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Human sacrifice has a context. War is often over resources. To win over a competitor has value in gaining the competitors' resources. But then, they have to qui

Human sacrifice has a context. War is often over resources. To win over a competitor has value in gaining the competitors' resources. But then, they have to quit needing those resources. It was a brutal and ugly practice. But their environment was unforgiving. Brutal. To demonize the survivor, the winner in the conflicts, is a natural impulse. But to pretend it was all futile and pointless is to miss the entire context.

deleted 3y ago
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FredPret 3y ago
[flagged]
- dsabanin 3y ago
  Exactly. I am not even sure how can someone call an environment where food just grows on trees and winter doesn’t exist brutal, compared to the mini Ice Age that was happening in Europe at that time. To me, it was only brutal because they made it so, it could have been a heaven.
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    Think again. Forestry collapse, drought, it was all a factor. Sure during the good times there's plenty. But during the bad times, the survivors did what they did. Plenty of horror in Europe, we should maybe revisit our European history. It's 'better' they just let peasants starve to death, while taxing them to penury. Because that's just a bureaucracy, not deliberate murder. Because they deliberately starved the Irish, refused aid, because it was a better world with fewer Irish in it? And Africa! My god, what a fantasy that Africa had less of a history of war and slaughter.
    - dsabanin 3y ago
      Forestry collapse, drought, famine, were all factors present everywhere around the world as well, and human sacrifice is not a solution to this. I argue that deaths due to famines, epidemics, wars, unfair food distribution, racism, slavery, exploitation are a whole different category from the human sacrifice. Each one of the former had a cause or a purpose. A lot of it was due to mismanagement, ignorance, fight for resources and control and people being assholes. Me deciding to keep food to myself to feed my family or my clique and not to share it with you, forcing you to starve, is very different from me going to your house, kidnapping you and killing you for no reason at all. Oh, pardon me, the reason was to build a fucking wall made out of you and your family skulls. You're justifying completely senseless violence here. The only thing in Europe that comes close in my mind is the burning of the witches and the holocaust, for which there was and is much repentance to this day.
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  The environment in central America at the time was unpredictable and prone to sudden failure. That is different. More competitive, if you will. Context is everything. To be surprised that the winner in such an environment resorted to war is naieve. Yes, it's barbaric to put skulls in piles. I guess they had to glorify what they did, as a sort of metal shield against murder. I don't know, I wasn't there.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    To justify human sacrifice as “contextual” is absolutely wild. Should the holocaust be seen “in context”? Or are you one of those who think only European colonizers / white people are capable of evil? War, murder, slaughter - all of these things existed everywhere. But gleeful and ritualistic mass-murder is different beast altogether. Some people are just evil.
dsabanin 3y ago
Everything can be justified given enough mental gymnastics, but I personally draw the line at genocidal, mass-murdering, religious cults, torturing and ravaging an entire region for centuries. I do not care about the context in this case at all, there was no reason to do this beyond savage, violent, prehistoric warfare and population control.
inglor_cz 3y ago
Human sacrifice isn't neatly mapped to warfare at all. Yes, there was sacrifice of POWs, but there also were warlike cultures which didn't engage in human sacrifice, and also cultures that practiced human sacrifice with their own people on the altar, especially kids, in order to please the gods. As Bret Devereaux [0] likes to say, people in the past believed in their own religion. Without accepting that, it is impossible to understand a lot of ancient practices. Reinterpreting everything in the most cynical/materialistic way means fooling yourself. If you believe in omnipotent beings that are capable of destroying the entire world or at least you and your city unless they get their cup of fresh blood, you will do quite a lot to please them. [0] https://acoup.blog/ https://acoup.blog/

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

FredPret 3y ago

[flagged]

dsabanin 3y ago
Exactly. I am not even sure how can someone call an environment where food just grows on trees and winter doesn’t exist brutal, compared to the mini Ice Age that was happening in Europe at that time. To me, it was only brutal because they made it so, it could have been a heaven.
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  Think again. Forestry collapse, drought, it was all a factor. Sure during the good times there's plenty. But during the bad times, the survivors did what they did. Plenty of horror in Europe, we should maybe revisit our European history. It's 'better' they just let peasants starve to death, while taxing them to penury. Because that's just a bureaucracy, not deliberate murder. Because they deliberately starved the Irish, refused aid, because it was a better world with fewer Irish in it? And Africa! My god, what a fantasy that Africa had less of a history of war and slaughter.
  - dsabanin 3y ago
    Forestry collapse, drought, famine, were all factors present everywhere around the world as well, and human sacrifice is not a solution to this. I argue that deaths due to famines, epidemics, wars, unfair food distribution, racism, slavery, exploitation are a whole different category from the human sacrifice. Each one of the former had a cause or a purpose. A lot of it was due to mismanagement, ignorance, fight for resources and control and people being assholes. Me deciding to keep food to myself to feed my family or my clique and not to share it with you, forcing you to starve, is very different from me going to your house, kidnapping you and killing you for no reason at all. Oh, pardon me, the reason was to build a fucking wall made out of you and your family skulls. You're justifying completely senseless violence here. The only thing in Europe that comes close in my mind is the burning of the witches and the holocaust, for which there was and is much repentance to this day.
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
The environment in central America at the time was unpredictable and prone to sudden failure. That is different. More competitive, if you will. Context is everything. To be surprised that the winner in such an environment resorted to war is naieve. Yes, it's barbaric to put skulls in piles. I guess they had to glorify what they did, as a sort of metal shield against murder. I don't know, I wasn't there.
- FredPret 3y ago
  To justify human sacrifice as “contextual” is absolutely wild. Should the holocaust be seen “in context”? Or are you one of those who think only European colonizers / white people are capable of evil? War, murder, slaughter - all of these things existed everywhere. But gleeful and ritualistic mass-murder is different beast altogether. Some people are just evil.

dsabanin 3y ago

Everything can be justified given enough mental gymnastics, but I personally draw the line at genocidal, mass-murdering, religious cults, torturing and ravaging an entire region for centuries. I do not care about the context in this case at all, there was no reason to do this beyond savage, violent, prehistoric warfare and population control.

inglor_cz 3y ago

Human sacrifice isn't neatly mapped to warfare at all. Yes, there was sacrifice of POWs, but there also were warlike cultures which didn't engage in human sacrifice, and also cultures that practiced human sacrifice with their own people on the altar, especially kids, in order to please the gods. As Bret Devereaux [0] likes to say, people in the past believed in their own religion. Without accepting that, it is impossible to understand a lot of ancient practices. Reinterpreting everything in the most cynical/materialistic way means fooling yourself. If you believe in omnipotent beings that are capable of destroying the entire world or at least you and your city unless they get their cup of fresh blood, you will do quite a lot to please them. [0] https://acoup.blog/ https://acoup.blog/