It seems like to a certain extent, excess and debauchery always existed in the ancient world though. I'm not well versed on Ancient Greece or Rome, but I know that the cult of Dionysus existed long before Augustus and Spartacus. I think Alexander the Great got shitfaced a lot with his generals at those festivals. That book that Dan mentioned, The Invisible Enemy, discussed Dionysus some. There is another book about Alexander by Richard a Gabriel that discussed this too. It could just be that the Greeks and Romans hid behind the cloak of divinity to justify their large alcoholic and sexual appetites.Speaker to Animals wrote:No, you deliberately reply to those posts by deleting the quotes from Livy and Plutarch that show you were totally wrong. I have posted them repeatedly and you just ignore them, falling back on more word salads instead of admitting you are wrong.
It's not like you posted anything to back up your claim. Are we supposed to just assume Bjorn is the authority on all things that happened in Rome, and one should just search through his word salads to figure out what "actually" happened, even when actual Romans of record dispute you?
LOL, no.
Why can't you just admit you are wrong?
You could easily contest my thesis that the Bacchanalia was the closest analog to our social justice warriors without being such a cunt and disputing recorded history (without a shred of sources presented to support you).
I don't give a shit if you dispute that thesis. What pisses me off is how you come in talking out of your ass about history and you never even bothered to read the people who were there and recorded what happened, and you get the history so fucking wrong.
Spartacus was married to a priestess of Dionysus, genius. You were wrong.
Destroying History
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Re: Destroying History
Shikata ga nai
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Re: Destroying History
heydaralon wrote:It seems like to a certain extent, excess and debauchery always existed in the ancient world though. I'm not well versed on Ancient Greece or Rome, but I know that the cult of Dionysus existed long before Augustus and Spartacus. I think Alexander the Great got shitfaced a lot with his generals at those festivals. That book that Dan mentioned, The Invisible Enemy, discussed Dionysus some. There is another book about Alexander by Richard a Gabriel that discussed this too. It could just be that the Greeks and Romans hid behind the cloak of divinity to justify their large alcoholic and sexual appetites.Speaker to Animals wrote:No, you deliberately reply to those posts by deleting the quotes from Livy and Plutarch that show you were totally wrong. I have posted them repeatedly and you just ignore them, falling back on more word salads instead of admitting you are wrong.
It's not like you posted anything to back up your claim. Are we supposed to just assume Bjorn is the authority on all things that happened in Rome, and one should just search through his word salads to figure out what "actually" happened, even when actual Romans of record dispute you?
LOL, no.
Why can't you just admit you are wrong?
You could easily contest my thesis that the Bacchanalia was the closest analog to our social justice warriors without being such a cunt and disputing recorded history (without a shred of sources presented to support you).
I don't give a shit if you dispute that thesis. What pisses me off is how you come in talking out of your ass about history and you never even bothered to read the people who were there and recorded what happened, and you get the history so fucking wrong.
Spartacus was married to a priestess of Dionysus, genius. You were wrong.
It was more than debauchery, and much of the debauchery we think of today comes from a later time when all this stuff became normalized (before it all fell apart).
My thesis here is not that debauchery is somehow unique to these two times, but that both of these movements are nothing more than a social manifestation of the tendencies of civilizations to degenerate and collapse. These people are not just railing against sexual mores, but against the very moral and social foundation of their civilizations. They want to destroy it. Furthermore, even if it were limited to the sexual degeneracy alone, sexuality plays a pivotal role in the development of complex cultures and civilizations. If you want free love, go live in the Amazon rain forest with the Invisible People.
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Re: Destroying History
I nowhere denied that the Plutarch source said that Spartacus was married to a prophetess of Dionysus. I pointed out that just because a Roman source says a foreign peoples worshipped a Greek or Roman god, doesn't mean they worshipped Greek or Roman gods. Here's another translation of Plutarch, btw:Speaker to Animals wrote:Weaseling again.
I posted Livy's account of them to show how similar they were to our SJWs with respect to moral degeneracy and the belief that the highest "virtue" is that no sexually degenerate practice is unacceptable. I also showed how this was a movement primarily driven by women, involved the erosion of class and gender roles and distinctions, and (by quoting Polybius) that it was a major factor fomenting two of the servile wars.
You, on the other hand, were completely wrong in your assertion that Spartacus was not married to a priestess of Dionysus. Had you actually bothered to read the post you responded to, you would have seen that, but lacked the integrity to read it, didn't read it, and now you are caught with more and more lies and obfuscations to avoid admitting you are wrong.
http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/ ... ttexts.asp
Meaning the frenzy they achieved in their rituals, were like those achieved by the women who worked themselves into a frenzy in the bacchanal rituals. It would be like us saying that a Chinese guy's going "berserk". Doesn't mean that you're saying a Chinese guy's actually donning a bear skin, makes offerings to Odin, and then goes into a murderous frenzy. And when you someone's "zealous", you don't mean that they're ancient Jewish fanatics fighting against Romans at Masada, either. But a reader, two thousand years from now... he might be confused.And seizing upon a defensible place, they chose three captains, of whom Spartacus was chief, a Thracian of one of the nomad tribes, and a man not only of high spirit and valiant, but in understanding, also, and in gentleness superior to his condition, and more of a Grecian than the people of his country usually are. When he first came to be sold at Rome, they say a snake coiled itself upon his face as he lay asleep, and his wife, who at this latter time also accompanied him in his flight, his country- woman, a kind of prophetess, and one of those possessed with the bacchanal frenzy, declared that it was a sign portending great and formidable power to him with no happy event.
If you had a bothered to read the link I posted earlier, on ancient Thracian religion, you'd actually seen that they had rituals that involved sex. Their gods are not called Dionyus or even Bacchus, though. They obviously had gods that Romans did mistake for Dionysus. But a Roman not making a distinction between foreign gods and his own gods, does not mean that every foreign peoples Romans wrote about, worshipped Roman gods. You should simply accept that as logical, StA.
If Spartacus had been a native Roman, born and raised, with an army of Romans, intent on making women of men and indulging in Bacchus ritualistic orgies... uhmm, then he'd not be leading armies, would he? He'd have drowned in slave cock instead of getting nailed up.
In fact, those Bacchus cults... sure, they got fucked by their slaves at the rituals, and the men got fucked by other men (not abnormal for Romans, of course) and the distinction between nobility and commoners and slaves was put aside at the rituals. But did Bacchus worshippers not hold slaves? Were the Bacchanal abolitionists? No evidence of that, yet given how you describe them, you'd expect them to be, no?
Modern day SJW's are unique in their loathing for their own culture and civilization, they are more like extreme religious puritans rather than radical hedonists.
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.
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Re: Destroying History
Word salad. Didn't read except the first sentence where you lied. I just quoted you denying that she was a priestess of Dionysus! Liar!
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Re: Destroying History
Its an interesting idea.Speaker to Animals wrote:heydaralon wrote:It seems like to a certain extent, excess and debauchery always existed in the ancient world though. I'm not well versed on Ancient Greece or Rome, but I know that the cult of Dionysus existed long before Augustus and Spartacus. I think Alexander the Great got shitfaced a lot with his generals at those festivals. That book that Dan mentioned, The Invisible Enemy, discussed Dionysus some. There is another book about Alexander by Richard a Gabriel that discussed this too. It could just be that the Greeks and Romans hid behind the cloak of divinity to justify their large alcoholic and sexual appetites.Speaker to Animals wrote:No, you deliberately reply to those posts by deleting the quotes from Livy and Plutarch that show you were totally wrong. I have posted them repeatedly and you just ignore them, falling back on more word salads instead of admitting you are wrong.
It's not like you posted anything to back up your claim. Are we supposed to just assume Bjorn is the authority on all things that happened in Rome, and one should just search through his word salads to figure out what "actually" happened, even when actual Romans of record dispute you?
LOL, no.
Why can't you just admit you are wrong?
You could easily contest my thesis that the Bacchanalia was the closest analog to our social justice warriors without being such a cunt and disputing recorded history (without a shred of sources presented to support you).
I don't give a shit if you dispute that thesis. What pisses me off is how you come in talking out of your ass about history and you never even bothered to read the people who were there and recorded what happened, and you get the history so fucking wrong.
Spartacus was married to a priestess of Dionysus, genius. You were wrong.
It was more than debauchery, and much of the debauchery we think of today comes from a later time when all this stuff became normalized (before it all fell apart).
My thesis here is not that debauchery is somehow unique to these two times, but that both of these movements are nothing more than a social manifestation of the tendencies of civilizations to degenerate and collapse. These people are not just railing against sexual mores, but against the very moral and social foundation of their civilizations. They want to destroy it. Furthermore, even if it were limited to the sexual degeneracy alone, sexuality plays a pivotal role in the development of complex cultures and civilizations. If you want free love, go live in the Amazon rain forest with the Invisible People.
As much as I would like to think otherwise, I'm not sure that culture can be preserved in the end. Many classicists look to the past and bemoan the state of today. From my limited understanding, there has always been a shift underway in culture. For instance in Athens during the Peloponessian War, Alcibiades and his ilk used to wear their hair long with a trailing cloak. This indicated a tendency for receptive anal sex, and it disgusted many of the more conservative members of Athenian society. These same young people enjoyed Spartan music which also upset much of the Polis. It seems like close scrutiny of any ancient society will show that these culture conflicts are perennial. That does not mean I am arguing that the new ways were better than the old, just that every society is always in flux. If you do think fundamentally preserving a way of life is possible, how would you go about doing it?
When you talk about degeneracy taking hold of different societies throughout history, what mechanism allows these ideas to take hold? Do you view it as a genetic thing (ie: certain people are predisposed to a degenerate lifestyle), a cultural thing, or do you view it more of an endless cycle? In your opinion, what causes these worldviews to start in the first place?
Shikata ga nai
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Re: Destroying History
Ummm... how to say this,
I think what you can say is that there was a slave revolt and one of the leaders likely was a man called Spartacus. That's the part we can be somewhat certain about.
Never underestimate the biased reporting and "Fake News" part in history writings from Antiquity.
I think what you can say is that there was a slave revolt and one of the leaders likely was a man called Spartacus. That's the part we can be somewhat certain about.
Never underestimate the biased reporting and "Fake News" part in history writings from Antiquity.
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Re: Destroying History
The idea of cultural decandence being the reason for cultures to erode and collapse is a very old one.
I'd prefer that the reason if far more about economics. If you cannot create more prosperity to more people, the culture isn't "advancing". More complex economic system is basically what we call "Globalization". And if the economy is decreasing, then the complexity of the society and economy decreases too. In the end, nearly everybody is a farmer and there isn't much trade going around. Like in the Dark Ages.
Yet the economic reasons aren't a good story. Far better story to tell is to make it a tale of morality, a battle between virtue and immorality.
I'd prefer that the reason if far more about economics. If you cannot create more prosperity to more people, the culture isn't "advancing". More complex economic system is basically what we call "Globalization". And if the economy is decreasing, then the complexity of the society and economy decreases too. In the end, nearly everybody is a farmer and there isn't much trade going around. Like in the Dark Ages.
Yet the economic reasons aren't a good story. Far better story to tell is to make it a tale of morality, a battle between virtue and immorality.
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Re: Destroying History
It wasn't just a slave revolt. He had lots of Romans join him too. These were people that wanted to overturn the civilization's order of things.
We may mistakenly project our own values on to them and want to take their side, but the fact remains, what happened was a kind of moral degeneration that led to a breakdown in civilization that had to be stopped through state violence.
The reason the idea of moral degeneration as a cause of civilization collapse is so popular is that it's true. Every civilization is founded upon certain moral principles and social divisions of roles and responsibilities. While it's true people can want to transform those guiding principles to "progress" the society, it's also true that every now and again you see something totally different masquerading as a legitimate reform movement, when in reality it's nothing more than people revolting against morality itself.
Even now, with the moral degeneration we have experienced since the 1960s, we are paying a hefty price. Our fertility rates are tanked. Our social welfare systems are facing insolvency in a few generations if this continues. The basic unit of every complex society -- the human family -- is in total ruins and children are being raised in some of the worst possible situations possible, and we even applaud it.
In any case, you better think long and hard about the consequences of not just modifying the founding moral principles of your civilization but adopting the Bacchanalia-like idea that the only virtue is that there exist no virtues, and the primary social sin is to express disapproval for the worst of the degeneracy. I do not for a moment believe that represents a legitimate alternative to the moral order upon which our civilization was built. I think, like the Bacchus cultists, these people represent a tendency for some people to revolt against civilization itself.
We may mistakenly project our own values on to them and want to take their side, but the fact remains, what happened was a kind of moral degeneration that led to a breakdown in civilization that had to be stopped through state violence.
The reason the idea of moral degeneration as a cause of civilization collapse is so popular is that it's true. Every civilization is founded upon certain moral principles and social divisions of roles and responsibilities. While it's true people can want to transform those guiding principles to "progress" the society, it's also true that every now and again you see something totally different masquerading as a legitimate reform movement, when in reality it's nothing more than people revolting against morality itself.
Even now, with the moral degeneration we have experienced since the 1960s, we are paying a hefty price. Our fertility rates are tanked. Our social welfare systems are facing insolvency in a few generations if this continues. The basic unit of every complex society -- the human family -- is in total ruins and children are being raised in some of the worst possible situations possible, and we even applaud it.
In any case, you better think long and hard about the consequences of not just modifying the founding moral principles of your civilization but adopting the Bacchanalia-like idea that the only virtue is that there exist no virtues, and the primary social sin is to express disapproval for the worst of the degeneracy. I do not for a moment believe that represents a legitimate alternative to the moral order upon which our civilization was built. I think, like the Bacchus cultists, these people represent a tendency for some people to revolt against civilization itself.
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Re: Destroying History
That's simply pathetic bullshittery from you. You're concocting a bullshit rule out of your ass, and pretending that by me not following your new, made-up rule, I am "lying" or evading shit.Speaker to Animals wrote:No, you deliberately reply to those posts by deleting the quotes from Livy and Plutarch that show you were totally wrong. I have posted them repeatedly and you just ignore them, falling back on more word salads instead of admitting you are wrong.
You are pissed off about something that never happened, then.It's not like you posted anything to back up your claim. Are we supposed to just assume Bjorn is the authority on all things that happened in Rome, and one should just search through his word salads to figure out what "actually" happened, even when actual Romans of record dispute you?
LOL, no.
Why can't you just admit you are wrong?
You could easily contest my thesis that the Bacchanalia was the closest analog to our social justice warriors without being such a cunt and disputing recorded history (without a shred of sources presented to support you).
I don't give a shit if you dispute that thesis. What pisses me off is how you come in talking out of your ass about history and you never even bothered to read the people who were there and recorded what happened, and you get the history so fucking wrong.
Spartacus was married to a priestess of Dionysus, genius. You were wrong.
If you knew how to read a historical source, you would long ago have recognized that what I have been disputing was never the source. It was your USE of the source, how YOU read it. A historical source, especially ancient sources, cannot, can NEVER be read without understanding the context they were written in. You clearly had no concept of the context, which is why I kept trying to explain it to you.
I cannot "admit" I am wrong, because I am not. It's even clear that you cannot agree with yourself what I'm supposed to be "wrong" about. A historical source, especially first hand accounts are like a witness testimony. Some are reliable, some are not un-reliable, but you need to take account of the witness' understanding of what he is witnessing if you want to get as much as you can out of the witness testimony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretatio_graeca
http://classics.oxfordre.com/view/10.10 ... 135-e-3303
You keep pretending that because a two thousand year old Roman source says that a Thracian worshipped Dionysus, then that Thracian must have worshipped Dionysus. What the source is telling you is that the source understands that Thracian god to be like Dionysus. As I said from the start, this is Roman sources 101.
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.
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Re: Destroying History
heydaralon wrote:Its an interesting idea.Speaker to Animals wrote:heydaralon wrote:
It seems like to a certain extent, excess and debauchery always existed in the ancient world though. I'm not well versed on Ancient Greece or Rome, but I know that the cult of Dionysus existed long before Augustus and Spartacus. I think Alexander the Great got shitfaced a lot with his generals at those festivals. That book that Dan mentioned, The Invisible Enemy, discussed Dionysus some. There is another book about Alexander by Richard a Gabriel that discussed this too. It could just be that the Greeks and Romans hid behind the cloak of divinity to justify their large alcoholic and sexual appetites.
It was more than debauchery, and much of the debauchery we think of today comes from a later time when all this stuff became normalized (before it all fell apart).
My thesis here is not that debauchery is somehow unique to these two times, but that both of these movements are nothing more than a social manifestation of the tendencies of civilizations to degenerate and collapse. These people are not just railing against sexual mores, but against the very moral and social foundation of their civilizations. They want to destroy it. Furthermore, even if it were limited to the sexual degeneracy alone, sexuality plays a pivotal role in the development of complex cultures and civilizations. If you want free love, go live in the Amazon rain forest with the Invisible People.
As much as I would like to think otherwise, I'm not sure that culture can be preserved in the end. Many classicists look to the past and bemoan the state of today. From my limited understanding, there has always been a shift underway in culture. For instance in Athens during the Peloponessian War, Alcibiades and his ilk used to wear their hair long with a trailing cloak. This indicated a tendency for receptive anal sex, and it disgusted many of the more conservative members of Athenian society. These same young people enjoyed Spartan music which also upset much of the Polis. It seems like close scrutiny of any ancient society will show that these culture conflicts are perennial. That does not mean I am arguing that the new ways were better than the old, just that every society is always in flux. If you do think fundamentally preserving a way of life is possible, how would you go about doing it?
When you talk about degeneracy taking hold of different societies throughout history, what mechanism allows these ideas to take hold? Do you view it as a genetic thing (ie: certain people are predisposed to a degenerate lifestyle), a cultural thing, or do you view it more of an endless cycle? In your opinion, what causes these worldviews to start in the first place?
I kind of suspect that, in the case of people of European descent, there exist alleles that get strongly favored for selection whenever we persist in strong urban populations for many generations. I suspect there exist a set of adaptations that make it easier for us to live in cities, more inclined towards tolerating differences, more able to live packed in with total strangers, etc. Over many generations in a city's life, people with these traits will more likely flourish whereas people with the rural adaptations do not (or likely join the army or move back into the countryside). But when a person becomes intellectually compromised by a subversive organization or movement, those tendencies also end up subverted. The tendency to tolerate (live and let live even when you disagree) becomes "don't judge anything, and if you think it's disgusting, then you are bigoted monster". The tendency to be comfortable living side-by-side with thousands (or more) of total strangers without getting paranoid about it becomes a mob mentality and collectivist ideals therein.
It's going to take a long time to prove this with the direction that universities are going. Evolutionary psychologists and geneticists are swimming in shark-infested waters at this point.
In any case, I have for a while now believed that most of our politics, and most of history in recent centuries, has amounted to a genetic struggle. Our political and social differences tend to be genetic and biological rather than genuinely intellectual. Weak men tend to want more mob-like and feminized ideologies because it's inherently a mating strategy on their part. Strong men prefer more independence and less collective control. But eventually, if the weak men prevail for long, the strong men will also collectivize and the helicopter rides will commence. It's like cause and effect.