astralcodexten.substack.com
It's a book review submitted to Scott Alexander's blog for his book review contest(not by me, I just enjoyed reading it). It a summary of an Icelandic Saga that's half-fable, half-historical record of a series of legal proceedings in medieval Iceland, and how society that teeters between civilization and barbarism.
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Notes -
I know that's their point, and that's a very common point being made, but it loses all significance. The humanity exists inbetween killing and making amends. Swinging from one to the other. I think 'everyone', on some level, understands that just the same as people obviously understand you can't avenge every killing with more killing. Which equally goes for the people in the story.
As an example from real life, it seems very self serving and onesided to pin civilization on the meek at the same time we have hundreds of thousands of people dying from corporations selling extremely addictive drugs, where they use part of the profit to pay themselves away from any serious consequence. When 'everyone' knows many of the instigators of that system should just be tortured to death for all the harm they've caused, and that no amount of money can right their wrongs.
To that end there are tons of stories with deep historical/political/legal analysis, and they all fail to extrapolate any meaningful reality based observations since they exist as vessels to carry a theory and not as an extension of reality. I think that minimizing the humanity and reality of the story so it can exist as a self congratulatory vessel for the endlessly meek is doing it a great disservice that also distorts it quite heavily.
I don't think the instigators should be tortured to death. I think your quotes on the everyone are very wide.
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