the great pyramid

[Guest Tamochanter]

I thi

 

How would anybody rate the lasting impact of a civilisation just by the construction they left behind is beyond me...

I think that is a common error when considering the egytians and myans and ankor wat etc.

 

The real impact was understanding the genius behind the structures. All that knowledge directed toward one purpose which was really the antithesis of the method used to construt em. Maybe one day we will look down on our forays into our solar system with the same dismissive and incerdulos attitude.

[lumpenprol]

I thought the whole dealie-oh was that fertile rice/grain agricultural areas (such as the Nile used to be in that area) allowed for the formation of very stable empires.

 

Same happened in Indonesia and SE Asia (Angkor Wat, Prambanan, Borobodur, etc).

 

Then the Nile changed course, right? And everything went to shit. At least that's my understanding?

[johnnix]

In some ways it's obvious that we look upon the material things left over from ancient cultures, but by now it should be clear that the real impact is societal; how do we organize ourselves as a society to better the survival of mankind, never mind the tall buildings and the fancy technologies.

[MisterE]

first off, i'm not judging their entire civilization based on that. i'm just saying:

a) shitloads of manpower, just vast incredible amounts of it, was used to build a huge pile of rocks that does absolutely nothing besides show off how badass the pharaohs were, for having lots of bitches build him a bunch of stupid shit that's really big, and to serve as the tomb for that same asshole.

b) that manpower could have been employed on the construction of things that would have benefited everyone, not just the pharaohs.

c) it wasn't. sure they built other things, and things for the people, but think about how much more they could have done with the effort that went behind these things.

d) of course now there is this debate about how they weren't even slaves. because the whole idea of them being slaves possibly undermines looking at those things as great achievements. but the fact is, that even if some of those people who worked on those things weren't technically slaves, or even if the majority of them weren't, they still obviously lived in a society where the separation between them and their ruling class was so vast, that they lived in two entirely different worlds with absolutely 0 chance of elevation. you can say they weren't technically slaves. maybe they got paid to do this. but they were paid with wealth that the pharaoh inherited and obtained by taxing them. best case, they were working on huge piles of rocks because it was the only decent paying job around, simply because the guy who wanted them to do it took some of their crops and money and wealth because he was born superior to them. now hes giving some of it back if they build a monument to his greatness. can you honestly tell me that that's how they WANTED to spend their lives? building something like that simply for someone else to have an insanely huge monument to lie in after he dies?

e) even IF they THOUGHT they 'wanted' to do that, it would be because of brainwashing by the pharaoh, again with the goal of getting his selfish wishes fulfilled. if those people who busted their asses on those things were presented with options for what life they would get to live before being born, and on one hand they could do that, be the pharaoh's bitches and build him his monuments, or they could live someplace else where the labor they did actually built things for everyone to benefit from, what do you think they'd pick? one way or the other, they were slaves. even if i have to concede with i am michael jackson's idea that we are all slaves even to this day. but i would say that in that case, it's shades of grey. and those pyramids would be standing evidence that those guys really had the shitty end of the stick, historically. what do you think moving those gigantic pieces of stone around for years does to your body? meanwhile pharaoh is having little naked boys feed him grapes. it just blows my mind how plenty of occupy types (not that i'm saying anyone here specifically in this thread is one of those) and lefties in general can be so critical of capitalism and yet look at these things with awe. they are the product of possibly the most or at least among the most extreme cases of imbalance between the wealth and lifestyles of the ruling class and their subjects, in all of history.

 

thousands of people breaking their backs for decades to build a tomb for some super, super, super, super rich asshole is at least FAR worse than anything that these people are protesting today with regards to capitalism. and lots of those same people still banter about how cool these shits are.

[johnnix]

I thought the whole dealie-oh was that fertile rice/grain agricultural areas (such as the Nile used to be in that area) allowed for the formation of very stable empires.

 

Same happened in Indonesia and SE Asia (Angkor Wat, Prambanan, Borobodur, etc).

 

Then the Nile changed course, right? And everything went to shit. At least that's my understanding?

you're right, to some extent

because the egyptian culture is still vibrant nowdays after the french and british invasion, and israel and you could go on... so it suggest that even when poor agricultral conditions come to be, cultural identity still lives on to survive

[goDel]

You should organize a march in Washington against the Egyptian rulerships thousands of years ago. It'd be fun. Perhaps the Bangles will come back and perform their "Walk like an Egyptian".

[Guest Tamochanter]

I thought the whole dealie-oh was that fertile rice/grain agricultural areas (such as the Nile used to be in that area) allowed for the formation of very stable empires.

 

Same happened in Indonesia and SE Asia (Angkor Wat, Prambanan, Borobodur, etc).

 

Then the Nile changed course, right? And everything went to shit. At least that's my understanding?

They did move actually, i seem to rememeber the first guy to go over found shit miles from the river and it turned out they moved it all when the Nile shifted. Each civilisation seems to have found the same mathematical theories and then used them to different ends. But the real gem for me is that the societys managed to galvanise their people to devote thier lives to the same purpose.

 

The lesson of the demise of these civilisations was the lack of fosight if resources dissaper, something we seem to have realised a little late.

[johnnix]

first off, i'm not judging their entire civilization based on that. i'm just saying:

a) shitloads of manpower, just vast incredible amounts of it, was used to build a huge pile of rocks that does absolutely nothing besides show off how badass the pharaohs were, for having lots of bitches build him a bunch of stupid shit that's really big, and to serve as the tomb for that same asshole.

b) that manpower could have been employed on the construction of things that would have benefited everyone, not just the pharaohs.

c) it wasn't. sure they built other things, and things for the people, but think about how much more they could have done with the effort that went behind these things.

d) of course now there is this debate about how they weren't even slaves. because the whole idea of them being slaves possibly undermines looking at those things as great achievements. but the fact is, that even if some of those people who worked on those things weren't technically slaves, or even if the majority of them weren't, they still obviously lived in a society where the separation between them and their ruling class was so vast, that they lived in two entirely different worlds with absolutely 0 chance of elevation. you can say they weren't technically slaves. maybe they got paid to do this. but they were paid with wealth that the pharaoh inherited and obtained by taxing them. best case, they were working on huge piles of rocks because it was the only decent paying job around, simply because the guy who wanted them to do it took some of their crops and money and wealth because he was born superior to them. now hes giving some of it back if they build a monument to his greatness. can you honestly tell me that that's how they WANTED to spend their lives? building something like that simply for someone else to have an insanely huge monument to lie in after he dies?

e) even IF they THOUGHT they 'wanted' to do that, it would be because of brainwashing by the pharaoh, again with the goal of getting his selfish wishes fulfilled. if those people who busted their asses on those things were presented with options for what life they would get to live before being born, and on one hand they could do that, be the pharaoh's bitches and build him his monuments, or they could live someplace else where the labor they did actually built things for everyone to benefit from, what do you think they'd pick? one way or the other, they were slaves. even if i have to concede with i am michael jackson's idea that we are all slaves even to this day. but i would say that in that case, it's shades of grey. and those pyramids would be standing evidence that those guys really had the shitty end of the stick, historically. what do you think moving those gigantic pieces of stone around for years does to your body? meanwhile pharaoh is having little naked boys feed him grapes. it just blows my mind how plenty of occupy types (not that i'm saying anyone here specifically in this thread is one of those) and lefties in general can be so critical of capitalism and yet look at these things with awe. they are the product of possibly the most or at least among the most extreme cases of imbalance between the wealth and lifestyles of the ruling class and their subjects, in all of history.

 

thousands of people breaking their backs for decades to build a tomb for some super, super, super, super rich asshole is at least FAR worse than anything that these people are protesting today with regards to capitalism. and lots of those same people still banter about how cool these shits are.

I don't even know where to begin to tell you how wrong you are...

 

The whole point of the belief system they had in place was to tie their society together, you can't just say "it's a bunch of rocks and they could have made something better for the people" it's like saying we didn't need to build cathedrals to achieve modern european societies.

These things go together, maybe in a hundred years people will be laughing at what we do now and consider state of the art, like trying to have everybody driving in a vehicle of their own...

And what do you think mankind has built in the last 1000 years that will still stand in a thousand years? not the burj khalifa, but the old castles and cathedrals yes

[MisterE]

don't you think most of that galvanizing was done by the powerful kings who had armies and soldiers to bully people into doing what they wanted? you're acting like it was something vaguely resembling a democracy where 'the people' decided that they wanted to build their pharaoh a nice tomb to sleep in, as some kind of gift to him. their looting of those tombs seems to indicate that that's not really how they felt though. and the existence of these things, again, indicates that that 'galvanizing' was disproportionately aimed at building things the pharaohs wanted. not what was best for the people.

but where did they GET their belief system? WHO did it benefit? (tip- both answers are the same)

 

a cathedral can house many, for worship. a tomb houses one.

[MisterE]

seriously, the hypocrisy here is astounding. if there were a project like this underway in america today, liberals would (rightly so) criticize it to hell and back. but since it happened in ancient egypt you can twist the scenarios around and try to convince me that these people WANTED to spend their lives lifting huge fucking bricks that they first had to carve out of solid rock, for some rich asshole's sole benefit. and do that for large chunks if not the entirety of their lives.

 

if some people were signing up for something like this now, say poor or sub-poverty level people who didn't have welfare given to them and were expected to do something to get food/money etc, and some vastly rich government entity that had rule without election for their lives, and set this thing up as a way to 'give back to the people' by letting them work on his pyramid.... i mean... seriously. this can't even, you can't even make a comparison to anything like today. that's how fucked up it is. but if something remotely close to this happened, you'd be outraged. i may be supposing that these people didn't really want to spend their lives this way, but you are supposing that they did. and neither of us can really know. but the thing is, that even if they did, i would say it was due to brainwashing, oppression, and bullying, just like you would say would be true if something remotely like that happened today. and like many of you accuse of things that do happen today and aren't even REMOTELY this fucked up. not remotely.

 

i mean seriously. we have welfare here, where people are getting paid to live within some degree of comfort for doing basically nothing but checking in or whatever they have to do but it's not working at a job. and people (liberals) still bitch about THAT. they still bitch about these people and how they are downtrodden and not given enough and it's all the fault of the wealthy who only care about themselves.

then you turn around and DEFEND the pyramids. which were built by people who had such a huge gap between them and the rich kings who 'hired' them to build those things, that such a gap probably doesn't even exist today. and that kind of labor killed countless numbers of them, directly and indirectly. seriously. these people were coerced or directly enslaved (either way, does it matter?) to carve and lift into place, huge fucking bricks, for some other guy. envision the people on welfare right now being tasked to do this to 'earn their keep'. really, just think about that.

[goDel]

Ever heard of cultural relativism? You could apply it to some culture thousands of years ago.

 

 

I repeat: thousands of years ago. Yes, thousands. Not 1 year. Not 10 year. Not 100. No a couple of thousand.

 

Answer: Cultural relativism is the view that all beliefs, customs, and ethics are relative to the individual within his own social context. In other words, right and wrong are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and, since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another societys customs.

 

Cultural relativism is widely accepted in modern anthropology. Cultural relativists believe that all cultures are worthy in their own right and are of equal value. Diversity of cultures, even those with conflicting moral beliefs, is not to be considered in terms of right and wrong or good and bad. Todays anthropologist considers all cultures to be equally legitimate expressions of human existence, to be studied from a purely neutral perspective.

 

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/cultural-relativism.html#ixzz2d3GmWIvZ

[Guest Tamochanter]

It's evolution baby, the ability to adapt and change. Look at history and that is the moral of the story. The Mayans and egyptians fell foul of thier own self belief that they were divine. The sun and stars are the things that effect our world and despite the mumbo jumbo of ascending to another plane the doctrines are factually sound. I think the real reason for the collapse of almost all societys is that religion came along and usurped the rulings classes power and gave the rank and file citizens a chance to change things. Much the same way as the corporations etc have taken most christians faiths power in the modern era.

 

Religion destroyed the knowledge and used that same devotion to protect it's one god. It may not sound like much but the biggest defining moment in human history was the concept of a single god. May not sound like much but it became the way for rulers to prevent wars etc thru pledging alligence to the new faith.

 

Each religion seems to be a reaction to the last and the anceinet cultures are exactly the same. Pyramid building became an intrisic part of thier way and kept the culture going for an incredible amount of time. Once they went The slave question is intersting, i agree religious devotion is a form of slavery but if that is the same as forced labour then the majority of the world are slaves. By that standard you could argue atheist or scientitsts are also slaves to thier beliefs.

seriously, the hypocrisy here is astounding. if there were a project like this underway in america today, liberals would (rightly so) criticize it to hell and back. but since it happened in ancient egypt you can twist the scenarios around and try to convince me that these people WANTED to spend their lives lifting huge fucking bricks that they first had to carve out of solid rock, for some rich asshole's sole benefit. and do that for large chunks if not the entirety of their lives.

 

if some people were signing up for something like this now, say poor or sub-poverty level people who didn't have welfare given to them and were expected to do something to get food/money etc, and some vastly rich government entity that had rule without election for their lives, and set this thing up as a way to 'give back to the people' by letting them work on his pyramid.... i mean... seriously. this can't even, you can't even make a comparison to anything like today. that's how fucked up it is. but if something remotely close to this happened, you'd be outraged. i may be supposing that these people didn't really want to spend their lives this way, but you are supposing that they did. and neither of us can really know. but the thing is, that even if they did, i would say it was due to brainwashing, oppression, and bullying, just like you would say would be true if something remotely like that happened today. and like many of you accuse of things that do happen today and aren't even REMOTELY this fucked up. not remotely.

 

i mean seriously. we have welfare here, where people are getting paid to live within some degree of comfort for doing basically nothing but checking in or whatever they have to do but it's not working at a job. and people (liberals) still bitch about THAT. they still bitch about these people and how they are downtrodden and not given enough and it's all the fault of the wealthy who only care about themselves.

then you turn around and DEFEND the pyramids. which were built by people who had such a huge gap between them and the rich kings who 'hired' them to build those things, that such a gap probably doesn't even exist today. and that kind of labor killed countless numbers of them, directly and indirectly. seriously. these people were coerced or directly enslaved (either way, does it matter?) to carve and lift into place, huge fucking bricks, for some other guy. envision the people on welfare right now being tasked to do this to 'earn their keep'. really, just think about that.

Do tell me why people sign up to fight wars???? It's all about finding the similarites in each of the civilisations. The Mayayn blood cult it was the highest honour to get yer head chopped for the normal citizen.

Ever heard of cultural relativism? You could apply it to some culture thousands of years ago.


I repeat: thousands of years ago. Yes, thousands. Not 1 year. Not 10 year. Not 100. No a couple of thousand.

Answer: Cultural relativism is the view that all beliefs, customs, and ethics are relative to the individual within his own social context. In other words, right and wrong are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and, since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another societys customs.

Cultural relativism is widely accepted in modern anthropology. Cultural relativists believe that all cultures are worthy in their own right and are of equal value. Diversity of cultures, even those with conflicting moral beliefs, is not to be considered in terms of right and wrong or good and bad. Todays anthropologist considers all cultures to be equally legitimate expressions of human existence, to be studied from a purely neutral perspective.

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/cultural-relativism.html#ixzz2d3GmWIvZ

 

Nail hit head on.

[MisterE]

godel so does cultural relativism say that slavery is ok in some cultures, because hey its not your culture so don't judge? or sexism would be ok in some cultures because don't judge?

 

and i can't point out that people who criticize specific elements of today's society also praise elements of ancient society that were orders of magnitude more fucked up than the things they are criticizing today, because cultural relativism? really, godel? it's called a double standard and cultural relativism doesn't change that. in that day and age, the culture was DICTATED

 

it wasn't nearly as much determined by the common will of the people as it is today. it was DICTATED.

do you know what DICTATED means, godel?

[johnnix]

seriously, the hypocrisy here is astounding. if there were a project like this underway in america today, liberals would (rightly so) criticize it to hell and back. but since it happened in ancient egypt you can twist the scenarios around and try to convince me that these people WANTED to spend their lives lifting huge fucking bricks that they first had to carve out of solid rock, for some rich asshole's sole benefit. and do that for large chunks if not the entirety of their lives.

 

if some people were signing up for something like this now, say poor or sub-poverty level people who didn't have welfare given to them and were expected to do something to get food/money etc, and some vastly rich government entity that had rule without election for their lives, and set this thing up as a way to 'give back to the people' by letting them work on his pyramid.... i mean... seriously. this can't even, you can't even make a comparison to anything like today. that's how fucked up it is. but if something remotely close to this happened, you'd be outraged. i may be supposing that these people didn't really want to spend their lives this way, but you are supposing that they did. and neither of us can really know. but the thing is, that even if they did, i would say it was due to brainwashing, oppression, and bullying, just like you would say would be true if something remotely like that happened today. and like many of you accuse of things that do happen today and aren't even REMOTELY this fucked up. not remotely.

 

i mean seriously. we have welfare here, where people are getting paid to live within some degree of comfort for doing basically nothing but checking in or whatever they have to do but it's not working at a job. and people (liberals) still bitch about THAT. they still bitch about these people and how they are downtrodden and not given enough and it's all the fault of the wealthy who only care about themselves.

then you turn around and DEFEND the pyramids. which were built by people who had such a huge gap between them and the rich kings who 'hired' them to build those things, that such a gap probably doesn't even exist today. and that kind of labor killed countless numbers of them, directly and indirectly. seriously. these people were coerced or directly enslaved (either way, does it matter?) to carve and lift into place, huge fucking bricks, for some other guy. envision the people on welfare right now being tasked to do this to 'earn their keep'. really, just think about that.

This is beyond depressing...

Do you ever wonder how your fuel and your uranium and your magnesium and your.... i could go on,and on

50 years ago in your country (and mine) poor human beings were digging in the mines so the people in power could build railroads and highways

Does it ring a bell ? It should...

Because it hasn't change so much in 6000 years besides prudctivity gains via technology

[Guest Tamochanter]

godel so does cultural relativism say that slavery is ok in some cultures, because hey its not your culture so don't judge? or sexism would be ok in some cultures because don't judge?

 

and i can't point out that people who criticize specific elements of today's society also praise elements of ancient society that were orders of magnitude more fucked up than the things they are criticizing today, because cultural relativism? really, godel? it's called a double standard and cultural relativism doesn't change that. in that day and age, the culture was DICTATED

 

it wasn't nearly as much determined by the common will of the people as it is today. it was DICTATED.

do you know what DICTATED means, godel?

I think you are failling to understand the power of faith and devotion to a god or religion.... Look at today we have all the knowledge to discout any religion but it still is the biggest defining part of most peoples character.

 

seriously, the hypocrisy here is astounding. if there were a project like this underway in america today, liberals would (rightly so) criticize it to hell and back. but since it happened in ancient egypt you can twist the scenarios around and try to convince me that these people WANTED to spend their lives lifting huge fucking bricks that they first had to carve out of solid rock, for some rich asshole's sole benefit. and do that for large chunks if not the entirety of their lives.

 

if some people were signing up for something like this now, say poor or sub-poverty level people who didn't have welfare given to them and were expected to do something to get food/money etc, and some vastly rich government entity that had rule without election for their lives, and set this thing up as a way to 'give back to the people' by letting them work on his pyramid.... i mean... seriously. this can't even, you can't even make a comparison to anything like today. that's how fucked up it is. but if something remotely close to this happened, you'd be outraged. i may be supposing that these people didn't really want to spend their lives this way, but you are supposing that they did. and neither of us can really know. but the thing is, that even if they did, i would say it was due to brainwashing, oppression, and bullying, just like you would say would be true if something remotely like that happened today. and like many of you accuse of things that do happen today and aren't even REMOTELY this fucked up. not remotely.

 

i mean seriously. we have welfare here, where people are getting paid to live within some degree of comfort for doing basically nothing but checking in or whatever they have to do but it's not working at a job. and people (liberals) still bitch about THAT. they still bitch about these people and how they are downtrodden and not given enough and it's all the fault of the wealthy who only care about themselves.

then you turn around and DEFEND the pyramids. which were built by people who had such a huge gap between them and the rich kings who 'hired' them to build those things, that such a gap probably doesn't even exist today. and that kind of labor killed countless numbers of them, directly and indirectly. seriously. these people were coerced or directly enslaved (either way, does it matter?) to carve and lift into place, huge fucking bricks, for some other guy. envision the people on welfare right now being tasked to do this to 'earn their keep'. really, just think about that.

This is beyond depressing...

Do you ever wonder how your fuel and your uranium and your magnesium and your.... i could go on,and on

50 years ago in your country (and mine) poor human beings were digging in the mines so the people in power could build railroads and highways

Does it ring a bell ? It should...

Because it hasn't change so much in 6000 years besides prudctivity gains via technology

 

Welfare ain't nothing new, ever heard of a kibbutz?

[johnnix]

It's evolution baby, the ability to adapt and change. Look at history and that is the moral of the story. The Mayans and egyptians fell foul of thier own self belief that they were divine. The sun and stars are the things that effect our world and despite the mumbo jumbo of ascending to another plane the doctrines are factually sound. I think the real reason for the collapse of almost all societys is that religion came along and usurped the rulings classes power and gave the rank and file citizens a chance to change things. Much the same way as the corporations etc have taken most christians faiths power in the modern era.

 

Religion destroyed the knowledge and used that same devotion to protect it's one god. It may not sound like much but the biggest defining moment in human history was the concept of a single god. May not sound like much but it became the way for rulers to prevent wars etc thru pledging alligence to the new faith.

 

Each religion seems to be a reaction to the last and the anceinet cultures are exactly the same. Pyramid building became an intrisic part of thier way and kept the culture going for an incredible amount of time. Once they went The slave question is intersting, i agree religious devotion is a form of slavery but if that is the same as forced labour then the majority of the world are slaves. By that standard you could argue atheist or scientitsts are also slaves to thier beliefs.

seriously, the hypocrisy here is astounding. if there were a project like this underway in america today, liberals would (rightly so) criticize it to hell and back. but since it happened in ancient egypt you can twist the scenarios around and try to convince me that these people WANTED to spend their lives lifting huge fucking bricks that they first had to carve out of solid rock, for some rich asshole's sole benefit. and do that for large chunks if not the entirety of their lives.

 

if some people were signing up for something like this now, say poor or sub-poverty level people who didn't have welfare given to them and were expected to do something to get food/money etc, and some vastly rich government entity that had rule without election for their lives, and set this thing up as a way to 'give back to the people' by letting them work on his pyramid.... i mean... seriously. this can't even, you can't even make a comparison to anything like today. that's how fucked up it is. but if something remotely close to this happened, you'd be outraged. i may be supposing that these people didn't really want to spend their lives this way, but you are supposing that they did. and neither of us can really know. but the thing is, that even if they did, i would say it was due to brainwashing, oppression, and bullying, just like you would say would be true if something remotely like that happened today. and like many of you accuse of things that do happen today and aren't even REMOTELY this fucked up. not remotely.

 

i mean seriously. we have welfare here, where people are getting paid to live within some degree of comfort for doing basically nothing but checking in or whatever they have to do but it's not working at a job. and people (liberals) still bitch about THAT. they still bitch about these people and how they are downtrodden and not given enough and it's all the fault of the wealthy who only care about themselves.

then you turn around and DEFEND the pyramids. which were built by people who had such a huge gap between them and the rich kings who 'hired' them to build those things, that such a gap probably doesn't even exist today. and that kind of labor killed countless numbers of them, directly and indirectly. seriously. these people were coerced or directly enslaved (either way, does it matter?) to carve and lift into place, huge fucking bricks, for some other guy. envision the people on welfare right now being tasked to do this to 'earn their keep'. really, just think about that.

Do tell me why people sign up to fight wars???? It's all about finding the similarites in each of the civilisations. The Mayayn blood cult it was the highest honour to get yer head chopped for the normal citizen.

Ever heard of cultural relativism? You could apply it to some culture thousands of years ago.

 

 

I repeat: thousands of years ago. Yes, thousands. Not 1 year. Not 10 year. Not 100. No a couple of thousand.

 

Answer: Cultural relativism is the view that all beliefs, customs, and ethics are relative to the individual within his own social context. In other words, right and wrong are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and, since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another societys customs.

 

Cultural relativism is widely accepted in modern anthropology. Cultural relativists believe that all cultures are worthy in their own right and are of equal value. Diversity of cultures, even those with conflicting moral beliefs, is not to be considered in terms of right and wrong or good and bad. Todays anthropologist considers all cultures to be equally legitimate expressions of human existence, to be studied from a purely neutral perspective.

 

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/cultural-relativism.html#ixzz2d3GmWIvZ

 

Nail hit head on

We're on the same page here

[MisterE]

you guys can say whatever you want, but here's what it boils down to. you are defending dictatorships, where what the people did was dictated by a king who told them what to do. they had little to no say. if any of them thought what they were doing was 'cool' and would help them get to a halfway decent afterlife or whatever, it was because the kings tricked them to believe that so they'd have willing slaves. christianity is all the time criticized for wars that were justified in it's name, and fought by people who thought they'd get to heaven. recent presidents have been criticized for talking to god. but heaven forbid we point out that some black egyptians used slave labor or coerced a bunch of relatively poor as shit peasants to build them an opulent tomb. the single person who sat at rule of egypt at any given time dictated everything. if they didn't like the previous pharaoh, they'd literally erase them from history by removing their face from depictions of them. they dictated EVERYTHING. they told these people that they were gods. to enslave them.

 

and you are defending that. yet you still think that things that are much less fucked up which happen today, are hideously evil. ya know i mean it seems to me that what godel really means by cultural relativism is what color the slave owner's skin is. i guess that's something i'm supposed to consider before deciding whether it was ok of them to get people to sweat and bleed out a pyramid for them...

 

?

[goDel]

godel so does cultural relativism say that slavery is ok in some cultures, because hey its not your culture so don't judge? or sexism would be ok in some cultures because don't judge?

 

and i can't point out that people who criticize specific elements of today's society also praise elements of ancient society that were orders of magnitude more fucked up than the things they are criticizing today, because cultural relativism? really, godel? it's called a double standard and cultural relativism doesn't change that. in that day and age, the culture was DICTATED

 

it wasn't nearly as much determined by the common will of the people as it is today. it was DICTATED.

do you know what DICTATED means, godel?

So we're in a thread about people being impressed by pyramids and you're going off over the slavery that was used to build these? And people who are impressed by these pyramids and who happen to have a liberal political color are hypocritical. Really. Is it even relevant? So people who have liberal point of views are not allowed to be impressed by the buildings surviving for 4 thousand years?

 

Why does this thread need to be politicized? What's your point? Don't youhave anything better to do than to whine about people being interested in pyramids?

[Guest Tamochanter]

Not defending nowt merely commenting on the facts.

 

Defending dictators is reprehensible.

[MisterE]

 

This is beyond depressing...

Do you ever wonder how your fuel and your uranium and your magnesium and your.... i could go on,and on

50 years ago in your country (and mine) poor human beings were digging in the mines so the people in power could build railroads and highways

Does it ring a bell ? It should...

Because it hasn't change so much in 6000 years besides prudctivity gains via technology

 

i'll concede this point you think you have here after you give me one practical purpose that the pyramids served to the general population of ancient egypt. in the meanwhile i may or may not be compiling an endless list of benefits that nuclear power, railroads, and highways have had for all of the people who get to enjoy those benefits. don't count on me wasting my time though since i already know your list will have nothing on it. besides maybe solidarity that those people gained by being basically, for all intents and purposes, enslaved. damned to eek their lives out for the whims of some lunatic pharaoh who cares more about their own delusions of divinity than for their own people who they could have done so much more for. but hey, they were killing themselves under boulders and breaking their backs for a common goal! at least they had that, right!?

 

but ya know that's really like going a long way out of your way to 'look at the bright side' of a situation. they couldn't possibly have had unity without the king's pyramid project, either, right?

[johnnix]

In the world of Mister E, every country in the world is free and democratic , and nobody ever has to to be the slave of someone other...
We build things like the pyramids now, but it's all free will, hey! everybody can do whatever they want! no tyranny at all... tell that to the Bangladeshi making your clothes

[goDel]

you guys can say whatever you want, but here's what it boils down to. you are defending dictatorships, where what the people did was dictated by a king who told them what to do. they had little to no say. if any of them thought what they were doing was 'cool' and would help them get to a halfway decent afterlife or whatever, it was because the kings tricked them to believe that so they'd have willing slaves. christianity is all the time criticized for wars that were justified in it's name, and fought by people who thought they'd get to heaven. recent presidents have been criticized for talking to god. but heaven forbid we point out that some black egyptians used slave labor or coerced a bunch of relatively poor as shit peasants to build them an opulent tomb. the single person who sat at rule of egypt at any given time dictated everything. if they didn't like the previous pharaoh, they'd literally erase them from history by removing their face from depictions of them. they dictated EVERYTHING. they told these people that they were gods. to enslave them.

 

and you are defending that. yet you still think that things that are much less fucked up which happen today, are hideously evil. ya know i mean it seems to me that what godel really means by cultural relativism is what color the slave owner's skin is. i guess that's something i'm supposed to consider before deciding whether it was ok of them to get people to sweat and bleed out a pyramid for them...

 

?

You're not in a position to judge about the old egyptian civilization. That's what cultural relativism is about. And what makes it even more obvious, is that the egyptian society we're talking about have stopped existing roughly 2000 years ago. So, apart from dictating some absolute morals, you're also dictating history as well. You're awfully certain about how things must have been going back then. Do you happen to have a time machine as well?

[johnnix]

 

 

This is beyond depressing...

Do you ever wonder how your fuel and your uranium and your magnesium and your.... i could go on,and on

50 years ago in your country (and mine) poor human beings were digging in the mines so the people in power could build railroads and highways

Does it ring a bell ? It should...

Because it hasn't change so much in 6000 years besides prudctivity gains via technology

 

i'll concede this point you think you have here after you give me one practical purpose that the pyramids served to the general population of ancient egypt. in the meanwhile i may or may not be compiling an endless list of benefits that nuclear power, railroads, and highways have had for all of the people who get to enjoy those benefits. don't count on me wasting my time though since i already know your list will have nothing on it. besides maybe solidarity that those people gained by being basically, for all intents and purposes, enslaved. damned to eek their lives out for the whims of some lunatic pharaoh who cares more about their own delusions of divinity than for their own people who they could have done so much more for. but hey, they were killing themselves under boulders and breaking their backs for a common goal! at least they had that, right!?

 

but ya know that's really like going a long way out of your way to 'look at the bright side' of a situation. they couldn't possibly have had unity without the king's pyramid project, either, right?

 

Basicaly it comes down to serfdom, the people of ancient egypt were 'protected' by being in the system. Do you know about all the wars being fought around Egypt at the time? don't you think the populace was happy to have some form os stability and security?

[MisterE]

So we're in a thread about people being impressed by pyramids and you're going off over the slavery that was used to build these? And people who are impressed by these pyramids and who happen to have a liberal political color are hypocritical. Really. Is it even relevant? So people who have liberal point of views are not allowed to be impressed by the buildings surviving for 4 thousand years?

people can be impressed by them all they want. i am. but i acknowledge realities behind them. and yeah i see other people turning a blind eye to those realities as a double standard, if those same people bitch about living conditions today which are immeasurably superior than what those pyramid builders back then had. i see the design of them as being impressive. i see the accomplishment of it as being amazing. but i see them as being built on the backs of countless people who got to live their lives for one other person who sure as hell did not deserve it. and i see people acting like these pharaohs were cool and these pyramids just being cool things by extension implies that the pharaohs also were pretty rad for building them, but i just don't understand how anyone who claims to care about injustice in the world today can look at those things and those kings as anything other than unbridled despotism. which those same people would probably claim to be against if asked about it with regards to some modern day politician who may or may not even be a despot. you know that saying about history repeating itself? and here you are telling me 'don't consider the realities behind them, just that they are pretty rad'. ok godel. you are right, this is a thread, in a forum, and as conversations go, some people may choose to look at other angles. do you not have anything better to do than follow me around here and try to discredit anything i say?

[Guest Tamochanter]

In the world of Mister E, every country in the world is free and democratic , and nobody ever has to to be the slave of someone other...

We build things like the pyramids now, but it's all free will, hey! everybody can do whatever they want! no tyranny at all... tell that to the Bangladeshi making your clothes

Free will is a religious construct that is a fallacy in itself. Slavery is more rife today thatn ever before if you consider capitalism s control over each and everyone of us. It has the same properties as any religion or cult that makes followers become part of the machinations of it's doctrine. I think this is a realisation many people have come to and has helped the resurgence of many religions.

 

So we're in a thread about people being impressed by pyramids and you're going off over the slavery that was used to build these? And people who are impressed by these pyramids and who happen to have a liberal political color are hypocritical. Really. Is it even relevant? So people who have liberal point of views are not allowed to be impressed by the buildings surviving for 4 thousand years?

people can be impressed by them all they want. i am. but i acknowledge realities behind them. and yeah i see other people turning a blind eye to those realities as a double standard, if those same people bitch about living conditions today which are immeasurably superior than what those pyramid builders back then had. i see the design of them as being impressive. i see the accomplishment of it as being amazing. but i see them as being built on the backs of countless people who got to live their lives for one other person who sure as hell did not deserve it. and i see people acting like these pharaohs were cool and these pyramids just being cool things by extension implies that the pharaohs also were pretty rad for building them, but i just don't understand how anyone who claims to care about injustice in the world today can look at those things and those kings as anything other than unbridled despotism. which those same people would probably claim to be against if asked about it with regards to some modern day politician who may or may not even be a despot. you know that saying about history repeating itself? and here you are telling me 'don't consider the realities behind them, just that they are pretty rad'. ok godel. you are right, this is a thread, in a forum, and as conversations go, some people may choose to look at other angles. do you not have anything better to do than follow me around here and try to discredit anything i say?