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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35663 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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I do unironically agree with this. I believe humans have a natural tendency to organize around political forms similar to feudalism, whose combination with industrial society is more or less what most people call fascism.

I'm not convinced. Humans may organize and develop hierarchies automatically, but I don't think it's people on the bottom who espouse the idea of "knowing one's place", and that idea is an important part of fascist thought. At the very least, they would not believe it is moral or right that they remain where they are, even if they have to accept it.

I don't think it's people on the bottom who espouse the idea of "knowing one's place"

I don't think there's any particular juncture to fascism here, but the Vendee was a poor region in France and fought back hard against the Revolutionaries (though there appears to be a large historiographical debate over the degree to which the Vendeans were ideological as opposed to just pissed about conscription and/or taxes).

A second, different piece of evidence might be taken from the awful reception the Russian narodniki received during the "Going to the People" attempted uplift of peasant and communal livelihood during the late 19th century - the poor peasants reacted very badly to ideas of overturning society, even to their alleged benefit; they also reacted badly to modern agronomy, medicine, religious skepticism, and literacy. Quite invested in "their place in the world," at least to hear the narodniks write about it.

It takes a shocking number of dead peasants before an intellectual will admit his ideas were wrong.

Changing medical and agricultural practices puts the peasants lives on the line. They weren't going to make any big changes without a lot of proof.

Almost everyone in almost every human society in the past remained exactly where they are in the economical/political order their entire life. Almost every traditional religion that I can think of is based on the idea that human hierarchies are ordained in some way and should be maintained. When peasants rebelled, it was typically not against their place in the traditional order but against an overlord who is not keeping with their responsibilities in the traditional order.

That was, until the Western discoveries of the rest of the world and industrial revolution suddenly made it possible to have societies where everyone is constantly striving up and a lot of them are indeed succeeding. This created new radical possibilities in societal thinking (commonly expressed with the umbrella term enlightenment) and today we are so used to it that we cannot even imagine people were serious in their traditional beliefs of hierarchy. Surely the peasants always hated their lord and envied him? Maybe some of them did, but this is the typical mind fallacy in my opinion.

That was, until the Western discoveries of the rest of the world and industrial revolution suddenly made it possible to have societies where everyone is constantly striving up and a lot of them are indeed succeeding.

Would you mind expanding on this? How did exploration/colonisation factor in?

Almost everyone in almost every human society in the past remained exactly where they are in the economical/political order their entire life.

Sure. But them accepting their lot in life isn't the same as proof that they found it moral that they are in that lot of life.

Almost every traditional religion that I can think of is based on the idea that human hierarchies are ordained in some way and should be maintained.

Which hierarchies? It's one thing to speak about the family hierarchy in which children obey parents and wives obey husbands. Quite another to speak about a class hierarchy in which your role is to be a low-class peasant and that's just and fair.

Just from a quick glance at Wikipedia's list of peasant rebellions, it doesn't seem like the typical rebellion was about punishing rulers for not obeying traditional responsibilities.

I can accept your argument that people believe those hierarchies are to be maintained, but I feel like that's a defense by higher-status people to protect their standing from the lower-status people, meaning we're probably not talking about peasants.

I remain open to proof of your argument.

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