[HN Gopher] What the Aztecs can teach us about happiness and the...
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What the Aztecs can teach us about happiness and the good life
(2016)
Author : drdee
Score : 26 points
Date : 2021-06-04 01:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aeon.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| randallsquared wrote:
| Happiness is your internal estimate of how successful your
| actions are. Goodhart's law applies, of course, but our culture
| (I'm usian) seems to have a fixation on gaming the metric in this
| case.
| kmnc wrote:
| So the secret to happiness is exercise, meditate, be social and
| develop a spiritual relationship with nature? So basically no
| more insightful then any pop self help book.
|
| Maybe the more interesting question is why no one putting down
| there hand when being told facts about how they will be happier
| without kids is instantly glossed over. Maybe this instant
| acceptance of equating traditional life milestones as leading a
| fulfilling life is the real issue. Giving that up is the real key
| to happiness.
| slicktux wrote:
| No kids here and I am happy camper...
| _Microft wrote:
| Do you think people are eventually happier without children? In
| short term, maybe. I guess nobody enjoys changing or feeding a
| baby at 3a.m. that much. In the long run, I would be surprised
| if that's still true. Not having relatives when growing old
| seems like a recipe for misery.
| stemlord wrote:
| Both of your perspectives are equally toxic... have kids if
| you want them, don't if you don't. I'm sure one can find
| happiness or misery either way
| ttt0 wrote:
| And telling someone to exercise is fatphobic, expecting
| people to be social is discriminating against people with
| aspergers, telling someone to meditate is anti-ADHD people.
| Do literally whatever you want, I'm sure you can _somehow_
| be happy no matter what you do. Toxicity, toxicity
| everywhere.
| prepend wrote:
| Neither perspective is toxic. I'm sure it's knowable
| whether kids add or decrease happiness. And there's
| probably some outlier set that feels differently than the
| population.
|
| Thinking this doesn't mean anything about toxicity.
|
| Generally speaking I haven't heard anyone use that word
| properly in years. It's a pretty stupid word, unless
| dealing with chemicals and lethal doses.
| thrav wrote:
| They've done studies, and parents are dramatically happier
| than non-parents after the teenage years (when the kids
| leave).
|
| It's a long term investment that pays dividends when you have
| nothing else you want to do with your life, but chill with
| your family.
| slumdev wrote:
| A culture built on human sacrifice has nothing to offer.
|
| The Spanish did nothing wrong.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I was looking for the part about sacrificing humans to assure
| favor of Quetzalcoatl.
| bashmelek wrote:
| Quetzalcoatl preferred nonhuman sacrifice. Other gods of the
| Aztec pantheon, such as Tezcatlipoca, Tlaloc, and
| Huitzilpohctli, however, did have a lot of human sacrifices
| offered
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| This is the level of detail I appreciate. It was a
| fascinating culture, just not a very warm and friendly one.
| ardit33 wrote:
| The Actecs were the nazis of meso-america, and treated every
| other tribe and culture around them like slaves/cattle. I would
| not take any advice from their genocidal culture.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| This is true. People imagine the Spanish conquistadors
| destroying the Aztec empire, but really it was something like
| 700 Spaniards + 100,000 pissed off Aztec-neighbors who
| destroyed it. The Spaniards, as far as I know, tried to
| actually stop the raping and pillaging of Tenochtitlan but
| didn't have much luck in that regard.
| ku-man wrote:
| Indeed. And this is true for the Incas as well.
|
| Wanna hear a funny historical observation I read somewhere?:
| native women were crazy about the Spaniard conquistadores
| (talking about the very definition of alpha male here).
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| People call anything and everything "Nazi" in this day and age,
| but in this case it might be somewhat of a relevant comparison.
| We're not talking about the Na'vi here: the Aztec were some
| brutally cruel people.
| crooked-v wrote:
| For example, it was a common practice for the Aztecs to
| engage in ritualistic wars against their smaller neighbors
| specifically to abduct captives for use in human sacrifice.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| So if Hitler liked apples you wouldn't eat any?
|
| IMHO people / cultures / civilizations aren't all bad or all
| good, there's always something to learn about them.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| If they are not all bad or good are they all the same ( that
| is to say composed of equal number and value of good and bad
| parts) that seems unlikely to be the case and would need some
| theory other than just answering yes so I suppose we will say
| no.
|
| If people / cultures / civilizations vary in the level of
| goodness and badness in them then it follows that there
| should be a distribution of societies that are significantly
| more good than bad, societies that are average, and societies
| that are significantly more bad than good.
|
| If a society is significantly more bad than good it can be
| true that you could still find something good in them but it
| becomes questionable if it is worth an individual to study
| the society to extract this good part from all the bad.
|
| Thus I would conclude that it might not be really worthwhile
| to learn anything from the Aztecs.
| golemotron wrote:
| > If they are not all bad or good are they all the same (
| that is to say composed of equal number and value of good
| and bad parts) that seems unlikely to be the case and would
| need some theory other than just answering yes so I suppose
| we will say no.
|
| Good and bad are time and culture specific. In 50 years,
| many things that we do everyday now will be "bad" and many
| things that we see as "bad" will be "good."
| irrational wrote:
| This is why the phrase "on the right side of history" is
| so stupid. It is literally impossible to know what is and
| is not on the right side of history until it actually is
| history.
| golemotron wrote:
| And even then... history takes a long time.
| krapp wrote:
| Chances are you come from a culture that did more or less the
| same.
| irrational wrote:
| I assume you mean some culture your ancestors belonged to in
| the past few hundred thousand years was more or less the
| same.
| krapp wrote:
| I meant far closer to the present than "past few hundred
| thousand years" but yes, that's why I used the past tense
| "did" rather than the present tense "does."
|
| Slavery? Genocide? Plunder? Rape? Religious violence?
| Slaughter of peoples they considered inferior? The
| "civilized" Christian cultures of the time did everything
| the Aztecs did, minus the human sacrifice.
| crooked-v wrote:
| There's something many people find uniquely, particularly
| offensive about using the machinery of war to perform
| human sacrifice as its own end (and not as the means to
| some variety of conquest or resource extraction), and
| there aren't many cultures that have actually
| historically engaged in that sort of thing.
| krapp wrote:
| They weren't performing human sacrifice as its own end,
| they were performing human sacrifice to honor their
| God... which is essentially what the Crusades were, an
| act of ritual human sacrifice to honor the Christian God.
|
| One is just more alien to Western culture than the other,
| so it seems more viscerally evil, and their means differ
| but their nature is the same.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| How much does constructing giant skull walls and pillars from the
| remains of your human
| sacrifices(https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-
| hundred...) contribute to happiness and the good life? Asking for
| a friend.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| "To crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet -- to
| take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their
| women. That is best."
| Grieving wrote:
| Depends on what you think is best in life
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo9buo9Mtos
|
| edit: looks like I was beaten
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