• TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    953·
    2 个月前

    Everyone so damn defensive about history texts like they’re fucking gospel.

    Norm was a funny guy. It was a joke.

    • Iceman@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 个月前

      Studied history at uni. On the topic of historical revisionism professor shruged and said: History is revised all the time. It’s called learning more.

  • Astrealix@lemmy.world
    38·
    2 个月前

    I mean, while there’s certainly a bias towards the victor, there’s definitely some histories that have slipped through from people who were very much not the victors. Josephus comes to mind, even if he did so by surrendering to the victors; Thucydides and Athens lost the Peloponnesian War; for a more recent example, the American South’s narrative on the Civil War.

    • egerlach@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      2 个月前

      for a more recent example, the American South’s narrative on the Civil War.

      Bold of you to think that they would agree that it’s over.

      • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
        15·
        2 个月前

        I go with Schopenhauer:

        Arthur Schopenhauer argued, contrary to Leibniz, that our world must be the worst of all possible worlds, because if it were only a little worse, it could not continue to exist.

      • DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip
        11·
        2 个月前

        How great it would be to realize that our god is the equivalent of a grade school child making finger painting and crayon drawing versions of worlds in the timeout chair and this was just the one we got stuck with.

        • Septimaeus@infosec.pub
          2·
          2 个月前

          Actually assumed naively that was the subject of the conversation above. Oh well.

          écrasez l’infame

      • Sergio@piefed.social
        English
        11·
        2 个月前

        Wai? Dude looks like he plays drums in a Spinal Tap tribute band. What could be better than that?

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        11·
        2 个月前

        Is that Leibniz?

        Such a fancy boy

        Edit: didn’t click the link before posting. Dunno if I should be impressed or concerned that I recognized this dude lol.

        He might look like a dandy, and might have been way too weirdly Christian, but the man was a fucking genius. Still think his notation style for calculus was better than Newton’s

    • BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish
      8·
      2 个月前

      Its object was to solve the problem of evil, that is, to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with the existence of a perfectly good, all-powerfuland all-knowing God, who would seem required to prevent it

      I’m reminded of HAL from 2001 for some reason. Maybe because HAL was given two conflicting goals and went insane trying to reconcile them with each other, rather than simply discarding the goal that was obviously just some nonsense.

    • too_high_for_this@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 个月前

      Beings are possible together, in turn, when they do not enter into contradiction with each other. For instance, it is logically possible that a meteor might have fallen from the sky onto Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’s head soon after he was born, killing him. But it is not logically possible that what happens in a given world (e.g. that Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia) also does not happen in the same world (i.e. that Jimmy Wales did not found Wikipedia).

  • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
    20·
    2 个月前

    I always loved his joke about 9/11. It went something like, “ I saw the towers fall and immediately went down to Ground Zero to look for my brother. I spent hours looking and searching for him, but I never found him then I remembered that he moved to Colorado three years ago.”

  • ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish
    207·
    2 个月前

    You would need to be extremely racist to think the good guys won the Opium War or the wars of European conquest in the Americas or Africa, and even centuries of propaganda spin don’t change that. And there are cases like the Siege of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade that was rightfully vilified even at the time.

    • fizzle@quokk.auEnglish
      46·
      2 个月前

      Indeed.

      Also just naive to think that there are “good guys” and “bad guys”. When you dig into the nuance of any conflict its almost always complicated.

      • Decq@lemmy.world
        132·
        2 个月前

        Did you guys just completely miss the joke or something? I mean it’s not subtle or anything…

        • fizzle@quokk.auEnglish
          44·
          2 个月前

          The joke refers to the addage that history is written by the victor, but that just isn’t true.

          • _donnadie_@feddit.cl
            51·
            2 个月前

            Exactly. That is part of the joke.

            Norm understands that it’s not true, he pokes fun at it because most people do tend to take it as fact. He ridiculizes how silly that thought is.

            • fizzle@quokk.auEnglish
              32·
              2 个月前

              Ill have to take your word for it. As written, it doesn’t seem that way to me at all.

              • _donnadie_@feddit.cl
                2·
                2 个月前

                I can understand that. Norm was a guy that went heavy into sarcasm and irony in his jokes.
                Reading the text as is would make you understand it differently if you didn’t know him.

                • fizzle@quokk.auEnglish
                  13·
                  2 个月前

                  You’re right, I don’t know him, but I still think you’re making up a deeper level of humor that wasn’t intended.

                  “Luckily the good guys have won every single time” is a very direct jab at historians always casting themselves as the good guys.

                  You’re all up in here like “wull ackshually this is a post modern commentary on feminism because he’s used the gendered phrase ‘guys’ and you just wouldn’t get it because reasons”.

    • Mirror Giraffe@piefed.socialEnglish
      23·
      2 个月前

      "Pirates are evil? The Marines are righteous? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values! Those who stand at the top determine what’s wrong and what’s right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!"

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.comEnglish
    713·
    2 个月前

    How many Americans in this thread have every read or seen anything about the Vietnam war written by a Vietnamese person ?

    I’ve searched and could find no books, no movies, no tv shows written or produced by a Vietnamese person available in English.

    Why is that ? I thought history was written by the victors.

  • bitteroldcoot@piefed.socialEnglish
    320·
    2 个月前

    The oppressed, butchered and exterminated victims of the European colonial systems would like a word with you…