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Post by TidusandYuna1983 on Aug 7, 2019 15:30:15 GMT
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Post by Uesugi-dono on Aug 26, 2019 9:18:49 GMT
This is a startling picture of a bonobo
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Post by Uesugi-dono on Sept 8, 2019 7:51:52 GMT
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/d13qbj/my_best_shot_of_saturn_so_far_taken_with_an_8/
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Science
Sept 8, 2019 21:48:33 GMT
via mobile
Post by TonberryKing on Sept 8, 2019 21:48:33 GMT
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Science
Oct 6, 2019 4:59:28 GMT
via mobile
Post by TidusandYuna1983 on Oct 6, 2019 4:59:28 GMT
What will happen to the universe far into the future.
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Post by Uesugi-dono on Oct 10, 2019 11:05:40 GMT
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Post by Uesugi-dono on Nov 21, 2019 9:22:17 GMT
"And while the placing of skulls on the heads of infants might seem barbaric or grotesque, Juengst said we need to cast aside our modern biases."
Let's back up before I get on my soap box.
The article discusses a pre-columbian archaeological find in Ecuador of ritualized, infant burial but the infants had the "still-fleshed" skulls of older children "fitted" around them.
Keep in mind the bodies of these older children, whom I remind you: their heads were still fleshed, were nowhere to be found. Consider, also, that these Guangala people share the same sacrificial culture that was common throughout Central and South America; a culture that included mass-scale slaughter, removal of hearts from living victims, and the sacrifice of children.
"As Juengst aptly points out, we need to stay open minded about ancient people and their motivations."
Yo, Anthropology student here. It was my major for a while and is still the primary focus of the degree that I'll finally graduate with in December. What they are talking about is called Cultural Relativism, the oh-so-noble attempt to see a culture through its own eyes. The opposite of this, what we are taught to avoid, is called Ethnocentrism. Ethnocentric views judge other cultures through the moral lens of their own; such as viewing child sacrifice as a bad, immoral act.
I can get down with limited Cultural Relativism. I can look at a culture that eschews clothing and be fine with it. I can accept a culture with loose sexual mores, such as polygamy, the accepting of a dead brother's wife, even barely pubescent brides. I may not like the idea of an old man taking a 12 year old wife, but hey... sexual maturity is somewhat fluid and is not age-locked, so... whatever. Human sacrifice is a bit rougher. Sacrifices of captured prisoners? Mmmm, okay. Sacrifices via lottery to prevent some calamity? Primitive, but understandable.
These people cut the heads off of still-living children to serve as 'helmets' for wealthy infants who died of natural causes. These children appear to have been murdered so that rich people's dead babies were, and I quote: “further empowered... in the afterlife, who were perceived as having souls that were pre-social and wild,” according to the paper.
I love exploring human culture. It's really a hobby of mine. Ancient people were certainly brutal, at times. Celts fought naked and sacrificed people. They also kept the skulls of defeated enemies in their homes, their kids played with them. Those are my people, lest I seem high and mighty. The Japanese, as recently as 200 years ago, tested the cutting ability of swords on live convicted criminals. Spartans were so gay that their wives had to dress up like boys to attract them and 'ease' them into heterosexuality after a youth spent getting rogered by other men.
But these people...
The death culture of Central and South Americans is on such a different level that just about anywhere else in the world. Other cultures had ritual sacrifice, other cultures had striations based on birth, wealth, and rank, but the pre-columbians in this part of the world took it to savage extremes. They delighted in it. They conducted human sacrifice at a level practically unheard of everywhere else. Involuntary sacrifice, torturous, barbaric... Apocalypto captured some of it.
But these monsters cut the heads off of living, probably poor, children to make goddamn hats for dead, rich babies.
I don't know how you apply Cultural Relativism to that. It would be like trying to accept Pedophilia as a cultural norm. Some things are just evil and if you can't identify them as evil then there's something wrong with you. Try to imagine what it would have been like if these people had achieved any form of technical advancement? Imagine that Columbus never found the New World and the Aztecs developed gunpowder on their own? Would a civilization like this, with such an appetite for human sacrifice, be compatible with the rest of the world? Can you imagine what that would be like?
Let me give you an example.
I'm fine with keeping an open mind and not judging a culture by your own standards. So what if they clean their sweaty heads with camel piss? Who cares if they eat bugs? It doesn't bother me if they devour the brains of their recently deceased relatives, it doesn't impose that habit on me. But I have to draw the line at murdering children, aged 4-12 years old, just to make a helmet for an infant.
That shit is fucked up. Fuck this culture.
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Post by endorbr on Nov 21, 2019 19:14:18 GMT
"And while the placing of skulls on the heads of infants might seem barbaric or grotesque, Juengst said we need to cast aside our modern biases."
Let's back up before I get on my soap box.
The article discusses a pre-columbian archaeological find in Ecuador of ritualized, infant burial but the infants had the "still-fleshed" skulls of older children "fitted" around them.
Keep in mind the bodies of these older children, whom I remind you: their heads were still fleshed, were nowhere to be found. Consider, also, that these Guangala people share the same sacrificial culture that was common throughout Central and South America; a culture that included mass-scale slaughter, removal of hearts from living victims, and the sacrifice of children.
"As Juengst aptly points out, we need to stay open minded about ancient people and their motivations."
Yo, Anthropology student here. It was my major for a while and is still the primary focus of the degree that I'll finally graduate with in December. What they are talking about is called Cultural Relativism, the oh-so-noble attempt to see a culture through its own eyes. The opposite of this, what we are taught to avoid, is called Ethnocentrism. Ethnocentric views judge other cultures through the moral lens of their own; such as viewing child sacrifice as a bad, immoral act.
I can get down with limited Cultural Relativism. I can look at a culture that eschews clothing and be fine with it. I can accept a culture with loose sexual mores, such as polygamy, the accepting of a dead brother's wife, even barely pubescent brides. I may not like the idea of an old man taking a 12 year old wife, but hey... sexual maturity is somewhat fluid and is not age-locked, so... whatever. Human sacrifice is a bit rougher. Sacrifices of captured prisoners? Mmmm, okay. Sacrifices via lottery to prevent some calamity? Primitive, but understandable.
These people cut the heads off of still-living children to serve as 'helmets' for wealthy infants who died of natural causes. These children appear to have been murdered so that rich people's dead babies were, and I quote: “further empowered... in the afterlife, who were perceived as having souls that were pre-social and wild,” according to the paper.
I love exploring human culture. It's really a hobby of mine. Ancient people were certainly brutal, at times. Celts fought naked and sacrificed people. They also kept the skulls of defeated enemies in their homes, their kids played with them. Those are my people, lest I seem high and mighty. The Japanese, as recently as 200 years ago, tested the cutting ability of swords on live convicted criminals. Spartans were so gay that their wives had to dress up like boys to attract them and 'ease' them into heterosexuality after a youth spent getting rogered by other men.
But these people...
The death culture of Central and South Americans is on such a different level that just about anywhere else in the world. Other cultures had ritual sacrifice, other cultures had striations based on birth, wealth, and rank, but the pre-columbians in this part of the world took it to savage extremes. They delighted in it. They conducted human sacrifice at a level practically unheard of everywhere else. Involuntary sacrifice, torturous, barbaric... Apocalypto captured some of it.
But these monsters cut the heads off of living, probably poor, children to make goddamn hats for dead, rich babies.
I don't know how you apply Cultural Relativism to that. It would be like trying to accept Pedophilia as a cultural norm. Some things are just evil and if you can't identify them as evil then there's something wrong with you. Try to imagine what it would have been like if these people had achieved any form of technical advancement? Imagine that Columbus never found the New World and the Aztecs developed gunpowder on their own? Would a civilization like this, with such an appetite for human sacrifice, be compatible with the rest of the world? Can you imagine what that would be like?
Let me give you an example.
I'm fine with keeping an open mind and not judging a culture by your own standards. So what if they clean their sweaty heads with camel piss? Who cares if they eat bugs? It doesn't bother me if they devour the brains of their recently deceased relatives, it doesn't impose that habit on me. But I have to draw the line at murdering children, aged 4-12 years old, just to make a helmet for an infant.
That shit is fucked up. Fuck this culture.
The "religion of peace" comes to mind...
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