tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post4950083758820897679..comments2024-03-18T15:45:32.866-04:00Comments on bensozia: Piracy and LifeJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-23805990398329363842022-08-10T22:24:59.661-04:002022-08-10T22:24:59.661-04:00@John
But is all that the same as that being done...@John<br /><br />But is all that the same as that being done with joy? Some may get joy or inspiration out of it. But I suspect many are doing it out of dull, dumb persistence, or spite, or, perhaps even more, rootedness, custom, habit, fear of change, lack of initiative, stupid hope that things will get easier, and often, (again) sheer numbness and a spirit of day to day getting by. I just don't think it's universal, or even common, to enjoy hardship, especially physical hardship, for its own sake.<br /><br />Consider that, while people live almost everywhere, fewer of them live in the really difficult places. Southern England isn't densely populated because living there is a heroic, tooth-cracking challenge. And very few people are trying to immigrate to Afghanistan.<br /><br />Part of my point is human diversity, and part is that I think very few people are so overtly heroic. Sure, some are heroes. But the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" comes from somewhere in humans, too. Why should it be more important that some groups stick with whale-hunting than that others ask the famous question, "Why should we work when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?" Both are human--and I bet that in each case, the rock-bottom reason most of those involved do it is because that's what everyone else is doing.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-89831290275572154052022-08-10T21:45:51.939-04:002022-08-10T21:45:51.939-04:00The madness is not in individuals, but in the spec...The madness is not in individuals, but in the species. Consider that people live on the Arctic sea ice through the winter, and in horrible deserts. People live in cardboard shacks and 48-square foot apartments. They live through wars and genocides. They just keep going.<br /><br />When the whales in the Atlantic Ocean were mostly dead, people didn't stop hunting them. They sailed to the Pacific. When the temperate parts of the Pacific ran short of whales, they hunted the Bering Sea and the far Antarctic. It never happened that people said, "the whales are too far away, and in places where it sucks to be, so let's stop hunting them."<br /><br />It doesn't matter that many people want safe lives. The fact is that there is no place on earth so miserable and dangerous that some people don't live there. There is no work so dangerous and uncomfortable that people aren't doing it. No place where violence is so bad that people stop having children or stop going to work. In fact people in violent, terrible places have more children than those in safe, rich places; Afghanistan has one of the highest birth rates in the world. Our greatest art comes mostly from places with terrible violence and awful poverty; think what Italy was like in 1500, or the Maya kingdoms, or the Viking world, or Nigeria today. <br /><br />Look at the war in Ukraine; it is awful, drone-guided artillery killing hundreds every day. But neither side has said, "this is too awful, I quit."<br /><br />Nothing stops us.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-34639904326617499382022-08-10T19:21:47.933-04:002022-08-10T19:21:47.933-04:00@Shadow
:)@Shadow<br /><br />:)Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-79573438872464873022022-08-10T16:36:03.404-04:002022-08-10T16:36:03.404-04:00The Unambitious Ape,
That needs to be a book. I&...The Unambitious Ape,<br /><br />That needs to be a book. I'm logging into Amazon to preorder.Shadowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05353532874773316117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-53750093443054723582022-08-10T16:02:29.275-04:002022-08-10T16:02:29.275-04:00"We are part of this madness." That and..."We are part of this madness." That and the rest of this paragraph are simply not true of all, or even necessarily most, people. (Or, as they say, "Who's this 'we,' Kemo Sabe?") There are plenty of folks who are content, shy, retiring, or spend their energies in non-expansive things, such as fandom and obsessive-compulsive behavior, and loads and loads of folks who do not find pain and striving pleasurable. This seems simply obvious to me. It seems to me you may be projecting the qualities of a minority whom you admire onto the mass. A clever guest reviewer on Scott Siskind's blog remarked that the really remarkable thing about people is not how much we've done and how much we've expanded, but the fact that, for the first 200,000 years or so of our species' existence, virtually nothing changed or happened. The question is not, how did we come so far, but what took us so long?<br /><br />There's certainly a drive among some intellectuals to focus overmuch on the activities of the most ambitious, driven, and energetic. You can see it in all those studies of ape alpha males and females. Perhaps we need a study of the mass of apes, who aren't on top, aren't hungry to be an alpha's follower, and are content to be among the many. Call the study "The Unambitious Ape."Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-28368567663531392162022-08-10T11:54:03.387-04:002022-08-10T11:54:03.387-04:00"Betran de Born's zeal for war has a sadi..."Betran de Born's zeal for war has a sadistic quality, but it still points toward the grim reality of life in an aristocratic society."<br /><br />His poetry also has, it has long seemed to me, a defensive quality. Something is threatening what he loves, and/or someone is talking it down. Obviously war was not going away in the late twelfth century, but arguably it was become more institutionalized, professionalized, and monetized. Or perhaps what threatened Bertran was a growing tendency to resort to law instead of violence. Violence was certainly not the only road to freedom in the Europe of his day; charters were probably more useful. Some towns did rebel to establish their freedom, and many towns kept militias and walls to defend it; but smart ones also got plenty of sound charters (confirmed and reconfirmed at every opportunity) and good lawyers.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-77397335105532712592022-08-10T10:51:39.699-04:002022-08-10T10:51:39.699-04:00Great post. BTW ". If people have somewhere e...Great post. BTW ". If people have somewhere else to go, there is a limit to how much they can be abused" - PPolish popular history writer Jasienica (IIRC) wrote once that this was the reason there were so few peasant uprisings in Poland proper - because they just could leave their master and choose another, and in the worst case they could just escape to the Wild Fields.szopenohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12096688483881484656noreply@blogger.com