generations ago Europeans were doing just that to one another; American tribes had done the same to each other since times immemorial; same with every other suitably wide collection of cultures on the planet. The difference was that we were supposedly 'civilized' enough to recognize the basic dignity of one color of our fellow man, but none of the others.
THAT is what makes European colonialism repulsive beyond the 'normal' passage of history, the butchering of Saxons by Franks, or of Pawnee by Sioux, or of Chinese by Mongols. We claimed to know better - we demonstrated an understanding of the values that should have prevented such action - we demonstrated the ability to restrain ourselves in dealings with fierce (European) foes - and yet we proceeded to indulge in the worst impulses of man that we claimed we had left behind anyway. We were not ignorant, we were not running on fundamentally different values that made murder somehow okay like Bronze Age fanatics - we made a deliberate choice to exclude subsections of our fellow man from the 'enlightened' values we were redefining our civilizations by.
They were not medieval peasants who knew no higher word than their lord's. They were not Aztec warriors brought up in a culture of human sacrifice and flower wars. They were men who were raised reading the works of the humanist enlightenment, whose norms should have excluded many of the actions they took - but when they saw a human being of a different color than them, they turned every last goddamn one of those norms on its head like they were the Hebrews bashing in the skulls of gentile infants in the Bronze Age.
Were there not many different tribes? It stands to reason that there could well have been a range of different lifestyles too. Including that described above.
My point being that other recorded experiences with native americans do not invalidate this rosy reminiscence.
It is in no way a workable solution to the modern maladies of this fractious over-crowded planet but it does help to have a range of idealised utopias to draw from in our discussions of how to proceed.
My point being that other recorded experiences with native americans do not invalidate this rosy reminiscence.
I'd actually point to the excepts from Columbus's own journals, catalogued in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" to identify a number of native tribes he initially encountered who were practically childlike in their innocence.
The Caribbean island peoples were documented in sharp contrast to more imperial mainlanders as extraordinarily passive, initially quite friendly, and devoid of the more rigid hierarchies and institutions common in those more technologically advanced societies.
The only bit that doesn't really fit is the horses, which hadn't arrived from Europe yet
Interesting stuff. I think remember hearing about that in the Behindthebastards episode on Columbus.
The spanish had a similar native experience during an unplanned visit to Ireland in 1517. While there were towns and villages in Ireland at the time, there was still a significant population of wild Irish.
They spend an marked amount of time talking about the free range boobs that were on show.
Good thing we've sacrificed that relative utopia to solve all those problems, eh?
Kinda weird that everyone had a horse. Considering there where no horses in the Americas before colonialism.
This feels very "noble savage."
You think so?
I read it as a native american highlighting good points of an already functioning model of civilisation before white men brought them, figuratively and literally, all the misery and disease of their own
Imagine being able to successfully convince yourself that the existence of defences, and conflict, between neighbouring indigenous nations, is equivalent, to the point of nullifying, sailing around the globe genociding and enslaving its population as you go, for profit.
White supremacy is a hell of a drug.
Omg, I recently started playing an retired MMO on some emulated servers and this was totally the vibe. With no economy or large influx of new players all your old stuff just piles up and you keep it, hoping someone will someday show up who can use it. Things had value but not in the sense you could even start an economy. For me, I loved getting end game weapons, which are an absolute grind, then gifting them. I had a few but it was always more satisfying to give them away.
I was also told the most profound thing while playing. Someone said, "you're hogging yourself." Since I really like playing solo. I still haven't reconciled it. Like I don't want to hog myself but at the same time it doesn't seem like others want to play with me. I try to be inviting but I guess the only thing I don't really do is make myself vulnerable. Like truly vulnerable. I'm scared to though.
This perpetuates an inaccurate stereotype, and separately, it makes no sense. Downvoted.
The number of people that want to quote native Americans and talk about how native Americans were screwed over by the white man and how terrible it is all the things that have been done to them divided by the people in that group who are willing to give up their property and their lives and move back to their ancestral homes is the same as any number divided by 0.
And I'm saying this as a Lakota man.
You don't want to actually do anything about the problem with native americans.
You just want to feel Superior to other people.
But don't get off of your high horse because I'm sure the fall will kill you.
A number divided by zero equals infinity.
Except if it's zero then (so 0/0) it is either undefined or any number IIRC.
No. The standard field (that is, a ring where both operations are abelian groups) on the complex numbers doesn't have a multiplicative inverse of 0; rings can't have a multiplicative inverse for the additive identity. You can create an algebra with a ring as a sub-algebra with such, but it will no longer be a ring. My preferred method is to impose such an algebra on the one-point compactification of the Complex Numbers, where the single added point is denoted as "Ω".
I started this project when I was 12, and when I could show that the results were self-consistent this was what I had settled on:
let z be a complex number that is not otherwise specified by the following equations. Note: the complex numbers contain the Real numbers, and so the following equations apply to the them as well.
0Ω=Ω0=1
z+Ω=Ω+z=zΩ=Ωz=Ω=ΩΩ
Ω-Ω=0. Ω-Ω=Ω+(-Ω)=Ω+(-1Ω)=Ω+Ω=0
The algebra described above is not associative. That is to say, (AB)C does not always equal A(BC).
If you plot out any number divided by x, as x approaches 0 the answer goes towards Infinity, yes.
When it reaches zero it ceases to be a number.
Every number divided by 0 is "undefined", and it is not undefined because we can't describe it, it is undefined because it does not exist, because you cannot divide things by 0.
Funny that you posted this in a dbzer0.com community (dbzer0 = device by zero).
First off it is incredible people are using the downvote button as an "I disagree" button even here. Vile fucking people.
Most efficient way to solve the issue of reparations to descendants of slaves and indians is poverty alleviation programs and land reform, they are disproportionately affected by these things. No more rich men owning forests, even if they do it through "conservation" nonprofits. No more wealth hoarding by white americans who inherited expensive housing from the era of redlining.
Also minority groups need special political representation in a democracy otherwise it is just wolves voting to have the sheep for dinner.
This is what they fight tooth and nail because they know who would win from evening the scales.
White political power is based on hoarding property, money, gerrymandering and preventing campaign finance reform.
Are you sure about that? Because I'm pretty much for decolonisation
You can start by getting a passport and looking into emigrating away from the United States.
Edit: well, I guess people don't like it when I'm flippant, and do like it when db0 condescends to a minority. Good show.
I'm not American and that's not what decolonisation means anyway
Then what the fuck are you doing talking about American colonialism when it doesn't fucking affect you?
You are very fucking brave taking a stance that other people should do something you yourself are incapable of doing.
I'm capable of caring for things other than my immediate self interest
I don't know if you're being obtuse or if you're just not getting it.
My statement was that the people who use native American sayings to make themselves feel Superior to other people are fundamentally incapable of putting their money where their mouth is.
You're saying "I'm all for other people putting their money where my mouth is" as if that somehow accomplishes anything or refutes my point.
You don't seem to understand how stupid/pointless/arrogant/self-serving that is.
I didn't try to make myself superior. I just quoted a Native American. All the rest is your interpretation.
My OpInIoN mAtTeRs MoRe CaUsE iM a lAkOtA mAn.
This is a logical fallacy called "ad hominem", you're attempting to tear me down as a human being rather than address the salient parts of my argument, and that's because you don't actually have a good answer to my argument so you're just being a dick head.
In this case, me being a native American indicates at least some small portion of the native American viewpoint on a topic that was brought up about native Americans.
Had it not been relevant I would not have mentioned it.
You don’t seem to understand how stupid/pointless/arrogant/self-serving that is.
ad hominem you say.