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  1. - Top - End - #181
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    AMFV, it's impossible to take seriously the idea that the south fought for democracy because the institution of slavery is inherently anti-democratic. Fighting to preserve slavery is a direct attack on democracy, and it doesn't matter how many people who stand to benefit from slavery agreed that it was a good idea. You know who weren't asked in your "the majority wanted slavery so how could it not be democratic" example? The slaves.

    Get out of here with that garbage.
    Last edited by SaintRidley; 2017-09-13 at 03:04 PM.
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    No author should have to take the time to say, "This little girl ISN'T evil, folks!" in order for the reader to understand that. It should be assumed that no first graders are irredeemably Evil unless the text tells you they are.

  2. - Top - End - #182
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by SaintRidley View Post
    AMFV, it's impossible to take seriously the idea that the south fought for democracy because the institution of slavery is inherently anti-democratic. Fighting to preserve slavery is a direct attack on democracy, and it doesn't matter how many people who stand to benefit from slavery agreed that it was a good idea. You know who weren't asked in your "the majority wanted slavery so how could it not be democratic" example? The slaves.

    Get out of here with that garbage.
    You'll note that is not what I was arguing or even a close paraphrase. I was saying that there is more complexity to it than to simply say that South was "against democracy" or "anti-democratic" as I recall the exact words were. I'm not for Slavery, I wouldn't have likely been for slavery at the time. But I'm not for condemning somebody for fighting on behalf of their state because their state was for slavery. I'm certainly not suggesting that somebody who did is "anti-democratic" because it's too complex to boil down to that simple an idea.

    Southerners were not monsters, they were soldiers. And Soldier's valor deserves to be remembered even when they were fighting a war for the wrong reasons. I want my ancestor's valor remembered even when they did not fight for the right reasons, so I can understand fundamentally how somebody from the South would feel the same.
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  3. - Top - End - #183
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by AMFV View Post
    Southerners were not monsters, they were soldiers. And Soldier's valor deserves to be remembered even when they were fighting a war for the wrong reasons. I want my ancestor's valor remembered even when they did not fight for the right reasons, so I can understand fundamentally how somebody from the South would feel the same.
    I accept and respect that. Soldiers a lot of times fight for other reasons than whatever garbage is spewing out of politicians' mouths -- and if anyone out there is going to die for a politician's promise, I would say they are almost certainly very misguided.

    People fight for all kinds of reasons, some good and some not. But some fight because they want to protect their families from war's desolation -- to go out on the trenches so their families can live in peace at home. As I climb into my forties, that reasoning becomes more and more important.

    RE Lee was one such man. He fought for Virginia because, to him, his state was an extended family to be protected from any attacker, regardless of cause.

    As I said, I accept and respect that. And I respect your ancestors, who perhaps fought in part to protect their homes.

    Nonetheless ... I don't believe that is the reason all those statues went up. It's part of the long struggle for historical memory in the US, and since those statues were put up for such a reason I believe they can come right back down, and better ones put in their place.

    Respectfully,

    Brian P.
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  4. - Top - End - #184
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Remembering the valor of the common Southern soldier? Perhaps. Here's a draft of the plaque.

    Here lie common soldiers of the Confederacy.
    Conscripted to fight for an unjust cause in an unjust war,
    Still they fought with valor for their brothers in arms,
    For love of family and home.

    The tragedy is not that they lost, but that their valor and their love were appropriated to serve such a terrible end. (I am, however, open to objections concerning my characterization of what common soldiers of the Confederacy fought for. 1/4 of Confederate households owned slaves.)

    As for the people who did the conscripting; who authored the war; who stood to benefit from industrialized human misery; who resolved the contradiction between our nation's magnificent ideals and contemptible practices by decisively rejecting the principle that all men are created equal...Let them gather cobwebs in forgotten corners of obscure museums. They must be remembered, but they do not deserve a prominent, public place of honor in our memory.
    Last edited by Lethologica; 2017-09-13 at 04:00 PM.

  5. - Top - End - #185
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by AMFV View Post
    Are you drawing conclusions about what a majority of people in the South believe based on the actions of 150 people?
    No, I kind of assume that racism is still an ongoing problem in general. Here's a random example. Statistics.

    Quote Originally Posted by AMFV View Post
    Yes, if you are saying that that is the reason they were put up then I'd like money where your mouth, cause it's all mouth and no money right now. You're making a lot of suppositions based on dates. Isn't possible that the same sentiment of Southern Pride that gave rise to the statues fed into other things. In which case you're assuming the racism is causal, rather than the racism is a reflection of a deeper cause, which is likely the case. So you'd need some proof yes, if you are going to make those allegations.
    Versus what? Your completely unsourced claims that everything here is totally innocent? That's not value neutral. It's more grandiose than mine. To hear you tell it, the fact that a nation was formed, fought and died for slavery, and then decades later erected figures celebrating men (some of whose only claim to fame was fighting for this cause) managed to somehow be magically removed from all that?

    I'm not entirely sure that's true. I don't think that you can find solid proof of that allegation.
    The lost cause of the South has no proof?

    I'm not sure that your sources are entirely unbiased on that subject. I can't go into greater detail, but there's not a lot of facts in those allegations either.
    Ah huh. So by your historiographical logic, all the lynchings that occurred during Jim Crow were really to protect White Women's virtue? Because that's what the executioners told themselves and others.

    1890 to 1920 is a LARGE span of time, and again, you're assuming a causal relationship where there is not strong evidence (primary sources) that such exists.
    No it's not. Historical trend mapping takes into account far greater spans of time.

    Well the South certainly thought it was substantial enough to secede over, so that's something, so at least at the time people did not believe that it was poppycock.
    By that rational any action approved by any crowd of people is...something.

    I don't think that you're going to find argument that the South was in the wrong, but arguing that only those who fought on the side of the North were in the right, isn't really accurate, Soldiers, even generals, are not responsible for their nation, it's the other way around.
    This is soft apologism. You're trying to portray a cause that fought to expand slavery to United States' territories as somehow not worthy of being defeated. That in itself sounds pretty morally praiseworthy. And then had it's opponent eventually take up the cause of emancipation in the middle of the war. Destroying the Confederacy was a moral end unto it's self. Preserving the great United States being selfishly convenient to the Union doesn't obviate that. We are all accountable for our actions.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lethologica View Post
    The tragedy is not that they lost, but that their valor and their love were appropriated to serve such a terrible end. (I am, however, open to objections concerning my characterization of what common soldiers of the Confederacy fought for. 1/4 of Confederate households owned slaves.)

    As for the people who did the conscripting; who authored the war; who resolved the contradiction between our nation's magnificent ideals and contemptible practices by decisively rejecting the principle that all men are created equal...Let them gather cobwebs in forgotten corners of obscure museums. They must be remembered, but they do not deserve a prominent, public place of honor in our memory.
    Indeed. The other complicating narrative is that while not every Household owned slaves, a majority certainly wished to. Furthermore it was useful to White elites to provide impoverished whites with someone they could look down on to maintain the economic inequality of the era. That's societal classicism 101. Southern identity is not some separate rational for why the statues went up, as AMFV would have it. Racial inequality was intractably linked to Southern Identity of the age. And it didn't magically disentangle itself after the war ended.

  6. - Top - End - #186
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by Legato Endless View Post
    Indeed. The other complicating narrative is that while not every Household owned slaves, a majority certainly wished to. Furthermore it was useful to White elites to provide impoverished whites with someone they could look down on to maintain the economic inequality of the era. That's societal classicism 101. Southern identity is not some separate rational for why the statues went up, as AMFV would have it. Racial inequality was intractably linked to Southern Identity of the age. And it didn't magically disentangle itself after the war ended.
    It definitely wasn't just Southern identity at that time. Racial inequality was everywhere (and is, to some extent). However, the South, and especially the Deep South, had the bug a lot worse.

  7. - Top - End - #187
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    In the interest of answering the conspiracy theorist OP's question, I thought immediately of Philip Short's biography of Pol Pot and its reference to the cpap, collections of traditional sayings taught to Cambodian children:

    The cpap, at least in the form in which Sâr [the future Pol Pot] would have learnt them, had another particularity. They portrayed the Khmers [Cambodians] as honest and sincere but "foolish and ignorant", constantly being duped by their smarter Chinese and Vietnamese neighbours:

    Your eyes are open and can see,
    But see only the surface of things
    Learn arithmetic with all your energy
    Lest the Chinese and Vietnamese cheat you
    The Khmers are lacking in judgement
    They eat without giving thought for what is proper and right,
    Each season they borrow from the Chinese,
    And the Chinese gain control of the inheritance their parents have bequeathed.
    (To clarify, I don't believe the Chinese and Vietnamese are evil! But from a historic Cambodian point of view they are definitely the designated villains.)
    There are bad times just around the corner,
    There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky, tiddley-pom!

  8. - Top - End - #188
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Meanwhile, answering the OP: Grave of the Fireflies . 'Nuff said!

    Respectfully,

    Brian P.
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  9. - Top - End - #189
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lethologica View Post
    It definitely wasn't just Southern identity at that time. Racial inequality was everywhere (and is, to some extent). However, the South, and especially the Deep South, had the bug a lot worse.
    I never said it was exclusive? But the South's economic apparatus and wealth being explicitly tied to slavery, among other things, did create cultural divergences. That's why Northern factory workers could support abolition on pure economic incentives even if they didn't have egalitarian feelings towards African Americans.

  10. - Top - End - #190
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Well I'm not from the USA but unfortunately I have to be side with AMFV on this one

    It makes no sense to tear down monuments, they are part of history, if anything they are a reminder of what NOT to be you can't just pretend terrible things didn't happened, they did happened and we evolved past that.

    Think of Taj Mahal, a splendorous castle whose creator allegedly removed the hands of the masons so they couldn't create such perfection again.

    Or the Egyptian pyramids build by slaves, many who died in the process.

    Should those monuments be taken down too?

    Just because something is a symbol doesn’t mean it can't change it's meaning, it's part of America history and you can't simply close your eyes and pretend it didn't happened.

    And save some really messed up people, people are just that... People, they make mistakes, sometimes because of the social structure of their time but they are not evil monsters or demons, they loved, they had kids, they had a Mom and dreamed of things to come just like us, Genghis khan loved his wife and George Washington had some really messed up ideas about women, because they were people and we can't forget that.

    For those who like to think of people as heroes or demons I recommend a big dose of Liev Tolstói literature and Hannah Arendt philosophy.
    Last edited by S@tanicoaldo; 2017-09-13 at 04:59 PM.
    I'm not a native english speaker and I'm dyslexic(that doesn't mean I have low IQ quite the opposite actually it means I make a lot of typos).

    So I beg for forgiveness, patience and comprehension.

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    It's like somewhere along the way, "freedom of speech" became "all negative response is censorship".
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  11. - Top - End - #191
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by AMFV View Post
    Southerners were not monsters, they were soldiers. And Soldier's valor deserves to be remembered even when they were fighting a war for the wrong reasons. I want my ancestor's valor remembered even when they did not fight for the right reasons, so I can understand fundamentally how somebody from the South would feel the same.
    I can see this but even accepting this there's still bias. The south's ideology was bad enough that desertion among its soldiers would be at least as admirable as valor, and deserves equal celebration and commemoration.

    Fun story, during WWII my grandfather was conscripted into one of the axis armies and his squad went out of their way to surrender to the allies without even having been first engaged in combat. That's admirable. That deserves a statue.

    Quote Originally Posted by S@tanicoaldo View Post
    Or the Egyptian pyramids build by slaves, many who died in the process.
    IIRC the pyramids were actually mostly built by a mix of professional builders and sycophants wishing to suck up the the royal family, slaves were used but only when they could not find enough of these first two groups
    Last edited by Bohandas; 2017-09-13 at 05:13 PM.
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  12. - Top - End - #192
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    IIRC the pyramids were actually mostly built by a mix of professional builders and sycophants wishing to suck up the the royal family, slaves were used but only when they could not find enough of these first two groups
    Shhhhh... Your facts are not welcomed in my emotional appeal comment.
    I'm not a native english speaker and I'm dyslexic(that doesn't mean I have low IQ quite the opposite actually it means I make a lot of typos).

    So I beg for forgiveness, patience and comprehension.

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    It's like somewhere along the way, "freedom of speech" became "all negative response is censorship".
    Quote Originally Posted by 2D8HP View Post
    "Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking), and your humility is stunning"

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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    IIRC the pyramids were actually mostly built by a mix of professional builders and sycophants wishing to suck up the the royal family, slaves were used but only when they could not find enough of these first two groups
    Isn't all slavery everywhere basically the result of someone not being able to find enough non-slave labourers?
    There are bad times just around the corner,
    There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky, tiddley-pom!

  14. - Top - End - #194
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    don;t underestimate the role of cheapness and greed

    edit:
    also power tripping and megalomania
    Last edited by Bohandas; 2017-09-13 at 05:25 PM.
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by 2D8HP View Post
    Well then, I invite you to read a book from 1951:
    I already have a copy, but, have yet to read it. I'll bump it up my list, thanks.

  16. - Top - End - #196

    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by georgie_leech View Post
    Now see, I look at these as a bit of a misleading idea. The native central americans didn't seek out conflict with the spanish conquistadors, but Cortez invaded and pillaged regardless. The native North Americans didn't fail to try and be healthy, the plagues the Europeans brought were far more destructive than their medicines could cope with. And a book you've previously held up as an example of enduring culture details a flood that no amount of preparation could save any civilization; indeed, that was sort of the point of said flood.

    Perhaps it's just a mishmash of definitions, but it seems to me these are less principles and more "ideas that work." In contrast to ideas that don't work. Early USA society had the "principle" of Manifest Destiny. Imperial Britain believed in Mercantilism and the extraction of value from colonies. The ancient Assyrians believed they had a divine impetus to war and conquer; they had to do so regardless of if it was "right." And since Godwin's law has already been invoked, Nazi Germany was partly founded on the idea of the Übermensch, a term from Nietzsche's philosophy.

    So forgive me if this seems less like insight into the rise and fall of cilizations, and more like you disagreeing with what society is like and your attempts at moralizing it. I have no qualms about the former. Heck, I think that society has problems too. But I don't need to act like my cynicism is cosmically justified, and neither do you. You can argue we need to do more to disaster-prep without calling on noetic planes and mythic archetypes for justification.
    No, I can't. If the planet isn't viewed as a noösphere, how can efforts be successfully orchestrated to develop it as a planet rather than a higgledy-piggledy collection of countries and geographies? Let's not get into the politics here, but just the engineering aspect: if the NAWAPA were to be successfully created, it would demand coöperation among Canada, the US, and Mexico. They would have to think in terms that are effectively identical to the noösphere, in their germane region. So, their economies would in a sense merge, collaborating in this geoengineering effort. The whole world is waiting to be developed like that, but it can't and it won't unless people think, at least implicitly, in terms of the idea of the noösphere.

    As for innoculation, if that isn't a medical principle then what is? How about sterilisation? "Ideas that work" indeed, ideas that accord with the way the world really works, and therefore can be adopted and exploited to achieve the desired change.

  17. - Top - End - #197
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Hey Donna, it doesn't matter how evolved and advanced we get we will always find something to be unhappy about.

    Last edited by S@tanicoaldo; 2017-09-13 at 06:02 PM.
    I'm not a native english speaker and I'm dyslexic(that doesn't mean I have low IQ quite the opposite actually it means I make a lot of typos).

    So I beg for forgiveness, patience and comprehension.

    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    It's like somewhere along the way, "freedom of speech" became "all negative response is censorship".
    Quote Originally Posted by 2D8HP View Post
    "Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking), and your humility is stunning"

  18. - Top - End - #198
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by S@tanicoaldo View Post
    Well I'm not from the USA but unfortunately I have to be side with AMFV on this one

    It makes no sense to tear down monuments, they are part of history, if anything they are a reminder of what NOT to be you can't just pretend terrible things didn't happened, they did happened and we evolved past that.

    Think of Taj Mahal, a splendorous castle whose creator allegedly removed the hands of the masons so they couldn't create such perfection again.

    Or the Egyptian pyramids build by slaves, many who died in the process.
    You're listing unequaled architectural marvels here, a more accurate equivalent would be paint by numbers paintings made in great abundance. Looking at the statues from a purely artistic perspective and staying out of politics, I'll just say that not everything is worth preservation, public art benefits from changing every so often, and these are exactly the sort of thoroughly mundane works that routinely get replaced with no commentary.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    America needs to get over what doesn't represent it anymore and pull that down, just like they did it with the Statue of George III.
    "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door."

    I want more Strong female characters.

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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by Donnadogsoth View Post
    No, I can't. If the planet isn't viewed as a noösphere, how can efforts be successfully orchestrated to develop it as a planet rather than a higgledy-piggledy collection of countries and geographies? Let's not get into the politics here, but just the engineering aspect: if the NAWAPA were to be successfully created, it would demand coöperation among Canada, the US, and Mexico. They would have to think in terms that are effectively identical to the noösphere, in their germane region. So, their economies would in a sense merge, collaborating in this geoengineering effort. The whole world is waiting to be developed like that, but it can't and it won't unless people think, at least implicitly, in terms of the idea of the noösphere.

    As for innoculation, if that isn't a medical principle then what is? How about sterilisation? "Ideas that work" indeed, ideas that accord with the way the world really works, and therefore can be adopted and exploited to achieve the desired change.
    Frankly, I'm not sure "convince people that everyone is the same thing on a mytical thought plane underlying reality so we should work together" is a more achievable goal than "convince people to work together."
    Quote Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant View Post
    We should try to make that a thing; I think it might help civility. Hey, GitP, let's try to make this a thing: when you're arguing optimization strategies, RAW-logic, and similar such things that you'd never actually use in a game, tag your post [THEORETICAL] and/or use green text

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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    I never had the feeling of the 90's.
    It was a pretty **** time for me.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hazyshade View Post
    Isn't all slavery everywhere basically the result of someone not being able to find enough non-slave labourers?
    Actually it's closer to being the other way around. When you have surplus of people via conquest, immigration or other means, you can afford to solve problems by throwing loads of people at them. When you do not have surplus of people, suddenly you need to be much more carefull about managing your human resources.
    "It's the fate of all things under the sky,
    to grow old and wither and die."

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    Quote Originally Posted by AMFV View Post
    The only people who I've met who were afraid of robot takeover have never worked with robots. I have worked with factory robots, they suck, they need constant human supervision. They need to repaired, sometimes every single shift if you're running them a lot. They need to be installed, they typically need an operator there to hit the button the instant something goes wrong.
    I've never worked with robots and I was kinda scared by the fact that you could have crazy medical robots taking over and performing random operations on humans. Especially since there exists robot-assisted vaginoplasty. Penile inversions for everyone!
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    You're listing unequaled architectural marvels here
    Pretty sure there's replicas of both in Vegas
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    Pretty sure there's replicas of both in Vegas
    There's cheap imitations.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

    I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that.
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by Donnadogsoth View Post
    No, I can't. If the planet isn't viewed as a noösphere, how can efforts be successfully orchestrated to develop it as a planet rather than a higgledy-piggledy collection of countries and geographies? Let's not get into the politics here, but just the engineering aspect: if the NAWAPA were to be successfully created, it would demand coöperation among Canada, the US, and Mexico. They would have to think in terms that are effectively identical to the noösphere, in their germane region. So, their economies would in a sense merge, collaborating in this geoengineering effort. The whole world is waiting to be developed like that, but it can't and it won't unless people think, at least implicitly, in terms of the idea of the noösphere.
    Do you get any of your news from non-LaRouche sources? Or have you transcended the mainstream media, like Donald Trump has?

    Anyway, this is exactly what I mean by overfitting the curve. The idea of the noosphere is DE-scriptive. You can analyse events post hoc and detect the idea of the noosphere at work, if you really want to, but it contributes nothing to our understanding of the future. How is implicitly thinking of the noosphere distinguishable from the unremarkable daily workings of the universe? Countries sometimes cooperate with each other. Look at the Montreal Protocol. Did the Montreal Protocol come about because people grasped the idea of the noosphere? Was the noosphere the function that generated the Montreal Protocol as a point on the graph? No. The architects of the Montreal Protocol would look blankly at you if you started talking about the noosphere to them. So drawing a line labelled "noetics" through that point on the graph is a pointless exercise, because that line is going to diverge from reality as soon as you try extending it into the future.


    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    Actually it's closer to being the other way around. When you have surplus of people via conquest, immigration or other means, you can afford to solve problems by throwing loads of people at them. When you do not have surplus of people, suddenly you need to be much more carefull about managing your human resources.
    When you say "you" can afford to do X or Y: who is this "you"? Are you talking about a planned economy, or is this an aggregate "problem-solving" that emerges out of millions of people acting in rational ways? When unemployment goes up in Western countries, there doesn't seem to be a problem-solving agent, a national HR department, that takes those people and throws them at a problem. There are problems, and there are unemployed people, but they don't necessarily find each other. So there has to be another term in the equation if you want to explain slavery from the supply side.
    Last edited by Hazyshade; 2017-09-14 at 05:03 AM.
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by S@tanicoaldo View Post
    Think of Taj Mahal, a splendorous castle whose creator allegedly removed the hands of the masons so they couldn't create such perfection again.

    Or the Egyptian pyramids build by slaves, many who died in the process.


    Actually, the pyramids were built mostly by farmers during the off season, cooperating with professional stonemasons, and the Taj Mahal thing is generally regarded as a myth.
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    Yeah. Half the purpose of the Egyptian monuments was to occupy farmers during flood and growth seasons when field work couldn't be done. The workers were also reasonably well paid and got reasonably good food.
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    BTW, having many different jobs and diversifying wasn't unusual for farmers in the antiquity. A Roman farmer with a little plot of land would tend to his own vegetable and fruit garden, and maybe have a small cereal field, but he wouldn't be able to survive on those alone. So he would occasionally work in the mines, and would surely help out the large landowners during harvest seasons. This way he was paid in money, with which he could buy ready-made clothes, pottery, and food.
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    Default Re: Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

    Quote Originally Posted by Donnadogsoth View Post
    No, I can't. If the planet isn't viewed as a noösphere, how can efforts be successfully orchestrated to develop it as a planet rather than a higgledy-piggledy collection of countries and geographies? Let's not get into the politics here, but just the engineering aspect: if the NAWAPA were to be successfully created, it would demand coöperation among Canada, the US, and Mexico. They would have to think in terms that are effectively identical to the noösphere, in their germane region. So, their economies would in a sense merge, collaborating in this geoengineering effort. The whole world is waiting to be developed like that, but it can't and it won't unless people think, at least implicitly, in terms of the idea of the noösphere.
    Wouldn't NAWAPA devestate the natural environment?
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