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lcam88
3rd July 2016, 22:36
[Mod Note: The first posts up to and including #24 on page 2 by modwiz were all split off from the Benghazi Report of June 28, 2016 (http://jandeane81.com/threads/9548-Benghazi-Report-of-June-28-2016) thread.]


They seem to have been rigged at least since 2000 but the rigging was rather uncontested back then. If there is a second faction vying to take over the presidential office then any rigging won't be uncontested anymore. I would wager that this is why the Brexit vote succeeded.

I think the British are more honest with their elections than the Americans. The establishment didn't want Brexit, they even employed a strategy involving an assassination of one of their moderates to try to gain traction.

They are more honest because the people expect transparency, here in Brazil there is even an expression we use to identify this value of "correctness". "Para o Inglês ver" => "For the English to see".

Government processes that can't be scrutinised or come up short of even under scrutiny get serious attention in England. In Australia, another commonwealth nation that has strong english values, a parlament member had to resign because of about 2k AUD that was inappropriately spent. Whereas here in Brazil, billions (with a b) go missing and politicians look around as though they have been awakened sharply by a slap on the table. Cultural differences.

I would go so far as to say that this tradition or culture British value is probably the reason their colonies do do much better than other european nations. The ideology that having rich colonies is more valuable to the "Crown" than poor ones, whereas the Portuguese where happy to have a colony they could steal from, regardless of whether it was poor or not. That puts Brexit in an interesting light as to why the values of the EU are being rejected.

Please chime in here anyone, I don't have any real reference to back any of that up and I might even be wrong.

PS is is this culture of oversight and verification of our political process that has been highjacked in a way that enables Hillary in these government activities that are quite simply "criminal".

bsbray
3rd July 2016, 23:55
They are more honest because the people expect transparency, here in Brazil there is even an expression we use to identify this value of "correctness". "Para o Inglês ver" => "For the English to see".

Idioms aside I don't know why I should believe that the British government is any more honest than the US government. Google "Scottish vote rigged" and look at what comes up.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbJif7vISQg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZRYVE4naHc


Maybe they're just worse at it because they haven't "upgraded" to electronic machines yet. (And hopefully they won't for a good while yet.)

I wouldn't do too much bragging on the British empire during the colonial period because it's hard to reconcile honesty with the rape, pillage and murder of natives and Africans the same as all of the other European powers during the colonial period. There are lots of good stories about all of that, from the intentional handing out of smallpox-laden blankets to Native Americans, to the enslavement of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, but I'm sure you can imagine. I've studied a good bit of colonial history under Britain and there may have been big cultural differences between Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Dutch, etc., but I don't know if outstanding honesty is the characteristic that particularly sets the British apart from the rest of them.


Anyway I think we have talked about this topic before and I have already given you a lot of the reasons why I think we are not governed by a single cabal that has a complete monopoly on power and gets everything that it wants.

lcam88
4th July 2016, 01:33
Fair enough bsbray. Consider, has the public backlash of that Bush election scandal when Florida started counting ballots by hand ever move beyond the speculation stage and been put to real scrutiny? At last the same type of scrutiny as the Scottish vote you shared?

If you have a link to a thread here on TOT elaborating evidences examined on the rape, pillage and murder of natives please link. I think most of us are willing to accept such claims because we like to see our leaders in that light, but... anyway, if you share a link I'll read up and comment where it is more appropriate.


I don't know if outstanding honesty is the characteristic that particularly sets the British apart from the rest of them

I only use the term to suggest that the outright swindle is something un-English, they will tend to "swindle" openly as they don't see their prepotension as something to be hidden... historically anyway, and in my view.

Furthermore, it seems to me that Portuguese mentality during the 15 and 1600's was that they would colonise in a way that was deliberately to pretend the rest of the world didn't exist. This mentality has reared its head in certain particularities that are even present today. I'll try to touch on a couple of here.

In brazil, numbers use a comma where the rest of the world uses a decimal point. 10.25 (10 1/4) is written 10,25. You see, they weren't smart enough to invent fpart notation for mathematics and so they borrowed (like almost every other culture), but they changed to notation so that within their borders (universe) things are done their way. This is the first of many countries I've visited that appears to take pride in a nuance of their legacy in that way.

Here, electrical outlets follow a "pattern" that initially started ideologically, the Neutral and Phase (N and P) poles in an basic electrical circuit was understood to be opposites and electrical plugs where designed with quite a large gap between the two as though to flaunt to their minion of engineers world how great, or superior their design is, to the point of mandating it. Then when 3 pronged plugs became more popular with the realisation that a 3rd wire Ground (G) was more safe, they added the G prong to their prior design, but, offset by 3mm between the other two. So now you have their initial superior design, crippled by a 3rd pole that then reversed their previous merits of superior design as the poles are now very close together. But it doesn't end there! The proper position of the G pole between N and P is 3 cm above the N <-> P line. So what we always knew, that Ground is terra, is earth, is down has been reversed. Probably the same reason a period for the decimal point was "too standard", that comma was to be used instead.

Why be such a non-conformist about such little things? I say its a cultural thing, the mentality, tradition is about the backdoor nuance that is ever present because "prepotension" here is something they would like to be open only in the club. Because the English mentality is about a worldly empire, they did not think necessarily about the backdoor as something required, they thought about the front being "proper". To pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist is simply not "thinking empirically ". The imitation of the empiric concept the English used to define measures applied in the nuance is laughable, they missed the point! They certainly didn't think about empire building in the same way as the English.

And that is where we stand with Benghazi, oversight that is unable to do its function because of nuance or "backdoor prepotension" that misses the point. Democrats are an integral part of oversight, but when they are overseeing one of their own, they are confused about what they are doing.


... I think we are not governed by a single cabal that has a complete monopoly on power and gets everything that it wants.

Not governed by a single cabal?

PS, I think I might have overcooked the "English honesty" idea above. :/ Fundamentally there is a reason English colonies did so much better than spanish or portuguese colonies. It is an issue dealing with tradition, culture and values, the analogies I share above are meant to touch to those values. I hope that is understood.

Aragorn
4th July 2016, 05:24
[...] In brazil, numbers use a comma where the rest of the world uses a decimal point. 10.25 (10 1/4) is written 10,25. [...]

Well, that depends on how you define "the rest of the world". In the Dutch language — albeit not in its offshoot Afrikaans, because of the former British influence in the development of modern-day South African culture — and in French and German, we also use a decimal comma, and a period as a thousands separator. In fact, this is quite common in Europe, although I'm not sure whether every single European nation follows this notation.

I have no objections to using a decimal point — I tend to do this myself quite a lot — but I have personally always found a comma as a thousands separator confusing. Maybe it's just my neurology. So I will commonly — and in the spirit of international communication by way of the English language — use a point for decimals and an apostrophe as a thousands separator, which is something I have picked up from an electronic calculator, and which was probably simply related to the crystal banks in the digits on the LCD screen.

Being a former Portuguese colony, I think that Brazil would probably simply be using the decimal comma because of how prevalent that is in Europe — minus the United Kingdom and Ireland, that is. For that matter, even though the UK has adopted the metric system, they still do use their imperial measurements system as well. Weights are still expressed in pounds and ounces — sometimes even in "stone" — and distances are still expressed in inches, feet, yards and miles. Likewise, volume is still often (but not always) expressed in gallons — being the imperial gallon of course, not the US gallon, which is larger.

When it comes to automotive applications, the vehicle's power is still expressed in horsepower in the UK, but this is then the German industry standard horsepower, commonly written as "PS", "DIN PS" or "DIN HP" — DIN stands for "Deutsche Industrie Norm" and "PS" stands for "Pferdestärke". Acronymians use bhp — for "brake horsepower" — which yields a slightly lower value than PS for the amount of power developed by the same engine — and they refer to the PS value as "metric horsepower", even though there is no such thing, because horsepower is not a metric unit. Fuel consumption is expressed in "miles to the gallon" — which is also what the Acronymians use, although they say "miles per gallon" — and torque is expressed in pound-feet (lb.ft) or foot-pounds (ft.lb).

The European mainland expresses torque in Newton-meters (Nm), automotive power in PS (*) — with the metric value in kW (kilowatts) added between brackets — and fuel consumption in "liters per 100 km". The Dutch have experimented with expressing fuel consumption in "kilometers per liter" for a while — analogous to the "miles per gallon" used in the US and the UK — but they eventually dropped it in favor of "liters per 100 km" as the rest of Europe found the numbers too difficult to relate to.

Official government instances and insurance companies exclusively use kW for rating automotive power, but the kW never caught on in the rest of Europe for expressing automotive power; people keep on using (German) horsepower as the more familiar unit. We do use Watts or kW for electrical appliances, though. Australia on the other hand has completely adopted the metric system and expresses even automotive engine power only in kW anymore.



(*) In France and Southern Europe, they use "CV" ("chevaux") instead, and in the Dutch language, we use "PK" ("paardenkracht"), but this is the same unit as PS. It's merely a translation of the German word "Pferdestärke".

Cearna
4th July 2016, 06:46
Well, that depends on how you define "the rest of the world". In the Dutch language — albeit not in its offshoot Afrikaans, because of the former British influence in the development of modern-day South African culture — and in French and German, we also use a decimal comma, and a period as a thousands separator. In fact, this is quite common in Europe, although I'm not sure whether every single European nation follows this notation.

I have no objections to using a decimal point — I tend to do this myself quite a lot — but I have personally always found a comma as a thousands separator confusing. Maybe it's just my neurology. So I will commonly — and in the spirit of international communication by way of the English language — use a point for decimals and an apostrophe as a thousands separator, which is something I have picked up from an electronic calculator, and which was probably simply related to the crystal banks in the digits on the LCD screen.

Being a former Portuguese colony, I think that Brazil would probably simply be using the decimal comma because of how prevalent that is in Europe — minus the United Kingdom and Ireland, that is. For that matter, even though the UK has adopted the metric system, they still do use their imperial measurements system as well. Weights are still expressed in pounds and ounces — sometimes even in "stone" — and distances are still expressed in inches, feet, yards and miles. Likewise, volume is still often (but not always) expressed in gallons — being the imperial gallon of course, not the US gallon, which is larger.

When it comes to automotive applications, the vehicle's power is still expressed in horsepower in the UK, but this is then the German industry standard horsepower, commonly written as "PS", "DIN PS" or "DIN HP" — DIN stands for "Deutsche Industrie Norm" and "PS" stands for "Pferdestärke". Acronymians use bhp — for "brake horsepower" — which yields a slightly lower value than PS for the amount of power developed by the same engine — and they refer to the PS value as "metric horsepower", even though there is no such thing, because horsepower is not a metric unit. Fuel consumption is expressed in "miles to the gallon" — which is also what the Acronymians use, although they say "miles per gallon" — and torque is expressed in pound-feet (lb.ft) or foot-pounds (ft.lb).

The European mainland expresses torque in Newton-meters (Nm), automotive power in PS (*) — with the metric value in kW (kilowatts) added between brackets — and fuel consumption in "liters per 100 km". The Dutch have experimented with expressing fuel consumption in "kilometers per liter" for a while — analogous to the "miles per gallon" used in the US and the UK — but they eventually dropped it in favor of "liters per 100 km" as the rest of Europe found the numbers too difficult to relate to.

Official government instances and insurance companies exclusively use kW for rating automotive power, but the kW never caught on in the rest of Europe for expressing automotive power; people keep on using (German) horsepower as the more familiar unit. We do use Watts or kW for electrical appliances, though. Australia on the other hand has completely adopted the metric system and expresses even automotive engine power only in kW anymore.



(*) In France and Southern Europe, they use "CV" ("chevaux") instead, and in the Dutch language, we use "PK" ("paardenkracht"), but this is the same unit as PS. It's merely a translation of the German word "Pferdestärke".



Are you surprised that we need to have some system development going on somewhere - and people have decided to opt out and live in their own little world. I grew up, with pounds, shillings and pence and the avoidupois system, which we learnt off by heart, from 3rd class on, some of which I still remember, and still use, because all our sewing work was done, in inches, feet and yards and I know how big 5/8th of an inch seam allowance is like the back of my hand, but it's eqivialent in metric, still eludes me to some extent.

Then we went metric - fortunately for the most part we are isolated in our own little island continent, for our oldies would never cope with what you have just expressed, because as I keep saying, large numbers of us only speak Strine, and some of us possibly Indonesian or Japanese, because of trade arrangements, unless we have another language background, some in primary school even learn aboriginal, but the number of dialects used makes even that difficult.

Oh what a tangled web, needs to be re-woven somewhere???????

modwiz
4th July 2016, 07:04
Are you surprised that we need to have some system development going on somewhere - and people have decided to opt out and live in their own little world. I grew up, with pounds, shillings and pence and the avoidupois system, which we learnt off by heart, from 3rd class on, some of which I still remember, and still use, because all our sewing work was done, in inches, feet and yards and I know how big 5/8th of an inch seam allowance is like the back of my hand, but it's eqivialent in metric, still eludes me to some extent.

Then we went metric - fortunately for the most part we are isolated in our own little island continent, for our oldies would never cope with what you have just expressed, because as I keep saying, large numbers of us only speak Strine, and some of us possibly Indonesian or Japanese, because of trade arrangements, unless we have another language background, some in primary school even learn aboriginal, but the number of dialects used makes even that difficult.

Oh what a tangled web, needs to be re-woven somewhere???????

Metric system "feels" inorganic to me. A system based in 10 does not fit will with sacred geometry either. Although they can have some relationship with each other. For instance, Pi is 3.14xxxxxxxx and Phi is 1.618xxx. These are based on a decimal system to express them in numbers yet, they allow us to understand and "compute" circles and segments based in geometry. For math decimals work. For organic things, measurements of volumes and lengths, I like the Imperial system. I am keeping this very short.

bsbray
4th July 2016, 08:09
Fair enough bsbray. Consider, has the public backlash of that Bush election scandal when Florida started counting ballots by hand ever move beyond the speculation stage and been put to real scrutiny? At last the same type of scrutiny as the Scottish vote you shared?

I don't think either have ever been scrutinized by anyone other than the general public, except this public hearing about US election fraud:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEzY2tnwExs

If something similar has occurred about the Scotland vote I don't know about it, and I think the point is pretty moot anyway. I have never seen any reason why any government in Europe, or any major government anywhere else in the world, should be significantly less corrupt so that voter fraud would not occur.


If you have a link to a thread here on TOT elaborating evidences examined on the rape, pillage and murder of natives please link. I think most of us are willing to accept such claims because we like to see our leaders in that light, but... anyway, if you share a link I'll read up and comment where it is more appropriate.

I don't have time to dig up the entire history of European or even just British offenses against Native Americans but I'm sure you could find lots of things on Google if you really wanted. It would save me the time of finding it for you and I would be very appreciative. I thought it was fairly well understood that no one was exactly treating the natives with kindness and respect, to put it mildly (except for the Quakers of Pennsylvania). Here is a Wikipedia page about the Siege of Fort Pitt where British leaders conspired to spread smallpox to native tribes by giving them contaminated blankets, to get you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt


I only use the term to suggest that the outright swindle is something un-English, they will tend to "swindle" openly as they don't see their prepotension as something to be hidden... historically anyway, and in my view.

Yes, I have no idea what you are basing these views on. Your original point was that you don't think elections can be rigged as easily in Britain because they insist upon more transparency and this sort of thing, but I haven't seen the things you apparently have which have led you to believe that. European government in general strikes me as more bureaucratic and convoluted if anything.


And that is where we stand with Benghazi, oversight that is unable to do its function because of nuance or "backdoor prepotension" that misses the point.

I don't know if you're aware of it but Britain was involved in the operations against Libya, and MI6 is running around doing the same things as the CIA and Mossad and all the rest. I wonder where James Bond fits into your idea of the British. These are the classical underworld cabal types you know. :p


Not governed by a single cabal?

Yes, as in I think there is more competition for power going on in the world than you imply when you say "they" won't allow this or that, as if there is just one group running things.


PS, I think I might have overcooked the "English honesty" idea above. :/ Fundamentally there is a reason English colonies did so much better than spanish or portuguese colonies. It is an issue dealing with tradition, culture and values, the analogies I share above are meant to touch to those values. I hope that is understood.

This is actually something that a lot of research has gone into, comparing and contrasting the colonization efforts of various countries. It's massively complex, as you can imagine if you think of the different internal situations going on in each country, the natural resources and manpower available to each country, their different styles of government, the different kinds of revolutions that evolved to create those governments (Mexico, for example, was embroiled in civil wars and revolutions for a long time and was not nearly as stable as the US early on), the demographics of the population (class divisions, racial tensions), economic systems, trade relations, etc. Culture is tied in with all of these things but it's not a simple subject. The British still had fairly rigid social classes (from royalty and nobility on down to peasants and slaves, still a feudal system at heart) at the time of the US revolution, and the US did away with all of that except of course for slavery, which had a lot to do with accelerating social and economic development since there was much more social/class mobility. So it gets complicated when you take all of these things into account.

lcam88
4th July 2016, 13:23
Thanks Aragorn and bsbray, points taken,

Perhaps the use of comma delimited fparts have a history deeper than we know. I didn't know it was so widespread in Europe I never noticed the comma during my time in France or Italy. To me the delimitation of thousands groupings using period is more odd than the comma or even a simple space. So odd indeed that I am complaining about the comma delimited decimal parts as though it is a sign of portuguese decadence! <facepalm/> I'm a programmer so I do have to fret over it.

Measurements of power and torque, indeed seem more empirical as used in industry, perhaps because it is more straight forward to think of force in terms pounds than newtons? I don't know. A HP (horsepower) is essentially that, the average amount of work an "average" horse can produce over a period of 12 hours. The vagueness about what is an average horse... <eye roll/> maybe the germans had to keep the english honest about it?

Thanks for keeping it straight bsbray. I appreciate it. So perhaps election rigging is just as much a part of democracy as voting? What does that say about democracy? And considering those "Cabal" groups, what does it say about them?


Your original point was that you don't think elections can be rigged as easily in Britain because they insist upon more transparency...

Yes indeed, I also have my doubts; there are other possible reasons for the Brexit results that are equally speculative... Off topic. (as if that really matters here)

While the issue of how and why English colonies are more successful may be made complicated, it fundamentally comes down to values and culture IMO, it comes down to the people involved acting in ways that fill the "details" aspect lost in history. Complications tend only to try to grapple with something not easily understood.

Since you mention Mexico, Cortez arrived set spanish values and traditions into the population. Same as in most of south america where conquistadors tried to duplicate what he had done. Brazil is the exception, and it isn't much better. In Africa, there are french and italian colonies that all seem to have suffered the hand of european values. You can make it all as complicated as you want, but England created colonies that over all have better social order. I suppose that is the word I was looking for all this time, "order". The English have quite a bloody history, filled with war and death, undeniably a price for their idea of order.

Considering order... the dutch, specifically the East India Trading company... The most successful and longest running "corporation" in the world... That says something for their values and culture... They didn't burden themselves with colonies for the most part. I think they may have tried.

Pardon me for the off-topic. Benghazi... Does anyone care about Benghazi at all?

bsbray
6th July 2016, 17:40
In Africa, there are french and italian colonies that all seem to have suffered the hand of european values. You can make it all as complicated as you want, but England created colonies that over all have better social order.

The English had colonies in Africa that didn't work out very well for them either. One of the biggest problems with all of these South American countries founded by the Iberians is that since the 1800's the US has been screwing with them, and particularly since the creation of the CIA. A lot of the instability you're blaming on Spanish or Portuguese culture could just as well be blamed on the US overthrowing governments all over Central and South America and generally causing chaos to its own benefit. We don't overthrow governments like Canada or Australia because the people there are already very well controlled.


The only reasons these investigations were put forward was to show Washington insiders that Hillary Clinton was above the law. The general US public is too stupid to read between the lines and will swallow the official story of her being not guilty. The FBI's statement is telling. They know she is guilty but they are not going to press charges just because... Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi i

The director probably has his hands tied or he's indebted to them or being blackmailed in some way.

Clinton Body Count (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/BODIES.php)


Here's an animation of Bill cutting it up while leaving a funeral of a "friend" until he sees a camera and goes into fake cry mode. These guys are mob types and wouldn't mind putting out a hit on somebody if they had to.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/BROWN/TEARS/clinton.gif

lcam88
6th July 2016, 18:15
The fact is many other groups tried to duplicate what Cortez managed to do with the Aztecs: => "Cortez model" values being instilled in colonies designed to enable a value grab... That is different from setting up an system of "integrity and governability", of social order, the way the british where interested in doing. (I used quotes there because those values are subjectively used).

I agree that lack of "integrity and governability" in the early history of a colony would make it much easier for CIA to corrupt, indeed these places where conceived corrupt as soon as colonizers prioritized their value grab.

If you want to get into the nuances, I think it is more fit to start by blaming colonizers/conquistadores for the values they introduced into their colonies. But to say then that the values of Spanish or Portuguese colonizers/conquistadores where cultural exceptions from the national norm is a weak position. That those "cortez model" values may have been much more culturally intrinsic to the colonizers is quite arguable; they only needed to find perhaps primitive peoples they could freely submit to their ideals. So, if you want understand that I "blame" Spanish or Portuguese culture, indeed I think there are valid points to say such blame would not be misplaced.

But even ignoring that, the motive of extracting wealth using a Cortez-like model introduces social values that increase the chances of "social failure".

My entire point is simply that the English colonizers didn't burden their colonies with those social values as much (or at all) as other european colonizers certainly did.

English ex-colonies in Africa... South Africa is a relative success. They did the apartheid thing instead of only mass murder of the natives that time around. Indeed South Africa is probably the best African country for you and I to think about living in. I certainly think it is better than Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Mozambique...

We are off topic.

It seems US Government has adopted "value grab" social values with the Clinton inditement position. That is real perspective for what residents of a spanish colony must have had during the introduction of "spanish values" in their community.


These guys are mob types and wouldn't mind putting out a hit on somebody if they had to.


And they did. The investigators got this story all wrong. (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-02/un-official-accidentally-crushes-own-throat-right-testifying-against-hillary-clinton)

bsbray
6th July 2016, 18:44
The fact is many other groups tried to duplicate what Cortez managed to do with the Aztecs: => "Cortez model" values being instilled in colonies designed to enable a value grab... That is different from setting up an system of "integrity and governability", of social order, the way the british where interested in doing. (I used quotes there because those values are subjectively used).

Cortez was in many ways a representative of the Catholic Church. Which reminds me that one of the biggest differences between the English and Dutch colonies versus the French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies is that the former were Protestant while the latter were Catholic. The Anglican church was strict in the American colonies (in Virginia they lynched Puritans and Quakers from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania from time to time, if they happened to wander across the border) but the Protestants were more ascetic and reserved than their Catholic counterparts who were accustomed to just paying their way out of sins (not an option for the Protestants).

In fact if you tried to really get at the heart, the core thing about British culture that you think has made the British colonies more organized (however we want to define that, and I think defining it more precisely would really help clarify this issue) is bound to be tied up in all of these other factors that I'm talking about. You have to also remember that before the US became a super power, the world did not look like it did today, and you may be attributing things to the colonial period that really have their root in the imperialist period.


English ex-colonies in Africa... South Africa is a relative success. They did the apartheid thing instead of only mass murder of the natives that time around. Indeed South Africa is probably the best African country for you and I to think about living in. I certainly think it is better than Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Mozambique...

Depends on how you want to look at it I guess. Even though it's a predominantly black country it was ruled by a white minority for about 60 years, so that was the most immediate thing that the British left to it. Nigeria was another British colony and the corruption there is so bad that it's basically mob rule.

And yes I know we are slightly off topic. :p

lcam88
6th July 2016, 20:23
Yes, heavy Catholic influence. No doubt. But still cortez must have add his own spice to the recipe, a spice that then was used in many other colonization events, as though it where acceptable. If the church was still finishing its fight against the matriarchal belief systems from the prior age of humanity (my contention), it would not specify how "conversion" was to take place, only that conversion was mandated.

Is having been influenced by the Catholic church an acceptable excuse to then dismiss the seedings of these corruption cultural values in Spanish or Portuguese colonies? Even if colonizers/conquistadors added something of their own into the mix?

Nigeria. I didn't know it was a british venture. Thanks for that too. Some fail...

This point of Catholic influence, it was indeed more rejected by the British. Protestants... Good point has sparked the degradation of my arguments footing.

Is the point you are making that the Catholic influence has more influence in the 3rd world system than culture?

bsbray
6th July 2016, 21:40
Yes, heavy Catholic influence. No doubt. But still cortez must have add his own spice to the recipe, a spice that then was used in many other colonization events, as though it where acceptable.

Can you define for me exactly what you mean here by his "spice"? If you mean taking Native American land by force and killing lots of people (what he was probably most famous for, his military conquests), the British colonists did that too. The British colonists (followed by the US government) actually seem to have been less concerned about converting and integrating natives in the end, preferring just to push them farther and farther west and/or kill them. That's why there is less native blood in the populations of former British colonies today than you see in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, etc.


Is having been influenced by the Catholic church an acceptable excuse to then dismiss the seedings of these corruption cultural values in Spanish or Portuguese colonies? Even if colonizers/conquistadors added something of their own into the mix?

Can you try to define more exactly what you mean by corrupted cultural values? Also I'm not trying to excuse anything in a moral sense, I'm just giving you examples of some of the many differences in the paths that colonizers and their colonies took that have led to the situation today, and this all happened in stages over the course of a few hundred years.


Nigeria. I didn't know it was a british venture. Thanks for that too. Some fail...

I think it would help a lot if we define these terms like "fail" or "corrupt" in something measurable rather than just abstract ideas. Maybe we could use the Human Development Index, in which case Argentina and Chile have very high ratings and are not at all failures, despite Chile at least having geographical handicaps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

Also interesting to note on here is that of the top 10 countries by this ranking, 9 of them have Protestant backgrounds and only one (Ireland) is Catholic. But Nigeria is not ranked very well at all.


Is the point you are making that the Catholic influence has more influence in the 3rd world system than culture?

I don't think you can separate religion from culture in the colonial era when the church was the center of every community, both Protestant and Catholic. "Culture" is an abstract idea that encompasses a lot of things. In the US we're often said to have a consumer culture. You can't have that without a strong capitalist economy, so economy and international trade also affect culture. If you don't have a strong economy then you're going to have a lot of poor people and that usually leads to slums, unrest and violence, which just can't be helped if the economy isn't being organized in some way.

I guess we could split this off into a "Contrasting Colonial Powers" thread or something if you want.

modwiz
6th July 2016, 21:41
There is another interesting breakdown of religions. The Anglican or Episcopal church refer to themselves as the Holy Catholic church. Protestants start with Martin Luther and the Reformation. If we can extrapolate from the videos Sylvie has made, the re-writing of history begins in earnest at this period with the Gutenberg press creating new books to rapidly replace the burnt original manuscripts with "new" versions. So, one sees the Protestant movement as a way for Rome to have someone do a lot of their dirty work and play the role of attack dog. More witches were burned in Germany, by Protestants, than the Roman Church could ever hope to. In many ways, the Reformation could have its roots with the Jesuits. So, Anglican, as Protestants is more of a Rome church thing than is obvious. Lumping the Holy Catholic church in with Protestants is taking liberties, IMO. Henry the Vlll never considered himself a lapsed Catholic. He excommunicated Rome, lol.

bsbray
6th July 2016, 21:46
That's a good point about the Anglicans, modwiz. In the US the real protestants were mostly landing in the North and you can see that these are exactly the same states where industrialization first developed here, and a lot of other progressive things. Of course how much those two things are related can be debated but the split from both Rome and the Anglicans (the Quakers and Puritans were persecuted in England too) seems to become most significant when all of these people started taking the words of Jesus deadly serious instead of just listening to a bunch of Latin gibberish and paying their tithes. That's not that the strict Protestants were the greatest bunch in the world but I am convinced that they were absolutely genuine in their faith, at least the ones who fled to America for it.

modwiz
6th July 2016, 23:20
That's a good point about the Anglicans, modwiz. In the US the real protestants were mostly landing in the North and you can see that these are exactly the same states where industrialization first developed here, and a lot of other progressive things. Of course how much those two things are related can be debated but the split from both Rome and the Anglicans (the Quakers and Puritans were persecuted in England too) seems to become most significant when all of these people started taking the words of Jesus deadly serious instead of just listening to a bunch of Latin gibberish and paying their tithes. That's not that the strict Protestants were the greatest bunch in the world but I am convinced that they were absolutely genuine in their faith, at least the ones who fled to America for it.

Yes, I guess those who do not put some money into the plate have lost their value to any established church. Useless eaters to them. Also, I think the Protestants needed to adopt a good work ethic because it was an insurance against not belonging to a large church and whatever social support it provided.

lcam88
7th July 2016, 13:25
Can you define for me exactly what you mean here by his "spice"? If you mean taking Native American land by force and killing lots of people (what he was probably most famous for, his military conquests), the British colonists did that too. The British colonists (followed by the US government) actually seem to have been less concerned about converting and integrating natives in the end, preferring just to push them farther and farther west and/or kill them. That's why there is less native blood in the populations of former British colonies today than you see in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, etc.


:) Of course. I agree with your assessment of British activities.

Spice => The Popes blessing is given with somewhat an open specification. The specific implementation used by the Blessed has aspects of that "spice". If you imagine the Church being interested in conversion of a population and eradication of matriarchal systems. The dosage of torture, killing and enslavement is left to the up to the colonalizer/conquistador. I don't know whether other strategies where seriously considered, if I where the church, I would want a summary of the plan before moving forward.



Can you try to define more exactly what you mean by corrupted cultural values? Also I'm not trying to excuse anything in a moral sense, I'm just giving you examples of some of the many differences in the paths that colonizers and their colonies took that have led to the situation today, and this all happened in stages over the course of a few hundred years.

I meant "corrupted cultural values" as a blanket type class of values that work for the destruction of social order. Tax loopholes for example. Cortez model economic being another.


I think it would help a lot if we define these terms like "fail" or "corrupt" in something measurable rather than just abstract ideas. Maybe we could use the Human Development Index, in which case Argentina and Chile have very high ratings and are not at all failures, despite Chile at least having geographical handicaps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

Also interesting to note on here is that of the top 10 countries by this ranking, 9 of them have Protestant backgrounds and only one (Ireland) is Catholic. But Nigeria is not ranked very well at all.

I think a colony that failed may fail in at least two ways, 1) failure to meet objectives set during planing, 2) breakdown of social order. I don't think it plausible to think the British would invest in the Nigerian Colony without plans at least equivalent to their other ventures.


I don't think you can separate religion from culture in the colonial era when the church was the center of every community, both Protestant and Catholic. "Culture" is an abstract idea that encompasses a lot of things. In the US we're often said to have a consumer culture. You can't have that without a strong capitalist economy, so economy and international trade also affect culture. If you don't have a strong economy then you're going to have a lot of poor people and that usually leads to slums, unrest and violence, which just can't be helped if the economy isn't being organized in some way.

I guess we could split this off into a "Contrasting Colonial Powers" thread or something if you want.

I agree.

Hence the position that Spanish and Portuguese cultural values having a bad influence in the social order of their colonies is a perfectly acceptable thesis. Regardless of religious affiliations, but more so, especially with religious affiliations.

Regarding the last sentence, I don't think the strength of an economy is so closely correlated with social order or unrest. Consider India, a poor nation.

I don't think the Quaker community, who are isolationists of a sort, worry about economics in terms of consumption privileges as something that threatens their social order.

Then consider Saudi Arabia, a rich nation: slums? maybe not so many, but certainly unrest and violence.

Israel, another very rich and very powerful nation with lots of consumption potential, certainly violence and unrest.

China?

Nations that fit your profile, the scandinavian nations, perhaps Canada, Argentina? I don't think wealth is as important a factor of social order as cultural values are.

bsbray
9th July 2016, 05:18
I meant "corrupted cultural values" as a blanket type class of values that work for the destruction of social order. Tax loopholes for example. Cortez model economic being another.

I get that it's a "blanket" term but I don't know what all you are imagining under that blanket, which is why more specific examples are necessary. Tax loopholes are more specific but I'm not sure how important that would have been in the early colonial period, as far as steering all of the Iberian colonies towards your idea of failure, or that tax loopholes must necessarily be inherent to Iberian colonies and not the British colonies. Maybe there is research data on that but I don't know anything about it. Do you?


I think a colony that failed may fail in at least two ways, 1) failure to meet objectives set during planing,

I don't think this is a good way to define whether or not a country is a failure because, for one thing, we have no way of knowing what the real goals of the colonizers were, and for another, their goals may have been so out of alignment with what everyday people consider success that it becomes a meaningless way to judge a country for anyone besides the colonizers themselves. It would become a meaningless way of judging, for example, for the people who actually live there.

For example, let's say hypothetically that the main goal of the Spanish colonizers in Argentina (acting on behalf of the church) was to eradicate any traces of anomalous past civilizations from the Americas, which they undoubtedly knew about. They failed in that goal, because we have various forms of evidence of a race of giants in Patagonia and this and that and the other. However, Argentina has a higher human development index rating than most other nations on Earth today, and in that respect can be considered a relatively prosperous country to live in. Nonetheless by your definition above it would still be a "failure" because the main goal of the colonizers was not met (again using a hypothetical goal, because we may never know all of the Spanish monarchy's real intentions at that time). So I don't think this way of defining the problem is really helping to distinguish differences between British and Iberian colonies.


2) breakdown of social order.

This has to be defined too but it definitely isn't a problem inherent to all Iberian colonies. Also in the history of an given country there are bound to be periods of upheaval and periods of relative prosperity, no matter what country you are talking about. The US and Britain have both had civil wars, which are definitely an acute form of a breakdown of social order. So unless we have a more specific definition of this as well, every country can be considered a failure.


Hence the position that Spanish and Portuguese cultural values having a bad influence in the social order of their colonies is a perfectly acceptable thesis. Regardless of religious affiliations, but more so, especially with religious affiliations.

I still don't know what specific cultural values you think are a "bad influence." You said you are a programmer, so you know that the code you program has to be precise and clear in every respect or else you will begin to have problems. There is no room for fuzzy thinking. You have to know the precise function of every command and how it fits into the bigger picture. History is my major and we do not treat it any differently in that respect. If a historical interpretation is to be of any real use then it also has to be very clearly defined and ideally supported by measurable evidence. Otherwise all you will do is engage in what might be termed mental masturbation, because people can argue two sides of an issue indefinitely if they have no basis in which to judge what they are talking about in concrete, objective terms.

So if you have a historical problem you want to address, you also have to define things as clearly as possible and start looking for primary source evidence, whether that be colonial records from which statistics can be drawn and compared between regions, or laws passed by colonial legislators, or in some cases archaeological or linguistic evidence, or whatever the case may be. In this case if you really wanted to do proper research on this, you could pour years into it because of how broad and generalizing your statements are. Which is why I said at the beginning of our discussion that the differences between the colonies run by the different European powers has been a heavily-studied and complicated field that tons of research has already gone into. I understand you think it can be boiled down to a simple answer but what I'm telling you is that the experts who actually study this stuff in detail, on both sides of the equator, don't necessarily think it is so simple, and even if they do think it boils down to a simple difference, they're likely to pin it on a completely different cause than a "corrupt" Iberian culture. Part of the problem there is defining what "corrupt" means, which sounds to be moralizing, and you can't measure something like the "goodness" or "badness" of something. You can measure trade value, population sizes, and with anecdotes you can even measure more subjective things, but still you want to be as specific and objective as possible in the terms you're using. Otherwise your ideas aren't going to be communicated clearly. We have to find a way to formulate the question in a way that can be measured or proven/falsified by the available evidence and then see what the evidence actually shows. That is the only way to get at a meaningful discussion that's more than just a casual exchange of vague opinions. The exactness historians strive for is not so different than the preciseness of data you want as a programmer. The only difference is that clear definitions and precise arguments (or commands) are a lot easier to come by when you're programming than they are in interpreting history.


Regarding the last sentence, I don't think the strength of an economy is so closely correlated with social order or unrest.

Of course it is. It's very simple: if people can't afford to eat, then they are either going to starve to death or start going to extreme measures to procure food. When people are running drug cartels or committing robberies or prostituting themselves in slums, where there is little to no legal means for work, do you think it's just because these people were born with certain genes or because it's just part of a culture that randomly spawned there or something? At the end of the day they have to afford to put food in their mouths one way or another. If they're living in a slum and have no reasonable chance of gainful employment, they are neither going to be given all of their meals for free, nor are they going to willingly starve to death.

This is such a basic principle of social stability that it was reliably used to spread the French Revolution outside of Paris and all over the French countryside. There is a prominent conspiracy theory that the Duc d'Orléans intentionally bought up a massive amount of grain and stored it all on the island of Jersey just to cause shortages in France and run grain prices way up, artificially creating a famine in France that led to the Great Fear of 1789 and the almost overnight destruction of the feudal system in France forever. Whether or not the duke was responsible, all of the rest is factual: grain prices skyrocketed and people panicked that they would starve to death, and then mobs descended on the castles of their feudal lords. All of that just because people were forced into a situation where they either had to overthrow their authorities (feudal lords in this case) or starve to death. It wasn't a tough decision for them. The outcome could have been fairly predictable, which is also why it may very well have been planned to happen like that, and also a classic example of why a relatively stable economy is necessary for stable societies.


Consider India, a poor nation.

What am I supposed to consider about India exactly? You are going to tell me that they don't have slums and massive social problems?


I don't think the Quaker community, who are isolationists of a sort, worry about economics in terms of consumption privileges as something that threatens their social order.

Then consider Saudi Arabia, a rich nation: slums? maybe not so many, but certainly unrest and violence.

Israel, another very rich and very powerful nation with lots of consumption potential, certainly violence and unrest.

China?

Nations that fit your profile, the scandinavian nations, perhaps Canada, Argentina? I don't think wealth is as important a factor of social order as cultural values are.

My point was not that a strong economy equates to social stability. My point is the exact opposite: that it is a complex interplay of factors, not some extremely simple 1 to 1 ratio like "if this condition then the country will automatically be like that," and that also applies to a country's culture. "Culture" can't even be measured like the price of grain anyway, which makes it even more difficult to make a case for it being the direct cause of anything.

lcam88
9th July 2016, 20:46
Iberian colonies

I had never heard of Iberian colonies. Do you mean the settlement of the peninsula as done by the greeks during say 200BC (wiki), or expansions made by the residents of the peninsula to North and South America during the 1500's?

Regarding my blanket statement "corrupt cultural values", you can imagine a continuum of all possible values humanly possible, unbounded, let's call it the continuum of human values. You can define a point somewhere along the line to define a neutral. Perhaps a neutral cultural value is something rather arbitrary, for example, men and women use sandals when it it hot, shoes or boots when it is cold. Perhaps a positive cultural value, something slightly to one side of neutral could be, we shake hands with people we meet. Human touch considered a good thing emotionally and psychologically.

Tax loopholes are about inequity, about privilege that certain members of society enjoy that may not be available to everyone... Thinking in this way, the meaning of corrupt is quite simple. It goes on the other side of neutral in the continuum of human values.


So if you have a historical problem you want to address, you also have to define things as clearly as possible and start looking for primary source evidence, whether that be colonial records from which statistics can be drawn and compared between regions, or laws passed by colonial legislators, or in some cases archaeological or linguistic evidence, or whatever the case may be. In this case if you really wanted to do proper research on this, you could pour years into it because of how broad and generalizing your statements are. Which is why I said at the beginning of our discussion that the differences between the colonies run by the different European powers has been a heavily-studied and complicated field that tons of research has already gone into. I understand you think it can be boiled down to a simple answer but what I'm telling you is that the experts who actually study this stuff in detail, on both sides of the equator, don't necessarily think it is so simple, and even if they do think it boils down to a simple difference, they're likely to pin it on a completely different cause than a "corrupt" Iberian culture.

Points taken.

Overall, complexity introduced into an analysis generally only serves one purpose, that is to break things down into more elementary components which then are evaluated. The complexity comes from the fact that elementary components have special relationships with each other that should be taken into account. Keeping things simple, as you evidently have identified in the thesis I present, is perhaps exactly the right issue to contemplate. I say that clearly supposing that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Consider this thesis: introducing complexity in cultural and social values for the purpose of identifying corrupt elements is also a way to subvert critical attention from aspects that are considered valuable. I'll share three cases where complexity in analysing a motive was forgone for the benefit of action, and three where complexity is introduced for motive for maintenance of the status quo.

You notice that abrahamic religion used no such strategy in scriptures used to degrade women into the role of servitude of men. Original sin being the example I'm choosing to support that with. There is no serious examination or curiosity about how the blame of mankind being exiled from heaven falls squarely on the female persuasion of our society. The is no added complications about whether Adam may have had a choice to make, or whether he may have inquired about the origins of the offering Eve made to him.

You notice when American society needed to "defend" its values by preemptive strike on Iraq, the issue was dead simple: Either you are with America, or you are with the enemy. (That was the level of discussion my sister had with her roommate at GW just post 9-11.) Pundits that appear on the news, well I don't think they deviate from the party line. If they ever introduce complexity is is for political reasons that may be beneficial to their affiliates.

I shared a video on "The truth is pouring out" thread where Ben Shapiro clearly makes a case saying that indeed the majority of muslims are radical. That all to move for action to be taken that he sees valuable to preservation of his conservative views. If you like I'll share it here.

Notice how more elaborate examination is "whitewashed" to keep things as simple as possible, all in favor of delivering the necessary "signal" so that a decision is clear and easy to make? Indeed the only time complication of any kind enters frame is when the defacto option is non-action, non-acceptance or pro-confusion.

Complexity in the interpretations of bill of rights is certainly something you notice. How many possible interpretations of the 1st amendment can there be. Either you are free or not. But it seems that in a society with ever more inclinations to micro-aggression, suddenly we need to tailor our speech so that the politically correct may find it pleasant. The simple fact that nobody can really decide, and nobody is willing to settle the issue has led to money literally being equated to speech, so as to benefit groups that have money to donate. While that idea is simple, the introduction of it in reference to the 1st amendment is yet another type of complexity thrown at self evident right our founders intended all americans to enjoy.

The way that works, a law is passed that is obviously a violation of the constitution so then a layer of complexity is added to the interpretations of thereof to prevent the obvious action of overturning the non-constitutional law.

Justice is a rather simple proposition, it is about having value or losses compensated when they are abridged by actions of others that are suffered. And yet, the justice system introduces the complexity of the legal procedure, of nuanced language and what some could argue to be hostile formalities so that we may take our losses as something settled as perhaps the emotional and material cost of using the system may be greater than the benefits. Yet again complexity introduced into a system so that justice takes on a new meaning more related with maintaining a status quo rather than about righting wrongs.

Perhaps even an argument can be made that complexity is there to give value to the players in this arena, but certainly such an interpretation must be seen in a similar way to a common toll-booth you may find on a motor-way. Either way, the complexity serves a purpose, and that purpose isn't about spontaneous action as much as it is about spontaneous inaction.

The Greek financial crisis and complexity of EU and IMF policies where about preventing the Greeks from acting in their own interests. How complexity in bureaucracy was used to remove unwanted democratic leaders, or to subvert the results of a democratic process.

So to then suppose that we need accept complexity in the simple question of colonial values introduced by european colonizers as the proper way to evaluate colonies is only an appeal to prevent condemnation of a rather simple proposition. Those colonizers introduced values into their colonies that didn't create a foundation on which they could be social successes. Indeed if the level of social success is measured by wealth, clearly the British did the best job. If the level of success is measured by the smaller amount of litter found on the streets, certainly the British did a better jobs. If the level of success is measured by average life expectancy, the British did a better job.

That all to say that to accept the notion that the effect of cultural values of Spanish and Portuguese (as well as Italian and French) on their colonies is "complicated" is only to say that we are unwilling to condemn those cultures of having introduced corrupt values in their colonies. Unwilling to condemn them of disrespecting neutrality in the continuum of human values in their efforts. An examination of why we feel this way being beyond the scope of the thesis.


Of course it is. It's very simple: if people can't afford to eat, then they are either going to starve to death or start going to extreme measures to procure food.

An extreme measure, perhaps like going to the local public shelter? Ou wait those are created when social values of the community have a standard about what the poverty line should be. In the US we have a welfare system, in Australia it's the dole. Those public benefits prevent their citizenry from falling below what is considered an acceptable level of poverty required to maintain social order.

Here in brazil social order by way of an acceptable level of poverty falls on volunteer organisations to handle.


When people are running drug cartels or committing robberies or prostituting themselves in slums, where there is little to no legal means for work, do you think it's just because these people were born with certain genes or because it's just part of a culture that randomly spawned there or something? At the end of the day they have to afford to put food in their mouths one way or another. If they're living in a slum and have no reasonable chance of gainful employment, they are neither going to be given all of their meals for free, nor are they going to willingly starve to death.

I don't see how economic disposition is not a symptom of a disfunction in social values. I mentioned welfare and the dole above, they happened because social values government acted on address the issue of extreme economic disparity. Those are simple propositions indeed. Why would a society not implement them?


...All of that just because people were forced into a situation where they either had to overthrow their authorities (feudal lords in this case) or starve to death. It wasn't a tough decision for them. The outcome could have been fairly predictable, which is also why it may very well have been planned to happen like that, and also a classic example of why a relatively stable economy is necessary for stable societies.

I rest my case on this thesis. I prefer simple.

modwiz
9th July 2016, 20:58
Iberia refers to Spain and Portugal. If memory serves me correctly.

bsbray
9th July 2016, 21:35
I had never heard of Iberian colonies. Do you mean the settlement of the peninsula as done by the greeks during say 200BC (wiki), or expansions made by the residents of the peninsula to North and South America during the 1500's?

Iberian is the short way of saying Spanish and Portuguese together, ie from the Iberian Peninsula.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RzL2Vx66XCM/hqdefault.jpg


Regarding my blanket statement "corrupt cultural values", you can imagine a continuum of all possible values humanly possible, unbounded, let's call it the continuum of human values. You can define a point somewhere along the line to define a neutral. Perhaps a neutral cultural value is something rather arbitrary, for example, men and women use sandals when it it hot, shoes or boots when it is cold. Perhaps a positive cultural value, something slightly to one side of neutral could be, we shake hands with people we meet. Human touch considered a good thing emotionally and psychologically.

I think I am having a hard time trying to convey to you my problem with speaking in terms of "culture" so I'm just going to quote this:


Culture is a notoriously difficult term to define. In 1952, the American anthropologists, Kroeber and Kluckhohn, critically reviewed concepts and definitions of culture, and compiled a list of 164 different definitions. Apte (1994: 2001), writing in the ten-volume Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, summarized the problem as follows: ‘Despite a century of efforts to define culture adequately, there was in the early 1990s no agreement among anthropologists regarding its nature.’

https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/interculturalskills/global_pad_-_what_is_culture.pdf

You can't make a lot of complicated theories based upon a concept that you can't even define in measurable terms.

You are talking about a sliding scale but it doesn't mean anything if the two ends of the scale are anchored in thin air. I could make a sliding scale for how "boralaxious" something is too, but it wouldn't mean anything because I just totally made that word up and it has no well-defined meaning. If you don't have a measurable definition for the word "culture" then a sliding scale for that is equally meaningless, and so are any theories that depend on it.


Tax loopholes are about inequity, about privilege that certain members of society enjoy that may not be available to everyone... Thinking in this way, the meaning of corrupt is quite simple. It goes on the other side of neutral in the continuum of human values.

Tax loopholes fall into the areas of law and economy. These are areas that can be well-defined and measured.



Consider this thesis: introducing complexity in cultural and social values for the purpose of identifying corrupt elements is also a way to subvert critical attention from aspects that are considered valuable.

First of all I would argue that we aren't introducing complexity into the reality of the situation. The complexity is already there because the human interactions that make up a country's history are already complicated. All we are talking about is a more complex way of evaluating history, considering a range of variables, instead of some simplistic 1-to-1 model that only considers one variable (and an extremely vague one at that, "culture," which can't even be reliably defined) and then expects to explain everything with just that one variable. It's just not going to happen because history can't be condensed into a single variable like that, no matter which one variable you pick.


I'll share three cases where complexity in analysing a motive was forgone for the benefit of action, and three where complexity is introduced for motive for maintenance of the status quo.

I'm not interested in this because this is getting into a lot of philosophical banter about simplicity vs complexity that I don't think is beneficial for anything. I'm not saying that you should introduce more complexity into your view of things just for the sake of complexity itself, like all I want to do is make everything super complicated. All I'm saying that you can't explain the history of two continents with by a single variable that you (or anthropologists) can't even define to begin with. Even if you could define "culture" in a measurable way it would still be too simplistic. There is a quote attributed to Einstein that you should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler, ie not so simple that the model itself fails. Trying to reduce the history of North and South America to the single ill-defined variable of "culture" is not going to successfully predict anything.


So to then suppose that we need accept complexity in the simple question of colonial values introduced by european colonizers as the proper way to evaluate colonies is only an appeal to prevent condemnation of a rather simple proposition. Those colonizers introduced values into their colonies that didn't create a foundation on which they could be social successes.

Can you tell me why exactly you think Argentina and Chile are failures as countries? I hope that is not complicating your view of things too much.


An extreme measure, perhaps like going to the local public shelter? Ou wait those are created when social values of the community have a standard about what the poverty line should be. In the US we have a welfare system, in Australia it's the dole. Those public benefits prevent their citizenry from falling below what is considered an acceptable level of poverty required to maintain social order.

You are ignoring the obvious here, that economy plays a huge role in social stability. By telling me what solutions countries introduce to counteract this you are even admitting that it is important for stability in a back-handed way.


I don't see how economic disposition is not a symptom of a disfunction in social values.

Because you cannot say that the actions of a few powerful individuals at the head of any society are representative of that society's culture as a whole. In other words what the Duc d'Orléans allegedly did to spark the Great Fear of 1789 does not tell you any information at all about how French culture differs from any other culture, except that the French must have had a certain system of internal trade and economy.

There is also the story of the Rothschild who crashed the stock market in London when he put on as if Napoleon had won Waterloo, before the news came in that Napoleon had been defeated. By then this Rothschild had taken advantage of the situation he had created and bought up an enormous amount of stock at very low prices. Again this information does not tell you anything at all about how British culture is different than anywhere else, except that in London they have a stock market. And that is not saying much.


I rest my case on this thesis. I prefer simple.

So basically your argument is that the simplest answer is always the most correct? I guess I can understand why a programmer would think this way, since as long as your program works the simplest method would be the best. But when it comes to trying to understand human behavior I'm afraid that the simplest explanation is not always the most correct and neither is a complex discussion always about trying to hide something. The "official story" whitewashes are usually much simpler than reality, to the point of being like a fairy tale for children, the 9/11 official story being one example. Btw you are misusing the word "thesis." :p


I'll add here too that the reason your view bothers me is because I think you're selling yourself short and also selling every country south of the United States short. Blaming social, economic and other problems all on the "culture" that you inherited from the Iberians is not helping anyone take responsibility for the real problems that are affecting these countries. Having a successful economy is not something that depends on where your country got its culture from. I just don't believe that for a second. It sounds like you could be telling me next that everyone in Brazil is lazy and stupid because you got your culture from Portugal. It's just how the whole tone of your argument strikes me. As long as people have that attitude they will be hopeless, because that's a hopeless attitude to have and there is no room in it anywhere for a person to take responsibility for the situation and want to do something about it. It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, or like you were born with a debilitating medical condition called "Portuguese culture." I just don't buy any of that.



Just as a heads up so you don't lose the thread, I'm going to break this off into a separate thread called "Comparing Colonial Cultures" after your next response, lcamm. I think this is a good discussion to have but obviously it has nothing to do with Benghazi.

modwiz
9th July 2016, 21:56
Culture would be a difficult subject for a science that does not use Nature as its guide and teacher. I will keep it simple at its most basic concept. Nuances and greater complexity can proceed from there. A strong foundation provides the best way to build upward.

The human species can be considered as milk in this example. Now let us use cheese and yogurt as examples of a culture, because they are cultures. Milk is the analogous medium of the human species because it allows for some variation within that medium. Cheese is a very good analogy because of its many varieties. No cheese is better than another though there are preferences in taste among humans and choice plays a part. Free will is another way of saying it. How natural would it be for parmesan to insist that cheddar is wrong? If both culture were inoculated into the same milk, the one best adapted to that milk would likely dominate. Yes, Nature does have turf battles because it provides for the most suited to one of Her environments will be the one that finds its niche there and optimizes it. However, most cultures do develop within already established niches and it is their to exploit. If they can keep it. Humanity is supposed to represent a level of consciousness, because of its connection to Source, with a sentience above instinct.

What we are now calling Survivor culture, practiced a live and let live philosophy overall. It sought to upgrade the cultures it encountered in a benevolent way. It appears they were kind enough to share their genomes as well. The parasitic culture is predatory and has little culture other than war-making and cunning psychological tools that lower spiritual defenses.

I will leave my short opinion of culture at this point.

lcam88
10th July 2016, 00:40
I have an idea about culture much like the one you shared modwiz.

Bacteria culture very accurately models human culture in a number of ways.

1. About 10% of the culture is "positive" in that they enter into mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships with their host. 10% are "negative" in that they tend to degrade the energetics of their hosts, and the other 80% are benign in that they will go with the trend set by whichever 10% (positive or negative) happen to dominating. That establishes an bacterial equilibrium, perhaps similar to cultural equilibrium, where some outside force needs to overcome a resistance or inertial threshold of some type to reverse the trend. The number 10% is approximate...

2. A bacteria culture multiplies until it occupies the whole region of bacterial space available. But the entire culture tends to be quite homogenous.

3. Foreign bacteria culture introduced either is killed off, or an adaptation happens where it introduces changes into host bacteria culture as it is assimilated.

I think of human culture as a set of characteristics, using the milk produce analogy modwiz introduced, those characteristics result in cheese of certain flavor characteristics... The "flavor" of human society is similarly dependent on the set of characteristics that define the specific culture. Flavors would the the exhibited results like the willingness to openly accept differences, the tolerances exhibited for divergences in social norm (law), how women are viewed/treated, resource allocation disparities, level of education...

If colonisers/conquistadors arrived with enough force to overcome the natives' resistance or inertial thresholds, they would have been in a position to redefine the social equilibrium (culture). That is why, modwiz, I think it is important to understand what muslims represent in context of European culture today. That is can be reasonably understood that the majority of muslims are radicals, it can be understood that they represent a force to be reckoned with in terms of them being something capable of overcoming resistance/inertial thresholds of the native culture.

Make no mistake about point number 3 I mention above; I would rather see them dead, than a whole Europe degraded into a mass of people who subjugate themselves to a mass who imposes their bigotry on others as some divine mandate. Europe is better than the Middle-East. No need to encourage a change there.

bsbray, there is no sliding scale. Neutrality is simple a point where almost any culture finds themselves indifferent with. I'll try for that point again: Water is good to drink. Absolutely simple proposition.

If there where a sliding scale, it is because the specific choice of value is not actually neutral.



I had never heard of Iberian colonies. Do you mean the settlement of the peninsula as done by the greeks during say 200BC (wiki), or expansions made by the residents of the peninsula to North and South America during the 1500's?
Iberian is the short way of saying Spanish and Portuguese together, ie from the Iberian Peninsula.

Yes.

When you say Iberian colonies, do you mean the ones formed in the peninsula 200BC by the Greeks, or do you mean Spain and portuguese colonies in North and South America in the 1500's and 1600's?


First of all I would argue that we aren't introducing complexity into the reality of the situation. The complexity is already there because the human interactions that make up a country's history are already complicated. All we are talking about is a more complex way of evaluating history, considering a range of variables, instead of some simplistic 1-to-1 model that only considers one variable (and an extremely vague one at that, "culture," which can't even be reliably defined) and then expects to explain everything with just that one variable. It's just not going to happen because history can't be condensed into a single variable like that, no matter which one variable you pick.

Ok. Consider that a variable is nothing more than a degree of freedom. Because society is composed of individual "agents" or people interacting with one another, by nature it is complex.

What I understand you to be saying is that you need more degrees of freedom to meaningfully examine the complexity in this case.

Let's define complexity:


Complexity describes the behaviour of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, meaning there is no reasonable higher instruction to define the various possible interactions.[1]

By saying you need another variable, are you saying you there are higher instructions do define various interactions? Can you mention one that is more important than culture? Bear in mind, money is an aspect of culture. That people can be greedy as a collective means they are attracted mostly to money. But it can be any other fixation (food, women, pyramid structures) that society then values.

Also bear in mind, cultural norms tend to be simplistic rules the collective follow... Views that effect their perspective... Or interpretations they are programmed with in genetics, family values, or values introduced to them by their company.


Complexity is generally used to characterize something with many parts where those parts interact with each other in multiple ways, culminating in a higher order of emergence greater than the sum of its parts. There is no absolute definition of what complexity means; the only consensus among researchers is that there is no agreement about the specific definition of complexity. However, a characterization of what is complex is possible.[2] The study of these complex linkages at various scales is the main goal of complex systems theory.


I'm not interested in this because this is getting into a lot of philosophical banter about simplicity vs complexity that I don't think is beneficial for anything.
I was trying to stay reasonably focused on the thesis I presented. Simplicity and Complexity in examination of social matters are useful. Regardless, I'll accept your position on this. I'll obviously be flaunting this to you again if your position boils down into something like "it is to complex to know for certain or decide upon".


I'm not saying that you should introduce more complexity into your view of things just for the sake of complexity itself, like all I want to do is make everything super complicated. All I'm saying that you can't explain the history of two continents with by a single variable that you (or anthropologists) can't even define to begin with.

Or that we can properly agree upon. I purposefully left the definition loose so that your introductions to the definition need not be a point of contention. I think appealing to rigidness of definitions or arbitrary criteria would make the discussion more about how to define those criteria than about the issue at hand. That is perfect grounds for someone to appeal to authority; if only Einstein (my god of intelligence) had postulated... Let's agree not to go there?


Even if you could define "culture" in a measurable way it would still be too simplistic. There is a quote attributed to Einstein that you should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler, ie not so simple that the model itself fails. Trying to reduce the history of North and South America to the single ill-defined variable of "culture" is not going to successfully predict anything.

I'm happy for you to introduce aspects of culture worth contemplation. You mentioned the Catholic Church, religion is a happy topic that bodes well with culture.

As simple as possible but not too simple... I don't think trying to predict failure is necessary anymore. Brazil has had 500 years for Portuguese values to have a chance to be successful. My only question is when they will throw in the rag. I'm more interested now in knowing why it was a failure. I'm interested in examining culture because it is the single biggest variable that can effect the outcome of the "host", whether it dies, or whether the symbiosis results in prosperity for both.

I don't think you mean to use complex and elaborate definitions to avoid admission that Brazil (for example) is a failure. So I'm not going to invoke the Simplicity vs Complexity philosophical position yet.


Can you tell me why exactly you think Argentina and Chile are failures as countries? I hope that is not complicating your view of things too much.

No I can't. It would complicate my view :)

I haven't ever lived there so I really don't have much reference to say. Politics in Argentina is about conservation of political powers within the establishment. Chile deviated from that norm once and so CIA, during one of Kissingers deals, had to intervene using their assets... :/

I do know that in Chile property tax rates increases as the size of the home increase. So as to create an incentive for people to have smaller residences. If that is some failed measure designed to tax wealthy individuals more than the average perhaps it can be said that society there discriminates against wealth.

Obviously you have touched on the weak area of my position. I'm sure that is evident.

Perhaps the two criteria I suggested for determining success or failure of a colony need be expanded? Suggestions?

I would have made more of a point about how politics in Argentina are about conservation of powers within the establishment, except that is exactly what the Democrats are doing in the US. If that where a point to use suggesting that Argentina fails in comparison to the US, the argument would be flawed. I can only say that perhaps that norm has been much more established in Argentina.

I really only make mention of Brazil because it is evident to me that the tradition of politics here, a legacy of the portuguese cultural values introduced is so full of corruption an analogy is made by the saying "if you pull a feather, you find a whole chicken comes with it" (Se puxa uma pena, achamos uma galinha inteira saindo). That is where I found my thesis that Portuguese values where more about being socially corrupt that of social order. There are other remnants of it here and there.

These are the distillations of plausible answers to the questions people often ask: Why is brazil still a third world country with all of its national resources and all the resourcefulness of the people?

I think referencing CIA operations that have obviously happened to shape politics, even if they are still happening, is a flawed thread of rational because fundamentally, much like economics, the weaknesses inherent in cultural values held since colonisation obviously make the CIA's job much easier. The fact that CIA can spread there wings here is a symptom of the real problem.

As to how valid such rational fits spanish colonies... That is an area I've hopefully included, but have much less certainty about. The spanish went to Mexico, Argentina and the other regions for different reasons, they where after gold. I can't help but find their cultural values to be at least equally corrupt on that continuum of human values scale I elaborated earlier.


You are ignoring the obvious here, that economy plays a huge role in social stability. By telling me what solutions countries introduce to counteract this you are even admitting that it is important for stability in a back-handed way.

I am ignoring it only because if cultural values gave any importance to a minimum standard of povery they would put up a welfare or dole system, something the US and Australia have done. So the role economics plays in social stability is actually cultural values of a society effecting social stability. I'm saying that economics is a symptom and not the cause.



I rest my case on this thesis. I prefer simple.So basically your argument is that the simplest answer is always the most correct?

The context of the narrow thesis I was concluding: Introducing complexity in cultural and social values for the purpose of identifying corrupt elements is also a way to subvert critical attention from aspects that are considered valuable.

Yes. And I'll suggest a test where my conclusion is incorrect: Does adding complexity introduce a meaningful way to advance understanding and solving of an impasse? My view is that more often then not, it doesn't.

modwiz
10th July 2016, 01:41
I have an idea about culture much like the one you shared modwiz.


Except the most important part of sentient contact with Source, which is Wisdom/Love. Also, until you have listened to Sufi Muslims, who represent the mind and heart of Islam, you are dealing with ignorant representations. It is not by accident that Wahhabism and its adherents are the form of Islam. and an apostate one at that, shown to us by media and others with a bias. You will need to find a more suitable medium for your pseudo-intellectual invective against the culture of Islam to grow, than here at ToT. We embrace love and acceptance as a whole.

The yeast you seem to wish to insert here will not rise and proliferate.

You seem like a bright and decent person. You are either misinformed or have an animus towards muslims based on the misinformation. At least I would hope that is the reason.

Cearna
10th July 2016, 03:50
This will probably mean little to most of you, but, we have on this Earth 15 separate Tectonic plates, this is not by chance, nor were the people on each plate, there for any random reason.

This Planet was here to provide a Sacred Pathway for each of us to follow. Each of the Tectonic plates imbues with it certain means of living with provide us overall with a balanced and harmonious , consciously alive person at the end of the journey. What we had originally were different attitudes and means of living quite different from other culture. For example, The Native American, The Latin American, the Australian Aboriginal, the Japanese, The Chinese, the Russian, The Islamic, The Hebrew, within each of these comes an specific way of life that they live by. I did once have writings up on each Tectonic plate, that explain each of these differences. They all teach a specific that is not necessarily found in the same way on any other plate. It seemed as I wrote them down, there was a specific Soul Path to follow as we re-incarnated on our journey. some for example revere the land itself and regard themselves as guardians of the land, others revere Mother Earth and her part in our life, others are meant to be guardians of the animals and protect them, some teach a discipline to follow that might seem strange or even worse to others but each religious practice, that includes a discipline is something required before you can go on to an even more strict regime, on another plate.

If we do not learn what each plate teaches us, we have lost the plot, and that is what has been happening over the past three hundred years, because of the Dominions of people who believed in their right to go anywhere they felt like it, take guns and canons in and overwhelm with force simply by planting a flag and saying, this is now ours. They took different values to people who already had a set of values that were there for them to learn Truth by.

It is now a bit late to turn the clock back, but it is not too late to learn that each Place was meant to be different from others, and that each has something to learn from the others. This whole thing of deciding that we are right and you are wrong is against our whole Planetary learning experience. Has a great deal been learnt by shoving your way of life onto another people, and telling them they are Primitive and thus can be walked all over. Go into your memories and you may discover as I have that I have lived before on any Tectonic plate many times over, each one contributed to my growth and understanding, and who knows how many of my anscestors still live on in those places. We need to learn the reason for each Tectonic Plate and learn the lessons, they teach before we allow this intolerance of other's way of life to continue. Travel has helped, but we have been for too long allowing others to go and take charge of another land, simply because they can, and decide their set of ideals is better or more than someone else. The kik a*se approach is beyond a joke, it foments nothing both societies backwards steps.

lcam88
10th July 2016, 05:06
Except the most important part of sentient contact with Source, which is Wisdom/Love.

So you are saying all human cultures have sentient contact with Wisdom/Love, an aspect of culture I've overlooked. How true!


Also, until you have listened to Sufi Muslims, who represent the mind and heart of Islam, you are dealing with ignorant representations.

Even the National Socialists of Germany pre WWII had idealisms that appeal to the heart and mind. But... Nobody stops to consider they somehow weren't or aren't villains because somewhere they have warm and fuzzy centers.


It is not by accident that Wahhabism and its adherents are the form of Islam. and an apostate one at that, shown to us by media and others with a bias. You will need to find a more suitable medium for your pseudo-intellectual invective against the culture of Islam to grow, than here at ToT. We embrace love and acceptance as a whole.

I'm happy to know you will make up your own mind.



The yeast you seem to wish to insert here will not rise and proliferate.

You seem like a bright and decent person. You are either misinformed or have an animus towards muslims based on the misinformation. At least I would hope that is the reason.

That's fine. I'm surprised that I'm having to visit the following rational. Here we go again.

I've only ever had a single muslim friend. Quite a nice person actually and very faithful. I felt about him the same way I felt about other Christian friends. And if you examined Christian backed violence in history, I don't think they have any claim to superiority over their muslim brethrin.

And just to say one last thing about this topic of good muslims or decent followers of any other faith just to lay it to rest!

It is not the fact that they are muslims that you may find they are decent human beings. Rather, simply, they are decent human beings. Their decency comes from their humanity, not their faith. Conversely, the radical ideas are from the faith, not their humanity.

That is the same as Christians in their churches who engaging in charitable work. There are charitable people doing the work who just happen to be christians. It is not their christianity that requires of them to be charitable, even while it may seem to encourage samaritan type values. If that indeed where the case, non-religious people would never be found in charity, a absurd proposition which simply isn't the case.

Indeed the opposite is true, when good people are required to do evil, it is religion that is used to compels them to act maliciously. Evil men will be evil, but religion is required to make a good man do evil things. That is something I picked up from the late Christopher Hitchens. RIP.

Brode over that yeast to see if it doesn't rise or proliferate.

Perhaps those are universal cultural values arising from that moment of sentient contact with wisdom/love. It is about being human. Not necessarily a person of faith.

Inevitably though, time is required to recover from malicious values introduced into culture. The worse the values introduced the longer recover takes, and consequently the longer a specific 'colony' requires before it manages to blossom and also the more vulnerable they may be during their recovery. If you think of sentient contact with wisdom/love as the volition a plant has to grow, laying asphalt on a road prevents plants from growing where they previously flourished. But leave the road unmaintained and within less than a century, plants will find a way to emerge through cracks that form on the paved surface. Eventually the asphalt is no more.

That is pseudo-intellectualism talking there. I found your comment to quite enlightening modwiz, I would suggest you dispense with that wry sense of presumed superiority you sprinkled into your posting, but I rather like the way you express yourself. I prefer to task myself with selectively accepting what you write.

modwiz
10th July 2016, 05:22
So you are saying all human cultures have sentient contact with Wisdom/Love, an aspect of culture I've overlooked. How true!



Even the National Socialists of Germany pre WWII had idealisms that appeal to the heart and mind. But... Nobody stops to consider they somehow weren't or aren't villains because somewhere they have warm and fuzzy centers.


I'm happy to know you will make up your own mind.



That's fine. I'm surprised that I'm having to visit the following rational. Here we go again.

I've only ever had a single muslim friend. Quite a nice person actually and very faithful. I felt about him the same way I felt about other Christian friends. And if you examined Christian backed violence in history, I don't think they have any claim to superiority over their muslim brethrin.

And just to say one last thing about this topic of good muslims or decent followers of any other faith just to lay it to rest!

It is not the fact that they are muslims that you may find they are decent human beings. Rather, simply, they are decent human beings. Their decency comes from their humanity, not their faith. Conversely, the radical ideas are from the faith, not their humanity.

That is the same as Christians in their churches who engaging in charitable work. There are charitable people doing the work who just happen to be christians. It is not their christianity that requires of them to be charitable, even while it may seem to encourage samaritan type values. If that indeed where the case, non-religious people would never be found in charity, a absurd proposition which simply isn't the case.

Indeed the opposite is true, when good people are required to do evil, it is religion that is used to compels them to act maliciously. Evil men will be evil, but religion is required to make a good man do evil things. That is something I picked up from the late Christopher Hitchens. RIP.

Brode over that yeast to see if it doesn't rise or proliferate.

Perhaps those are universal cultural values arising from that moment of sentient contact with wisdom/love. It is about being human. Not necessarily a person of faith.

Inevitably though, time is required to recover from malicious values introduced into culture. The worse the values introduced the longer recover takes, and consequently the longer a specific 'colony' requires before it manages to blossom and also the more vulnerable they may be during their recovery. If you think of sentient contact with wisdom/love as the volition of a plant has to grow, laying asphalt on a road prevents plants from growing where they previously flourished. But leave the road unmaintained and within less than a century, plants will find a way to emerge through cracks that form on the paved surface.

That is pseudo-intellectualism talking there. I found your comment to quite enlightening modwiz, I would suggest you dispense with that wry sense of presumed superiority you sprinkled into your posting, but I rather like the way you express yourself. I prefer to task myself with selectively accepting what you write.

Thank you for the reply. My preference is to leave the thread, at least for now. I am familiar with debating styles and am not a debater because sophistry has an element of being disingenuous to prevail, and the decency of a topic can be left on the floor.

I will continue to read the thread and perhaps enjoin with others should the urge arise. Apologies for the pseudo intellectual part. Your intellect is not a false one. I will not edit it out of the original post, that way the apology has context.

Cearna
10th July 2016, 05:45
I wish to continue the line of thought which bothe Modwiz and I have tried to contribute. that is, as far as I see it a Spritual context to all that we do, we is part and parcel of all our lives as much as historical effects upon our own disintegration as people.

I found when I was writing about the Tectonic Plates that, this African plate epitomises what we are trying to say. I have left quite a lot out, but I think it still flows together. I am not intellectualising this, it was to me a profound statement in the first place to myself, from a very great African man who is now unknown in history.



The colours of this tectonic energy are the earthy colours and the environmental colours, for they, like the Australian Aborigines were shown a path of being, so close to nature, that all their spiritual understanding came from this. They too, were in harmony with the very nature of the earthiness of this planet, yet their main focus has to be the animals that are the true spirit of Africa. The colours most in focus are the Red Brown Of The Earth In The Grassy Plains, The Green Of The Acacia Leaves, The Green Of The Trees In The Lost Ancient Forests, Orange Like The Flaming Sun, Blue, Blue-Purple, Indigo.

The main focus of this tectonic energy live in harmony with all that is “The One”, The Earth, Seas, Water, Sky, Animals And Plants. It is easy to see how with the advent of the lack of consideration for the land and its ability to provide, that mankind rapes and pillages the only real resources available to him. Certainly, intelligence enables a certain kind of development of its own, yet this is of little use to people who have taken so much from the soil, that it is not possible to subsist from the land and famine, drought, pestilence and disease are the result.

This continent was once a very beautiful forest land which was fully capable of supporting all the huge animals of the land. Over time, the animals developed a large appetite because there was such a variety and abundance of food. Man cut down the forest, leaving the animals no way but to cut down and destroy the very food source from which they live. Cutting down trees for use is not the problem, it is the lack of consideration of “The Now” and the future that is the downfall of mankind. It is a simple process of development of the land and animal resources that was all that was necessary of these people to learn in order to maintain their link to that Sanctity of Creation and thus their own inherent spirituality.

Many people from the so called developed countries are now able to see this to be the most important link to their own existence, yet seldom do others realise the sheer immensity of what they are doing to their own existence. Consider, that if you are carefully maintaining the land and all about you, so that you are aware of the nature of all that it means to you, then it, correspondingly means, that you are maintaining all that you are and all that you will ever be within yourself. If you are capable of cutting out all that is available to feed and sustain your very being, then you are capable of doing the same thing in your life. If you incarnate into an area that is devoid of all that is beautiful and sustainable, consider how you really are as a being within your self.

There are so many instances where an analogy exists for the world to see, just from how the people of Africa have mismanaged their land and resources from the trees to the animals, for they are the keepers of this lesson to all others on Earth. The people of Europe may consider just how they pollute the very air they breathe and the water which is the bringer of all life to them. Start thinking in terms of how symbolically they and all the Western world are unable to take in the very ‘Breath of Life’, without the pollution of all that is vile and unclean to their very being. Maybe they are so filled with that pollution in their thoughts that more pollution is all they can feel themselves to be.

Is it possible for you to see just how much this land of Africa has been ravaged almost beyond repair? If so, then start thinking about your own land and how you and your countrymen feel about their own inner being, is it beautiful or is it so damaged that a massive regeneration process is in order?

Elen
10th July 2016, 06:53
Culture would be a difficult subject for a science that does not use Nature as its guide and teacher. I will keep it simple at its most basic concept. Nuances and greater complexity can proceed from there. A strong foundation provides the best way to build upward.

The human species can be considered as milk in this example. Now let us use cheese and yogurt as examples of a culture, because they are cultures. Milk is the analogous medium of the human species because it allows for some variation within that medium. Cheese is a very good analogy because of its many varieties. No cheese is better than another though there are preferences in taste among humans and choice plays a part. Free will is another way of saying it. How natural would it be for parmesan to insist that cheddar is wrong? If both culture were inoculated into the same milk, the one best adapted to that milk would likely dominate. Yes, Nature does have turf battles because it provides for the most suited to one of Her environments will be the one that finds its niche there and optimizes it. However, most cultures do develop within already established niches and it is their to exploit. If they can keep it. Humanity is supposed to represent a level of consciousness, because of its connection to Source, with a sentience above instinct.

What we are now calling Survivor culture, practiced a live and let live philosophy overall. It sought to upgrade the cultures it encountered in a benevolent way. It appears they were kind enough to share their genomes as well. The parasitic culture is predatory and has little culture other than war-making and cunning psychological tools that lower spiritual defenses.

I will leave my short opinion of culture at this point.

What a wonderful analogy you've made here modwiz. At this instance "we are on the same page."

lcam88
11th July 2016, 11:00
Thank you for the reply. My preference is to leave the thread, at least for now. I am familiar with debating styles and am not a debater because sophistry has an element of being disingenuous to prevail, and the decency of a topic can be left on the floor.

I will continue to read the thread and perhaps enjoin with others should the urge arise. Apologies for the pseudo intellectual part. Your intellect is not a false one. I will not edit it out of the original post, that way the apology has context.

Thank _you, modwiz. Please pardon me if I overcooked it; I get a sense that you take pride in your clearly valued participation here and on TOT in general. I hate religion as a topic of conversation, nothing really good comes of it. Perhaps rather the same in the way it effects peoples lives. :/

I am not an intellectual. I mostly pick up bits and pieces and do with cobbling them together, (maybe that is what academia does in its entirety <shrug/>) so I take absolutely no offense to being called out on it. I rather dislike being labeled, as I think is true for all of us.

Debating styles only since you mentioned it: There are 40 theorems authored by Arthur Schopenhauer that go into to details so how to debate even while having a weak argument. The result of their employment is that very learned individuals who hold quite strong positions, righteous positions end with the appearance non-meritous of the reality they try to share. Sensibility comes down to the debaters acting with generosity the everyones positions...

Even the most reasonable chap I know here, bsbray, has taken to confront aspects of my ramblings/musings. If it makes any difference here at this point. I think his positions as he has shared them are more reasonable than mine; I feel that if the discussion where to continue, it would boil down to how subjective the views I share really are even if there may be some underlying reason to it all.

So with that matter in mind, I think I should be less confrontational in my participation here. If anyone has suggestions please feel free to let me know.

Considering aspects of Colonial Culture, a question I've raised before, is it important to consider some other aspect besides culture?

Shall we select specific colonies we are interested in comparing? Say, colonies that grew into modern day nations?

Shall we select at least one that doesn't exist any more?

lcam88
12th July 2016, 19:36
"Hillary's America" is a motion picture D'Souza (http://hillarysamericathemovie.com) has produced.

It touches on the little known post Colonial politics of Andrew Jackson employed to his personal benefits, "...he would send out surveyors to value "American Indian" land some 3 months before the army would come in, and he would approach investors..." That is the type of personal value it seems Hillary Clinton has employed while at the state department. "She took kind of the local level corruption we are used to, Tammany Hall, The Daily Racket of Chicago, and took it to the level of renting out American foreign policy."

Here is the radio interview on the tube where I found this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZNHmjUUAX8
(Time encoding in this URL Aragorn :) )

Elen: Using the video encoding feature on the forum causes the time queue parameter to be lost. That is why I left it as a simple link with that message to Aragorn. I'm going to put another link with the time parameter right here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZNHmjUUAX8&t=15m).

Notice the &t=15m parameter at the end of the URL? That is what permits me to link to 15m into the clip. That is lost with the embedded video feature.

bsbray
14th July 2016, 20:27
I'm just now getting time to catch up here. Some of these posts get lengthy so I didn't pop back in until I had some time to spare.



If colonisers/conquistadors arrived with enough force to overcome the natives' resistance or inertial thresholds, they would have been in a position to redefine the social equilibrium (culture). That is why, modwiz, I think it is important to understand what muslims represent in context of European culture today. That is can be reasonably understood that the majority of muslims are radicals, it can be understood that they represent a force to be reckoned with in terms of them being something capable of overcoming resistance/inertial thresholds of the native culture.

That's a great point and I agree completely that this is going to result in a "bad" (terrible, really) cultural shift in Europe if allowed to continue.

So now in order for me to say this I'm in a similar position to your own, when you suggest that superior British culture is why British colonies were successes while the Iberian colonies (and yes I use this term for brevity to refer to the colonial period, ie the one relevant to what we are talking about :p) were failures. But even though I can say loosely that fundamentalist Islamic culture is going to be a "bad" influence on Europe ("bad" is not something measurable, so this is just a way of speaking, an example of language being imprecise again), I'm going to have to back this up using something concrete.

So what I would point to in this case is the fact that the increase in immigration from certain Middle-Eastern countries into Europe correlates perfectly with increases in sexual assaults on women in countries like Sweden. This can be easily explained by the fact that these immigrants are coming from countries where women are still very oppressed and don't necessarily have protection under their law from these acts of violence. The laws said to be enforced in the areas of Syria and Iraq controlled by ISIS are a perfect example of these kinds of laws. In many parts of the Islamic world, daughters are executed by their own fathers for violating certain rules in their religion. Examples of honor killings in various countries can be found on this Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing).

So we could find more and more examples of this kind of thing and build a case that all of this Muslim immigration is going to result in serious problems with violent crime in Europe. What happens when the Muslim populations eventually become either a very large minority or even a majority (because of the fact that they happen to create a lot more babies than Europeans) is up in the air, but it's hard to imagine a scenario that would not involve a movement toward Islamic governments like you see in the Middle East. That is just what this particular population can be expected to want since that culture is ingrained in them just like British culture was ingrained in many American colonists.

Anyway this is a good example of how we can redefine "culture" as something that can be measured (like crime rates) in order to really make our ideas specific and testable. I completely understand how people think this kind of thing is knit-picking and trivial but I can't stress enough that it's not. The saying "the devil is in the details" (sounds like something the Catholic Church would say, doesn't it?) is absolutely right.


bsbray, there is no sliding scale. Neutrality is simple a point where almost any culture finds themselves indifferent with. I'll try for that point again: Water is good to drink. Absolutely simple proposition.

This is another big philosophical debate that goes back thousands of years and may be better to just avoid altogether. What is good for one person is not necessarily good for someone else. We could reference the honor killings above as a perfect example. For millions of Muslims, honor killings are apparently a pretty good thing. They are so committed to the idea that this is a "good" thing to do, that fathers actually kill their own daughters over it. Now obviously you and I would not see this as something good. So "good" is another one of these vague words that can't be used as a universal standard to measure something with, because it varies wildly.


By saying you need another variable, are you saying you there are higher instructions do define various interactions?

Yes. In historical studies, the "atom" we deal with is the single instance of interaction between people, like everything that happened when your family bought its first car (where it happened, when, how it happened, how much money was exchanged and how, why someone felt buying a car was necessary, etc.). It would be great if we could recreate the past in a laboratory but we of course we can't. The best we can hope for is video, or reliable eyewitness accounts, or some other documentation or form of evidence to attest to what happened, that then has to be interpreted.

Starting from that single interaction and all of its data, when you "zoom out" to large-scale interactions between people, like on the scale of a country, we should (hopefully) now have an overwhelming amount of data, everything from demographics compiled from censuses to autobiographies and private journals to records of business transactions. If you have a hypothesis about something that you really want to test out, to see if it's really valid or not, you look at all of this wealth of information for a given place and time (and of course the further you go back the less of a "wealth" it is, but for the colonial period there is still a lot) and try to find something that could prove or disprove or modify the line of thinking.


I think appealing to rigidness of definitions or arbitrary criteria would make the discussion more about how to define those criteria than about the issue at hand.

Not at all, because it doesn't matter how you define the problem as long as you are expressing your same basic idea and can now support it with data. I'll post something here soon that will give you an example of this and dive into the heart of the situation in the Americas from an economic point of view, in terms of which colonies were worth the most to their European owners and why. This will give us a window into how these colonies actually differed from each other in significant ways, without having to get abstract or fuzzy about it. You'll see what I mean.


I don't think you mean to use complex and elaborate definitions to avoid admission that Brazil (for example) is a failure. So I'm not going to invoke the Simplicity vs Complexity philosophical position yet.

I know Brazil has lots of problems. I hear about them all the time from my girlfriend who says she doesn't want to live there anymore. But we also both agree that Brazil is better with some things and the US is better with some things. For example, the Brazilian government paid for her brother to study medicine in New Zealand for a couple of years or so. If you pass academic contests in Brazil the government will pay for your education in ways that the US government does not, including paying Brazilians to go to universities overseas and then bring what they've learned back to Brazil. Our education system here doesn't have any opportunities like this, and instead just puts millions of students tens of thousands of dollars in debt before they're even 30 years old.


No I can't. It would complicate my view :)

I haven't ever lived there so I really don't have much reference to say. Politics in Argentina is about conservation of political powers within the establishment. Chile deviated from that norm once and so CIA, during one of Kissingers deals, had to intervene using their assets... :/

But they are both better places to live than most of the rest of the world. If they're in the top half of the world's living standards (which they definitely are according to the Human Development Index) then I don't understand why you'd want to call them failures anyway. I think you may be trying to cram a square peg into a round hole on this one. I'm sure Chile and Argentina have had their problems but they are not "failures" of countries when you look at the rest of the world.


Perhaps the two criteria I suggested for determining success or failure of a colony need be expanded? Suggestions?

I thought about it. The only value I can see in judging a country as a "success" or "failure" is in how it impact's someone's self-esteem, for as much as they identify themselves with the country they live in. Other than that, judging a country in this way doesn't change how many people are getting fed or anything else. I don't find it a very useful thing to try to define, and yes, trying to define it is very difficult anyway.

It's because it really is a judgment call. If you are going to make a judgment like this then you get to set the standards for how you will render your verdict I guess, but what you said above is that you really want to understand why your country is in the situation that it is. That's probably a more meaningful and worthwhile way of approaching the problem.


These are the distillations of plausible answers to the questions people often ask: Why is brazil still a third world country with all of its national resources and all the resourcefulness of the people?

You hit on all the questions that people have been arguing about for years and years. :p

I'm sure it's complex but the US and Europe have a vested interest in not seeing new global superpowers like China or India, or Russia or Brazil. Weaponized economics seems to be the preferred way of keeping people down from what I've seen, and everything else evolves from that, since so much depends upon money and the Federal Reserve and IMF have a heavy hand in that.


I think referencing CIA operations that have obviously happened to shape politics, even if they are still happening, is a flawed thread of rational because fundamentally, much like economics, the weaknesses inherent in cultural values held since colonisation obviously make the CIA's job much easier. The fact that CIA can spread there wings here is a symptom of the real problem.

That may be true, but there aren't many countries that the CIA hasn't been able to infiltrate when it really wants to. And it developed out of the US, and we (general population) didn't have any say in it, either. They're crafty like that.


I am ignoring it only because if cultural values gave any importance to a minimum standard of povery they would put up a welfare or dole system, something the US and Australia have done. So the role economics plays in social stability is actually cultural values of a society effecting social stability. I'm saying that economics is a symptom and not the cause.

Economics also determines whether or not these countries are able to afford these kinds of programs in the first place, and if they can't afford them then no amount of culture is going to change that, no matter if they're British or Portuguese. The system in the US is unsustainable and is eroding our work ethic as larger and larger numbers of single moms literally just pop out babies and get paid welfare money for it by the government, while the kids grow up without dads or any sense of direction in life in general. This will probably be the single biggest legacy of our welfare system. Incidentally this explains why a lot of people vote democrat here, because the democrats are mostly the ones promising more and more "free" stuff.


The context of the narrow thesis I was concluding: Introducing complexity in cultural and social values for the purpose of identifying corrupt elements is also a way to subvert critical attention from aspects that are considered valuable.

Yes. And I'll suggest a test where my conclusion is incorrect: Does adding complexity introduce a meaningful way to advance understanding and solving of an impasse? My view is that more often then not, it doesn't.

Well we'll look start to actually look into this specific issue next and see whether this is the case this time. I'll dig up some stuff and post below.

bsbray
14th July 2016, 20:59
I'll just write this post up as a running commentary as I search for this data, because this stuff is probably mostly in old books and I don't know what I'll be able to find online. I'm also not going to take the time to write it up properly or any of that because there is no need here.

I do remember reading that the Caribbean colonies were the most profitable for Britain, not the mainland colonies on continental North America. This is very important for a number of reasons. The English Caribbean colonies are more similar in several ways to the most profitable Spanish and Portuguese colonies, for making heavy and particularly brutal use of slavery and also for growing the same kinds of labor-intensive crops like sugar cane.

Because the Caribbean colonies were more valuable economically, they were also more valuable to Europe politically. At the end of the Seven Years War, when France lost Canada, they managed to negotiate ownership of some valuable land in the Caribbean, and this was more important for them to bargain for than the whole territory of French Canada.

Because the mainland colonies were worth less, they got saw less economic activity in general, and had to be more self-sufficient. This is where you will begin to see how economics shines light on how these colonies developed into very different countries. The Caribbean continued to see direct European control a lot longer than the vast areas of land that became self-sufficient and broke away on the continents (Brazil being an exception to this, at least partly because of the way the Portuguese royals fled Europe to South America in order to escape Napoleon). Some Caribbean islands are still directly controlled by European powers to this day, despite heavy US involvement trying to break these links in its early years.


I really am having trouble finding primary source information for all of this (the subject is too broad and obscure for most of the Internet I guess), but for what it's worth, here's a French Colonial History guy from reddit explaining the same situation:


For the 18th century you'd be hard-pressed to choose anything better than some of the sugar islands (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Barbados, Jamaica, etc.) due to the value of sugar at this time, its addictive nature and its growing consumption in Europe. When after the Seven Year's War the French had to choose between French Canada and the tiny sugar island of Martinique and Guadeloupe, they chose the latter if that helps illustrate their importance!

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3rrrv7/what_were_the_most_valuable_colonies_in_the/?st=iqms9hxq&sh=94f5147d


Still looking and not finding much of anything online here. I'd probably have to take a trip to the university library and I won't be doing that this evening. But I can tell you what I remember, though it's mostly relevant to the US. The thirteen colonies were definitely valuable, but not as valuable as colonies closer to the equator. Most slaves were pouring into the Caribbean and Brazil. I think something like 8-12 million slaves were imported into Brazil alone. They were worked hard, worked to death really, and then just replaced. In North America, because of the weaker local economy, slaves were not brought in on the same scale, and those who did come were generally treated better and allowed to have families, since making babies domestically was cheaper than paying for a boat ride from Africa. In the Caribbean and Brazil this was not the case: it was more profitable to just bring them from Africa and work them to death. So there was an enormous amount of exploitation in Brazil and the Caribbean that the thirteen colonies did not see at this point in history. This is all during the infancy of all of these colonies.

The relatively weaker economies in the thirteen colonies is also at least partly why the British crown allowed persecuted religious minorities (Protestants with good work ethic as modwiz has commented on) to establish colonies like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. These colonies proved pivotal in our revolution and also produced a lot of political philosophy against monarchy, in favor of equality and in favor of more economic self-reliance. The British didn't mind the small headache produced by giving these people large amounts of land in America because the British considered the land fairly worthless and it got the Protestants out of their hair back in Britain. Notice that this doesn't have to do so much with British culture itself, so much as it does with British attitude towards the North American colonies, and towards Protestants like Puritans and Quakers.

Europe was much more invested in the Caribbean and other tropical areas, and the local populations in these areas continued to be heavily exploited and abused by the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The Dutch were also involved but from what I've read, the Dutch were relatively fair to local populations, though "relatively" may still be pretty cruel by modern standards. I've also heard from my girlfriend that the Jesuits in Brazil also attempted to convert the local natives and were teaching them to read and write, which the colonial government there frowned heavily upon (traditionally they had just been killed off or made into slaves and worked to death).

lcam88
15th July 2016, 11:45
Thanks for the most thoughtful replies bsbray. I'm going to jump right into it.



bsbray, there is no sliding scale. Neutrality is simple a point where almost any culture finds themselves indifferent with. I'll try for that point again: Water is good to drink. Absolutely simple proposition.
This is another big philosophical debate that goes back thousands of years and may be better to just avoid altogether. What is good for one person is not necessarily good for someone else. We could reference the honor killings above as a perfect example. For millions of Muslims, honor killings are apparently a pretty good thing. They are so committed to the idea that this is a "good" thing to do, that fathers actually kill their own daughters over it. Now obviously you and I would not see this as something good. So "good" is another one of these vague words that can't be used as a universal standard to measure something with, because it varies wildly.

The key in what I was saying about Neutrality is in the underlined part.

Name another culture where a father articulating the killing of his daughter is considered a good thing.

I understand that you are trying to be culture-centric in your evaluations and that is where the complexity in these contemplations lie. You want to accept cultures for what they offer without applying your arbitrary standard of judging good and bad on what you may find. I think another strategy is to define our arbitrary standard in a meaningful way and I think finding neutrality as I am trying to do above is a step to doing that. Perhaps Western culture may find that "water is good to drink" is backwards with Coke or Cabernet purchasable. So maybe that concept of neutral can still be refined. But eventually you get to a point where the survival value of some cultural value is universally met with concordant indifference, something everyone is familiar with yet doesn't think too much about.

The same strategy can be used to think about the worst thing in the world. Something that makes someone in any culture sad, in a way that they stay sad for the longest possible period of time... In this way you have a standard comparison that is cross cultural, that can be used as a measuring stick between values each culture has.

Do you think such a strategy could be useful? Could it simplify in a way that doesn't blur the details?


...For example, the Brazilian government paid for her brother to study medicine in New Zealand for a couple of years or so. If you pass academic contests in Brazil the government will pay for your education in ways that the US government does not, including paying Brazilians to go to universities overseas and then bring what they've learned back to Brazil. Our education system here doesn't have any opportunities like this, and instead just puts millions of students tens of thousands of dollars in debt before they're even 30 years old.

In the US there are scholarships which are roughly equivalent. My sister went to GW on nearly a full ride athletic scholarship (rowing club).


But they are both better places to live than most of the rest of the world. If they're in the top half of the world's living standards (which they definitely are according to the Human Development Index) then I don't understand why you'd want to call them failures anyway. I think you may be trying to cram a square peg into a round hole on this one. I'm sure Chile and Argentina have had their problems but they are not "failures" of countries when you look at the rest of the world.


I think you are right. A certain myopic view that just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

bsbray
15th July 2016, 17:39
I think at this point we are mostly just discussing how to define a way to get meaningful data rather than the specifics of how and why one set of countries is any better or worse off than another, or for what reasons.


Name another culture where a father articulating the killing of his daughter is considered a good thing.

Why should I have to name a second example to prove my point that there is no universal standard for what is "good"? You make it sound like we're going to define terms based on which views are the most popular on Earth. Would it not be totally arbitrary to define "good" by a simple majority opinion and then pretend that it's an objective and scientific standard for measuring things? Fathers also kill their daughters in Hindu parts of India for marrying outside of their caste. China still routinely kills live babies as part of their 1-child policy, even after it was slightly amended. They think this is "good" because it's necessary to control population growth, but I think it's a completely barbaric practice. There are still cannibals living on some islands in the Pacific. There are lots of people in the west who think that mankind should be murdered off en masse, by whatever underhanded means, in order to save the natural environment. My point is that "good" is defined by the person who is saying it, and definitely cannot be used as some kind of scientific measuring stick like meters or kilograms can, and neither can "bad" or even "neutral" because they all depend on personal beliefs.


I think another strategy is to define our arbitrary standard in a meaningful way and I think finding neutrality as I am trying to do above is a step to doing that.

Yes, redefining the problem in other terms is necessary to avoid just confirming our own biases from the start. "Neutral" is just like "bad," it only exists as a contrast to "good," so all of this is still not objective at all. Setting up your own personal standards for judging things is only going to result in confirmation bias. We could cut straight to the heart of the issue and just say that cultures originating from Iberia are bad and cultures originating from northern Europe are good, and viola, you've instantly made your case just by arbitrarily defining "good" and "bad," without actually learning anything about the real situation. If you really want to use these subjective terms to measure things then we really might as well say just that and call it a day. On the other hand, if you want an objective measuring stick to compare and contrast cultures to find meaningful differences then yes, we have to redefine the problem in objectively measurable terms, preferably something in units.

Since this is really a philosophical issue at heart I'm going to quote the Tao Te Ching here:


When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html

This is a really beautiful passage in general, but how this relates to our discussion is, "good," "bad" and "neutral" all define each other through contrast, and so they are not independent ways of measuring something and they are totally arbitrary. Putting it another way, you can't measure a decision that Obama makes in units of "good." It would be a waste of effort to even try to design a system where this would be possible, because somewhere in defining the system you would have to make arbitrary moral decisions that are going to turn the whole effort into confirmation bias. "Neutral" in this way of thinking is nothing but the halfway point between "good" and "bad," so if you can't define those latter two terms then the middle point is also meaningless.

When we define a unit of measurement like a meter, it's also ultimately an arbitrary decision to make this particular length the unit of measurement. But the difference is that once we all agree to make this unit standard, we actually can get useful, objective data from it because we can compare it to things and get measurable differences that we can then apply mathematics to and all the rest. You can't do that with "good" and "bad" and "neutral" because you will never get everyone to change their own personal beliefs about what is "good" and "bad" and "neutral" just to humor you long enough to confirm biases. Even if you could, you wouldn't actually learn anything from the exercise.

The best way to cut across cultures with a meaningful measuring stick, is just to pick something that is measurable (like economics) and stick with it. You can tell a lot about how people live through economics and demographics.

If I had access to more direct data from colonial economies right now I would be posting it, but like I said above, info online seems pretty slim and I'd have to go digging around a university library.


In the US there are scholarships which are roughly equivalent. My sister went to GW on nearly a full ride athletic scholarship (rowing club).

It was probably a private scholarship, or else maybe from a charity or something. The US government itself doesn't do scholarships like Brazil or Germany do. What happens is some universities make big money from their athletic departments so they're willing to foot the bill for an athlete's education in order to make their teams more competitive, draw more people to their sporting events, sell more tickets and make more money. It's just for corporate profit in the end. In Brazil or Germany the governments are actually interested in trying to attract the best and brightest to advance the nation, so these governments pay directly for scholarships.