SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! Mesa and South Africa

For the most part, your examples of change were merely events that were perfectly normal within the societies' experiences.

Technological changes took millions of years at first and up until the renasaince and industrial revolution, most people witnessed no profound technological innovations that significantly affected the structure of society. Someone from the early bronze age would not have been confused by the late bronze age or early iron age.

For most of human history, social change was negligible. The same customs were applied generation after generation.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, there is no objective evidence that the social changes that most liberalnadvocates for change cherish are beneficial. The cultures that have changed the most are now experiencing a demographic implosion. Unless these changes are reversed or modified, these societies will collapse.

hanuman wrote:

namelessfly wrote:For most of human history, CHANGE was virtually non existent. There was little technological innovation. Populations oscillates around equilibrium level. People generally lived their lives in the same manner as their great-to-the-tenth grandparents had. When change occurred, it was usually a very unpleasant change such as war, famine, earthquakes, floods or war.

The rapid advancement of technology makes change inevitable. However; the progressive argument that change should be promoted because it is inevitable is a logical fallacy. Change has to be evaluated on at least practical if not moral criteria.

The Southern States and Mesa have historical events, particularly the Hatian Slave Revolt, to inform their opinions and judgements. One can argue that the danger of a slave uprising makes the abolition of slavery imperative. However; the Hatian Slave Rebellion was itself the result of liberalized policies. The Haitian slave masters just like Southerners such as Thomas Jefferson were in the habit of having sex with their black slaves which resulted in Medes race children. The Hatian slave holders freed their hybrid children, educated them and allowed them to enjoy many rights.

Given Honorverse technology, I find it extremely difficult to imagine how genetic slavery can be economically viable beyond people adapted for harsh environments or sex slaves. Even so, voluntary genetic modification of one's own children motivated by the lure of high hazardous duty pay or colonization opportunities. There is no shortage of sex workers in a free society either.

One factor that might mitigate conflict on Mesa is the realization that the carnage inflicted by operation Hudini was orchestrated by a secretive cabal.

Namelessfly, your statement re human history cannot be further from the truth. Change is and always has been a constant and inevitable factor of human life. The only way for ANY human society to completely avoid any form of change would be not only to completely avoid outside influence but to impose such rigorous standards of behaviour that daily life and interpersonal interaction would become virtually impossible. Whether it was contact with merchants from another land, or a nomadic clan of shepherds setting up camp just outside one's village, or an invasion by another kingdom, or buying a new houseslave on the market, ancient societies were forever exchanging ideas, cultural memes, goods and people.

You're talking about technology being a major driving force of change. That's true, but what do you think flint knives were, or stone scrapers, or pottery wheels? Those were technological innovations as well, you know. Modern technology doesn't DRIVE change, it simply gives change impetus; in other words, it's a driving force behind the RATE of change.

Hanuman,
My point is that Secession was attempted,
and then Sumter was fired upon,
for concrete reasons, not an abstract test of a theory.

The Confeds *had achieved* a de-facto state of secession,
even though the US Army still retained Forts Sumter and
Pickens. They had no need to "effect" what they had.

Had the CSA not fired on Sumter, there is no way to know
how the situation would have played out, as kzt said.
For one thing, the CSA leaders would have been thinking
differently than they were OTL.

One thing to consider is that the CSA could then claim
only seven (7) states, with six of them in a straight
line (SC, Geo, Ala, Miss, Lou, Tex), and only Florida
to give them any depth. And the cultures of these states
were very different, so the CSA was in a *very* unstable
situation, with a high chance of breaking up.

The other reason that they fired on Ft. Sumter,
was to induce more states to join them. Four others did
join, out of eight possibilities.

hanuman wrote:at bottom.
h.

kzt wrote:below.
kzt

hanuman had written:
Howard, are you saying that the US government would have let the secession stand had Confederate forces not fired on Ft Sumter?

I always understood that the major casus belli was to preserve the United States as a 'perpetual union'?

hanuman

KZT replied:
It's unknown. The crazies in South Carolina had been trying to start a war for ~30 years and finally pulled it off.

So the Confederates WERE trying to force the US out of confederate territory? In other words, to effect a de facto state of secession? And that action started the war? My case stands.

Let's see ... that website begins by misspelling
Sumter (as Sumpter).
We'd better not believe everything we read on websites,
even those with pretentions to be authoritative.

*Might-clauses* prove nothing.

The 1776 American Revolution was an overt "revolution,"
not a "secession" with pretentions of legality.

Perhaps we should consider a theory that a state
cannot secede from our *country* but can secede
from our "constitution."

HTM, PHL

namelessfly wrote:As always, some people have to be PC! Read here:

http://www.electricscotland.com/history ... r/cw26.htm

The simple fact of the matter is that negotiations were underway that *might* have allowed secession if a certain hot headed Union General had not decided to relocate his troops to occupy an incomplete fort. The provocation of that occupation escalated the dispute.

Everyone at the time was aware of the political theorie of secession articulated in the declaration of independence.

While the CSA secceeded because of the issue of slavery, the war was fought because Northerners refused to recognize the right to secession that was cited less than a century earlier to justify the American Revolution.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Let's see ... that website begins by misspelling
Sumter (as Sumpter).
We'd better not believe everything we read on websites,
even those with pretentions to be authoritative.

*Might-clauses* prove nothing.

The 1776 American Revolution was an overt "revolution,"
not a "secession" with pretentions of legality.

Perhaps we should consider a theory that a state
cannot secede from our *country* but can secede
from our "constitution."

HTM, PHL

Howard, is that even possible? After all, a country's Constitution acts as the basic law from which all political authority is derived. What you are proposing is just another take on the Nullification doctrine.

namelessfly wrote:For the most part, your examples of change were merely events that were perfectly normal within the societies' experiences.

Technological changes took millions of years at first and up until the renasaince and industrial revolution, most people witnessed no profound technological innovations that significantly affected the structure of society. Someone from the early bronze age would not have been confused by the late bronze age or early iron age.

For most of human history, social change was negligible. The same customs were applied generation after generation.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, there is no objective evidence that the social changes that most liberalnadvocates for change cherish are beneficial. The cultures that have changed the most are now experiencing a demographic implosion. Unless these changes are reversed or modified, these societies will collapse.

Change has very little to do with technological innovation (btw, palaeontologists' best estimate is that the human species evolved about 1.6 to 2 million years ago), and far more with the exchange of cultural memes and ideas. Yes, modern technology increases the rate of change, but it's not the source of change.

I'll take an example from the Bible. Marriage as described in the Bible changed considerably over the centuries, from incestuous and polygamous marriages (yes, Abraham and Sara were half-siblings) in Genesis, to a situation in which only royalty practised polygamous marriage (David, Solomon), to a situation in which monogamous marriages became the only socially-acceptable norm (New Testament). The Bible even contains hints of same-sex marriages, although it is never explicitly mentioned as such (David and Jonathan).

That is just in the holy scripture of ONE major religion. Let's look at an example from Africa: the origin of the click sounds in the Xhosa language. Linguists suspect (they have ways of recreating proto-languages' sound systems that are far too technical to explain here) that a thousand years ago the proto-Nguni language (Xhosa is a member of the Nguni-branch of Bantu languages) had NO click sounds, because the proto-Nguni-speakers have not yet come into contact with the Khoisan-speakers of southern Africa.

The introduction of those click-sounds into the proto-Xhosa dialect happened by way of slavery, in fact. The proto-Xhosa-speakers were in the habit of taking wives from the Khoisan tribes they defeated, who spoke their own language around their homesteads but proto-Xhosa with their husbands and other members of their communities. Naturally, their children learned both languages, and with time some of the Khoisan click-sounds became part of the proto-Xhosa dialect of proto-Nguni (and eventually the Xhosa language).

Change happened slowly, yes, but it was always a constant in every human society, because NO human society has ever managed to isolate itself completely from other societies, or prevent the introduction of new ideas from outside.

Yes, this applies to me, Howard "Map-addict" Wilkins,
in particular.
Perhaps someday Mr. Weber and I can discuss in person
how simplistic etc. my ideas are, and how much of them
I learned in the past quarter-century, even the past
five years, as opposed to what I learned as a child.

I should say that my choice of names is similar
to John's in that I created the name
"War For Slaveholders' Privileges" in 2004 on Baen's
Bar (Eric Flint's Mutter Of Demons Forum)
as a direct and deliberate answer to those who were
calling it "War Between The States" and sometimes
even "War Of Northern Aggression."
I strongly disagreed with those names
and so I created a name I felt True and Concise.
I have used it ever since then, especially when I saw
that someone had written "WofNA" as an antidote to that,
and also at some other times.

I hold to my opinion, proudly, yes emotionally,
and expect to continue in it until convinced otherwise.

Howard "True Map-addict" Wilkins,
self-styled Pointy-Headed Liberal

JohnRoth wrote:reply below.

runsforcelery wrote:
...
[snip by John Roth]
Having said all of that, however, I find efforts to dismiss the American Civil War as a War to Defend Slaveholders’ Privileges simplistic, trivializing, demeaning, and culturally (and temporally) centric, saying far more about the cultural preconceptions of the individual than about the realities of the event or of the long-dead people who actually fought and died in it. Even worse, it precludes the possibility of actually learning from what happened because the people who over simplify cull from the experience only those things which support views they already hold. All of us do this to one extent or another whenever we look at any past period in history, but I think it's important for us to remember that we're doing it and make a conscientious effort to avoid doing it to the greatest extent possible.

...

John Roth replied:
I should note that I've seen efforts to trivialize the Civil War as The War of Northern Aggression; my comment was a direct poke at that, not an attempt to trivialize it.

To your comments on the multiple causes of the war, I could add the conflict on whether the new territories on the Great Plains should be reserved for new southern-style plantations or for small freeholder farms; this lead directly to "Bleeding Kansas," among other things. I see the "slave state vs free state" fight as a direct proxy for that more fundamental conflict. The Homestead Acts, enacted during the Civil War, effectively burned that bridge behind the North and might well have made any form of negotiated settlement impossible.

Another point here is that the plantation system was ruining the soil through mono-culture agriculture; I've seen estimates that the South had to expand or it would have lost its economic viability in a few decades.

Nuff said.

That Wikipedia article specifically says:
"The academic consensus of historians **rejects**
most of the claims" [made in this article].

HTM

cthia wrote:President Lincoln being black himself may explain much of that.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African- ... am_Lincoln

Fly, just to add, the reason why we seem to experience so much more rapid change these days, is manifold.

Firstly, because modern technology truly does make the world so much smaller. An event in one country instantly becomes news in another. It takes days, at most weeks, for goods to move from one side of the globe to another. We are constantly exposed to new ideas, new opinions, new announcements, new knowledge. It doesn't require a caravan train travelling several months and crossing several hundred or thousand kilometres to bring us news or goods from far away. We don't need to wait anxiously for weeks or months at a time to learn the outcome of an important battle or summit or trade deal. Technology means we can learn those things almost instantly.

Secondly, it seems as if change is rapid today because this is the time and place WE live in right now. I can guarantee you that a hundred years ago, or five hundred, or five thousand, people were voicing the same complaint - 'everything is changing so fast!!!' And the honest truth is, they were, for those ancients' time and place. It is a common mistake to compare our time and place with other times and places, but it's a mistake nonetheless.

If you read Weber, you probably read Flint as well. The 163x series is an excellent reminder of the fact that even a relatively short period of time can make a huge difference in people's worldview and circumstances. For prehistoric hunters, the discovery of how to make fire was as much of a technological innovation as was the development of the nuclear bomb or the internet for us. It had as much of an impact, and in many ways just as significant and radical consequences.

To claim that somehow change didn't really happen for ancient societies, because of how very slowly it happened, is a false argument based on unsound logic. You're comparing grapes with pineapples. We are not those ancient societies, and we cannot compare OUR experiences with theirs. Yes, we can make analogies, and we can analyse, but we cannot say that because something happens in a certain way for US, then because it didn't happen in exactly the same way for them, it didn't have as important an impact for them.

Moreover, the denial of change in the past (and the implication that change is therefore somehow 'bad' or undesirable) comes down to playing ostrich.

Like I said, the dislike or distrust of 'change' is very much related to the dislike of human 'difference', because it is rooted in the fear that that which is new will threaten our stability and security, and therefore our livelihoods.

hanuman wrote:Fly, just to add, the reason why we seem to experience so much more rapid change these days, is manifold.

Firstly, because modern technology truly does make the world so much smaller. An event in one country instantly becomes news in another. It takes days, at most weeks, for goods to move from one side of the globe to another. We are constantly exposed to new ideas, new opinions, new announcements, new knowledge.

As a sidenote, it might be interesting to look at how this same thing actually happened already in early 20th century, before WWI there was an explosive development in regards to making maximum use of telegraph, telephone, railroads, cars and radio.

Even if it was less personal than in recent decades, it´s quite amazing that it took until the 1990s for the mailorder market to again reach the levels of speed, access and reliability that existed in Europe and USA at least, in 1910.

Which is totally weird when you consider that delivery by air was nonexistant at the time.
The combination of the massive expansion of instant communication, lots of new and cheap cars, hypercheap fuel, a railroad net becoming quite extensive very quickly, a new generation of merchant ships (faster and cheaper), hoardes of workers available for cheap and lots of new technologies that just eeeveryone haaad to get...

Lots of companies in Europe set a standard of "1 week delivery to any railroad station or port in Europe", something that is hard to achive even today, without relying on air delivery.

It was a very interesting period of time.


Anyway, my not so important point was that change isn´t always positive, nor is development always linear, sometimes it goes up, other times it goes down.

Tenshinai wrote:

hanuman wrote:Fly, just to add, the reason why we seem to experience so much more rapid change these days, is manifold.

Firstly, because modern technology truly does make the world so much smaller. An event in one country instantly becomes news in another. It takes days, at most weeks, for goods to move from one side of the globe to another. We are constantly exposed to new ideas, new opinions, new announcements, new knowledge.

As a sidenote, it might be interesting to look at how this same thing actually happened already in early 20th century, before WWI there was an explosive development in regards to making maximum use of telegraph, telephone, railroads, cars and radio.

Even if it was less personal than in recent decades, it´s quite amazing that it took until the 1990s for the mailorder market to again reach the levels of speed, access and reliability that existed in Europe and USA at least, in 1910.

Which is totally weird when you consider that delivery by air was nonexistant at the time.
The combination of the massive expansion of instant communication, lots of new and cheap cars, hypercheap fuel, a railroad net becoming quite extensive very quickly, a new generation of merchant ships (faster and cheaper), hoardes of workers available for cheap and lots of new technologies that just eeeveryone haaad to get...

Lots of companies in Europe set a standard of "1 week delivery to any railroad station or port in Europe", something that is hard to achive even today, without relying on air delivery.

It was a very interesting period of time.


Anyway, my not so important point was that change isn´t always positive, nor is development always linear, sometimes it goes up, other times it goes down.

I end to think more in terms of sociological change than technological change without intending to downplay the later. I regard the following as ironclad. Change is really the only constant. Societies are born and grow to maturity. They then decay and die as new societies are born in the midst of the ashes. They in turn undergo the same cycle.

As the war with the bugs begins in "In Death's Ground", Admiral Villiers in ruminating wonders, Does anyone recognize the end of a golden age when it happens?

Good question. I don't have the answer.

Don