Were people more unselfish before the 19th century?

[innonimatu]

Yes, and the reason was to increase mobility by reducing heavy and slow logistics. Which was certainly not any fun for local population, but wasn't long-lasting - when spending time at the same location, like in Vienna in 1805, it was more organized and saw actually little friction with the locals (save, obviously and again, Spain).

The french stole everything that was not nailed down, and then some things that were. They made themselves hated in the whole Iberian Peninsula (it wasn't just Spain), but also in Italy. It was just that the italians were used to having the french coming down on them already, more of the same. Your argument is that Napoleon was not more evil that Louis XIV had been, just bitten a larger chunk?

Also, don't see how just having bigger numbers available somehow makes Napoléon especially heinous, especially when the comparison is the 30 years war, which managed to have a MUCH higher death toll and MUCH higher amount of atrocities, despite being much more geographically restricted and with much smaller populations. Just because there was less killed during battles due to less people fighting ? That's some weird logic here.

Napoleon didn't last 30 years, fortunately. I don't think anyone will ever produce an accurate number for total casualties in either of these sets of wars, but strongly suspect that Napoleon, on his ambitions alone, got more people killed that all the fighting of numerous nobles and monarchs during the 30 years war among many sides divided by religion.

Napoleon was not "progressive". He was regressive, saw himself as a new Caesar. Wanted to recreate a Roman Empire as a French Empire, with himself as emperor. He was not bringing a new era, he was trying to turn history back 1500 years.

 

[Akka]

The french stole everything that was not nailed down, and then some things that were. They made themselves hated in the whole Iberian Peninsula (it wasn't just Spain), but also in Italy. It was just that the italians were used to having the french coming down on them already, more of the same. Your argument is that Napoleon was not more evil that Louis XIV had been, just bitten a larger chunk?

Yeah, the winners pillaged the losers. Not nice, but not shocking considering the times.
And yeah, he wasn't worse than most other ambitious monarch of the time, he just managed to be much more successful and able to enforce his will instead of having to play the alliance game.

Napoleon didn't last 30 years, fortunately. I don't think anyone will ever produce an accurate number for total casualties in either of these sets of wars, but strongly suspect that Napoleon, on his ambitions alone, got more people killed that all the fighting of numerous nobles and monarchs during the 30 years war among many sides divided by religion.

Actually, he got barely from one fourth to half the amount of people killed, and most of them were soldiers, not civilians, and half of that happened singly through the invasion of Russia (which means it was his responsability, but certainly not his objective). So yeah.

Napoleon was not "progressive". He was regressive, saw himself as a new Caesar. Wanted to recreate a Roman Empire as a French Empire, with himself as emperor. He was not bringing a new era, he was trying to turn history back 1500 years.

He was only regressive compared to the Révolution, from which he still drew a lot of very modern concepts (that he often somewhat corrupted, like meritocracy over aristocracy, which ended creating another aristrocracy). He was nevertheless central to a huge amount of new progressive ideas being introduced into most of Europe and breaking the foundations over which old monarchies were built, paving the way for the revolutionaries movements of the XIXth century (this was out of pragmatism mainly, and only marginally out of ideology, and even his ideology was more about "rational" than "enlightened", but it was still a huge progress compared to the old dynasties).

As usual, your problem is that instead of informing yourself and drawing conclusions from there, you start with your bias and then filter everything to fit it. So you just argue through ignorance and blatant dissonance with facts, and it gives post like this one (or the one where you comically claim he saw French as the "chosen people"), which are basically being wrong on about everything because reality doesn't fit what you want it to be.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Contemporary cartoons

 

[Live trash can]

I think Narz points to something important when he says:

Modern society rewards ruthless acquisition.

And @Takhisis raised an excellent question. What kind of people were Alexander and all the other generals and rulers? Were they selfish? Were they control freaks? I gather everyone here play or have played Civilzation. How do you justify that?


Saying people can't have been different in times past doesn't do it IMHO, cause I know I have changed during my life, and I know I am different from some people. So it becomes pretty obvious to me that people could have been different also.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I think Narz points to something important when he says:


And @Takhisis raised an excellent question. What kind of people were Alexander and all the other generals and rulers? Were they selfish? Were they control freaks? I gather everyone here play or have played Civilzation. How do you justify that?


Saying people can't have been different in times past doesn't do it IMHO, cause I know I have changed during my life, and I know I am different from some people. So it becomes pretty obvious to me that people could have been different also.

Civ is a game, it doesn't affect real life, no justification needed for actions in a game.

 

[Live trash can]

Doesn't it mirror your desires in the real world?

I know it does for me

Can you really separate them? The wish to control.

Maybe that desire is stronger in some than in others. I know at least some people have "real" feelings when they play games - like anger. But that is stronger in multi-player games.

 

[Akka]

Doesn't it mirror your desires in the real world?

No, it mirrors your fantasies about the real world, which can be pretty different than your actual desires.
(like, in games, I tend to like imperial governments, because the power fantasy of being an absolute ruler, and the "glamour" of traditional monarchy ; my actual desires in the real world are about the exact opposite, as I'm a staunch democrat and I dislike having the weight of responsabilities)

 

[Live trash can]

Okey, yes maybe it is more about fantasies.

Yes, I like the medieval and ancient settings the most.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Doesn't it mirror your desires in the real world?

I know it does for me

Can you really separate them? The wish to control.

Maybe that desire is stronger in some than in others. I know at least some people have "real" feelings when they play games - like anger. But that is stronger in multi-player games.

Maybe. That could be an argument for them, if they allow you to work off feelings like aggression, frustration, desire for control without affecting actual people.
I've spent 40 years playing wargames, RPGs, videogames, boardgames etc without being in a violent situation once so they certainly don't cause aggression in me at least.

 

[Farm Boy]

What kind of people were Alexander and all the other generals and rulers?

The conquerors? The by choice for glory and power instigators of the rapists and pillagers and murderers on world scale?

Literally the worst of man. Hard stop.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Maybe. That could be an argument for them, if they allow you to work off feelings like aggression, frustration, desire for control without affecting actual people.
I've spent 40 years playing wargames, RPGs, videogames, boardgames etc without being in a violent situation once so they certainly don't cause aggression in me at least.

What wargames did you play? I began with Tactics II and my addiction never ended.

 

[AmazonQueen]

What wargames did you play? I began with Tactics II and my addiction never ended.

I started with minatures and one of Donald Featherstone's books, then moved on to SPI and AH boardgames as I've always been too lazy and slapdash to paint figures well in quantity. I lack the patience and time to play the old style wargames nowadays, but tonight 4 of us are playing "Vikings 878" https://www.academygames.com/pages/878 which if its like their other games should be playable in under 2 hours. My brother has loads of unplayed GMT games.

 

[civvver]

is this a good thing? The reason why I ask is that I have read somewhere that this freedom is detrimental. It has something to do with teleology. I cannot remember it all; maybe with time I will remember. And does the freedom work for the majority?


I haven't had time to read beyond #34, but any of you write about the good of urban society and big societies. I am very for these things. But I think maybe there also are some weird things going on there. (I wish I had some statistics.)

I'm not really pro-barbarism because the medieval age had many things besides barbarism. Wasn't there peace in Norway in the middle ages? In many other countries there were different kinds of government. In fantastic worlds there is magic and all sorts of weirds things which make it different to barbarism IMO. And the setting is "scripted" meaning the good usually prevails. It is a nice story because it is a nice story.

You mention both good things and bad things about modern society. IMO we are heading for disaster with the use of our technology. And this is pretty serious! At least from the outside, our society seems flawed.

I am between 1 and 100 years old.

The danes and norse had many slaves, were probably slave economies on the scale of the american south. Scientists are finding new evidence of this in archaeological sites.

Also talking about conquerers and such, ghengis khan and his children and the mongol invasions killed so many people we can still see the effects on the carbon footprint today.

https://www.livescience.com/11739-wars-plagues-carbon-climate.html

 

[Birdjaguar]

I started with minatures and one of Donald Featherstone's books, then moved on to SPI and AH boardgames as I've always been too lazy and slapdash to paint figures well in quantity. I lack the patience and time to play the old style wargames nowadays, but tonight 4 of us are playing "Vikings 878" https://www.academygames.com/pages/878 which if its like their other games should be playable in under 2 hours. My brother has loads of unplayed GMT games.

I collected games for decades and about ten years ago sold most of them. I had many, many S&T games plus numerous SPI games. I was partial to anything Napoleonic and the bigger the game the better. I still have some of the LBM games. I indulged in 25mm Napoleonics for a while, but the painting was always an obstacle.

 

[Takhisis]

And @Takhisis raised an excellent question. What kind of people were Alexander and all the other generals and rulers? Were they selfish? Were they control freaks? I gather everyone here play or have played Civilzation. How do you justify that?

How do we justify playing a videogame? It's a videogame, not reality. Otherwise, everyone watching The Matrix or The Terminator and enjoying the film could be accuse of enjoying the near extermination of the human species.

Alexander and many other generals… they felt entitled. ‘I'm gonna conquer Persia/Gaul/China/Italy and to hell with it’. And most people agreed that rulers were meant to rule and the ruled were meant to be ruled. Human rights, dignity, etc. are a quite recent development in human thought, at least as a mainstream thing.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I collected games for decades and about ten years ago sold most of them. I had many, many S&T games plus numerous SPI games. I was partial to anything Napoleonic and the bigger the game the better. I still have some of the LBM games. I indulged in 25mm Napoleonics for a while, but the painting was always an obstacle.

I don't have many old games left, mostly Napoleonic (La Grande Armee, Empires in Arms, War and Peace, Napoleon at Austerlitz) and Ancient (with an emphasis on the Punic Wars and the Roman Republic in general). I once spent an afternoon with a friend who played a lot of 15mm 18th century minature games watching him paint an Ottoman army. He made it look so quick and easy and produced such beautiful results.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I don't have many old games left, mostly Napoleonic (La Grande Armee, Empires in Arms, War and Peace, Napoleon at Austerlitz) and Ancient (with an emphasis on the Punic Wars and the Roman Republic in general). I once spent an afternoon with a friend who played a lot of 15mm 18th century minature games watching him paint an Ottoman army. He made it look so quick and easy and produced such beautiful results.

Many excellent games in your list. The la Battaille series was my favorite other than Battles of the First Empire: Marengo.

 

[Live trash can]

The danes and norse had many slaves, were probably slave economies on the scale of the american south. Scientists are finding new evidence of this in archaeological sites.

Slave economy - I am not sure what exactly that means. The Greeks had slaves, and aren't they considered highly/quite developed?

They had city-states, governments, Olympic games and philosophers and poets and plays and so on. And slaves and generals and warring groups and so on.

 

[civvver]

Slave economy - I am not sure what exactly that means. The Greeks had slaves, and aren't they considered highly/quite developed?

They had city-states, governments, Olympic games and philosophers and poets and plays and so on. And slaves and generals and warring groups and so on.

yes but also really selfish

 

[Traitorfish]

Slave economy - I am not sure what exactly that means. The Greeks had slaves, and aren't they considered highly/quite developed?

They had city-states, governments, Olympic games and philosophers and poets and plays and so on. And slaves and generals and warring groups and so on.

All of those things existed in China, India and Mesopotamia, too. They just didn't get the hell romanticised out of them by successive waves of Europeans.