Downtown Khazan: Ice Cold Utopia

[Beadle]

So apparently Wilder fired his trainer for throwing in the towel.

He’s really not covered himself in glory in the last 48 hours, has he?

If he’d just faced up to losing and moved on, he would still have kept some respect from the public. But apparently that was too much to ask.

[FistofIron]

He’s really not covered himself in glory in the last 48 hours, has he?

If he’d just faced up to losing and moved on, he would still have kept some respect from the public. But apparently that was too much to ask.

He talks a lot about Joshua but at least he didn’t make excuses.

[Len Ikari145]

Edens Zero:....Holy ****. Okay yeah, this is clearly not Fairy Tail's Mashima. This is RAVE Mashima who is also indulging heavily into his dark side. I was fully expecting a fake-out in terms of Weiss losing in his arm, but that ain't the case. And Shiki...damn.

Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest: Speaking of Fairy Tail, things are getting intense. Much like I anticipated, destroying the Wood Dragon God's orbs simply unsealed him. And, in another example of Mashima's dark narrative, the townspeople die and become sacrifices to restore Aldoron. It also seems that the WW was manipulated by Selene, the Moon God Dragon, into carrying out her plan in order to increase the distortion of the world.

Mashima's been on a roll lately.

[Nik Hasta]

Edens Zero:....Holy ****. Okay yeah, this is clearly not Fairy Tail's Mashima. This is RAVE Mashima who is also indulging heavily into his dark side. I was fully expecting a fake-out in terms of Weiss losing in his arm, but that ain't the case. And Shiki...damn.

Yeah, I didn't see this coming. Intrigued to see where this goes.

[Sharpandpointies]

Oh yeah, I just assumed there were whiney guys ...

Fixed it for you.

Idle thought tangentially related to the "Be a man" conversation: In the olden times, Man was actually a gender neutral term. A girl became a woman, and a boy became a werman, but all were men. This is were the term werewolf comes from. It meant man-wolf.

The reason why we now think of Man as refering to males specifically is because of sexism. More often than not, when people wrote or spoke about the exploits of men, they were speaking about males because women were excluded from those notable pursuits, and so linguistic drift cause man to come to mean Male.

After I learned this, I have often thought that if I ever write a fantasy series, I'd use the term Werman. See if I can get it back in the popular consciousness

That's interesting. Thanks.

"It weighed 40 lbs with the helmet and all the batteries."

...40 lbs took away his legs, not getting blasted in the face and jaw.

So apparently Wilder fired his trainer for throwing in the towel.

I guess he'd rather get his brains turned into scrambled eggs than give up.

That’s what it’s sounding like.

Worse and worse. The guy sounds like a child. His silly outfit doesn't help.

I agree with this. Intent and context is everything.

I don't, myself. Use that line of thinking for any number of things that used to be considered okay and now aren't because society has grown past them, and it doesn't work so well.

But that's me. Mileage, it may vary.

[Lord Falcon]

Fixed it for you.



That's interesting. Thanks.









Worse and worse. The guy sounds like a child. His silly outfit doesn't help.



I don't, myself. Use that line of thinking for any number of things that used to be considered okay and now aren't because society has grown past them, and it doesn't work so well.

But that's me. Mileage, it may vary.

A lot of things were thought of as okay in the past and now would not be, as you say. I don't think that means Abraham Lincoln was a horrible man for having Liberia as his Plan A for black people. Or black people using the n word nowadays when talking among themselves makes them terrible. Because intent and context.

Morality, like gender, is a social construct that shifts considerably over time and context. That's how I'm looking at it.

[Nik Hasta]

A lot of things were thought of as okay in the past and now would not be, as you say. I don't think that means Abraham Lincoln was a horrible man for having Liberia as his Plan A for black people. Or black people using the n word nowadays when talking among themselves makes them terrible. Because intent and context.

Morality, like gender, is a social construct that shifts considerably over time and context. That's how I'm looking at it.

I'm going to be quite charitable here and assume that it was not intentional but the implied claim of equivalence between black people reclaiming of a racialist slur and Lincoln's proposal to mass deport black people from the USA is... frankly somewhat astounding.

Also, I don't like your implication that people from the era of Lincoln get a free pass on the morality of their actions because they somehow didn't know better.

People did know that things like slavery and racism were wrong at the time. I would strongly advise reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, therein you can find tons of examples of people at the time decrying the practices of racism, slavery and white cruelty as far back as first contact by Columbus.

For the record, yes Lincoln for wanting to throw all the black people out of the country was a bad thing. He also did the emancipation declaration which was a good thing. People are capable of doing good and bad things because they are inherently more complex than binary morality.

[Lord Falcon]

I'm going to be quite charitable here and assume that it was not intentional but the implied claim of equivalence between black people reclaiming of a racialist slur and Lincoln's proposal to mass deport black people from the USA is... frankly somewhat astounding.

Also, I don't like your implication that people from the era of Lincoln get a free pass on the morality of their actions because they somehow didn't know better.

People did know that things like slavery and racism were wrong at the time. I would strongly advise reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, therein you can find tons of examples of people at the time decrying the practices of racism, slavery and white cruelty as far back as first contact by Columbus.

For the record, yes Lincoln for wanting to throw all the black people out of the country was a bad thing. He also did the emancipation declaration which was a good thing. People are capable of doing good and bad things because they are inherently more complex than binary morality.

They are equivalent in the sense that they are all based on moral context of the times and social situation they live in. They are not equivalent in the sense that black people reclaiming the n word will likely be looked well upon in history, while Lincoln wanting to send all black people to Liberia was not.

Equality of the races was a hotly contested issue 200 years ago, hot enough that abolitionists needed to form a coalition with free market capitalists who may or may not have had strong views on the race issue but didn't like competing against slave labor. Did people see racism (as we define it today) as wrong? Yes, many did, though nowhere near the overwhelming majority that exists today. We shouldn't give them a free pass for racism any more than we give Crusaders a free pass for butchering Jerusalem. But trying to judge people hundreds of years ago by our modern moral standards is going to warp our idea of how humans operate.

[KingofPie]

Ultraman style game from Platinum?! Sign me the **** up

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

They are equivalent in the sense that they are all based on moral context of the times and social situation they live in. They are not equivalent in the sense that black people reclaiming the n word will likely be looked well upon in history, while Lincoln wanting to send all black people to Liberia was not.

Equality of the races was a hotly contested issue 200 years ago, hot enough that abolitionists needed to form a coalition with free market capitalists who may or may not have had strong views on the race issue but didn't like competing against slave labor. Did people see racism (as we define it today) as wrong? Yes, many did, though nowhere near the overwhelming majority that exists today. We shouldn't give them a free pass for racism any more than we give Crusaders a free pass for butchering Jerusalem. But trying to judge people hundreds of years ago by our modern moral standards is going to warp our idea of how humans operate.

Well this is nonsense.

[Nik Hasta]

They are equivalent in the sense that they are all based on moral context of the times and social situation they live in. They are not equivalent in the sense that black people reclaiming the n word will likely be looked well upon in history, while Lincoln wanting to send all black people to Liberia was not.

I think moral context has less to do with it and more that one is an act of tyranny and the other is cultural act of resistance to tyranny. One is an objectively awful thing to and the other is not.

I feel like this was a poor choice of comparison. Intentional or otherwise.

Equality of the races was a hotly contested issue 200 years ago, hot enough that abolitionists needed to form a coalition with free market capitalists who may or may not have had strong views on the race issue but didn't like competing against slave labor. Did people see racism (as we define it today) as wrong? Yes, many did, though nowhere near the overwhelming majority that exists today. We shouldn't give them a free pass for racism any more than we give Crusaders a free pass for butchering Jerusalem. But trying to judge people hundreds of years ago by our modern moral standards is going to warp our idea of how humans operate.

I can't help but see your final sentence as pointless equivocating.

Judging people by modern moral standards doesn't change how we think they operate. One can identify an action as wrong without losing an understanding of why people do bad things.

In simplified terms;

Racism = Bad, Lincoln did racist things, therefore Lincoln did bad things. Also, lots of other people were racist too, this was also bad.

That doesn't change my understanding of his political motivations in his tenure of controlling the US, that doesn't change my view of why he did the things he did. It does allow me to recognise bad stuff and maybe reconcile aspects of the modern American Identity with their lionising of an obviously flawed man.

Like, I'm British. We have the same thing with Churchill. He is man who is often, by some margin of the vote, recognised as "Greatest Britain of All Time," Churchill was also extremely racist, was responsible for the preventable deaths of around three million Bengali people.

I personally think he's not a great person but he also was the right guy at the right time to beat one of the few regimes that was actively worse than his own. Everyone looks good when they fight Nazis because Nazis are the bottom of the barrel, morally speaking.

I don't understand the idea that pointing out monstrosity in history when it is evident somehow shouldn't be done. It feels like you are trying to absolve Lincoln of at least some of his moral responsibilities and I don't really understand why.

[Lord Falcon]

I think moral context has less to do with it and more that one is an act of tyranny and the other is cultural act of resistance to tyranny. One is an objectively awful thing to and the other is not.

I feel like this was a poor choice of comparison. Intentional or otherwise.



I can't help but see your final sentence as pointless equivocating.

Judging people by modern moral standards doesn't change how we think they operate. One can identify an action as wrong without losing an understanding of why people do bad things.

In simplified terms;

Racism = Bad, Lincoln did racist things, therefore Lincoln did bad things. Also, lots of other people were racist too, this was also bad.

That doesn't change my understanding of his political motivations in his tenure of controlling the US, that doesn't change my view of why he did the things he did. It does allow me to recognise bad stuff and maybe reconcile aspects of the modern American Identity with their lionising of an obviously flawed man.

Like, I'm British. We have the same thing with Churchill. He is man who is often, by some margin of the vote, recognised as "Greatest Britain of All Time," Churchill was also extremely racist, was responsible for the preventable deaths of around three million Bengali people.

I personally think he's not a great person but he also was the right guy at the right time to beat one of the few regimes that was actively worse than his own. Everyone looks good when they fight Nazis because Nazis are the bottom of the barrel, morally speaking.

I don't understand the idea that pointing out monstrosity in history when it is evident somehow shouldn't be done. It feels like you are trying to absolve Lincoln of at least some of his moral responsibilities and I don't really understand why.

Because people 50 or 100 or 1000 years ago aren't operating by our moral standards, and saying someone was terrible based on climates they did not grow up and operate in places them against a standard that did not exist or was experiencing far different levels of prevalence and controversy over decades. Lincoln is not fairly subject to exactly your standard of moral responsibility or mine, because he did not live in our time. However, since the moral standards of the abolitionists did exist, we can still very clearly point to his failures as an individual. The blow is softened, not eliminated.

I never said don't point out racism in the past. Point it out. It's important for people to understand that The Great Emancipator would be quite welcome in the KKK today. It's also important for thise tempted by revisionism to understand that this doesnt make Lincoln not great for his time. Churchill was a weird case because he was generally terrible even in his time, except for one short period during World War 2 where he happened to align with what Britain needed. If we're going to take a man who was great in his time but hasn't aged well by today's moral standards, I think Arthur Wellesley works pretty well.

[Guy1]

I feel like this conversation has run its course. Take it to the politics thread.

[Nik Hasta]

Because people 50 or 100 or 1000 years ago aren't operating by our moral standards, and saying someone was terrible based on climates they did not grow up and operate in places them against a standard that did not exist or was experiencing far different levels of prevalence and controversy over decades.

Lincoln is not fairly subject to exactly your standard of moral responsibility or mine, because he did not live in our time. However, since the moral standards of the abolitionists did exist, we can still very clearly point to his failures as an individual. The blow is softened, not eliminated.

So, your argument is that an act is only wrong, or perhaps worthy of condemnation, for historical figures if the concept of an alternative existed at the time they were alive?

That is a frankly baffling way to look at the morality of actions throughout history.

Like, slavery is inherently wrong. It was wrong when the Egyptians did it to the Hebrews, it was wrong when the Vikings did it, it was wrong when the Romans did it, it was wrong when the British and the US did it, it is wrong.

To claim that "Oh, the concept of not having slaves didn't exist in the time of the Pharaohs therefore we cannot indict them for it in any way," You know who would have had a great idea of how morally terrible slavery was at the time? The slaves. I imagine they would have had a lot to say on the topic.

You seem to be looking for ways to try to lessen the moral impact of these terrible things that were done in history. Again, what do you gain from this frankly bewildering rationality?

[Nik Hasta]

I feel like this conversation has run its course. Take it to the politics thread.

Didn't see this as I was typing Guy, consider it dropped.