The climatic argument is a peculiar one, mind, given that the hot-headedness of the Southerners is traditionally attributed to Scots and Irish origins, and it's not like we're sunning ourselves in October. Perhaps that whole notion of a "Celtic South" wasn't so well-established at the time?
Sometimes when I play Civ, I write a history of my civilization. And sometimes, when I'm really ambitious, I write it each epoch in the style of historians writing in that epoch.
So the ancient era is kind of like a heroic poem. Then, around Philosophy or Civil Service (Civ V) I shift to a Livy-like annals. I don't know if I've ever made it up to the era of 19th C historians (too much starts to happen in my game itself, and I let my history slip), but if I ever do make it that far, I'll try to remember to include this kind of ethnographic sensibility.
I'm right now reading a history of the Tudors from the 50s (G.R. Elton) and I'm astonished at what historians could allow themselves even only seventy years ago. Little capsule summaries of the total career of particular ministers too broadly generalizing for any contemporary historian to countenance.
But see (in this schema of mine), it would be a 2020 historian giving that account. So it would be a post-structuralist, Marxist-inflected feminist who would give you your account of Ghandi's "My words are backed by nuclear weapons" ("The phallogocentrism of his boast is better passed over in disrespectful silence, lest the historian be thought complicit in the militaristic ideology that began to manifest itself within Indian culture in the early 21 century.")
I'm right now reading a history of the Tudors from the 50s (G.R. Elton) and I'm astonished at what historians could allow themselves even only seventy years ago. Little capsule summaries of the total career of particular ministers too broadly generalizing for any contemporary historian to countenance.
Man, I'm reading biographies of classical figures that were written in the 80s and the amount of homophobic editorializing by the authors is pretty incredible.
Man, I'm reading biographies of classical figures that were written in the 80s and the amount of homophobic editorializing by the authors is pretty incredible.
Dude I re-watched Friends and the amount of casual homophobia was cringe worthy. It's pretty amazing how fast that switch flipped, though of course that viewpoint ignores centuries of persecution.
"Or take the notion of "political correctness". It is true that movements of conscience have piled demands onto people faster than the culture can absorb them. That is an unfortunate side-effect of social progress. Conservatism, however, twists language to make the inconvenience of conscience sound like a kind of oppression. The campaign against political correctness is thus a search-and-destroy campaign against all vestiges of conscience in society. The flamboyant nastiness of rhetors such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter represents the destruction of conscience as a type of liberation. They are like cultists, continually egging on their audiences to destroy their own minds by punching through one layer after another of their consciences."
Essay was fairly interesting. I don't really agree with its larger theoretical grounding but I think its analysis of contemporary American conservatism is more or less correct.
"If all of this time all this incomprehensible stuff about dialectics was just basic “start understanding a concept by giving binary examples of opposite sides, then correct it and make it more sophisticated later”, I am going to be SO ANGRY."
"If all of this time all this incomprehensible stuff about dialectics was just basic “start understanding a concept by giving binary examples of opposite sides, then correct it and make it more sophisticated later”, I am going to be SO ANGRY."
Sorry, but this person comes across as not having read anything remotely about dialectics, if he thinks that is dialectics. It's no mystery, btw, there are famous works which present the concept. Although they often are named in such a way that *possibly* (said in Blackadder tone) one would not identify them as relevant, eg "The Parmenides, or On Dialectics"
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It's pretty amazing how fast that switch flipped, though of course that viewpoint ignores centuries of persecution.
It's no mystery, btw, there are famous works which present the concept. Although they often are named in such a way that *possibly* (said in Blackadder tone) one would not identify them as relevant, eg "The Parmenides, or On Dialectics" 
