5 ms·

One thing we absolutely should not do, is evaluating history based in modern day morals. Gets you nowhere, even worse it carrys the risk of rewriting history. T

by hef19898 3y ago

One thing we absolutely should not do, is evaluating history based in modern day morals. Gets you nowhere, even worse it carrys the risk of rewriting history. The moral standard to measure historical actions against are contemporary (the standards, not contemporary opinions as those are basically just propaganda in a lot of cases).

llm_trw 3y ago
The point is that this is a _good thing_ by both modern and ancient standards for pretty much the same reasons: don't kill, rape and enslave. For the ancients they were happy when it didn't happen to them, for us we're happy when it doesn't happen to (nearly) anyone.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Ok, in historical context, killing and enslaving was pretty much accepted, and respected, behaviour. Back in ancient times that is, up to, I'd say, early 16th century? Killing, depending on the contexr, still is today. Rape and enslaving isn't anymore, thank god.
  - llm_trw 3y ago
    Both us and the ancients agree that murder, rape and slavery are bad when it happens to them. The Germans from then and us today would agree that destroying that Roman army was _a good thing_ because it stopped a lot of murder, rape and slavery from happening. I'm not sure what you're arguing against.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Basically all your points? Because the "Germans" didn't exist at the time. It was a mix of various tribes, some loosly allied with Rome. Heck, the German leader even was a former Roman officer. So it was much less about "Freedom" as it was about indovidual tribal leaders power. Painting the Romans of the time the way you do, is pretty much en vogue today, where people view everything from the perspective we have today on colonialism (especially the latter day variant of colonialism).
      - watwut 3y ago
        Basically, Romans intentions are pure and valid even if they are acting from pure self interest, even if they manage to kill and rape a whole lot of people. But, their victims are not pure enough nor entitled to have opinion about being killed or raped, because they are not as pure in motivation. See, they need to organize themselves into larger nation without anyone having any self interest in the process. Very obviously, Roman politics was self interest based - both on the individual scale and societal one. What you ask for is not objective history, you ask for historians to take a side and ignore all but one viewpoint.
        hef19898 3y ago
        Where exactly did I say Roman interests were pure and valid? They were interests, empire building and such. Not sure if rape was a stated goal... Never heard that.
        watwut 3y ago
        They attacked pretty often happened because someone wanted an office or become more powerful locally. Nothing to do with any larger goals. "Empire building" however itself amounts to "stealing from others".
  - Log_out_ 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War It was pretty much globally till far into the 1800 and still is under a different decorations in many countries.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Slavery is a difficult topic in that regard, and not kust because it is slavery. My yard stick was contemporary poeple and movements seeing the thing as universally bad, not just some rare individuals here and there. With slavery, we have a movement against it as far back as the 17th century (might be wrong here, didn't read it up again). You are absolutely right so, what is acceotable or not is highly context and culture driven. And even in the Western world, we replaced slavery with exploitive employment methods as early as the industrial revolution and do so to this day.
- ant6n 3y ago
  Matter of perspective innit? I mean,… …All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
- Log_out_ 3y ago
  You fail to mention the horrific mess and aftermath left behind by empires. Countries with half dissolved cultures, hatred among neighbors, local elites trying to emulate and even outdo the imperialist horror and create new ones. Examples today: balcan, Iraq. Hyper imperialist emulators include imperial Japan, nazi Germany and today's China (modeled after the British Empire). The loss of complexity , when a hyper centralized system collapses and unravels, or in the Roman case the old empires tendrils are used to inject a new cultural empire with worser effects.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
watwut 3y ago
If you was actually intent to not evaluate history based on morals, you would avoid celebrating past historical figure too. The criticisms or simply showing bad stuff that happened in the past is not rewriting history, not any more then glamorizing it. And quite often, when you honestly look at history, contemporaries were criticizing the exact same phenomenons. We really do not need to write about Nazi in a celebratory way just so that we avoid "rewriting history" by "evaluating it based on modern morals" when we write about Holocaust.

llm_trw 3y ago

The point is that this is a _good thing_ by both modern and ancient standards for pretty much the same reasons: don't kill, rape and enslave. For the ancients they were happy when it didn't happen to them, for us we're happy when it doesn't happen to (nearly) anyone.

hef19898 3y ago
Ok, in historical context, killing and enslaving was pretty much accepted, and respected, behaviour. Back in ancient times that is, up to, I'd say, early 16th century? Killing, depending on the contexr, still is today. Rape and enslaving isn't anymore, thank god.
- llm_trw 3y ago
  Both us and the ancients agree that murder, rape and slavery are bad when it happens to them. The Germans from then and us today would agree that destroying that Roman army was _a good thing_ because it stopped a lot of murder, rape and slavery from happening. I'm not sure what you're arguing against.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Basically all your points? Because the "Germans" didn't exist at the time. It was a mix of various tribes, some loosly allied with Rome. Heck, the German leader even was a former Roman officer. So it was much less about "Freedom" as it was about indovidual tribal leaders power. Painting the Romans of the time the way you do, is pretty much en vogue today, where people view everything from the perspective we have today on colonialism (especially the latter day variant of colonialism).
    - watwut 3y ago
      Basically, Romans intentions are pure and valid even if they are acting from pure self interest, even if they manage to kill and rape a whole lot of people. But, their victims are not pure enough nor entitled to have opinion about being killed or raped, because they are not as pure in motivation. See, they need to organize themselves into larger nation without anyone having any self interest in the process. Very obviously, Roman politics was self interest based - both on the individual scale and societal one. What you ask for is not objective history, you ask for historians to take a side and ignore all but one viewpoint.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Where exactly did I say Roman interests were pure and valid? They were interests, empire building and such. Not sure if rape was a stated goal... Never heard that.
        watwut 3y ago
        They attacked pretty often happened because someone wanted an office or become more powerful locally. Nothing to do with any larger goals. "Empire building" however itself amounts to "stealing from others".
- Log_out_ 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War It was pretty much globally till far into the 1800 and still is under a different decorations in many countries.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Slavery is a difficult topic in that regard, and not kust because it is slavery. My yard stick was contemporary poeple and movements seeing the thing as universally bad, not just some rare individuals here and there. With slavery, we have a movement against it as far back as the 17th century (might be wrong here, didn't read it up again). You are absolutely right so, what is acceotable or not is highly context and culture driven. And even in the Western world, we replaced slavery with exploitive employment methods as early as the industrial revolution and do so to this day.
ant6n 3y ago
Matter of perspective innit? I mean,… …All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Log_out_ 3y ago
You fail to mention the horrific mess and aftermath left behind by empires. Countries with half dissolved cultures, hatred among neighbors, local elites trying to emulate and even outdo the imperialist horror and create new ones. Examples today: balcan, Iraq. Hyper imperialist emulators include imperial Japan, nazi Germany and today's China (modeled after the British Empire). The loss of complexity , when a hyper centralized system collapses and unravels, or in the Roman case the old empires tendrils are used to inject a new cultural empire with worser effects.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

watwut 3y ago

If you was actually intent to not evaluate history based on morals, you would avoid celebrating past historical figure too. The criticisms or simply showing bad stuff that happened in the past is not rewriting history, not any more then glamorizing it. And quite often, when you honestly look at history, contemporaries were criticizing the exact same phenomenons. We really do not need to write about Nazi in a celebratory way just so that we avoid "rewriting history" by "evaluating it based on modern morals" when we write about Holocaust.