Bay 12 Games Forum

Ha. Nah, no master theologian, just taught a bit by a couple of 'em that had a certain degree of appreciation of the GIGO concept applied to religious texts. And yeah, a fair bit of what I picked up was that was one of the major directions of interpretation... but not the only one, y'know?

I've always been personally a little mystified about folks' insistence on interpreting such things in the least constructive method available, heh, but that's neither here nor there.

Yeah... my understanding's fairly limited, but "perfectly fine" isn't exactly the word I'd use in that sentence LW. From what I do understand, the strictures regarding that sort of thing are actually fairly strict, both in implementation and in what counts as sufficient justification. There's apparently a reason the theology of Islam had a major influence on the concept of just war in western thought, though I'd have to go back digging (and gods know I don't want to do that. Even cursory searches to remind myself of a few things is probably pinging gods know how many warning flags for some asshole data miner) to remember the specifics.

But yeah... if muslim folks were actually following their holy texts (which hey, isn't just the Qu'ran), they'd be pretty peaceful (especially until provoked). There's at least one passage among the Hadith that flat out forbids violence, and a few in the Qu'ran that's pretty strongly against it as well (especially against other abrahamic religions). Can say that about a lot of religions that get tangled up in societal issues, unfortunately.

Would that... would that actually help?

I'm not much of a server/network fellow. Is that actually standard methodology these days? What exactly is that supposed to fix?

So we should sacrifice people to war because you feel like we might lose perspective?

Fairly sure there's a reason I used "stock response" in that, hum. Personally, I'm entirely aware that perspective of that sort was lost a long damn time ago. I can understand why some folks don't want to further exaggerate that problem, though.

Because it's not entirely wrong thinking, really. There's a fairly extreme difference between human and material cost, and people are generally a lot less comfortable spending the former. Making war cost even less of the former would indeed most likely further undermine perspective. Some people actually care about their sons and daughters, but they're a lot less likely to raise a fuss over another penny on the dollar or whathaveyou. So theoretically, when your course of action is going to threaten the former, you pay a hell of a lot more attention to what you're intending to do.

Doesn't actually work that way, but that's how the thinking goes insofar as I'm aware.

Otherwise, why emigrate?

There are reasons for emigrating besides personal happiness, yeah? Sometimes you move to improve things for the people in the area you're moving to, or to improve things back home (the latter in particular for work visa type situations).

People who emigrate do so for a 'better thing', and in doing so they Should claim their previous country 'not on par' as long as they remain in the country they are in. That's the rule of guests in a house. You enter another man's house, and even if she or he might have a leaky roof, if they like it leaky...then why insist they fix it? They want it leaky, leave it leaky unless the house's owner asks you to repair it. In which case go ahead. Otherwise, leave it leaky.
They enjoy the rain.

Except... the person in question isn't a guest in a house, exactly. They're a person trying to build their own home, somewhere else. In this case, perhaps, attached in part to someone else's home, yes, but that's no reason not to try to fix their own roof.

And again... even if they should claim that their previous country is not on par, (Which is a stronger statement than I'd accept, really. Rule of guests around here doesn't specify you're supposed to badmouth your own home, after all. Perhaps it is different in your area?) that doesn't entail that the country they're in cannot be improved, or that aspects of their previous country cannot be used to improve their current. It's... fairly common where I'm at for guests, especially long term ones with skillsets or experiences capable of being utilized to improve the place they're staying, to, y'know, offer to help out and improve things. Sometimes using their previous residences as a base pattern for the upgrades. Perhaps the guest knows of a way to build something that can keep things rainy to the desired degree without the water damage caused by leaks, yeah?

It's not really a case where I'd suggest "stay quiet until help is requested" is appropriate action. If you love the place you're in, and you believe you see a way to improve it, you should make the offer and try to convince others of the opportunity for improvement, yes?

I can now fully relate to the bishops who tried to ban the arbalest, because it took chivalry out of war. History sets Fun precedents.

... wasn't that line of complaints just a thin facade over th'fact they were up in arms (heh) about peasants and whatnot actually having a chance vs. heavily equipped and trained nobility?

Drones and such would... actually probably be an exact reversal of that trend, as (even) more military power gets centralized in the hands of those controlling the resources (i.e. drone production) and the underclass's capability to meaningfully defend itself (which is mostly a joke anyway, but still) erodes even further.

That said, do you think it's important to preserve these traditions?

I don't think it's important to preserve traditions for the sake of preserving traditions, m'self, or in preserving traditions whole cloth. There's no inherent value to a historical record or long running behavioral/cultural patterns; they're incidental and arbitrary, the results of accident rather than construction (though, of course, successive accidents can produce very practical outcomes.). If there's practical aspects to keeping parts of it around, then... good. Keep those parts, and do remember context can be important. But don't keep dirty water in with the baby, as the saying goes. Ideally we want a tub full of nothing but babies and no bath water at all, but if nothing else we want to minimize the bath water/baby ratio as much as possible.

The overall goal of cultural intermingling, t'me, is to steal every bloody useful thing from every bloody where and throw every bloody thing else to the curb. Tradition is no reason to hold on to detrimental behavioral patterns or to cleave to means and methods that are obviously inferior to other methods. Similarly, that a particularly beneficial behavioral pattern is associated with a particular cultural base is no reason to not utilize (as an individual, as a group) that behavioral pattern, and we shouldn't be letting obviously useful means and methods (even if they're only conditionally so based on geographic area or whatnot) drop off the chart just because they're practiced by people with relatively (relative to our own norms, anyway) funny names. We should definitely be more aggressive about thoroughly recording and documenting useful cultural bits and bobs and figuring out how to integrate and utilize them.

As a whole, though, I don't think culture genuinely matters. At all. What's important is the individual memetic components considered in aggregate to be culture, and those should be considered on their own merit before the worth of the aggregate is considered relevant (if it's relevant in the least). Insofar as multiculturalism goes, I think it currently does a better job than most things of facilitating that process, by dint of encouraging a lot of different cultural groups to get into fairly close contact and interaction, giving the memetic transfer, interaction, and competition a better environment to occur. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good idea to keep dying cultures alive, though -- if it can't keep up, loot the body and let it die. Opinion of nationalism should be obvious from that, ha. The aggregate is pointless, and considering it to be of some kind of comparative merit is equally so.

As to th'concept of cultural blending causing a reduction in... something. Innovation? Interesting variations on the theme? Brought up earlier. I call bullshit. I read fanfiction, alright? If there's ever a situation where you're dealing with an insular, largely homogeneous memetic base, that'd be it, especially for older and more established fan bases. A great deal of innovation and interesting variations on the theme occur anyway. When it comes right down to it, even within a particular memetic aggregate you've got a great deal of individual moving parts, and the combinations they're capable of are tremendous. I think that it's more likely than not that, when it's all said and done, we're going to have something more vibrant and active in that sort of sense than anything more distinct separation is allowing to happen. Providing we don't fuck it up,* at that point we'll have all the best moving parts and all the less-than-best-but-still-good ones, too, and whatever structurally necessary bits associated with those. What we'll be able to make from that should be pretty bloody impressive.

Is my 2˘, anyway.

*This is probably the "big if", though. Maybe if we just don't screw it up too badly, heh.