Vnonymous wrote:Until you have enough resources that you do not HAVE to work to live, you are effectively a slave. That's not something that can be said about the majority of a given population in just about any society these days.
This is bullshit. In order for a member of society to accept the fruits of others labours they have to be contributing to the society themselves. Society only works if the fisherman, the clothier and the builder all do their thing and then share the results. The only way that someone can decide to lay around all day and then ask for free food and clothes is if others are taking up the slack and producing more than their share without getting anything in return. I wonder what we call workers who aren't paid for their labours?
Ironically I think the example you gave of a 'free man' is impossible unless the society practices slavery.
Vnonymous wrote:Obviously wanting to live in a society like America or Rome or Greece is idiotic. Really, almost every single society in the entire world used slavery in the past. and it most certainly does not mean that every single nation in history was comprised of objectively evil people. We've still got slaves in western countries as well, but their conditions are a bit better and the chains that they get locked up in tend to have different names and appearances. Until you have enough resources that you do not HAVE to work to live, you are effectively a slave. That's not something that can be said about the majority of a given population in just about any society these days.
Being a slave in Rome wasn't a too bad a deal. Slaves were mainly owned by the wealthier folks, and there were some rules on how to treat them, you had to feed them/keep them healthy. And they had the option to marry into the family and a couple other ways to become free citizens.
And there were slaves doing all kinds of jobs--including household slaves who were tutors to the children. It wasn't all back-breaking labor like we imagine when we hear the word 'slave'.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
Red_Rob wrote:
This is bullshit. In order for a member of society to accept the fruits of others labours they have to be contributing to the society themselves. Society only works if the fisherman, the clothier and the builder all do their thing and then share the results. The only way that someone can decide to lay around all day and then ask for free food and clothes is if others are taking up the slack and producing more than their share without getting anything in return. I wonder what we call workers who aren't paid for their labours?
It is totally possible to be a contributing member of society without working. If I start a company that provides a valuable service, strike it lucky and make tons of money by selling it, I have contributed plenty to society and yet still don't have to work for a living anymore.
EDIT: removed an extraneous "been"
Last edited by Vnonymous on Mon May 02, 2011 9:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
Starting a money-making business takes a lot of work, so you in fact contributed a great deal of labor for the benefit of society before retiring.
Some people in the (generally) free market system work hard and smart enough so that they can retire really early. But they still have to work for it. In fact, it can be argued that they front-loaded their work load early in their lives so they can enjoy the rest of it in retirement.
The only people who don't have to work in a free market system are those who inherited wealth - meaning the bums who are smooching off mom and dad's hard work.
Red_Rob's point stands. If somebody is not working, somebody else is doing it for them.
Last edited by Zinegata on Mon May 02, 2011 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
Zinegata wrote:The Aztecs for instance had a society which was based on the subjugation of various weaker states (or more correctly, tribes) culminating in mass spectacles and ritual sacrifice. Which kept the Aztecs in power, but sucked massively for those who have their still-beating hearts cut out.
That depends. The empire was based a lot on the flowery war concept of political stability. Instead of fighting to the death, capturing prisoners was a part of the process to get sacrifice victims. Some of them really bought into the whole process. (And I mean in a fanatic way.)
The sixteenth century chronicle a History of Tlaxcala, by Tlaxcallan Diego Muñoz Camargo contains a legend of a powerful Tlaxcalteca warrior called Tlahuiçole, who was captured, but because of his fame as a warrior he was freed and then fought with the Aztecs against the Tarascans in Michoacan. He received honors, but instead of returning to Tlaxcala he chose to die in sacrifice. There were eight days of celebrations in his honor, and then he killed the first eight warriors. Still insisting on being sacrificed, he fought and wounded 20 more warriors before being defeated and sacrificed.
BUt as not all sacrifices were a result of the flowery war and not all were as bizzare as Tlahuiçole one can assume that it sucked for many of them.
The Aztecs actually treated their prisoners very well before the rip-out-the-heart ritual, but ultimately said prisoners would end up having their hearts torn out of their bodies as part of a bunch of ritual sacrifices meant to kept the subjugated tribes in line.
So it's not exactly great to be an Aztec sacrificial slave unless you're really into swift and horrible death after a short period of relative luxury .
Zinegata wrote:
Strictly speaking Judaism also subscribes to "give all other Gods the finger" thing too. In fact, much of the "You shall have one God" portions of Christianity stem from the Old Testament - which is basically the Jewish part of the Bible.
Pretty much any monotheistic religion has this quality.
Islam and Christianity go one step further and say that other gods do not exist. I don't know if this is doctrine or cultural drift, but it happens all the same. Anyway, even though Judaism takes the first commandment incredibly fucking seriously, they don't flat-out deny that other gods exist. It'd be theoretically possible to jump ship to a new god if Ganesh or Odin were offering salvation because you are at least open to the idea of non-Yahweh deities existing--even though the religion beats into your head that Yahweh is easily the strongest war god and will be very very mad for you even considering.
It's still not a good position for using Pascal's wager (the amount of contempt engendered between 'only my God exists' and 'our Gods exist but mine is stronger' is pretty small), but your position is still strictly better than the other Abrahamic religions if only because of extra information.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:Islam and Christianity go one step further and say that other gods do not exist. I don't know if this is doctrine or cultural drift, but it happens all the same. Anyway, even though Judaism takes the first commandment incredibly fucking seriously, they don't flat-out deny that other gods exist.
Yeah, I remember one god being mentioned in the Old Testament (Moloch?), and there being a rule not to sacrifice your children to him, or something weird. Other than that, I don't remember any specific mention of other gods by name, and they don't really say whether or not they believe Moloch exists.
In the Old Testament, YHWH is repeatedly described as the strongest of the gods. That's his title. It would actually diminish him if there weren't any other gods around. It would make his triumphs over Osiris, Baal, and Moloch much less miraculous if those gods did not in fact exist. Also, YHWH has three homies, including a wife named Astoreth.
Of course, YHWH of the Old Testament is really not that impressive.
Judges 1:19 wrote:Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.
FrankTrollman wrote:In the Old Testament, YHWH is repeatedly described as the strongest of the gods. That's his title. It would actually diminish him if there weren't any other gods around. It would make his triumphs over Osiris, Baal, and Moloch much less miraculous if those gods did not in fact exist. Also, YHWH has three homies, including a wife named Astoreth.
It should be said that while the OT acknowledges the existance of other gods, the theology itself is quite monotheistic. The mentions of Astoreth et. al. are in condemnation of their worship. So some worshipped these deities, but it's not the theology espoused by the text.
There was an evolutionary model of theology movement, which was strong in the 18th and 19th century which had Judaism as a polythestic religion which became monotheistic (with a couple of other steps in between). It's an interesting theory, but criticism has moved on and I believe it's a minority view at the moment.
Come to think of it... I always knew of Baal in the Bible (before Diablo 2 came out and everyone knew Baal as "the boss of the D2 expansion!"), and was aware that it was in that grey area of "There are other gods, BUT THEY'RE STUPID AND BANNED".
How about Islam? Do they have multiple gods? Given the two stem from the same original religion, I'm just curious.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
Koumei wrote:How about Islam? Do they have multiple gods? Given the two stem from the same original religion, I'm just curious.
That's a bit trickier. I believe there are lines in the Koran that allow for the worship of pagan goddesses, in the west those lines have been dubbed 'the satanic verses'. The rest of the Koran is pretty clear there is no god but god and Mohamed is his prophet, so there's a bit of a contradiction.
Oh thank God, finally a thread about how Fighters in D&D suck. This was a long time coming. - Schwarzkopf
"Allah" just means "the god." Before Islam hit, he was one of many deities that the Arabs worshiped, in a position akin to Zeus, if I remember correctly.
Islam made a huge deal about God not being divisible (hence their disagreement with Christians on Christ's divinity), or other gods existing. There is only Allah.
Allah was a god of doorways and possibilities if I recall correctly. YHWH was a god of thunder and war. In Islam, Allah is 100% the only god, who had no children and has no aspects. It's the most monotheistic religion anyone ever came up with.
FrankTrollman wrote:In the Old Testament, YHWH is repeatedly described as the strongest of the gods. That's his title. It would actually diminish him if there weren't any other gods around. It would make his triumphs over Osiris, Baal, and Moloch much less miraculous if those gods did not in fact exist. Also, YHWH has three homies, including a wife named Astoreth.
Of course, YHWH of the Old Testament is really not that impressive.
Judges 1:19 wrote:Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.
-Username17
Yeah, that was a cute incident that got featured in Salvation War.
Zoroastrians are dualists. They believe in two gods. Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. That's kind of the whole point.
Jains believe in a potentially (ad I believe literally) infinite number of divine Jina.
Zoroastrians believe in a lot less gods than most other religions, but they definitely believe in more than one. Jains do not for practical purposes believe in any less gods than Hindus do. Heck, they basically acknowledge that Hindu gods are real, it's just that their infinite set of divine beings are more worthy of worship than the Hindu infinite set. Minayugala represents a fight with Kamadeva.
The cool thing about Pascal's Wager is that it was actually debunked centuries before its existence by Marcus Aurelius:
‘Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.’
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