8 ms·

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters.html?m=1 http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carl... Relevant obnox

by lukev 11y ago

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters.html?m=1 http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carl... Relevant obnoxious quote, in a sea of drivel: In all these relationships, the structure of obligation is the same. The subject, serf, or slave is obliged to obey the government, lord, or master, and work for the benefit of same. In return, the government, lord or master must care for and guide the subject, serf, or slave. We see these same relationship parameters emerging whether the relationship of domination originates as a hereditary obligation, or as a voluntary obligation, or in a state outside law such as the state of the newly captured prisoner (the traditional origin of slave status in most eras). This is a pretty good clue that this structure is one to which humans are biologically adapted. Not all humans are born the same, of course, and the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery. For others, it is more suited to slavery. And others still are badly suited to either. These characteristics can be expected to group differently in human populations of different origins. Thus, Spaniards and Englishmen in the Americas in the 17th and earlier centuries, whose sense of political correctness was negligible, found that Africans tended to make good slaves and Indians did not. This broad pattern of observation is most parsimoniously explained by genetic differences.

k_brother 11y ago
Right, I think I saw this one pulled elsewhere. It's still not clear to me that the author holds that view, or that he's just putting forth a weak analysis. Considering the response, I thought there would be something explicitly aggressive.
emjr 11y ago
"Natives did not make good slaves, and so Africans were imported." That alone is so innocuous as to appear in elementary school textbooks. Is this really what the whole row is about?
- cactusface 11y ago
  No, it's because he said it was due to genetic differences between population groups. This makes him a "true" racist in that he believe there are different races, or sub-species, of homo sapiens (sapiens). There is a scientific consensus that this is not the case, because races only exist if population groups are completely isolated, which humans never have been. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
  - andrewchambers 11y ago
    I find asserting superiority of one race over another hard to justify, but is it crazy to think there are differences? Dogs are the same species, but people do assign traits like aggression/playfulness to different breeds.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - cactusface 11y ago
      There aren't "races" in the sense of Darwin's finches because there is interbreeding between population groups, that's all.
      - tjradcliffe 11y ago
        Redefining the word "race" so it does not apply to the human varieties does not make the fact of human varieties go away, and so fails to make a counter-argument against racists. "Racism" exists, and saying "race doesn't exist" doesn't change that. All it does is mean that to be consistent you'll have to call it "variety-ism", which is awkward and irrelevant.
        andrewchambers 11y ago
        Racism is asserting superiority of one group of humans over another, and generalizing without evidence. You could think certain people are genetically better adapted to cold or hot climates. That by itself is not racism, it becomes racism when you say that everyone who cannot stand cold weather is inferior, when in reality, it is totally dependent on circumstances. I think people failing to see the difference stops some honest discussion and people go on a witch hunt. In this case, blocking the person may well be justified however.
        cactusface 11y ago
        I'm repeating myself here, but per WP, "Scientific racism is [...] alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races."
- politicalhn4tw 11y ago
  School textbooks also often make the case that Native Americans didn't make good slaves because they were native to the area and just walking away and vanishing was relatively easy for them. That's very different from asserting genetic racial differences were the factor at work.
- tptacek 11y ago
  I do not accept the premise of this argument, unless we're talking about textbooks from the 1910s.
  - emjr 11y ago
    It was stated as fact as late as the early 90's in my own textbooks, and I attended a private school in the NY metro area.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
So, from that quote, he seems to be: a) Describing a master-slave structure with the implication that it is a biologically programmed one. b) That some are born for more dominant roles, some for more submissive ones, and then others who are in between or neither. c) That the aforementioned characteristics are genetic. Not particularly savory, but also a pretty standard evopsych position. In fact, I'd say that the only truly controversial part is the argument that these structures are innate and predetermined. That such master-slave structures permeate society is readily observable.
- convexfunction 11y ago
  This is not a "standard evopsych position". Evolutionary psychology seems to get conflated with a lot of unsavory bullshit just because the latter uses appeals to the former. Most people I know who do evolutionary psychology are extremely careful to point out all the ways they differ from (usually) sexists because they're so damn tired of people conflating one with the other.
- tptacek 11y ago
  That's one way to read it, I guess. The more straightforward way to read it would be to just use the normal accepted meanings of words, under which the quote straightforwardly argues that Africans are genetically adapted for slavery, and that arguments to the contrary constitute "political correctness". I feel like the only "reaching" I had to do to take that meaning from the quote was c/p'ing it out of my browser window to correct for the weird spacing HN put on it.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    No, that's oversimplified, I find. The quote implies that the colonizers found Africans to be more suited to fulfilling slave roles, and that the master-slave cycle formulated earlier is a genetic one. It doesn't make a direct judgment whether the colonizers were correct. The jab at political correctness doesn't seem to be an absolute refutation of opposing arguments, so much as an outlining of the historian's fallacy of trying to apply contemporary moral value judgments to past circumstances. FWIW, there was "political correctness" (sidestepping taboos) in those days, but the taboos were wildly different.
urbit 11y ago
"He has literally written that several of his co-speakers are genetically more fit to be slaves while he, a white male, is genetically designed to be a master." Certainly a powerful use of the word literally. Frankly, I'm actually considering recanting. Who wouldn't rather be Galileo than Giordano Bruno? But recanting is a serious matter - it's the sort of thing you need to get right the first time. To appear at future conferences without my fellow speakers worrying that I'll enslave them or kick off Holocaust 2.0, it'd be ideal if someone can tell me what I have to believe. I'm guessing it's either: (a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations. (b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations. Let's face it, Strange Loop is an awesome conference - there's a reason I applied. And I think Alex's decision is totally understandable for practical reasons, as someone downthread explains. If there's a chance of being invited back next year, I could totally go for (b). But if it has to be (a), I might still be all "e pur si muove" and stuff.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- cactusface 11y ago
  Barring peculiar talents such as resembling the POTUS, you should go for (b) and get yourself re-invited to this year's conference.
- danso 11y ago
  I don't have anything to add to this thread except to say that this is a gracious response and thank you for chiming in even while being at the center of controversy.
- colinhb 11y ago
  > I'm guessing it's either: > (a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations. > (b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations. Or: (c) The inter-group variation in the talents and inclinations of human beings is completely dominated by the intra-group variation. In other words, "living populations" (= ethnic groups) don't matter. You'll have (e.g.) smart and dumb people in every group, and everything else is noise. I'm not sure how a reasonable person could choose hypothesis (b) over (c), given the long history of hypothesis (b) proponents trying (and failing) to make the math work out for them.

by lukev 11y ago

k_brother 11y ago

Right, I think I saw this one pulled elsewhere. It's still not clear to me that the author holds that view, or that he's just putting forth a weak analysis. Considering the response, I thought there would be something explicitly aggressive.

emjr 11y ago

"Natives did not make good slaves, and so Africans were imported." That alone is so innocuous as to appear in elementary school textbooks. Is this really what the whole row is about?

cactusface 11y ago
No, it's because he said it was due to genetic differences between population groups. This makes him a "true" racist in that he believe there are different races, or sub-species, of homo sapiens (sapiens). There is a scientific consensus that this is not the case, because races only exist if population groups are completely isolated, which humans never have been. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
- andrewchambers 11y ago
  I find asserting superiority of one race over another hard to justify, but is it crazy to think there are differences? Dogs are the same species, but people do assign traits like aggression/playfulness to different breeds.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - cactusface 11y ago
    There aren't "races" in the sense of Darwin's finches because there is interbreeding between population groups, that's all.
    - tjradcliffe 11y ago
      Redefining the word "race" so it does not apply to the human varieties does not make the fact of human varieties go away, and so fails to make a counter-argument against racists. "Racism" exists, and saying "race doesn't exist" doesn't change that. All it does is mean that to be consistent you'll have to call it "variety-ism", which is awkward and irrelevant.
      - andrewchambers 11y ago
        Racism is asserting superiority of one group of humans over another, and generalizing without evidence. You could think certain people are genetically better adapted to cold or hot climates. That by itself is not racism, it becomes racism when you say that everyone who cannot stand cold weather is inferior, when in reality, it is totally dependent on circumstances. I think people failing to see the difference stops some honest discussion and people go on a witch hunt. In this case, blocking the person may well be justified however.
        cactusface 11y ago
        I'm repeating myself here, but per WP, "Scientific racism is [...] alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races."
politicalhn4tw 11y ago
School textbooks also often make the case that Native Americans didn't make good slaves because they were native to the area and just walking away and vanishing was relatively easy for them. That's very different from asserting genetic racial differences were the factor at work.
tptacek 11y ago
I do not accept the premise of this argument, unless we're talking about textbooks from the 1910s.
- emjr 11y ago
  It was stated as fact as late as the early 90's in my own textbooks, and I attended a private school in the NY metro area.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

So, from that quote, he seems to be: a) Describing a master-slave structure with the implication that it is a biologically programmed one. b) That some are born for more dominant roles, some for more submissive ones, and then others who are in between or neither. c) That the aforementioned characteristics are genetic. Not particularly savory, but also a pretty standard evopsych position. In fact, I'd say that the only truly controversial part is the argument that these structures are innate and predetermined. That such master-slave structures permeate society is readily observable.

convexfunction 11y ago
This is not a "standard evopsych position". Evolutionary psychology seems to get conflated with a lot of unsavory bullshit just because the latter uses appeals to the former. Most people I know who do evolutionary psychology are extremely careful to point out all the ways they differ from (usually) sexists because they're so damn tired of people conflating one with the other.
tptacek 11y ago
That's one way to read it, I guess. The more straightforward way to read it would be to just use the normal accepted meanings of words, under which the quote straightforwardly argues that Africans are genetically adapted for slavery, and that arguments to the contrary constitute "political correctness". I feel like the only "reaching" I had to do to take that meaning from the quote was c/p'ing it out of my browser window to correct for the weird spacing HN put on it.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  No, that's oversimplified, I find. The quote implies that the colonizers found Africans to be more suited to fulfilling slave roles, and that the master-slave cycle formulated earlier is a genetic one. It doesn't make a direct judgment whether the colonizers were correct. The jab at political correctness doesn't seem to be an absolute refutation of opposing arguments, so much as an outlining of the historian's fallacy of trying to apply contemporary moral value judgments to past circumstances. FWIW, there was "political correctness" (sidestepping taboos) in those days, but the taboos were wildly different.

urbit 11y ago

"He has literally written that several of his co-speakers are genetically more fit to be slaves while he, a white male, is genetically designed to be a master." Certainly a powerful use of the word literally. Frankly, I'm actually considering recanting. Who wouldn't rather be Galileo than Giordano Bruno? But recanting is a serious matter - it's the sort of thing you need to get right the first time. To appear at future conferences without my fellow speakers worrying that I'll enslave them or kick off Holocaust 2.0, it'd be ideal if someone can tell me what I have to believe. I'm guessing it's either: (a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations. (b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations. Let's face it, Strange Loop is an awesome conference - there's a reason I applied. And I think Alex's decision is totally understandable for practical reasons, as someone downthread explains. If there's a chance of being invited back next year, I could totally go for (b). But if it has to be (a), I might still be all "e pur si muove" and stuff.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cactusface 11y ago
Barring peculiar talents such as resembling the POTUS, you should go for (b) and get yourself re-invited to this year's conference.
danso 11y ago
I don't have anything to add to this thread except to say that this is a gracious response and thank you for chiming in even while being at the center of controversy.
colinhb 11y ago
> I'm guessing it's either: > (a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations. > (b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations. Or: (c) The inter-group variation in the talents and inclinations of human beings is completely dominated by the intra-group variation. In other words, "living populations" (= ethnic groups) don't matter. You'll have (e.g.) smart and dumb people in every group, and everything else is noise. I'm not sure how a reasonable person could choose hypothesis (b) over (c), given the long history of hypothesis (b) proponents trying (and failing) to make the math work out for them.