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#western civilization
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Rafael Romero Barros (Spanish, 1832-1895) Still life with oranges, 1863
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eternal-echoes · 8 months
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pol-ski · 4 months
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Ogrodzieniec Early Medieval Festival, Poland
© Aleksander Gabrysiak
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spideyyeet · 5 months
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“Western civilization is a sarcastic term.”
— Shahid Bolsen.
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regulusmasamune · 4 months
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Colonizers need the Three Laws of Eywa. The Na'vi don't.
If you are confused: in the comics the Three Laws of Eywa are introduced as follows:
Do not set stone on stone
Do not use the turning wheel
Do not use the metals from the ground.
I really feel like the laws oversimplify civilizations, and they made them to explain why the Na'vi aren't an 'advanced civilization.' For us westerners, innovation and change are a core value of an advanced civilization. Technological advancements are considered the highest achievements. That is our history. Western history is told through 'advancements' like writing systems, the chariot, bronze, and megalithic structures. We see this as a need.
However, there are many cultures who do not see these kind of 'advancements' as a need.
(please note the quotation marks around advancements. The Na'vi are an incredibly complex society, who created incredibly and complicated things. Their advancements are not what westerns usually think of as advancements. Like vehicles or writing systems. But they are just as incredible. There are clans who WEAVE THEIR HOMES between growing tree branches. The engineering and artistry of that is insane. Gushing about that is a different rant though.)
The focus of the Na'vi, is family and clan. Their family includes their world. The Na'vi word for Pandora is Eywa'evang. Eywa's child. The giant trees some clans make their home in are called their elder brothers, and must give approval before the Na'vi make a village in them. The Metkayina village's layout is designed to empathize the connection of the clan.
Also keep in mind, the Na'vi can connect to their world and each other through tsaheylu. They can actually feel their world; when they connect to the Tree of Voices, not only can they see memories and their ancestors, but they can feel every living thing in their surroundings. That connection is incredibly intimate. They are, in many ways one with Eywa, and Pandora, as one family.
Certain technological advancements would hurt Pandora. Because the Na'vi see Pandora as their family, they do not want to take more from her than they need.
But, as with any civilization, Pandora's environment shapes how her people live.
So. Let's start with stacking stone on stone. So we don't know of many locations in Pandora, other than a thick jungle, a temperate forest, an open plain, and the reefs. Stone is generally used in places where there isn't a lot of wood. Great job to the writers for discounting every culture, alive an ancient, who created stone dwellings, and could absolutely be inspiration for a Na'vi clan. That set aside, for the environments we know of, stone is a bad building material. For one thing, you have to get to it. Quarrying stone would harm Pandora, so that isn't an option. Getting through the thick root system on the ground would be insanely challenging and harm Pandora as well. The stone we know there is access to, floats. (Na'vi clan who carved their village in the side of the floating mountains please.) It's also likely the megafauna would destroy dwellings pretty quickly. Plus, things made on the ground are easier targets for predators. For some clans, their life and resources are also in the air, so living in a tree is very handy, and keeps you safe. Wood, animal bones and skin, and natural fibers are much more suited to the needs of the Na'vi we have seen. So that brings me to the other use for stone on stone: roads. Dire horses can run along the root system in the Omatikaya forest. Ikran fly. There really isn't a need for roads, and making one at ground level doesn't really offer any protection or extra ease of travel for the Na'vi. Plus it seems like things grow fairly quickly on Pandora. Also keep in mind, stone needs upkeep. It's way easier to replace leather that has gone bad than it is to replace stone that's crumbling. Again, there may be places on Pandora where stone is a great building material. See Skara Brae and Great Zimbabwe for examples.
Don't use the metals in the ground. Welp. Mining is out of the question. So that's not gonna fly. Plus, forges take up a looot of resources. So that's that. But wait! Mining is not the only way to get metal?! What! Yea so on earth gold can be found in riverbeds because it washes down from the mountains. It's a natural part of erosion. That's why you see people in the gold rush with water sifts. So setting that on a shelf. The only metal we know exists on Pandora is unobtianium (far as I know anyway.). Extracting that from the ground is not easy, and it's also one of the reasons mountains float on Pandora. So then it comes down to how easy it is to work with the metal. All I have is speculation, but I get the feeling it's a bit difficult to work with. Kinda feel like the anti metal law is aimed at weapons. Just because metal exists, doesn't mean it's a good material for arrowheads and knives. Plus, you usually need alloys for stronger metals, and you also need a lot of metal to make a big object. Beads or rings out of pliable material? Very doable.
Alright, lastly, the wheel. The way we think of wheels are on vehicles. The Na'vi do not need vehicles. There are no locations on Pandora where something like a cart would be good for transporting material or goods. However 'wheels' aren't just on vehicles. Potters wheels, spindles for hand spinning fiber, and food grinders all use 'wheels.' So chariots aren't gonna work on Pandora, but a long bowl with a dip in the middle full of grain, with a pestle that is a wheel on a stick that is rolled back and fourth to make flour? Absolutely. Before anyone goes 'but the Na'vi don't have flour!' There is literally a word for food made from flour: tsyosyu.
Confusion. The Three Laws of Eywa are unnecessary for the Na'vi. There doesn't need to be an explanation why they don't use these things. The laws don't take Pandora's natural environment or the spiritual/physical experiences of the Na'vi. They also force things that ancient and indigenous people did and still do, to not exist on Pandora. The Na'vi do not adhere to the western view that advancements and innovation make great civilizations.
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treasurethelibraries · 11 months
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The Theological Hall in Strahov Library, Prague, Czech Republic
The Theological Hall, built between 1671 and 1679, was designed by Abbot Jeroným Hirnhaim and the architect Giovanni Domennico Orsi.
The 1678 compilation wheel, a research item, which is a rotating shelf for scribes. They’ve put texts on it if they wanted to copy or refer to them while working.
There are also several globes, which was the best way for 17th-century monks to study the planet at the time.
There is a statue of Saint John the Evangelist, one of the writers of the Bible and the patron saint of authors, theologians, book sellers, and printers.
The gorgeous frescoes on the ceiling are based on quotes from the Bible that are about acquiring wisdom and using knowledge and education to build upon faith.
Over 18,000 volumes are stored in the Theological Hall, and the northern wall is composed entirely of Bibles or Bible parts in various languages.
Photographer: Peter Rajkai
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haggishlyhagging · 11 months
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. . . [I]ndustry turned "the worker" into "the tool," by getting rid of the human being. Thus monastic discipline, the Christian practice and urge to "free" the spirit by subjugating the body, was institutionalized throughout the Western world. And thus it led directly to the mechanization of the body, the human being turned into an appendage of the machine, a servomechanism, at work, play, love, and war. The spirit was never "freed" in this process, needless to say; it continues to share, with the body, in what Foucault calls "a subjection that has never reached its limit." It has never reached its limit because the exercise of subjugation itself—the chronic submission of the human to the system and mechanism of such discipline—has become a function of profit, i.e., of world power.
The "Protestant spirit" added greatly to this process by rationalizing worldly profit as a function of Christian spirit. The fundamentalist-Protestant tautology that "wealth is a sign of God's favor because God wants you to be rich" is a perfect machine: While it grinds out "the profits of morality" for the many, it gathers in "the morality of profits" for the few; and thus Christian capitalism, where God becomes a kind of shrewd world banker in the sky, exchanging souls for dollars, and dollars for souls . . . at a terrible rate of exchange.
-Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering The Religion of the Earth.
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mynawyspie · 2 years
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victusinveritas · 21 days
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waldires · 7 months
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Посмотри!
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Inspiration by Walter Girotto
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justtenderfury · 1 month
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William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905) L'Amour et Psyché, 1899
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eternal-echoes · 5 months
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New Rule: The War on the West | Real Time with Bill Maher
New Rule: For all the progressives and academics who refer to Israel as an "outpost of Western civilization" like it's a bad thing, please note: Western civilization is what gave the world pretty much every goddamn liberal precept that Liberals are supposed to adore.
Individual liberty, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women's rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech. Please somebody, stop us before we Enlighten again.
And since one can find all these concepts in today's Israel and virtually nowhere else in the Middle East, if anything, the world would be a better place if it had more Israels.
Of course, this message falls on deaf ears to the current crop who reduce everything to being only victims or victimizers, so Israel is lumped in as the toxic fruit of the victimizing West. The irony being that all marginalized people live better today because of western ideals, not in spite of them.
Martin Luther King used Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience" to help shape the Civil Rights Movement. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights owes its core to Rousseau and Voltaire. Kleisthenes never showed up for a sexual harassment seminar, but without him there's no democracy. The cop who murdered George Floyd got 21 years for violating his Fourth Amendment rights, an idea we got directly from John Locke, who no one in college would ever study anymore because he's so old, and so white, and so dead, and so Western.
Yes, that's how simple the Woke are. It's never about ideas. If it was, would they be cheering on Hamas for their liberation? Liberation? To do what? More freely preside over a country where there are no laws against sexual harassment, spousal rape, domestic violence, homophobia, honor killings or child marriage. This is who liberals think you should stand with? Women there should be so lucky as to get colonized by anybody else.
And for the record, the Jews didn't "colonize" Israel or anywhere ever, except maybe Boca Raton. Gaza wasn't seized by Israel like India or Kenya was by the British Empire. And the partitioning of the region wasn't decided by Jews, but by a vote of the United Nations in 1947 with everyone from Russia to Haiti voting for it. But apparently, they don't teach this at Drag Queen Story Hour anymore.
Now it is true that for too long we didn't study enough Asian or African or Latin American history. But part of the reason for that is, frankly, there's not as much to study. Colleges replaced courses in Western Civ -- boo! Eyeroll! Dead white men, am I right? -- they replace that with World Civilization classes, which is fine in theory, but what it meant in practice is you read queer poetry of the African diaspora instead of Shakespeare. And I'm sure there's value in both, but as usual, America only ever overcorrects.
And so, we're at this place now where the words "western civ" became kind of a shorthand for "white people ruined everything." But they didn't ruin everything. No, they didn't live up to their own ideals for far too long and committed atrocities. But people back then were all atrocious, not just the white ones depending on who had the power.
But it was the western Enlightenment that gave rise to the notion that the law of the jungle should be curbed. Henry David Thoreau. John Stewart Mill. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Three-named dudes. It was all about three-named dudes. Three-named dudes like that were the OG social justice warriors. The ideas that came through Athens, Rome, London, Paris, and yes Philadelphia, are what make life good for most people in free societies today. That the individuals have value, and even the powers that be must submit to the rule of law. That punishment should not be cruel and unusual. That accused people get a trial. That there is such a thing as a war crime.
Why is it that every other culture gets a pass, but the West is exclusively the sum of the worst things it's ever done? You think only white people colonized? Historians estimate that the very non-western Mr Genghis Khan killed 40 million people, and that was in the 13th century. He single-handedly may have reduced the world's population by 11%. On the other hand, he kind of made up for it, because he was such a prolific colonizer of vaginas that today an estimated 16 million people are his direct descendants.
So, stop saying "western civilization" like it's a contradiction in terms. It's not. You're thinking of "moderate Republican."
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The people who snarl "western civilization" went to elite universities with air conditioning where they used their MacBook Pros and iPhones on extensive Wi-Fi networks.
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tmblrfuckingsucksass · 4 months
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The Coronation of Napoleon - Jacques-Louis David (1805-1807)
🇫🇷
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pol-ski · 10 months
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Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ - Corpus Christi
© Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Łódź, Poland
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