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Notes -
Why do you exhort against acts and tales of greatness, the fuel of millennia of glories passed? Why do you suggest (fetishize) victimhood? Domesticating the dog is great, other animals too. Milk... Eh.
The greatest things Man's done:
These are transcendent acts, overcoming our animal nature, becoming something greater. You can disagree, find others etc. but arguing the Romans conquered the Greeks ignores that the Greeks colonized the Romans' minds. We remember them for their works, not their pointless civil wars and petty treasures. As Caesar said, describing Cicero:
You can’t make a captivating story out of just that. A truly captivating story needs a protagonist who suffers, especially unjustly. All of the most powerful social-organizing stories have this component. You read it in Exodus, the Gospel, in French revolutionary literature, in both communism and nazism (not that these are good but they were powerful movements), in China’s century of humiliation.
Victimhood is a key element to any group’s story because it increases intragroup ties, it inoculates against catastrophe (you won’t always be great), and it prevents emotions from being taken advantage of by outside forces. You have to still have an element of greatness and destiny, but a victimhood and overcoming component is essential.
I think a 40% infant mortality rate would fill that criterion....
But that applies to everyone. A group story needs to make the group’s struggles out as special. I think every non-white group in America has a story that is utilized by the competitive PMC class, even great oppressors in history (the Arabs) can complain about the history of colonialism and even complain about post-9/11 discrimination. High-caste Indians in the UK may complain about colonialism. Etc.
These are highly motivating: “I have been unjustly oppressed and attacked by you — I am a moral sympathetic character whom God likes more than you — and yet here I am succeeding wildly in spite of this, with my guiltless and pure repute. [Implied: you must really suck, white folks, because not only did you take my wealth and abuse me, but I perform better than you in spite of your corrupt advantage]”.
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