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  • SerLava [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    If you have the "great replacement" thing scratching at the back of your mind, you probably have the "but why did white people become so powerful?" thing too.

    What finally got rid of it for me was this realization. Societies were only able to consistently maintain specialized, non-food-producing workers under certain circumstances.

    They need to move east-west and not north-south, so when their area has a drought, they can plant the same crops they've been growing.

    They also need good tamable animals.

    They also need access to certain minerals and metals etc.

    Thats why the middle east had the first high tech civilizations.

    After those basic issues are solved, there's a new major source of instability: raids by horseback nomads. They are basically impossible to beat on wide open landscapes. When horses were reintroduced to the Americas, it fucked over a lot of advanced sedentary societies that hadn't been dealing with nomadic raiders. Just like in Asia.

    Europe found it relatively easy to defend against them, because of the mountainous terrain- I mean there's a few reasons the skinny peninsula with the mountain passes became the dominant power in the region for a millennia, and that terrain is a big one.

    That's why they developed, not because of some inherent racial difference.

    This can be called determinism, and yes there are many other deciding factors including individual choices, but when you're talking about thousands of years and the bare limits on practical work that can be done, these things do matter on a long time scale. When you're talking about whole cultures dying off, getting overrun, and people migrating back and forth, you wind up with certain areas making all those complicated things practical.

    And really, you can't call low-tech societies less "advanced" anyway, something I've avoided saying. They're adapted well to their particular conditions, and would only try to ignore those constraints of they were stupid, and they just aren't. Dumbass white people constantly go try to "help" hunter-gatherer African tribes by being like "just plant some tomatoes lol" before a bunch of hippos tear through the plots and devour everything, and the hunter-gatherers are like yeah coulda fuckin told you that.

    It's just that certain conditions create the opportunity to dominate neighbors and take even more resources and gain an even bigger upper hand militarily, and white people absolutely did that.

    You can't ignore the actions of individuals throughout history and become fully determinist - it's stupid and anti Marxist. But you also have to recognize that someone living on a 2 square mile island isn't going to roll up on you with a fleet of warships.

    It just so happens that there's only one easily defensible area next to the middle east, and it doesn't get much sunlight, so it's a coincidence that the people who colonized everything and took advantage of everyone were also pale.

      • Glass [he/him,they/them]
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        edit-2
        3 years ago

        I spent some time in the pipeline and used to have those same worries, but the more time I spent with other groups of people, the more I came to realize that I was unconsciously viewing it through the zero/sum worldview that all fascist spaces cultivate. "As soon as we stop doing it to them, they'll start doing it to us." It's a way of looking at things that precludes any way of interacting with each other besides domination, an extension of the psychotic, solipsistic fascist war of all against all that can only be maintained by reinforcing illusory differences.

        Most people outside fash spaces aren't like that, and just want to live their lives in peace. There are always a few exceptions in any large enough group of people, but when I was in those spaces, those were the only examples shown, over and over and over again. Fascist "communities", for all their bloviating about :freeze-peach:, go to great lengths to ensure their users never actually encounter socialist ideas. When I was there they just spent all their time making fun of Assigned Male and reposting the same three hysterical college students. The reason for that isn't just laziness, its a lack of content. You're told again and again that "this is what they're all like", but if that's true, why isn't there a glut of fresh content every day? Because the vast majority of leftists understand that we didn't choose to be born into a racial categorization that has historically oppressed others, and while you'll see some venting and good-natured ribbing, no comrade is gonna honestly give you shit for the color of your skin. They might point out issues that we don't have experience with as a result, but no leftist treats whiteness as an "original sin" the way right wingers crow about. It's simply not a materialist thing to do. If anything it's liberal shit, and we hate those smug pricks even more than right wingers do. Its just that they can't tell the difference between liberals and the left.

        This has been my long-winded way of saying you'll be fine. Fascist propaganda works by evoking strong emotions of fear and outrage, and those little mental barbs stay for a while after you leave. As long as you don't actively reinforce them, those thoughts do fade. Remember first that you and other people are the same being, "separated" only by social context and lived experience. The same liquid poured into different glasses. Love yourself, for you are everyone. Love everyone, for they are you. Welcome to a better place, you're a comrade now.

        • SerLava [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yeah liberals really do fucking represent the left and it's simply the god damn worst

      • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Don;t read diamond, he's an ornithologist working his way through anthropology.