Story Comic for 2016 April 25th

[BurntAsh 10]

25 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

You think the pieces stopped flying out already?

It was meant to be colorful language. Again, it's kinda a weird pick to nit. Even if I said yes, I could also say we're still finding them. If we were to go by the original story, the box was empty of everything but hope once the evils were unleashed. But it doesn't mean Pandora was able to catalogue them all as they came screaming out, or encountered them all during her lifetime even. The gender box has been opened for quite a while, it's just more recently that western european culture has been willing to examine what came out.

 

3 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Enough times I've come across a situation where I'm talking to two groups at the same time, and group A demands terminology X and takes offense at all others, while group B demands terminology Y and takes offense to all others. In such a situation there is NO way not to offend one of them, because satisfying the one inherently offends the other.

Except, you can run into this in many situations. Replace terminology with other words, like policy, and you just described a lot of groups (very few groups are homogenous, even if they are "single issue" groups). Yes, it is a controversy in some trans circles (apparently not the ones I'm involved in, we must hang out with different people), but that's okay, and allowed. And yes, on some issues you can take sides and offend the other side (i.e. abortion) and not really have any way around it. When it does happen, it sucks, but I point to OldHack's approach as the best standard approach to work with. Deal with the individual, don't worry so much about how unified the group is (or isn't). 

(I meant to post this yesterday, ugh)

[hkmaly 490]

4 hours ago, BurntAsh said:

23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

You think the pieces stopped flying out already?

It was meant to be colorful language. Again, it's kinda a weird pick to nit. Even if I said yes, I could also say we're still finding them. If we were to go by the original story, the box was empty of everything but hope once the evils were unleashed.

The part I'm nitpicking is that there is some finite list of stuff we need to find, analyze and then adapt the language to it. To show it on original story, Pandora's box was supposed to contain plagues and diseases ; but for example H5N1 didn't exist before 1959, so there was no way it could've been included there. The language is trying to adapt to moving target.

I'm sorry if I'm only one seeing that meaning in what you said. It looked worth nitpicking to me.

[BurntAsh 10]

9 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The part I'm nitpicking is that there is some finite list of stuff we need to find, analyze and then adapt the language to it. To show it on original story, Pandora's box was supposed to contain plagues and diseases ; but for example H5N1 didn't exist before 1959, so there was no way it could've been included there. The language is trying to adapt to moving target.

I'm sorry if I'm only one seeing that meaning in what you said. It looked worth nitpicking to me.

But H5N1 is still Influenza, which isn't new. Nor does what emerges from the box have to remain static once its out. When we talk about gender identity, it is quite an old topic (many cultures do have some language that dates back far enough to demonstrate this). Western culture being forced to acknowledge it? That's a new thing. Previously, it was just erased as mental illness if acknowledged at all. Hell, we're still seeing society defend reparative therapy in the last few months for trans people. 

And again, you take what was meant to be colorful language, and are focusing on the more literal details of the analogy. That's what I take issue with, since it isn't really relevant to the point I was trying to make. Do I expect the language to become fixed? No, but I do expect it to settle down to something manageable at some point. But that takes exploration, which takes time. And in the US anyhow, we're only now deciding to actually explore, question and learn. 

[hkmaly 490]

33 minutes ago, BurntAsh said:

But H5N1 is still Influenza, which isn't new. Nor does what emerges from the box have to remain static once its out. When we talk about gender identity, it is quite an old topic (many cultures do have some language that dates back far enough to demonstrate this).

I don't know much about the linguistic proofs of age of gender identity issue, but I got feeling that the current exploration of the topic in western culture is not only high time to happen, but also deeper (more detailed) than previous attempts. Meaning, we are in need of names for something which was not considered separate issue until this century. But I may be wrong.

33 minutes ago, BurntAsh said:

And again, you take what was meant to be colorful language, and are focusing on the more literal details of the analogy.

I hoped that keeping the analogy would help explaining my point. I guess it didn't.

33 minutes ago, BurntAsh said:

Do I expect the language to become fixed? No, but I do expect it to settle down to something manageable at some point.

I really hope it will, but I wouldn't go as far as to expect it. The issue of race is older and didn't seem to be settling down yet.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I really hope it will, but I wouldn't go as far as to expect it. The issue of race is older and didn't seem to be settling down yet.

Codswallop. Gender identity is a much, much older issue than the race issue. There are cultures on this planet that make specific allowances for people to move from the gender assigned at their birth to the other. We have present day hunter/gatherer tribes in which gender is basically treated as whether you hunt or you gather. We have thousands of years old legends of males becoming females or the other way around. Tiresias of Greek mythology is just one example.

Race, on the other hand, is a far more modern construct and only started to become an issue once improving travel technology made large scale interaction between continental land masses possible. Race lines as we know them have only existed for a mere handful of centuries and came into being as a justification for the systematic enslavement of Black people. In previous centuries or millennia, what slavery did exist was usually based on cultural or tribal lines. Even the hapless Slavs, a people so victimised by the slave trade that their very tribal name became the root word of 'slavery', were not considered a 'race' but a tribe.

Also, at its very root, the concept of 'race' is scientifically speaking utter nonsense. The concept of gender is not. Which would be more likely to be an old, old part of humanity's identity: an observable physical and social fact or a ridiculous contrivance solely brought into existence to justify the exploitation of people with high melanin content in their skin?

[Don Edwards 548]

And as for terminology, there are languages with no grammatical gender at all, and languages where the grammatical genders have absolutely no relationship to sex.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

And as for terminology, there are languages with no grammatical gender at all, and languages where the grammatical genders have absolutely no relationship to sex.

Languages can be funny that way. Danish is one of the latter, in a sense. Apart from certain dialects close to Germany that have three genders, Danish in general only has two -- combined gender (male and female gender conflated into one) and agender (the literal translation would be 'nogender' but it sounds a little odd to my ears.)

But even English has gender in it, if vestigial and only used in very special cases. One would be ships, which by seamen are referred to as 'she' rather than 'it.' This same naval tradition exists in Denmark as well and is one of the few places where this kind of usage survives.

[Stature 96]

7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

And as for terminology, there are languages with no grammatical gender at all, and languages where the grammatical genders have absolutely no relationship to sex.

I know one that does the former. You'll always get that paranoid feeling as to who (or even what) is it talking about in any sentence. As in, no gender, no delegation for non-human objects. The pronouns are one-o and the same-o. Major advantage in some ways, I would say.

Say, did we not have some kind of a language thread before?

[The Old Hack 2,448]

26 minutes ago, Stature said:

Say, did we not have some kind of a language thread before?

We did, in the Off Topic forum. Feel free to start a new one.

[Sjmcc13 42]

11 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Race, on the other hand, is a far more modern construct and only started to become an issue once improving travel technology made large scale interaction between continental land masses possible. Race lines as we know them have only existed for a mere handful of centuries and came into being as a justification for the systematic enslavement of Black people. In previous centuries or millennia, what slavery did exist was usually based on cultural or tribal lines. Even the hapless Slavs, a people so victimised by the slave trade that their very tribal name became the root word of 'slavery', were not considered a 'race' but a tribe.

Fun fact : There was a african (black) dynasty of Roman Emperors. 

Though I always figured justifying the Genocidal actions taken against "the Savages" (Native Americans) was another large part of the creation of Racism. It does seem like it really comes about when Europe started conquering the rest of the world, as a justification for their conquest and subjugation of all those non european countries (and Ireland). 

[Don Edwards 548]

10 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Languages can be funny that way. Danish is one of the latter, in a sense. Apart from certain dialects close to Germany that have three genders, Danish in general only has two -- combined gender (male and female gender conflated into one) and agender (the literal translation would be 'nogender' but it sounds a little odd to my ears.)

But even English has gender in it, if vestigial and only used in very special cases. One would be ships, which by seamen are referred to as 'she' rather than 'it.' This same naval tradition exists in Denmark as well and is one of the few places where this kind of usage survives.

English has four genders just in pronouns. Most of our pronouns are neutral (they/them plus all the first and second person pronouns), but we also have male (he/him), female (she/her), and nonperson (it, that, those).

There are some languages, mostly African if I remember correctly, where the only genders are person and nonperson. And some others where the genders are animate and inanimate.

[hkmaly 490]

19 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Codswallop. Gender identity is a much, much older issue than the race issue.

I meant based on when "Western culture" (meaning: people in US) started solving it. But you're right, gender identity was issue long before people started taking it as one.

19 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

In previous centuries or millennia, what slavery did exist was usually based on cultural or tribal lines. Even the hapless Slavs, a people so victimised by the slave trade that their very tribal name became the root word of 'slavery', were not considered a 'race' but a tribe.

Hmmmm ... civilization started near the point where "black" and "white" people meet. But yes, the idea that enslaving people of "correct" (white) color is not normal appeared only later, before that any other nation was fair game.

19 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Also, at its very root, the concept of 'race' is scientifically speaking utter nonsense. The concept of gender is not.

Informal doesn't mean nonsense, although I see that the term "breed" is now preferred term - oh. You mean the concept of dividing humans to races based on skin color. Well, before the "improved travel technologies" (was it really technology? Didn't the travel expanded for political reasons, like fall of Constantinople?) it might had some relevancy, although not nearly as big as it was claimed to ... interesting how the race started to be issue only when it's relevancy started to decline ...

7 hours ago, Sjmcc13 said:

Though I always figured justifying the Genocidal actions taken against "the Savages" (Native Americans) was another large part of the creation of Racism. It does seem like it really comes about when Europe started conquering the rest of the world, as a justification for their conquest and subjugation of all those non european countries (and Ireland). 

... and by "interesting" I mean "suspicious".

Basically, the concept of race was used as an explanation that then existing cultural lines are fixed and there is no point trying to make those other people part of our culture. And the fact that you can't extend culture as fast as the conquest was happening was taken as confirmation.

Now, after several centuries, it is apparent that "other races" can became part of our culture if we let them (and if they want to).

[The Old Hack 2,448]

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

(was it really technology? Didn't the travel expanded for political reasons, like fall of Constantinople?)

Both reasons could be involved but the technology trumps the politics. Constantinople could have fallen as many times as it wanted, without improving ship designs, mapmaking and astronomical knowledge the trade expansions would not have followed. Thor Heyerdahl made some amazing journeys using only very old technology. But there is a very large step between 'possible' and 'practical.' I cannot see colonisation and the conquest of the new world starting from Europe based only on triremes or canoes.

[ijuin 572]

15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

 interesting how the race started to be issue only when it's relevancy started to decline ...

... and by "interesting" I mean "suspicious".

 

 

eg

Race started to matter politically once it became clear that political authority was needed in order to force social stratification (i.e. keeping the less-favored groups out of the professional and ruling classes). White farmers don't campaign against black folks when 90% of blacks exist only in subservient roles--they do it when the black folks actually start to compete with them for jobs, housing, schools, and influence. Nobody bothers to spend effort on preventing earthworms from flying, after all.

[hkmaly 490]

18 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

(was it really technology? Didn't the travel expanded for political reasons, like fall of Constantinople?)

Both reasons could be involved but the technology trumps the politics. Constantinople could have fallen as many times as it wanted, without improving ship designs, mapmaking and astronomical knowledge the trade expansions would not have followed. Thor Heyerdahl made some amazing journeys using only very old technology. But there is a very large step between 'possible' and 'practical.' I cannot see colonisation and the conquest of the new world starting from Europe based only on triremes or canoes.

The technology definitely helped, but I wasn't able to find any specific technology at the correct time. I mean, sextant was first implemented in 1730, that's too late. Astrolabe was first used in 1295, that's too soon ... but might not been actually used on sea before 1551, that's too late ...

Obviously, Leif Erikson didn't had the same technology as Columbus and his method of getting to America was less practical, but the technology "window" for start of traveling might easily been hundred years, with political reasons behind the exact date.

Also, regarding the conquest part, cannons appeared in Europe in 13th century.

7 hours ago, ijuin said:

Race started to matter politically once it became clear that political authority was needed in order to force social stratification (i.e. keeping the less-favored groups out of the professional and ruling classes). White farmers don't campaign against black folks when 90% of blacks exist only in subservient roles--they do it when the black folks actually start to compete with them for jobs, housing, schools, and influence.

Hmmm ... ruling classes ... is this the reason slavery was more problem in US, with voted president, instead of Europe full of monarchies? Or is it more because slaves were much more heavily used in US, mainly for production of stuff which Europe was buying from them?

7 hours ago, ijuin said:

Nobody bothers to spend effort on preventing earthworms from flying, after all.

I wouldn't be so sure about birds motivation ...

 

[Scrapyard_Dragon 5]

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

 

Hmmm ... ruling classes ... is this the reason slavery was more problem in US, with voted president, instead of Europe full of monarchies? Or is it more because slaves were much more heavily used in US, mainly for production of stuff which Europe was buying from them?I wouldn't be so sure about

My understanding is that in the south the political representatives were elected mostly by plantation owners rather than common farmers, and so southern congressmen worked in favor of the area's upper class, which used slavery for the majority of it's farming. It doesn't matter who the president is if congress can't get a bill out to end slavery. Heck, the only reason slavery ended during the civil war was because abolitionists could get the 13th amendment out without southern interference, what with them having seceded and all. If the war never happened American slavery might not have ended until after world war two.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

10 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, regarding the conquest part, cannons appeared in Europe in 13th century.

You really need to read up on the European looting spree of the rest of the world. While gunpowder did play a role, it was only part of the story. A big help was the spread of European diseases like cholera, smallpox, typhoid, mumps and the flu. They took an utterly hideous toll of local populations, more than decimating them in many cases. For example, a single outbreak of smallpox killed more than half the population of Tenochtitlan and the surrounding area. This was not an ideal situation from which to wage a war of survival.

As to 13th century cannon, they consisted mainly of massive and primitive tubes intended for siege warfare. They were utterly useless in open battles. By the time the slave trade began, gunpowder weapons had improved a good deal though they still left much to be desired. Still, they had at least progressed from the point where they were metal tubes balanced on a forked stick and a horrible tendency to blow up or light afire the gunner by the third attempted shot at the latest.

[hkmaly 490]

13 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

You really need to read up on the European looting spree of the rest of the world. While gunpowder did play a role, it was only part of the story. A big help was the spread of European diseases like cholera, smallpox, typhoid, mumps and the flu. They took an utterly hideous toll of local populations, more than decimating them in many cases.

Considering decimating means killing 10% I'm not surprised it was worse in some cases. Also, somehow I don't think European leaders RELIED on this bacteriology warfare: if they wouldn't be convinced they will be able to win direct battle anytime they need to, I don't think they would risk it. And gunpowder was certainly big part of this. Still, again, no big progress at the correct time, was it?

Anyway, the diseases are unlikely to be deciding factor for WHEN the conquest started, unless some recent discovery made either spreading them or limiting their danger to own population easier ... which I don't think happened around that time.

[Sjmcc13 42]

56 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Anyway, the diseases are unlikely to be deciding factor for WHEN the conquest started, unless some recent discovery made either spreading them or limiting their danger to own population easier ... which I don't think happened around that time.

European had some resistances to the plaques they carried, the the Native Americans had next to none, They spread through the native population and destroyed their numbers, while the european losses to the same diseases were considerably smaller. Also there were no native american plaques since the conditions required to create one did not exist in North America at the time

After the Spanish conquest of Mexico (which they were only able to do because of help from the groups the Aztecs were oppressing) the Europeans were confident that their equipment was far superior (and probably overestimated the difference in lethality), and that the natives were primitive savages who needed to be converted to christianity. The Europeans probably would have won without the diseases (and alcohol) but it would have been allot bloodier and probably taken allot longer. 

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Any disease will be most devastating the *first* time it hits a naïve population, that is, a populatin that has never seen that disease before.  The first plague will kill off all the most vulnerable genes, leaving behind the more resistant genes to spread throughout the population.  The next time the disease hits, there are fewer vulnerable genes, and more resistant ones, so the disease isn't quite as devastating.  The longer a disease exists in a given population, the less severe it tends to be, and the fewer severe cases develop.

The diseases that ravaged the natives in the Americas had already ravaged Europe, they just did it many generations before.  By the time they crossed the ocean they'd developed resistance to them, by virtue of everyone *not* resistant dying off.

[hkmaly 490]

15 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Any disease will be most devastating the *first* time it hits a naïve population, that is, a populatin that has never seen that disease before.  The first plague will kill off all the most vulnerable genes, leaving behind the more resistant genes to spread throughout the population.  The next time the disease hits, there are fewer vulnerable genes, and more resistant ones, so the disease isn't quite as devastating.  The longer a disease exists in a given population, the less severe it tends to be, and the fewer severe cases develop.

The diseases that ravaged the natives in the Americas had already ravaged Europe, they just did it many generations before.  By the time they crossed the ocean they'd developed resistance to them, by virtue of everyone *not* resistant dying off.

Thats the truth we are NOW seeing clearly.

Anyone who would try to explain stuff like this in 15th or 16th century will be burned at the stake. Not speaking about the fact that without travelling all around the world and observing many different biotopes, not even Darwin would get idea so revolutionary. They likely thanked God that the diseases are much more deadly between natives ... or, well, took it as confirmation they are the Chosen ones.

As I said, they didn't know enough about diseases to actually rely on them.

1 hour ago, Sjmcc13 said:

the Europeans were confident that their equipment was far superior (and probably overestimated the difference in lethality)

Yup ; the CONVICTION was what they needed, actual superiority was secondary.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

7 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Considering decimating means killing 10% I'm not surprised it was worse in some cases. Also, somehow I don't think European leaders RELIED on this bacteriology warfare:

Read up on the colonisation process. One wonderful trick employed was to sell natives the clothes and bedding of people who had died from some disease or other. Then lean back and enjoy the show as an epidemic tore through the hapless people you had cheated. This was bacteriological warfare in its earliest form but it worked quite well.

And who has to rely on it? You just need to make use of the result. A disaster area is much, much easier to conquer than a healthy community with infrastructure intact.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Current research indicates that the population of the Americas was many times greater before Columbus arrived, and early European settlers often arrived to cleared lands and cultivated forests which had been abandoned recently enough to still be extremely useful to them.  The Mayflower settlers were greeted by a village with a sole survivor who welcomed them because his entire community had been wiped out by disease.  The Americas weren't unspoiled wilderness with a few little villages, they were a vast array of civilizations which had been greatly depopulated by illnesses brought by the early European explorers.  The first explorers would report thriving communities, and the next people through the area would say they must have been exaggerating because there was nothing like that anymore.

There's a whole book, 1491, which summarized a lot of this a decade ago, but I first read about it in an online article of the same name.  Really makes you wish you could travel back in time and see for yourself!

[Scotty 1,061]

I think before we could travel through time, we'd have to figure out a way to fully cleanse ourselves of any diseases that could potentially be 10-100x worse than anything in the time periods we'd visit. Don't want to give the early european settlers PAX Pox.

[partner555 170]

32 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I think before we could travel through time, we'd have to figure out a way to fully cleanse ourselves of any diseases that could potentially be 10-100x worse than anything in the time periods we'd visit. Don't want to give the early european settlers PAX Pox.

Nor do we want to give them any computer viruses.