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This comment is a gem of colonialist thought. Those "conflict zones" are also generally the sovereign territory of the people who live there, who are generally

This comment is a gem of colonialist thought. Those "conflict zones" are also generally the sovereign territory of the people who live there, who are generally one half of the "fools" you mentioned (their neighbors being generally the other half). The "ego" they have is generally a desire to keep their sovereign territory--their homelands, which are frequently the same places in which their ancestors produced the "archives" you want to "protect and secure." Those people have a right to decide what to do about the destruction of their cultural artifacts, because they are people and have agency. They can fight, they can ask for help from their allies, they can do any number of things. If they don't prioritize the preservation of their culture, that's unfortunate, but it's also their business. If they decide to destroy artifacts of their culture rather than let them fall into invaders' hands (sound familiar?), that's tragic, but it's still their business. Your suspicion of value in their cultural output does not entitle you to pay armed men to swoop in and take their "priceless history," no matter how noble you think your intentions are.

lucozade 9y ago
This comment is a gem of nationalist thought. When the Bamiyan buddhas were dynamited, exactly whose culture were the Taliban "preserving"? It is entirely reasonable to believe that culture and history have an importance independent of petty, local squabbles. Crowd funding militia may well be questionable but to demean the sentiment as colonialist is pointlessly insulting.
- FroshKiller 9y ago
  I don't think you understand what nationalism is. I admit that my reply could be read as a tacit endorsement of tribalism, but there's nothing nationalist about it. You should not presuppose that conflicts are "petty, local squabbles." Minimizing language like that reinforces the mindset that the mighty are justified in interfering in the sovereign destiny of a people. Anyway, my reply was thoughtful, not pointlessly insulting. If you'd like to engage on this beyond the invocation of the Taliban bogeyman, I'm happy to. But if you're just gonna presume that I'm equating the exercise of sovereign rights with wholesale destruction, I'm not interested.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Whose conception of sovereign rights. Sovereignty is the historic acquisition of power through violence in all cases that spring to mind (W. European bias). How far back do you go. Does Russia now have sovereignty over Crimean history?
    - FroshKiller 9y ago
      Please note that I've taken care to say "people" rather than "nations" or "government." People organize themselves into all sorts of forms with all sorts of power. I get that sovereignty is a particularly loaded term, but what I'm getting at is that culture is a product of a people, and a people is entitled to determine its own fate with the powers available to it.
    - ZoeZoeBee 9y ago
      FYI, Crimea has been a part of Russia for over 200 years, except for the post Soviet Union period, which in and of itself was the result of a symbolic transfer of Crimea to the Ukranian SSR in 1954, marking the 300th year of the Ukraine under Russian rule. A move, which was supposed to have no strategic consequence, until the Soviet Union broke up and twenty years later NATO attempted to bring the Ukraine into their fold. Of course Russia could not allow their warm water port to fall under NATO jurisdiction
  - lucozade 9y ago
    > I don't think you understand what nationalism is. I was misusing the term nationalist in a literary device in order to deliberately mimic your misuse of the word colonialist. I wasn't so condescending as to assume you didn't know what colonialist meant so I assumed its misuse was deliberate too. > my reply was thoughtful, not pointlessly insulting. My mistake. It's rare to see colonialist used as a term of endearment. > sovereign destiny / sovereign rights I guess this is the meat of the point. See I don't believe that just because someone in temporarily in charge of a country that they should have carte blanche to do whatever they fancy. Now, in the case of the Coptic monasteries in the Sinai, there is no threat from the present government. If, say, the Sinai Insurgency escalated and the monasteries were under threat, it would be entirely appropriate, in my view, to pressure Egypt to do something about it. I can't envisage a realistic situation where external forces would be appropriate in this case. I do believe that it is both right and proper to care about, and if necessary act for, our fragile collective cultural heritage. If that makes me a colonialist in your eyes then so be it. I've been called worse.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > When the Bamiyan buddhas were dynamited, exactly whose culture were the Taliban "preserving"? Their own. > It is entirely reasonable to believe that culture and history have an importance independent of petty, local squabbles. Calling it “reasonable” elevates it to a level of objective neutrality to which it is not entitled. That view is simply it's own set of cultural values, which, while perhaps fairly widespread at the moment, are no more universal or grounded in reason than any others.
  - pault 9y ago
    Is the scientific method just a cultural value?
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Is the scientific method just a cultural value? The value attached to particular outputs, such as those that might be supported by preservation of cultural artifacts, is unmistakably a cultural value.
vortico 9y ago
This suggests many questions surrounding rights and ownership of culture. If an object (informational work like a book, ancient artifact, etc.) is considered to be owned by the public, does a subset of the public have the right to destroy the object? If an object has a cultural association, say of Egypt, is the public ownership of the object only those in Egyptian culture? Do Egyptian-Americans count under this ownership for example? If the object is thousands of years old, is the ownership the heirs of the creator, if it is possible to track the descendants down? Is the ownership those who call nearby locations their home? Is the ownership all citizens of the country the object was created in, or currently resides in? Is the ownership simply the creator and nothing else? Or are ancient artifacts owned equally by all humans on earth? These are not very straightforward questions. It is not a matter of their business and our business when it's difficult to place ownership of a cultural object.
Majestic121 9y ago
I understand your point about invasion and imperialism, but I strongly disagree with your opinion that people from a country "own" the culture of this country. National cultures and cultural artifacts are part of the human culture as a whole, and as such they belong to mankind. There's hardly any good justification to destroy pieces of human culture, and misplaced nationalism definitely is not of them.
- FroshKiller 9y ago
  The idea that all cultures belong to "mankind" is grease for the wheels of appropriation. People have a right to choose what they share with others. There's a certain phrase that people from my county use to express surprise and approval. It isn't widely known. When I use it around neighbors, they know what I'm conveying, and it identifies us as kindred. I could tell you what it is, and you might like it. You might even start using it just because you like the sound of it. And it might become very popular, and soon, all kinds of people from all kinds of places might bond over its use. Hell, people might even make T-shirts. But I choose not to. It's a shibboleth for me and the folks back home, and that use is valuable to us. You don't have the right to force me to share it. If I wanted to explore its etymology, survey exactly how widely it's used, or argue that it's related to a similar phrase in a nearby region, I could certainly do those things and might choose to. But if I don't, human culture as a whole doesn't get a crack at it just because I passed on the opportunity. It's a bit of a contrived example, because I'm not talking about the Bhagavad Gita here, but I hope you see what I'm getting at. The transmission of culture between peoples should be based on a mutual interest in sharing and learning, not some sense of global entitlement.
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    I think that is the first time I have seen shibboleth used in a neutral way. Everywhere else I have seen it used there has always been an implication that the making of distinctions like this was negative. I'm not making a value judgement here, it just struck me as unusual.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
fipar 9y ago
As someone from a country who has been a colony of a handful of other countries during its history, I understand and can relate to your argument. Also, as someone from a continent that still has millitias funded by other countries, I find the idea of funding a militia appalling, specially if the purpose is not to at least try and save people, but to save cultural artifacts ... That said, I think you are oversimplifying things a bit in your comment. This part: >Those people have a right to decide what to do about the destruction of their cultural artifacts, because they are people and have agency. Think of how even in geographically small countries, there is often cultural heterogeneity, and you can see that it's not easy to say if those deciding to destruct some cultural artifact actually "own" it. I think this is specially important since cultural artifacts tell a culture's history (books are the most obvious example, but we are able to learn basic things about pre-historic cultures by looking at their non textual artifacts), and the aftermath of a war typically includes the winner rewriting history, which is something that destroying the loser's artifacts makes easier. Let me finish with a quote I identify a lot with, from Lukas Ligeti[1]: "It makes no sense to group people together according to superficial characteristics. There are no majorities in the world: we are, each and every one of us, a minority of one" [1] "Secret Instruments, Secret Destinations", from ARCANA II
- FroshKiller 9y ago
  You're right that I simplified heterogeneity, but my point wasn't so much that the preservation or destruction of culture should be left to a population of certain ownership--it's that these things should not be left to mercenaries hired by outsiders with a sense of global "human" entitlement. Ownership and responsibility are really complex topics. The notion that you shouldn't rent a bunch of goons to steal books from your co-worker's house just because you think he's not taking care of them properly is not complex.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    The notion becomes a lot more complex if those books are the only remaining copies.

lucozade 9y ago

This comment is a gem of nationalist thought. When the Bamiyan buddhas were dynamited, exactly whose culture were the Taliban "preserving"? It is entirely reasonable to believe that culture and history have an importance independent of petty, local squabbles. Crowd funding militia may well be questionable but to demean the sentiment as colonialist is pointlessly insulting.

FroshKiller 9y ago
I don't think you understand what nationalism is. I admit that my reply could be read as a tacit endorsement of tribalism, but there's nothing nationalist about it. You should not presuppose that conflicts are "petty, local squabbles." Minimizing language like that reinforces the mindset that the mighty are justified in interfering in the sovereign destiny of a people. Anyway, my reply was thoughtful, not pointlessly insulting. If you'd like to engage on this beyond the invocation of the Taliban bogeyman, I'm happy to. But if you're just gonna presume that I'm equating the exercise of sovereign rights with wholesale destruction, I'm not interested.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Whose conception of sovereign rights. Sovereignty is the historic acquisition of power through violence in all cases that spring to mind (W. European bias). How far back do you go. Does Russia now have sovereignty over Crimean history?
  - FroshKiller 9y ago
    Please note that I've taken care to say "people" rather than "nations" or "government." People organize themselves into all sorts of forms with all sorts of power. I get that sovereignty is a particularly loaded term, but what I'm getting at is that culture is a product of a people, and a people is entitled to determine its own fate with the powers available to it.
  - ZoeZoeBee 9y ago
    FYI, Crimea has been a part of Russia for over 200 years, except for the post Soviet Union period, which in and of itself was the result of a symbolic transfer of Crimea to the Ukranian SSR in 1954, marking the 300th year of the Ukraine under Russian rule. A move, which was supposed to have no strategic consequence, until the Soviet Union broke up and twenty years later NATO attempted to bring the Ukraine into their fold. Of course Russia could not allow their warm water port to fall under NATO jurisdiction
- lucozade 9y ago
  > I don't think you understand what nationalism is. I was misusing the term nationalist in a literary device in order to deliberately mimic your misuse of the word colonialist. I wasn't so condescending as to assume you didn't know what colonialist meant so I assumed its misuse was deliberate too. > my reply was thoughtful, not pointlessly insulting. My mistake. It's rare to see colonialist used as a term of endearment. > sovereign destiny / sovereign rights I guess this is the meat of the point. See I don't believe that just because someone in temporarily in charge of a country that they should have carte blanche to do whatever they fancy. Now, in the case of the Coptic monasteries in the Sinai, there is no threat from the present government. If, say, the Sinai Insurgency escalated and the monasteries were under threat, it would be entirely appropriate, in my view, to pressure Egypt to do something about it. I can't envisage a realistic situation where external forces would be appropriate in this case. I do believe that it is both right and proper to care about, and if necessary act for, our fragile collective cultural heritage. If that makes me a colonialist in your eyes then so be it. I've been called worse.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> When the Bamiyan buddhas were dynamited, exactly whose culture were the Taliban "preserving"? Their own. > It is entirely reasonable to believe that culture and history have an importance independent of petty, local squabbles. Calling it “reasonable” elevates it to a level of objective neutrality to which it is not entitled. That view is simply it's own set of cultural values, which, while perhaps fairly widespread at the moment, are no more universal or grounded in reason than any others.
- pault 9y ago
  Is the scientific method just a cultural value?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Is the scientific method just a cultural value? The value attached to particular outputs, such as those that might be supported by preservation of cultural artifacts, is unmistakably a cultural value.

vortico 9y ago

This suggests many questions surrounding rights and ownership of culture. If an object (informational work like a book, ancient artifact, etc.) is considered to be owned by the public, does a subset of the public have the right to destroy the object? If an object has a cultural association, say of Egypt, is the public ownership of the object only those in Egyptian culture? Do Egyptian-Americans count under this ownership for example? If the object is thousands of years old, is the ownership the heirs of the creator, if it is possible to track the descendants down? Is the ownership those who call nearby locations their home? Is the ownership all citizens of the country the object was created in, or currently resides in? Is the ownership simply the creator and nothing else? Or are ancient artifacts owned equally by all humans on earth? These are not very straightforward questions. It is not a matter of their business and our business when it's difficult to place ownership of a cultural object.

Majestic121 9y ago

I understand your point about invasion and imperialism, but I strongly disagree with your opinion that people from a country "own" the culture of this country. National cultures and cultural artifacts are part of the human culture as a whole, and as such they belong to mankind. There's hardly any good justification to destroy pieces of human culture, and misplaced nationalism definitely is not of them.

FroshKiller 9y ago
The idea that all cultures belong to "mankind" is grease for the wheels of appropriation. People have a right to choose what they share with others. There's a certain phrase that people from my county use to express surprise and approval. It isn't widely known. When I use it around neighbors, they know what I'm conveying, and it identifies us as kindred. I could tell you what it is, and you might like it. You might even start using it just because you like the sound of it. And it might become very popular, and soon, all kinds of people from all kinds of places might bond over its use. Hell, people might even make T-shirts. But I choose not to. It's a shibboleth for me and the folks back home, and that use is valuable to us. You don't have the right to force me to share it. If I wanted to explore its etymology, survey exactly how widely it's used, or argue that it's related to a similar phrase in a nearby region, I could certainly do those things and might choose to. But if I don't, human culture as a whole doesn't get a crack at it just because I passed on the opportunity. It's a bit of a contrived example, because I'm not talking about the Bhagavad Gita here, but I hope you see what I'm getting at. The transmission of culture between peoples should be based on a mutual interest in sharing and learning, not some sense of global entitlement.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  I think that is the first time I have seen shibboleth used in a neutral way. Everywhere else I have seen it used there has always been an implication that the making of distinctions like this was negative. I'm not making a value judgement here, it just struck me as unusual.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

fipar 9y ago

As someone from a country who has been a colony of a handful of other countries during its history, I understand and can relate to your argument. Also, as someone from a continent that still has millitias funded by other countries, I find the idea of funding a militia appalling, specially if the purpose is not to at least try and save people, but to save cultural artifacts ... That said, I think you are oversimplifying things a bit in your comment. This part: >Those people have a right to decide what to do about the destruction of their cultural artifacts, because they are people and have agency. Think of how even in geographically small countries, there is often cultural heterogeneity, and you can see that it's not easy to say if those deciding to destruct some cultural artifact actually "own" it. I think this is specially important since cultural artifacts tell a culture's history (books are the most obvious example, but we are able to learn basic things about pre-historic cultures by looking at their non textual artifacts), and the aftermath of a war typically includes the winner rewriting history, which is something that destroying the loser's artifacts makes easier. Let me finish with a quote I identify a lot with, from Lukas Ligeti[1]: "It makes no sense to group people together according to superficial characteristics. There are no majorities in the world: we are, each and every one of us, a minority of one" [1] "Secret Instruments, Secret Destinations", from ARCANA II

FroshKiller 9y ago
You're right that I simplified heterogeneity, but my point wasn't so much that the preservation or destruction of culture should be left to a population of certain ownership--it's that these things should not be left to mercenaries hired by outsiders with a sense of global "human" entitlement. Ownership and responsibility are really complex topics. The notion that you shouldn't rent a bunch of goons to steal books from your co-worker's house just because you think he's not taking care of them properly is not complex.
- adrianN 9y ago
  The notion becomes a lot more complex if those books are the only remaining copies.