Poly familiesFollow

Ah, child-like "rubber/glue" retorts to avoid admitting the truth again. They worked when you were a little boy so why wouldn't they work now, right?


And throwing temper tantrums about wheels because you can't admit they existed, right?


The interest in it for the Inca culture was more the extent and sophistication of it than "Hey, look! Terraces!".

Again, try to push past your 5th grade social studies understanding.

They had all of sub-Saharan Africa beat out!

The conversation of whether or not being hard wired or not depends on what you are considered being hard wired.

I think it's safe to say that jealousy is a natural reaction that can be controlled. I can't imagine anyone NOT being jealous in some form or fashion in a relationship with more than 2 people. I have many friends, some with benefits, and I control my jealously by reminding myself that I'm doing the same thing. Even though the end result is that I'm not jealous, a lot has to do with the level of the relationship we have and the probability of having a future together.

Some people might want to be in poly relationship, but you would be a fool to believe that it's possible to have found and live in "true love" and not express some form of jealousy. If you subscribe to "true love", the definition in itself contradicts the thought of being hardwired any other way than monogamous.

Well, you were completely befuddled and confused about the wheels as well so I wouldn't use you as a barometer.

I don't believe I ever said I don't experience jealousy, nor was that in any way the subject of this thread. I'm pretty sure you're the first person to bring it up, but that's fine.

Jealousy is absolutely an emotion that can be controlled, and it does have it's usefulness. Now, in my experience, monogamous people usually feel jealousy because they fear losing their significant other. That tends to be why some people don't like their partner having friends of the opposite sex, or getting together for dinner with an ex, etc. In the poly world, you don't have to worry about losing your S.O. because they become interested in someone new, so why be jealous?

Another cause of jealousy tends to be the thought of your S.O. doing X with another person. Whether that be kissing, sex, foreplay, whatever. Now I'm not saying this is true for everyone, but I think a large part of the reason people get upset by these thoughts, is because they have this idea that they own their partner. It might not even be a conscious thing, but it's still there. Look at the way people in a relationship speak about each other. "This is MY husband/wife." "You're MINE." Or to quote the Song of Songs from the bible, "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." I'm sure there are some other examples, but I can't think of them at the moment. This is possessive language, you are indicating that you own your partner and that they are your possession. Of course poly folks are guilty of this sort of language as well, as it's an ingrained part of our culture.

Poly folks try to look at jealousy from a different angle though. Everyone feels jealousy from time to time, it's a normal human emotion. What matters is what you do with that emotion. I try to use it as a self examination tool. When I feel jealousy, I ask myself why. Am I not getting enough attention from my partner? Are my needs being met? Or is this just a little petty thing that doesn't really matter? If I feel like my needs aren't being met, it's a good time for me to talk to my partner and let them know how I feel so we can rectify it.

Also, you mention "true love." I'm assuming you are referring to the idea that there is one match out there for everyone, i.e. a "soul mate." No, I don't believe in these things. I've seen my own mother love two different men, and never stop loving either of them. My dad passed away when I was a senior in high school. My mom had been with him since she was 16 years old, for over 30 years. She has never stopped loving him. But she did find someone else that she could love, and she got remarried. My mom and my step-dad will have been married 9 years this May. She has told me herself that she doesn't love my step-dad any less than she loves my dad, she just loves them in different ways. People often say this about their children too. That's how I look at poly. I don't believe in "one true love," I believe in compatibility. Does my personality mesh well with this person, do we have things in common that we can talk about? Do I enjoy spending time with them? This is the foundation for any relationship, but that doesn't mean that a relationship that starts as a friendship cannot evolve into a romantic relationship. I think it's important for you to be friends with your partners and/or lovers. Otherwise, how are you going to stand each other when the passion is gone?

One last thing, there is another emotion I would like to briefly mention, as a comparison to jealousy. I'm not sure if this term exists outside the poly world, as this is the only place I've heard of it. Compersion, which is the feeling of happiness you get from watching/knowing someone you love experiencing pleasure with another. It might sound like b.s., but I have felt this before. I can see a partner of mine cuddling or kissing another partner of theirs, and have that vision make me feel happy. I am happy that they are happy, even if they derive that happiness from someone else.

Don't worry, it was a reply to Alma. He'll go off on a whole new tangent.

Yes. No one's disputing that the floating farms were great ideas and helped the city grow (literally, since they basically extended the size of the island it was on artificially). But that only worked in one place. To say "their farming techniques were many times more efficient" you really need to take into account all the techniques across their entire civilization and not just what they did in one location were it worked due to geography.

Once you get outside the lake valley itself, population density dropped dramatically and farming efficiency did as well. The overall effect was that even with the use of the Chinampas, the Aztec living in the main island were reliant on tribute from the surrounding tribes outside the valley. And given the lack of food production efficiency in the rest of the empire, expansion was limited dramatically. They'd hit a wall in terms of what they could do, but their population was still growing in the center of the empire. The result was that they had to become increasingly more brutal with the tribes on the outer edges (and more even towards the central tribes around the lakes themselves).

This set up the conditions which Cortez took advantage of to topple their rule. But honestly, even if he hadn't shown up, their civilization as unsustainable.



Yeah. Because they had advanced metallurgy and had long before cleared tons of land for farming and made that land more fertile along the way. Has it occurred to you to wonder why the population in that same lake valley was several times greater by the 18th century (I'm going to stick to pre-rail/car periods)? Because they cleared land in the rest of what is now Mexico, and made lots of those inefficient European style farms which allowed for the capital region to grow to much greater population levels than when the Aztecs were using their techniques.

Know why this was possible? Roads and carts and land clearing capability. It allows for the transportation of goods much farther and faster without being reliant on where the land happens to have placed rivers and lakes.



Yes. Do you also understand that the entire population of the Americas in the 1500s was about the same as the entire population of Europe? At the risk of stating the obvious, Europe is a hell of a lot smaller than North, Central, and South America. As tends to happen, population grows to the extent to which the existing supply of food can sustain it. Europe was no different than anywhere else in that regard. So when they suffered a disruption, it caused lots of problems.

I'll point out that while the Aztecs were somewhat protected from this due to the farming methods used in the valley, it also limited them in terms of expansion and sustainability. They were already heavily dependent on tribes outside the valley, so it's not like they were immune to the same factors. They might not have starved in the valley, but the tribes outside would, and the result would be harmful (eventually) to the ruling folks as well.



Are you kidding? While we often speak of the model of Feudal Europe as being noble landowners and peasants working on the land, the reality is that there was *always* a middle class. There were always artisans and professionals whose skills were valued and thus could earn a living which afforded them a greater standard of living than just what a single noble might provide directly to someone working on his land. In the countrysides and small villages, there was little of this (but I doubt there was much of a middle class in the smaller tribes and towns in the Aztec empire either. In the larger towns and cities though, there were tradesmen who owned businesses similar to what we'd see today. There were innkeepers, artists, merchants, and all manner of what we'd refer to as middle class.



Apparently my understanding of what Feudal Europe looked like is far better than yours. While all people living or working in a given area were subjects to whatever lord controlled it, not everyone fit into the classic "landowner/landworker" model. I'm not going to claim that Feudal Europe had a huge middle class, but it's absurd to argue that it didn't have one at all. Whether a larger or smaller percentage of the population fit into that class in Europe versus the Aztec Empire is pretty much speculation IMO. I don't know. But neither do you.


But we can say that the number of what we'd label as arbitrary killings by the Aztec rulers was much much higher than anything seen in Europe at the time. There wasn't a whole lot of human sacrifice going on in Europe at the time. And certainly, the practice of killing off rival populations or defeated enemies hadn't been the norm in Europe for quite some time either. You pretty much have to go back to Rome to find a civilization in Europe in which the ruling state demanded human tribute of its vassals to be used as slave labor or for entertainment in death games.


The kind of political structure the Aztecs had wasn't much different than what me might find in Ancient Mesopotamia, or Egypt, or Africa, or Asia. It was certainly not "advanced" in any meaningful way.

Edited, Feb 1st 2012 2:32pm by gbaji

They were used all over the empire, with terrace forming the basis of farming in areas that were distinctly mountainous, so without the ability to create swamplands. Notice I said create. They didn't just create these islands where they found lakes and swamps--they TURNED areas into lakes and swamps.

And you seem REALLY confused about what happened after the Europeans came over. Guess what? Their efficiency was VASTLY lower, to the point where they often had food problems even while utilizing slave labor. They could't evolve--they couldn't react. They brought over their traditional livestock without understanding why it wouldn't do well in their area, and struggling for hundreds of years to try and make it work (it never did well).

Oh, also, the population density in the new world was, generally speaking, equal or higher than Europe. It was almost NEVER lower. You seem to be picturing a Europe where there are towns as well as cities. The problem with that is that it wasn't the case. What we call cities WERE the towns. 97% of the population lived on manors, where they had huts a good mile at least from other peasants, and couldn't possibly afford to feed large families (which was common until the 1700s).

Because this was false:


It's funny how this isn't true.

About artisans, no there weren't. Artisans were ALWAYS peasants. Until the Renaissance, it was unheard of in Europe for people to exist outside of their 3-class system. Many peasants learned practical skills, like blacksmithing. But this never earned a livable wage. They usually received a small stipend from their lord in exchange for reduced farming requirements. Each manor needed a blacksmith, a shoemaker, maybe a weaver or tailor-type worker. But that had never been a full-time job. It was only just starting to change in the period we are talking about. And it was certainly NEVER true of "feudal" Europe.

There WAS an emerging class of intellectuals, essentially writers and lawmakers. But the massive majority of these people were nobility, and the rest were clergy, so it didn't challenge the natural order.



Well, I go to the University whose cultural history program is ranked 9th in the nation, with the general history department ranking 20th. I'm about to graduate with a 4.0 in history, having taken classes and developed personal relationships with many of the preeminent scholars in the field. And this is what ALL of them happen to think is the case.

I know you just HATE experts, but I'm inclined to believe them over a random dumbass on the internet.

ALWAYS.

You know why it's not worth having any sort of discussion with you?

Because any human with a brain knows why:



Is absurd. You think it's clever to turn your argument circular. The rest of us know it's pathetic.





Oh you and your conspiracies.

Merchants, bards, and the rest (outside of a few cities like Venice) were peasant class. There was no middle class (there weren't economic classes at all). Tradesmen existed, but trade was not common in the middle ages, especially following the plague periods. Now, these classes WERE rapidly growing now that Europe was beginning to enter the Renaissance period, but that was only beginning to spread to the rest of Europe (and feudalism still largely applied to everyone outside of cities which, again, had only about 50,000 people or less. Remember the numbers YOU cited for the population of Europe. That's an extremely small percentage of the world at large. Outside of Italy, there wasn't any strong perception of a professional class until 1600 or so.

And what you are completely ignoring is that the discoveries of the new world, as well as trade routes to India and other areas, had a massive impact on turning Europe INTO a trade based society. Until they discovered the new world, they had nothing to trade.

Literally. They couldn't get spices from the Middle East, because they didn't have anything the Ottoman Empire wanted--they were way too wealthy to care about simple European products. It wasn't until Europeans started using New World territories to grow and sell new products that they began to develop a trade-based society.

And if your head wasn't so far up your ass, you'd realize that FUEDALISM isn't an economic system--it's a legal system that officially created and structured three separate classes. There was no "middle" class, there were those who prayed, those who fought, and those who ruled. It wasn't until feudalism was abolished that economic based classes could begin to form. And these classes struggled against the MANORIAL economic systems left behind.

It's quite possible to be in true love with two people at once. I've been in that state myself. The feeling kind of made me feel like I had two hearts. One devoted to one Love, and the other equally devoted to the other Love. Now, the question was, since I couldn't have both, because they were not people who would share, was which love would I ACT ON? I chose to be in a relationship with one person, and love the other person from afar. And not be cheaty or stalkery or get in the way of the other one's new relationship. A polyamourous person doesn't have to make that particular choice.

Yes. Yes, it is.

It is kind of funny watching it be the same way almost every time. Why look for a door when eventually you'll get inside running head first into a wall anyway? Using that door is just admitting defeat.

Actually, that's completely false. The records we have for nearly all populations throughout history come from modern archaeological endeavors and it is expected that they are low across the board as a result.

Once again, an example of how you assume completely false premises and then try to use them to argue a point.

But not as much for population records in Europe in 1500, right? We're literally comparing two groups of populations, one of which was relatively well documented and known (and is thus reasonably accurate) and the other which at the same period of time was more or less completely undocumented until the Spanish came along and started counting people. It's fair to say that we're going to see a hell of a lot more variation in the latter than the former.

We extrapolate population numbers based on archaeological data, but the degree of weight given to those methods is based on the presence or absence of written records (which I suppose really just gives you additional data to use). We have medical records and census reports in Mesopotamia, Eqypt, Greece, Rome, etc. We don't have that data for America at the time in question. However, the data we need to estimate things like the population in 1500 is not nearly so old. We're not talking about digging up thousand year old ruins and examining pottery shards here. We're asking about what the population number was at the time (or right before) Europeans started showing up. And we do have constant historical records from that point on.

There shouldn't be as much variation in the estimates as there is. Think about it. Imagine if we had a continuous written historical record going from Ancient Babylon to modern Iran which literally started up in complete form one day but never existed prior to that. Don't you think we'd have a much better and more accurate idea of what the population was in Babylon 10 years prior to the start of that written record than we do by examining archaeological data? Yeah. We would. It should be very accurate.


Why the inaccuracy with regard to American populations then? It's not really about data. It's about re-interpretation of said data based on current social viewpoints. Right now, we're in a very anti-WesternCiv social mood. We downplay the importance of what Western culture did. We play up its nature as just violent and warmongering and conquering. We play up the value and importance of the cultures they competed with or conquered along the way. Ancient Western cities become smaller and less grand in our eyes, and those of other cultures become bigger and more awe inspiring. We play number games. We play interpretation games. But ultimately, it's because of our current social needs, and do not necessarily reflect accurate information.


When you start valuing the accomplishments of a group, not based on the accomplishments themselves and some objective method of measurement, but rather based on who the group was (and in our case whether we view them as a victim of western expansion), then you're being just as irrational with your conclusions as the folks who insisted that the earth was flat and the sun moved around it. You're leading with your emotions, not your intellect. One need only look at the number of times my statements have been labeled as some form of bigotry to see this. You're assessing things not based on what they are, but who they are about. You've been taught to view positively those seen as victims and negatively those seen as the victimizers. Thus, you feel a need to play up the accomplishments of those victims. Because if you don't, then you think of yourself as a bigot, and you don't want that.



Which is funny as hell coming from someone who's basing his position on pure emotion. You don't want the brown skinned conquered people to actually have been inferior in some way. Because you have a need to blame the white skinned guys who conquered them as much as possible. And it's just easier to do that if the civilization they wiped out was advanced and wonderful and really so much more peaceful and perhaps the world would have been a better place if only they were still around. You can't accept the cold hard fact that most of the time the wiped out culture was no more moral or advanced than that which wiped it out. You project your own modern feelings about race, culture, and haves and have nots into your interpretation of history.


Which is a piss poor way to do things. Again, I'm not saying this is new. Man has always interpreted the world around him within the context of the ideas of the day. The difference is that I'm aware of this pattern of behavior and thus take such interpretations with the cautious grain of salt they deserve.

No, European populations are still largely being determined by archaeologists (with some help from anthropologists). We obviously have HELP in that department from church records, but that's all we have, and those are not reliable (largely because so few exist).

You are vastly overestimating the bookkeeping of the time. Most church priests weren't literate, and thus incapable of making records. It was one of the major issues brought up that led to the Reformation. [edit] And when I say "most" I'm not talking 51%. I'm saying that it was an extreme rarity for your parish to have a literate priest capable of documenting a birth or baptism. Records of populations within cities aren't horrible (though definitely not good). But the vast majority of Europeans lived outside cities, and almost none of their lives were recorded in any form. Even fewer of those records survived. [/edit]

Archaeology and anthropology, with aid from other records, is our best resource for estimating European populations.

And LOL at you asserting that I'm basing my argument on pure emotion. I've given you a logical argument based on how advanced the Aztec Empire was with regards to specific important aspects of civilization (ability to maintain urban centers, established government and social structures, scientific and mathematical knowledge--Eropeans didn't widely use Arabic numerals and zeros until the 15th century, btw--transportation systems, characteristic art and architecture, astronomical understanding, etc.

You are focusing on SINGLE aspects of what go into building a civilization and grounding your whole argument on those. At the end of the day, it's a terrible argument--advanced institutes in one area don't validate everything. Historians look at the whole. Yes, Europeans had superior metallurgy and weaponry (neither of which they had designed themselves).

That's only a very small portion of the picture.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2012 12:15am by idiggory

This is Gbaji. He'd want to use the word "absolutely".

..Nooo, pretty sure that was common sense which did it. You think the priests regularly preached from the pulpit "The Earth is flat"? The idea that the planet curved had no basis in anyone's experience at the time. The experts, in fact, were the people who had traveled sufficiently to have an inkling otherwise.

I know you seriously hate "experts", I'm assuming because you failed every history and poli sci class when you were in college because the world didn't line up with your biases, but at least pick a less ridiculous example.

Last I check, dirt wasn't considered a better road material than stone paving.

Aztecs and Maya were both also mathematically advanced civilization. They didn't rival the Ottomans, but they had developed mathematical system that allowed for fractions--we know they at least used it to evaluate tribute taxes based partially on areas. The conclusion is that they at least had practical versions for arithmatic, algebra, and geometry. They probably didn't have fully fleshed out trigonometry, but we know Mayans had at least the basics of sine, cosine and tangent systems.

And Europeans hadn't invented any of it. They learned it all from the Ottomons. It wasn't until Newton was born, a century later, that they made any significant contribution to mathematics. The Aztecs and Mayans actually pioneered every mathematical advance independently of outside bodies (as it is is believed the Maya and Aztec devised it separately).

The Aztec and Mayan understanding of Astronomy was also superior. They were more accurate in their measurement of the year than the Gregorian calendar was (though for some reason didn't base their calendars on this figure, possible for easy--theirs was a 365-day basis, so it has the same error our own does).

The Maya are also the first known civilization to discover the Orion Nebula, making them the first civilization to ever detect a stellar body without a pinpoint effect.

And you should probably note that Galileo lived AFTER the period we are discussing.

Better trade? The Aztec Empire was a trade based society. And they were actually able to barter. Europeans were having significant problems in this period because no one wanted anything they had. They could make it all, and they could make it better.

They had better construction. But vastly worse urban planning, which is needed to actually make USE of construction. Their adobe-based communities were far better maintained than the wood-based ones of Europe. And I say wood, when most peasants were still living in huts that were primarily earthen.

Europeans had NO chemical knowledge during this period. Chemistry didn't exist yet. Alchemy did, but that's all. The Ottomans were pioneering science, which wasn't imported at all until the intellectual class of the Renaissance started to form. You know who did surgeries in this time period? Barbers.

Yeah, that medical knowledge is great.

In some areas of science, Europeans were better. In others, the Aztec and Maya were definitely better. Europeans were no better at physics than they were, and they were only just starting to take an interest in the natural world (which is another defining feature of Renaissance change).

Human sacrifice is neither here nor there. It's a religious practice and doesn't apply to any definitions of civilization. They believed that the gods were demanding those lives, so they killed them. It wasn't all that different from the Inquisition, truth be told. Inquisitors believed that God was calling for the death of heathens, and that any innocent burned at the stake was acceptable, as they would obviously gain entrance to heaven for their martyrdom.

The Aztecs did the same thing. Except that they saw everyone who wasn't them the way that Europeans saw gypsies and Jews. It's not significantly different in any way relating to the value of civilization. Horrific and appalling, but not something that applies to that definition.

gbaji, I'm done trying to discuss this with you. You are stuck on a vision of Europe that simply was NOT the case. This isn't some kind of liberal spin on ideas--it's the plain fact of the matter. Most of the information I have posted, particularly with regards to Europe, is NOT distinctly modern. You know who coined the term "Dark Ages"? The Italians during the Renaissance, because the shift in culture was so incredibly apparent that they were able to instantly distance themselves from classical Europe.

Fact of the matter is that you are trying to argue for a definition of civilization that is based on Eurocentric values, rather than objective aspects of what a civilization must need to exist.

Advanced masonry isn't a requirement for an advanced civilization. It helps contribute, but no historian has ever considered it a criterion. Why? Because it doesn't discuss how advanced the human arrangement of civilization is.

Quick and dirty for instance:

Cathedrals began to be built in Europe largely around 11-1200 CE. They had been built before, of course, but this was the major period during which they switched from Romanesque to Gothic architecture, allowing for larger buildings. These were still extremely rare, because Gothic architecture required trigonometry (which required the Arabic mathematical systems that were only slowly spreading through Europe).

Thing is, these simply aren't a good reason by which to measure a civilization. Why?

Which civilization is more advanced? The one that can reliably feed, educate, and provide for the needs of hundreds of thousands of citizens. Or, the one that can build a massive building, but that's only possible because you are forcing every person to give up 10%+ of their income, even when they already can't feed themselves?

The latter was the reality of Europe. The tithes and other taxes of peasants payed to erect the massive Gothic cathedrals. You might get some nobles paying, but they were exempt from both tithing and taxes, so that was completely optional. Considering these same peasants were dying of starvation, that just doesn't tell me anything impressive about the civilization. Yeah, they have some impressive technology. But that's not an intrinsic fact about their civilization--the very way they arrange themselves.

It's far more fun to watch other people defeat his arguments and watch him dance around indignantly refusing to admit defeat than to watch him defeat his own arguments before anyone else gets a chance too, that's just boring

But basically, this is how I'm reading his arguments by this point:
"Europe was really advanced, because they said so!" "Those guys didn't have all the fancy stuff that the Europeans did, regardless of the fact that they didn't need it, that means they were silly cavemen." "What do you mean those guys developed that stuff on their own? Europe had that stuff too!" "So what if the Europeans didn't develop it on their own and just got it from piggy backing off of other civilizations?" with various paranoid jabber thrown in.

Given that most of the Europeans' big advancements came off of someone else teaching them how to do it, you can't really say that they advanced themselves (read: "they didn't advance on their own", not "they didn't advance at all"). Monkey-see-monkey-do may be part of human nature, but between someone who does something after being taught how to be smarter people, or someone who figures out how to do it on their own in roughly the same timeframe, who is more advanced? For example, what's more impressive, a parrot who was taught how to talk and hold a conversation, or a parrot who learned how to talk and hold a conversation without anyone sitting down and teaching them words? hmmmm, that's not the best example, since both are forms of mimicry. Let's try this:

You take a high school student and put them in two different, similar scenarios, in which they have to solve a very difficult math problem. In the first scenario, you take 25 minutes to teach them the basic formulas used in the equation (note: you're not teaching them how to solve the equation itself, but how to solve equations like it, the equation itself is basically an after-lesson test). After this, you give them the problem (remember, it's tough), and within 5 minutes they solve it. In the second scenario, rather than teaching them the basics, you just give them the problem as is and let them work at it by trial and error, and after 30 minutes, they've solved it. Which is more impressive?

Retard.

Emotionally, there is no choice, and no choosing. Logistically, a choice is possible and was necessary. What if you were single, and found your one True Love, and she was married, deeply and passionately love with her husband, happy and content in her home, and a devoted mother to her children with her husband?

It would be natural to feel jealous of her husband. But would you try to convince her to leave him, and be with you? Would you try and have an affair with her? Would you choose to just be friends with her, painfully and ecstatically bittersweet though that be? Or would you choose to leave her alone?