3 ms·

Some of it is about ideals, so spread Western ones; push the world closer to being a cultural monoculture. As an eastern man with an eastern wife, that sounds

by meric 9y ago

Some of it is about ideals, so spread Western ones; push the world closer to being a cultural monoculture. As an eastern man with an eastern wife, that sounds incredibly evil. How about you do what you do and we do what we do.

Filligree 9y ago
We may not be talking about the same thing. I'm talking about ideals like... - Don't treat women like chattel. - In general, consider all people to be equally valuable. - Trust the people you meet. Be able to trust them. Don't abuse the trust. (This means not needing regulations and inspections of everything.) - Follow the rules, follow the spirit as well as letter of contracts, and don't attempt to twist every role into benefiting yourself or your tribe. ("Don't be corrupt.") - If, following the rules of society, you fail -- don't step outside the rules in order to win. If these ideals sound incredibly generic and universal, then congratulations, you've already been infected. For the majority of human history, and in large parts of the world, they are in no way common. There are even parts of Europe which break some or all of these. Notice that I didn't say "Push western culture", though I wouldn't be sad if that were to naturally spread. It's only the specific cultural innovations that allow us to get along with each other that I care about. -- Anyone who breaks the latter half of that set, I'll be upset and annoyed at them, and will be disinclined to trade. I certainly won't want them in my country. Anyone who breaks the top half... well, if they're removing the agency of half their population then I'd feel fine about removing theirs. That's grounds for heavy-handed efforts. -- Actually, "western culture" may be a misnomer. There was such a thing; it involved maypole dances, mjød, burning witches and constant warfare. It wasn't necessarily nice, and it isn't what we're doing now. What's been happening could be more suitably termed "universal culture", as it is -- for better or worse -- closer to being highly optimized culture, rather than historically-based. (Optimized for what? Not necessarily our good; cola is incredibly tasty, but I avoid it in all cases.) Someone else already explained this better than me: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/
- maxerickson 9y ago
  - Trust the people you meet. Be able to trust them. Don't abuse the trust. (This means not needing regulations and inspections of everything.) - Follow the rules, follow the spirit as well as letter of contracts, and don't attempt to twist every role into benefiting yourself or your tribe. ("Don't be corrupt.") The fun thing is that the same people that are enthusiastic for military adventurism are the ones that are also grinding those values to dust. I guess if Abu Ghraib hadn't happened, in the context of a war that was rushed into for wrong reasons, your statements about resorting to heavy handed effort to fix things wouldn't be fucking tragic.
  - Filligree 9y ago
    War is a last resort. I wouldn't have supported that, except in extreme circumstances, and any historian would tell you that they'd need to be truly extreme for the outcome to be a net good. Nah. I mean heavy-handed "cultural imperialism". There are a lot of options there which aren't normally a good idea.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      My point is that the Iraq war was ostensibly started for reasons in line with those that you expressed. Except the good guys didn't quite have all their shit together the way you would want if you are going to go to war to spread better values. If you go to war because "America Fuck Yeah", it doesn't matter so much if there are a bunch of disgusting fuck ups. If you go to war to protect higher ideals, well, fucking do it right.

by meric 9y ago

Filligree 9y ago

We may not be talking about the same thing. I'm talking about ideals like... - Don't treat women like chattel. - In general, consider all people to be equally valuable. - Trust the people you meet. Be able to trust them. Don't abuse the trust. (This means not needing regulations and inspections of everything.) - Follow the rules, follow the spirit as well as letter of contracts, and don't attempt to twist every role into benefiting yourself or your tribe. ("Don't be corrupt.") - If, following the rules of society, you fail -- don't step outside the rules in order to win. If these ideals sound incredibly generic and universal, then congratulations, you've already been infected. For the majority of human history, and in large parts of the world, they are in no way common. There are even parts of Europe which break some or all of these. Notice that I didn't say "Push western culture", though I wouldn't be sad if that were to naturally spread. It's only the specific cultural innovations that allow us to get along with each other that I care about. -- Anyone who breaks the latter half of that set, I'll be upset and annoyed at them, and will be disinclined to trade. I certainly won't want them in my country. Anyone who breaks the top half... well, if they're removing the agency of half their population then I'd feel fine about removing theirs. That's grounds for heavy-handed efforts. -- Actually, "western culture" may be a misnomer. There was such a thing; it involved maypole dances, mjød, burning witches and constant warfare. It wasn't necessarily nice, and it isn't what we're doing now. What's been happening could be more suitably termed "universal culture", as it is -- for better or worse -- closer to being highly optimized culture, rather than historically-based. (Optimized for what? Not necessarily our good; cola is incredibly tasty, but I avoid it in all cases.) Someone else already explained this better than me: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/

maxerickson 9y ago
- Trust the people you meet. Be able to trust them. Don't abuse the trust. (This means not needing regulations and inspections of everything.) - Follow the rules, follow the spirit as well as letter of contracts, and don't attempt to twist every role into benefiting yourself or your tribe. ("Don't be corrupt.") The fun thing is that the same people that are enthusiastic for military adventurism are the ones that are also grinding those values to dust. I guess if Abu Ghraib hadn't happened, in the context of a war that was rushed into for wrong reasons, your statements about resorting to heavy handed effort to fix things wouldn't be fucking tragic.
- Filligree 9y ago
  War is a last resort. I wouldn't have supported that, except in extreme circumstances, and any historian would tell you that they'd need to be truly extreme for the outcome to be a net good. Nah. I mean heavy-handed "cultural imperialism". There are a lot of options there which aren't normally a good idea.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    My point is that the Iraq war was ostensibly started for reasons in line with those that you expressed. Except the good guys didn't quite have all their shit together the way you would want if you are going to go to war to spread better values. If you go to war because "America Fuck Yeah", it doesn't matter so much if there are a bunch of disgusting fuck ups. If you go to war to protect higher ideals, well, fucking do it right.