Hey r/kappa! Since I was not chosen for the winter komike, that means I'll have more time to focus on improving my fundamentals, as well as doing more fighting game related NSFW art. Hopefully I'll be able to post here more often from now on!
I have also been reading quite a lot recently. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari has been as inspirational as lord Daigo's book to me. Highly Recommended.
I'm about 150 pages into Frankopan's "The Silk Roads" https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Roads-New-History-World-ebook/dp/B00XST7IX2 and it is BLOWING my mind how connected the world was at this period.
Pottery from north Africa in Scotland, spices circulating Eurasia, and Bhuddism, Christianity and Islam running together in strange and unexpected ways. Great read so far.
That is absolute bull.
Source is history - The roots of the British/US hegemony in the Middle East can be found here...just finished it, and it's a good read. https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Roads-New-History-World-ebook/dp/B00XST7IX2
They are rich per capita, not in absolute dollar terms. They're 19th in that category, below Indonesia, so nothing to write home about. And nowhere in the Middle East actually has control of their oil supplies. OPEC was a move in that direction, but even that is heavily influenced by Western policies and markets.
The British entered the Middle East to control the oil. When they lost their hold on it, the US stepped in - and we have never quite left. A few nationalists movements here and there do not control grant.
Here's the 19th source - remember, it doesn't really matter what your spending power per capita is. We're not so vain that we can't allow a few rich countries in the Middle East. But, ultimately, our foreign policy is geared toward getting and controlling what they have. To put it another way - you're only a rich oil country - or any country - if someone wants what you have. The Saudis have oil. They'd be able to sell it pretty much anywhere, if they wanted. But we go out of our way to go get it.
https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/
Look at the first Iraq War, as well. The humanitarian reasons for protecting Kuwait were entirely made-up - the girl that testified about the infamous baby-killing was the daughter of a ranking Kuwaiti official. But we could not, could not allow those oilfields to slip out of our control. Saddam knew that - which is why he torched them on the way out.
I strongly recommend this book for both learning things and getting depressed.
On sale for Kindle right now for $1.99:
<em>Salt, A World History</em> is an engaging book about the importance of salt. Before canning and refrigeration, salt-based methods were the only means of preserving food. Controlling the use of salt via taxation and by means of force was of great importance—one of Gandhi’s acts of civil disobedience was to go to the sea and harvest his own salt, which was illegal at that time. This is one of those books I think fantasy readers and writers will appreciate for the historical context, given that many fantasies are in preindustrial settings.
Well said, I try to always be kind and it is hard at times. I actually mirror what OP said exactly, except that I am still in those discord communities and am part of the leadership.
For everyone who is beaten down there's a wonderful book I just finished that reminded me of the kindness we all have. Humankind by Rutger Bregman he goes through many important moments of our history and gives insight on how kindness actually won the day.
According to the book Sapiens, this very paradigm is why men are in positions of power and not women. Men, and male animals in general, have to be aggressive in order to win a mate. They also must learn to compete against other males for the same female. Females, on the other hand, could simply sit back and let the males come to them. They could afford to passive and not intervene in conflicts between males because they had no incentive otherwise. So evolution conditioned males to be aggressive, competitive and able to navigate conflict, while conditioning females to be passive and conflict-averse. You can easily see how this would result in men, throughout history, excelling in the power struggle while women really didn't even participate.
edit: link to book. it's really interesting
I might suggest reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. They use loads of archeological and anthropolgical evidence to show that not only did prehistoric humans live in a variety of different political and social arrangements, these arrangements were often subject to routine, intentional changes that upended hierarchies, allowing social mobility and liberty.
They also demonstrate that liberty is not inherently connected to the level of societal complexity. For example, there were pre-agricultural cities where the populace lived in an egalitarian fashion. Likewise, many tribal peoples (for example, the Comanche) could live very free lives being that no one had the authority to legally bind others or the institutions to execute that authority.
What's more, people throughout time have had the power to shape their political reality as conscious political actors. The point is, there is not time or place you can point to as man existing in his "natural state". Social organization across the globe has never been that simple.
What an incredibly depressing view of humanity. We are absolutely not on the brink of world war 3. Even if it starts in Europe we'll be absolutely fine here.
Humans really aren't as bad as you think they are.
There's a great book I'd suggest you read:
Humankind: A Hopeful History https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07XDNDSBG?ref_=cm_sw_r_apann_dp_VZPY6GY0EC5J7QG2NGV7
There's a theory that the Catholic Church's far-ranging definition of 'incest', inadvertently had a number of benefits. Aside from reducing the prevalence of genetic defects, it also suppressed the establishment of tribes and clans within society, leading to a flatter and more mobile social structure.
That's 100% wrong, though. You should read <em>Sapiens</em> by Yuval Noah Hariri. The TLDR is "We came, we saw, we ate."
...
Early humans were absolutely savage in terms of obliterating local wildlife populations and causing lasting environmental damage that we can detect (with some difficulty) today. Using up the food and water, and shitting up the surroundings, were the primary drivers of early migration.
The myth of the native or primitive human in balance with nature is a lie we tell ourselves. We are hungry murder monkeys.
Tribes are sort of like big extended families. To keep a tribe intact you need cousin marriages. When everyone marries outside the family (tribe) all the tribes get stirred up with each other and becomes one big tribe...eventually the whole country.
History should always be viewed through the lens of historical context vs. the context of modern times. The Catholic Church basically built western civilization, from the university system to the scientific method to our legal system, etc.
Might I recommend a book that would be of great use in helping you get a true view of history? It's called How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. You can find it here.
Last time... Peter Frankopans - The Silk Roads Its about world history and politics, and why we at this point now.
The book is from 2015, and with all this shit going right now in the world it is relevant as ever. It is writen in plain English.
https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Roads-New-History-World-ebook/dp/B00XST7IX2
I wish these people are the best luck in the world. But there is a reason the lands between Germany and Russia are known as "BloodLands."
I've been reading the book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity and came across a term that is very relevant to this forum: schismogenesis. The authors of the book provided a real snappy definition that was something like "conscious oppositional culture" - basically the idea is that a community creates a culture as something pointedly different than a culture of a nearby group. So like how Classical Athens was into democracy, drama, and philosophy while Sparta had its war-mongering and oligarchy. The authors also give examples of two neighboring Native American cultures on the west coast of the US/Canada where one had slaves, agricultural, and an ostentatious, indolent aristocracy, while the other was strictly hunter-gatherer, non-slave-holding and had an aristocracy that prized physical fitness and austerity. Schismogenesis could literally refer to the genesis of theschism, but also how the culture here was oppositional to a certain other subreddit.
Schismogenesis (schismogenic is the adjective form) is a pretty useful conceptual way of thinking about the world IMO and, according to wikipedia, has been applied in various contexts, including inter-personal and international relations. I would also add contemporary US party politics to this list.
If you are interested, there's a book by David Graeber (many books, also known for Bullshit Jobs: A Theory). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Both of these books are #1 bestsellers.
"Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume."
According to Harari, it works as some kind of glue (my words). It's in one of the first chapters of his book Sapiens.
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Deal link: Amazon
Category-wise subreddits for Amazon Deals:
Is your reddit feed getting flooded with deals for products you are not interested in? Below are our category-wise subreddits where I crosspost from the main sub.
Category | Subreddit |
---|---|
Electronics | /r/Deals_Electronics |
Computers and Accessories | /r/Deals_Computers |
Video Games | /r/Deals_VideoGames |
Home Improvement | /r/Deals_HomeImprovement |
Clothing and Accessories | /r/Deals_Apparel |
Grocery | /r/Deals_Grocery |
Discord Server: Instant deal notifications on our Discord Server!
Amazon Canada Deals: /r/OnlineDealsCanada
Disclaimer: The deal links are affiliated. We may earn a small share on qualifying purchases. It does not affect the deal price in any way.
Deal link: Amazon
Category-wise subreddits for Amazon Deals:
Is your reddit feed getting flooded with deals for products you are not interested in? Below are our category-wise subreddits where I crosspost from the main sub.
Category | Subreddit |
---|---|
Electronics | /r/Deals_Electronics |
Computers and Accessories | /r/Deals_Computers |
Video Games | /r/Deals_VideoGames |
Home Improvement | /r/Deals_HomeImprovement |
Clothing and Accessories | /r/Deals_Apparel |
Grocery | /r/Deals_Grocery |
Discord Server: Instant deal notifications on our Discord Server!
Amazon Canada Deals: /r/OnlineDealsCanada
Disclaimer: The deal links are affiliated. We may earn a small share on qualifying purchases. It does not affect the deal price in any way.
Cheese is one of the many foods born of ways of trying to keep food from spoiling in all of human history before the advent of refrigeration. A variety of microorganisms could “process” milk into cheese that imparted flavor, transformed the easily-spoiled liquid into a transportable solid, and retarded the growth of harmful bacteria. Lactic acid produced by the lactobacillus (in yogurt and some cheeses) is bad for other microorganisms, and a hefty dose of salt helps to preserve the cheese, too. The now solidified cow/goat/sheep juice could also be wrapped or even sealed in a wax coating, waxed paper, oil cloth, etc.
So cheese was very important. As were a great many salty foods. If a food is considered salty by today’s standards, chances are it used to be a great deal saltier before refrigeration. I recommend you read <em>Salt, A World History</em> by Mark Kurlansky.
> Or, you could fulfill your responsibility to show by what measure catholics have produced more for the world.
You would have to be willing to read. I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make him think : https://www.amazon.com/Catholic-Church-Built-Western-Civilization-ebook/dp/B00C0JE80W
> Hatefulness
So, are you okay with anti-Catholic bigotry ?
> The contributions of Islamic scientists
If you look deeper into that history, you'll see that Muslims would conquer a Christian town by the sword, rape the women and children, and take credit for whatever they stole. The remaining Chrisitans would have to change their names to Arabic names to survive.
> The survey says 95% of atheists believe in evolution, and 91% of atheists believe life "evolved over time,
Read the Actual survey here: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2015/11/201.11.03_RLS_II_topline.pdf
>> Humans and other living things have evolved due to natural processes such as natural selection,
[OR]
>> A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and
other life in the form it exists today
.
> I have superior everything
Then why haven't you explained how we got here ? I'm still waiting.
Just checked "Sapiens" on Amazon and although it has a 4.5 rating, the top reviews are 1 stars. Here's the Amazon link. They claim it's not scientific and/or biased. What did you think?
(to be fair, the 1 star reviews may be because of politics based on some reviews)
You're right. Stalin killed his millions too. You may be interested in this book: Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.
I think the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind might be an enlightening read for you. Particularly the first half has great information about the emergence of religion and how certain religions came to be dominant in the world we know today.
Favorite song is Instant Crush, by Daft Punk. Makes me remember a few of the crushes I had in my life, plus the beat is awesome too.
Favorite TV Show is breaking bad, as it tells a great story about great characters. You definitely should check it out, in case you never watched it.
Movie has to go to Tropa de Elite. It's a Brazilian movie about an elite squad in Rio, Brazil, that gets inside the favelas to take down a powerful drug dealer. It's one of the best acclaimed Brazilian movies, and the production do the movie is very hollywoodish, so a lot audiences outside of Brazil tend to like it too. http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0861739/
Favorite book goes to Sapient, a Brief History of Mankind. I learned so much about the human evolution, the human brain, the importance of religion and faith in the development of our societies that it's a nobrainer. Recommend to everyone. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICN066A/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
I'm enjoying Super Mario Odissey a decent bunch, but favorite game goes to Chrono Trigger. I played the game so many times for the plot and the characters that it takes a special place in my heart.
> The USSR is the best thing that happened to Eastern Europe since Genghis Khan dying before he could conquer everything west of the Dnieper.
Point: The USSR is the best thing that happened to Eastern Europe since Genghis Khan dying before he could conquer everything west of the Dnieper.
Counterpoint: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3M3VE6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
The USSR wasn't a worker's paradise man. Also, your diminution of Russian responsibility for 2016 hasn't age well, even though it's only 9 hours old.
I'm a Catholic Libertarian and I really see no problem with it. You may want to give a look into Tom Woods, a very prominent Libertarian as well as a fairly strong Catholic.
He wrote a book about the Catholic Church's involvement in Western Civilization.
And here's an article about his political philosophy and his religious philosophy.
Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
"From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”
One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?
Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?"