Post AEnvuIojSDHMfcPnyy by Hyolobrika@fedi.club
(DIR) More posts by Hyolobrika@fedi.club
(DIR) Post #AEmMqSVhmZ0G1LzHEG by Andrii@we.1being.org
2021-12-26T00:34:19.148563Z
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"Enlightenment thinkers insisted that their ideals of individual liberty and political equality were inspired by Native American sources and examples. Because it was true."From "Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber"That indigenous Americans lived in generally free societies, and that Europeans did not, was never really a matter of debate in these exchanges: both sides agreed this was the case. What they differed on was whether or not individual liberty was desirable.This is one area in which early missionary or travellers’ accounts of the Americas pose a genuine conceptual challenge to most readers today. Most of us simply take it for granted that ‘Western’ observers, even seventeenth-century ones, are simply an earlier version of ourselves; unlike indigenous Americans, who represent an essentially alien, perhaps even unknowable Other. But in fact, in many ways, the authors of these texts were nothing like us. When it came to questions of personal freedom, the equality of men and women, sexual mores or popular sovereignty – or even, for that matter, theories of depth psychology18 – indigenous American attitudes are likely to be far closer to the reader’s own than seventeenth-century European ones.These differing views on individual liberty are especially striking. Nowadays, it’s almost impossible for anyone living in a liberal democracy to say they are against freedom – at least in the abstract (in practice, of course, our ideas are usually much more nuanced). This is one of the lasting legacies of the Enlightenment and of the American and French Revolutions. Personal freedom, we tend to believe, is inherently good (even if some of us also feel that a society based on total individual liberty – one which took it so far as to eliminate police, prisons or any sort of apparatus of coercion – would instantly collapse into violent chaos). Seventeenth-century Jesuits most certainly did not share this assumption. They tended to view individual liberty as animalistic. In 1642, the Jesuit missionary Le Jeune wrote of the Montagnais-Naskapi:They imagine that they ought by right of birth, to enjoy the liberty of wild ass colts, rendering no homage to any one whomsoever, except when they like. They have reproached me a hundred times because we fear our Captains, while they laugh at and make sport of theirs. All the authority of their chief is in his tongue’s end; for he is powerful in so far as he is eloquent; and, even if he kills himself talking and haranguing, he will not be obeyed unless he pleases the Savages.19In the considered opinion of the Montagnais-Naskapi, however, the French were little better than slaves, living in constant terror of their superiors. Such criticism appears regularly in Jesuit accounts; what’s more, it comes not just from those who lived in nomadic bands, but equally from townsfolk like the Wendat. The missionaries, moreover, were willing to concede that this wasn’t all just rhetoric on the Americans’ part. Even Wendat statesmen couldn’t compel anyone to do anything they didn’t wish to do. As Father Lallemant, whose correspondence provided an initial model for The Jesuit Relations, noted of the Wendat in 1644:I do not believe that there is any people on earth freer than they, and less able to allow the subjection of their wills to any power whatever – so much so that Fathers here have no control over their children, or Captains over their subjects, or the Laws of the country over any of them, except in so far as each is pleased to submit to them. There is no punishment which is inflicted on the guilty, and no criminal who is not sure that his life and property are in no danger…20Lallemant’s account gives a sense of just how politically challenging some of the material to be found in the Jesuit Relations must have been to European audiences of the time, and why so many found it fascinating. After expanding on how scandalous it was that even murderers should get off scot-free, the good father did admit that, when considered as a means of keeping the peace, the Wendat system of justice was not ineffective. Actually, it worked surprisingly well. Rather than punish culprits, the Wendat insisted the culprit’s entire lineage or clan pay compensation. This made it everyone’s responsibility to keep their kindred under control. ‘It is not the guilty who suffer the penalty,’ Lallemant explains, but rather ‘the public that must make amends for the offences of individuals.’ If a Huron had killed an Algonquin or another Huron, the whole country assembled to agree the number of gifts due to the grieving relatives, ‘to stay the vengeance that they might take’.Wendat ‘captains’, as Lallemant then goes on to describe, ‘urge their subjects to provide what is needed; no one is compelled to it, but those who are willing bring publicly what they wish to contribute; it seems as if they vied with one another according to the amount of their wealth, and as the desire of glory and of appearing solicitous for the public welfare urges them to do on like occasions.’ More remarkable still, he concedes: ‘this form of justice restrains all these peoples, and seems more effectually to repress disorders than the personal punishment of criminals does in France,’ despite being ‘a very mild proceeding, which leaves individuals in such a spirit of liberty that they never submit to any Laws and obey no other impulse than that of their own will’.21"From "The Dawn Of Everything" by D. Graeber and D. Wengrow
(DIR) Post #AEmSm8kntU45JWNDdo by Andrii@we.1being.org
2021-12-26T01:40:45.674178Z
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Dw:This feels like virtue signaling to me. What is the point of this message? Is there something we can garner to help us today?Andrii Logan Zvorygin:Yeah, it's that liberty is native to north america, and we have thousands of years of precedent to live freely without coercion..
(DIR) Post #AEmSoGKogBi3P9EKSe by Andrii@we.1being.org
2021-12-26T01:41:09.172617Z
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Alexander Supertramp:Sounds a little sketchy. Europeans have made advancements and come up with so many concepts for millenia. I'm sure the concept has fallen upon some over the courses of many generations and civilizations.Andrii Logan Zvorygin:Feel free to try to find any such. The people who authored that book did their research. Basically Europeans were purely hierarchical and fear anger control oriented cause they were mostly based on old testament punishment codex laws. And everyone being subject to the Lord, typically a land lord or king. And people lived like slaves. Asia was very similar. China has had a succession of empires for like over 3,000 years with only short lapses. Africa practically invented slavery. Indeed they are the ones that would sell black people to the arabs and whites to use as slaves..
(DIR) Post #AEmySX2z3lHZOpZSwi by Prodigal@freespeechextremist.com
2021-12-26T07:35:47.538765Z
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@Andrii African slave culture is a thing. However African-to-African slave culture in most cases more humane than Arab-to-African slave culture.Euro-to-African slave culture largely depended on the originating country and circumstance.Spain and Portugal slave cultures were WAY nicer than British and American slave cultures to black Africans.
(DIR) Post #AEnh3IWcPXmT3em30K by Andrii@we.1being.org
2021-12-26T15:55:26.649721Z
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@Prodigal Well from what I know some of the worst slavery still ongoing is in Africa. Though there is also some in India.In Africa I know there is child slavery on plantations, as soldiers and in mines. I'm not sure the ethnicity of people running the mines. Though at least the soldier slavery is usually done by black people.Anyhow, you are right that some of the ways white people abused black slavery was probably worse than how black people abused each other. Such as all the whipping. My understanding is that whipping is a Pauline thing, because some Paulines like to glorify Jesus using a whip in the temple as an expression of anger, as an excuse for not following Jesus's commandments to love one another.Pauline people used to also torture each other to death a lot. Like breaking on the wheel, the rack, hanging and whipping each other to death.Yeah it's true that many races on Earth's main vice is violence. Like for blonde white people in the realm of conquering related violence. For red haired white people it's usually vengeange related violence. Indigenous people of north america had a problem with seeking status and vengeance through violence.Asia or Han people it seems violence wasn't as big a problem, more so was the issue of subjugation of the majority for the will of a minority. Which is more of a violence through assimilation and exploitation.Polynesian or Austronesian people also had an issue with violence particularly in refence to invading islands and warring between islands, as well as intra island violence related to scarce resources.There are of course peaceful examples from all groups as well.In the grand scheme of things, violence initially was intended as a means of increasing biodiversity such as by harvesting abundant plants of low diversity and giving room for other plants to take hold.Then it extended to predators that would harvest excess herbivores.In times of resource scarcity typically on Earth we have seen a reverting to such animalistic predatory behaviour, particularly among white people.Wheras any people if pushed to the brink of starvation may resort to violence. White people have had a bad habit of resorting to violence at the first indication of quality of life decline.Anyways I know I've ventured somewhat far off topic. But my point being that there are vices in all peoples and virtues as well. The important thing is to nurture the virtues, and taking care to avoid the vices, by cultivating more virtues.Simple example instead of using slaves and conquest to get food when fields start failing, can grow food forests which provide staggered harvest all year round.
(DIR) Post #AEnvuIojSDHMfcPnyy by Hyolobrika@fedi.club
2021-12-26T18:41:53.204871Z
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@Andrii What about the Greeks though?
(DIR) Post #AEnw351I7cYoU6TW5I by Hyolobrika@fedi.club
2021-12-26T18:43:28.504145Z
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@Andrii "Man conquered Mars and in that instant, Mars conquered Man" - Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
(DIR) Post #AEo2xWsELfB0oUXMy8 by Andrii@we.1being.org
2021-12-26T20:00:54.453407Z
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@Hyolobrika what about the greeks?Greeks did a lot of pedarastry AKA homosexual pedophilia. Which was violence in terms that it was sexual assault of minors.They like Rome also had more slaves than freemen. Mostly as a result of conquering foreign areas and taking their civilians as slavus. ."Slavery was common practice and an integral component of ancient Greece throughout its history, as it was in other societies of the time including ancient Israel and early Christian societies.[2][3][4] It is estimated that in Athens, the majority of citizens owned at least one slave. Most ancient writers considered slavery not only natural but necessary, but some isolated debate began to appear, notably in Socratic dialogues while the Stoics produced the first condemnation of slavery recorded in history."https://slaveryinjustice.wordpress.com/slavery-in-ancient-greece/Up to 80% of people living in Athens were slaves. Which in many ways is similar or perhaps less than what we have now if you include wage slaves.In Sparta they had so many slaves they would regularly go to war with their own slave class."Every year, the Crypteia, young men who just completed their training, would declare “war” on helots population. They would be allowed to kill as many slaves as they could, especially the strongest and fittest. This helped with keeping helots numbers at check and make sure they could not rebel."https://medium.com/interesting-histories/interesting-histories-helots-the-slaves-of-sparta-46b70ebfdc05Similarly currently the depopulation injections are crippling people and vax passports turning people into a non mobile serfs. Though generally actually with less wealth than serfs, since most serfs at least had enough land to grow their own food.