[Donna]

No they did not. There's limited evidence for a very primitive form of iron smelting but they didn't have anywhere near the level of technology Europe had.

Note that I said they had similar technologies, not identical technologies.

The success of European civilization is due to a complex mix of geography, history, culture, and population genetics.

My argument is essentially a geographical one btw.

What do you mean by "history", "culture" and "population genetics"? Please elaborate.

[Sivad]

they had similar technologies

in what way?

My argument is essentially a geographical one btw.

Well then it's just wrong. You can't explain the course of an entire civilization by geography alone. The world is far too complex for that kind of simplistic reductionism.

What do you mean by "history"

The interplay of agency and accident on all scales at all levels over a period of time.

"culture"

knowledge, beliefs, values, traditions, customs, practices, etc.

"population genetics"

genetic differences within and between population groups.

[Donna]

in what way?

For example, metal working in Indigenous Ecuadorian cultures similarly involved alloying metals like platinum with different materials to make various commodities, which is also how the Spanish made platinum malleable (also an example of technological intercourse).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurg ... an_America

The earliest known powder metallurgy, and earliest working of platinum in the world, was apparently developed by the cultures of Esmeraldas (NW Ecuador)at some point before the Spanish Conquest [14] Beginning with the La Tolita culture (600 bc - 200 ad), Ecuadorian cultures mastered the soldering of platinum grains through alloying with copper, gold and silver, producing platinum-surfaced rings, handles, ornaments and utensils. This technology was eventually noticed and adopted by the Spanish c.1730 (Donald McDonald, 'The Platinum of New Granada: Mining and Metallurgy in the Spanish Colonial Empire,' Platinum Metals Review, Vol. 3 (4), 1959, p. 140) https://www.technology.matthey.com/article/3/4/140-145/

Well then it's just wrong. You can't explain the course of an entire civilization by geography alone. The world is far too complex for that kind of simplistic reductionism.

I wouldn't say it's reductionist. It's just that material existence--geography, agriculture, production, etc.--is always going to be the predominant factor in any question about history since the economic and political organization of human societies revolve around their mode of material production.

The interplay of agency and accident on all scales at all levels over a period of time.

This does not describe history at all. In fact it sounds more like meta-history than anything else, which is also how fascism historicizes fictional racial struggles. The fact that you've divested human society from this sentence suggests you don't know what history is.

knowledge, beliefs, values, traditions, customs, practices, etc.

In what way did the "knowledge, beliefs, values, traditions, customs, practices, etc." help Europeans outpace the technological development of everyone else?

genetic differences within and between population groups.

In what way did the "genetic differences within and between population groups" help Europeans outpace the technological development of everyone else?

[Verv]

Why would God favor a destructive and unholy process that would ultimately lead to the global domination of Mammon? Because the world that exists today, the world that is beginning to eat itself and everyone in it, is the legacy of Europeans going on faraway adventures with guns and whips.

The world was always dominated by wealth and geopolitical concerns -- if the wealth and geopolitics is the crooked stick which draws the circle, why not?

Moreover, it is through wealth that a great deal of improvement to lives has occurred, and primitive peoples have been lifted out of eternal tribal darkness.

I'll be honest, I gush like a schoolgirl over royal families even though I'm a Marxist, especially the Windsors and the historical Romanovs. Their lives are fascinating and sympathetic. Even though Nicholas II was a tyrant and slaver who deserved what he got, I believe he was also a very pious Christian who was utterly devoted to his family, perhaps even to the point of compromising the monarchy in Russia. Sometimes I wonder if God gave Russia such a Tsar--materially situated in history as a killer of his own people, but spiritually a saint--to give history, to give the development of logos in the world, a bit of a push.

I enjoy these conversations, Verv. You should post more often, especially with coronavirus going around. Stay safe.

Those are wonderful thoughts, Donna, and thank you for the concern. I appreciate it.

I'll try to do that. I've sort of meant to but, you know, things change. Internet routines grow - and contract, and twist, and turn. I'm surprised a bit myself that I ever let this site get so distant from me.

[Sivad]

For example, metal working in Indigenous Ecuadorian cultures similarly involved alloying metals

So you mean they're similar in the broadest possible sense? You're saying that like a wood raft and a state of the art aircraft carrier are both boats so they're "similar technologies"?

I wouldn't say it's reductionist. It's just that material existence--geography, agriculture, production, etc.--is always going to be the predominant factor in any question about history since the economic and political organization of human societies revolve around their mode of material production.

Overarching theories of history like materialism are retarded. That's 19th century thinking. History is a nonlinear complex process with so many forces and factors at work that a single theory like that could never adequately capture it.

fascism

lol I think we're done here.

In what way did the "knowledge, beliefs, values, traditions, customs, practices, etc." help Europeans outpace the technological development of everyone else?



In what way did the "genetic differences within and between population groups" help Europeans outpace the technological development of everyone else?

Yeah, we're definitely done here.

[Donna]

So you mean they're similar in the broadest possible sense? You're saying that like a wood raft and a state of the art aircraft carrier are both boats so they're "similar technologies"?

You might as well be claiming here that Europe was always more technologically advanced than everyone else, which simply isn't the case. For most of its history it had a similar rate of growth to the rest of the world (0.1-0.2%), owing to relative similarities in technological development.

Overarching theories of history like materialism are retarded. That's 19th century thinking. History is a nonlinear complex process with so many forces and factors at work that a single theory like that could never adequately capture it.

It's not "materialism" (way to demonstrate your philosophical illiteracy), it's historical materialism, which is concerned with social production, not with creating a grand theory of everything.

:knife: Yeah, we're definitely done here.

Yea, because you're fucking trapped. You know you can't answer those questions without sounding like Richard Spencer. Way to get hoisted by your own petard.

[annatar1914]

@Donna ;

Why would God favor a destructive and unholy process that would ultimately lead to the global domination of Mammon? Because the world that exists today, the world that is beginning to eat itself and everyone in it, is the legacy of Europeans going on faraway adventures with guns and whips.

Indeed. What goes around, comes around.

I'll be honest, I gush like a schoolgirl over royal families even though I'm a Marxist, especially the Windsors and the historical Romanovs. Their lives are fascinating and sympathetic. Even though Nicholas II was a tyrant and slaver who deserved what he got, I believe he was also a very pious Christian who was utterly devoted to his family, perhaps even to the point of compromising the monarchy in Russia. Sometimes I wonder if God gave Russia such a Tsar--materially situated in history as a killer of his own people, but spiritually a saint--to give history, to give the development of logos in the world, a bit of a push.

I absolutely agree.

The Tsar did exactly that, paid in his person and that of his family the price of over 300 years of Romanov rule, in which he mercilessly continued the policy of persecution of the ''Old Believer'' Orthodox Christians of Russia (which had already cost the Ancient Orthodox some 15 million lives over the centuries, according to Alexander Solzhenitsyn and others) until 1905.

One irony of that is that his last guards that were personally loyal to him and who had to be ordered by him to leave him and his family to their fate with the provisional government were not official state church ''Nikonians'' but ''Old Believers'', Don Cossacks. And the official state church ''Holy Synod'', which was created to serve the aims of the Romanov Tsars and their ambitions, went over to the provisional government of Kerensky and rejected the Tsardom entirely.

And thus it was that the history of Russia from 1917 to today has been above all else a gradual rejection of the Western Civilization imposed by the Romanovs upon Russia, still incomplete but world-historically decisive as it unfolds.

I enjoy these conversations, Verv. You should post more often, especially with coronavirus going around. Stay safe.

I agree, Verv is one of my favorites, and I'm enjoying your posts as well.

[Sivad]

You might as well be claiming here that Europe was always more technologically advanced than everyone else, which simply isn't the case. For most of its history it had a similar rate of growth to the rest of the world (0.1-0.2%), owing to relative similarities in technological development.

Donna is actually trying to convince us that there was a technological parity between Europeans and aboriginals.


Most aboriginal people didn't even have the wheel.

It's not "materialism" (way to demonstrate your philosophical illiteracy), it's historical materialism

lol

Yea, because you're fucking trapped.

Donna, if you think you have ever trapped me on anything then you are even more delusional than I thought.

You know you can't answer those questions without sounding like Richard Spencer.

The answers to those questions aren't racist and I have no problem answering them. The reason I blew you off is that it's complicated and I don't have a burning need to debate it with a shrill ideologue who's operating on the exact same intellectual level as a Richard Spencer. If Richard Spencer asked me the same question about geography I would blow him off too because who in the fuck wants to debate that kind of idiocy. I got better things to do.

Way to get hoisted by your own petard.

Sure.

[skinster]

But it's probably a big blunder to believe Ben Norton has become a journalist/writer/filmmaker by using words wisely & correctly.

What part of his description of fascists who support the BJP were incorrect?

Norton is a butthole.

Ad-homs are no argument, despite your trying.

[Rich]

Overarching theories of history like materialism are retarded. That's 19th century thinking. History is a nonlinear complex process with so many forces and factors at work that a single theory like that could never adequately capture it.

Historical materialism at its most basic level is fundamentally sound, if approached with a level of subtlety. One of my prime criticisms of Marxists is that they are really historical idealists posing as historical materialists. I often think:

Conservatives are moral relativists pretending to be moral absolutists and
Liberals are moral absolutists pretending to be moral relativists.

But just think about the position of women in 1700 in all of the Agrarian civiilsations across the world. And look at the massive changes that have taken place across the world. What changed? Was humanity just waiting for some bright spark to think up the idea of women's equality? Of course not. It was the material conditions. The rise of urban industrialisation, the gradual but ongoing decline in heavy manual labour and also the decline of mass armies.

[Sivad]

Historical materialism at its most basic level is fundamentally sound

It's usefull. It definitely needs to be taken on board. But it can't give you the whole picture. It can't give you half the picture. There is no preferred lense of historical analysis, I take history the way the mysterians approach philosophy of mind: we can glean important insights through the various methodologies and perspectives but ultimately it's too complex for us to crack. We should learn what we can but we should also be acutely aware of our cognitive, theoretical, methodological, and evidential limitations.

[Sivad]

If Richard Spencer asked me the same question about geography I would blow him

[Verv]

What part of his description of fascists who support the BJP were incorrect?

I think Fascism is a pretty specific ideology and it is just usually used to mean "these people are violent and intolerant," and bonus points if it involves ethnicity or religion.

I've found, though, that while such violent & intolerant fascists do exist, some of the more thoughtful posters on the internet dabble pretty hard in the Fash. Of course, the fashy guys have an advantage: almost everything that they are looking into is never really talked about seriously, so our lack of familiarity with these topics perhaps make it seem more sophisticated and insightful...

But, regardless, many of the far right guys don't fit this description at all.

So, I think we should talk about things like we are adults -- not like we are journalists -- and try to appraise the ideas and events in their own light, and when we speak about things generally, we are charitable to everyone involved.

[Sivad]

almost everything that they are looking into is never really talked about seriously, so our lack of familiarity with these topics perhaps make it seem more sophisticated and insightful...

[...]

So, I think we should talk about things like we are adults -- not like we are journalists -- and try to appraise the ideas and events in their own light, and when we speak about things generally, we are charitable to everyone involved.

I agree with you that it shouldn't be caricatured and that we should listen carefully to what they're saying but after all that it's still a bankrupt ideology that only really appeals to edgelords. All these stupid extremist ideologies on both the right and left are only good for trolling the normies. They don't have any real value in themselves, they're only uesful for pushing the discourse in one direction or the other.

[Verv]

I think it does largely draw edge lords, right. But the same can be said of Marxism, but we still have to treat it as a serious ideology worthy of being discussed -- both Marxism and Fascism.

I also think that Fascism can be thought of as... a movement that may potentially result in different ideological conclusions. For instance, Franco's end-game was handing over power to the monarchy when he stepped down. Franco is basically a Fascist, right? Like, it's not controversial to equate Falangism and Fascism...

So, in a sense, Fascism could be interpreted as a stage, or a movement, or a phase, if you really wanted to.

I believe when you look at the things that Codreanu wrote about, as well, you could understand that his movement was, in a sense, Fascist, but it very well may likely have had an end goal of monarchy, not unlike Franco. Yet, these were clearly not goals either in the Italian or German forms of it. But maybe I am digressign too far.

... And who knows?! Maybe that journalist knows something that we do not know and he actually knows these specific rioters were all theoretical fascists, not just random Hindutva-types flexing hard on everyone else.

[Donna]

Donna is actually trying to convince us that there was a technological parity between Europeans and aboriginals.

Until technology begins to dramatically alter production and the rate of growth, yes, we can only think of technology in relative terms.

Most aboriginal people didn't even have the wheel.

For most of their history they had no practical use for for it.

The answers to those questions aren't racist and I have no problem answering them. The reason I blew you off is that it's complicated and I don't have a burning need to debate it with a shrill ideologue who's operating on the exact same intellectual level as a Richard Spencer. If Richard Spencer asked me the same question about geography I would blow him off too because who in the fuck wants to debate that kind of idiocy. I got better things to do.

You're the one who seems to think that European genetics and culture is why Europeans technologically outpaced the rest of the world. Sounds like you're trying to backpedal from an incredibly revealing moment.

[Sivad]

Until technology begins to dramatically alter production and the rate of growth, yes, we can only think of technology in relative terms.

I don't know what you're smoking but I'm pretty sure technology began to dramatically alter production and the rate of growth relative to that of the stone age many thousands of years ago.

For most of their history they had no practical use for for it.

What? They most definitely had practical use for it, they just didn't have it. That's like saying they didn't have practical use for antibiotics.

You're the one who seems to think that European genetics and culture is why Europeans technologically outpaced the rest of the world.

That's absolutely a major part of it. There's no question about that. But that's not "why", the "why" is much more complicated.

Sounds like you're trying to backpedal from an incredibly revealing moment.

I'm not trying to backpedal, I don't give a fuck if woketards call me racist. woketards call everyone and everything racist, nobody takes woketards seriously.

[Donna]

I don't know what you're smoking but I'm pretty sure technology began to dramatically alter production and the rate of growth relative to that of the stone age many thousands of years ago.

The ancient Olmec in southern Mexico had gold metallurgy, agriculture, latex and rubber production, and a writing system during the Bronze Age in 650 B.C.

What? They most definitely had practical use for it, they just didn't have it. That's like saying they didn't have practical use for antibiotics.

No, they did not have practical use for wheels. The Indigenous civilizations of the Americas weren't like the 'Old World', which had ancient highway infrastructure for horse-drawn transportation built by numerous empires. They did develop municipal roads for hand-drawn transportation, between trading posts various pathways for sledge and foot travel, as was practical and sufficient for commerce.

That's absolutely a major part of it. There's no question about that. But that's not "why", the "why" is much more complicated.

Which is essentially white supremacist propaganda that has no scientific basis. You believe Europeans outpaced everyone else because they're racially superior.

Again, hoisted by your own petard. Whether consciously or unconsciously, you've bought into a racist cosmos.

I'm not trying to backpedal, I don't give a fuck if woketards call me racist. woketards call everyone and everything racist, nobody takes woketards seriously.

If you were not trying to backpedal you would answer the questions candidly instead of trying to wiggle out of it with just-so statements. It's pathetic.

[Deutschmania]

I think it does largely draw edge lords, right. But the same can be said of Marxism, but we still have to treat it as a serious ideology worthy of being discussed -- both Marxism and Fascism.

I also think that Fascism can be thought of as... a movement that may potentially result in different ideological conclusions. For instance, Franco's end-game was handing over power to the monarchy when he stepped down. Franco is basically a Fascist, right? Like, it's not controversial to equate Falangism and Fascism...

So, in a sense, Fascism could be interpreted as a stage, or a movement, or a phase, if you really wanted to.

I believe when you look at the things that Codreanu wrote about, as well, you could understand that his movement was, in a sense, Fascist, but it very well may likely have had an end goal of monarchy, not unlike Franco. Yet, these were clearly not goals either in the Italian or German forms of it. But maybe I am digressign too far.

... And who knows?! Maybe that journalist knows something that we do not know and he actually knows these specific rioters were all theoretical fascists, not just random Hindutva-types flexing hard on everyone else.

You might not know of this , but I think that the BJP , and more specifically the RSS , literally have been historically fascist . https://www.ibtimes.com/hindu-nationalists-historical-links-nazism-fascism-214222 , http://www.marxistreview.asia/ideology-and-tactics-of-the-rss-rashtriya-swayamsevak-sangh/ Here is what the situation in India is .

[Verv]

@Deutschmania , that is a really fantastic article. I must take back my words on the comparison of Norton there, perhaps , but just as the article quotes the man behind it, the model for this was conceived independently from Mussolini.

It is Eco's "Ur-Fascism" at work, perhaps.

Really, that was a fantastic little read. Thanks a million.