DejahEntendu

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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He definitely used an odd definition of religion. However, having just left Texas and living there during part of a rise of ChristoFascism, I have a hard time seeing any positive in religion right now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (4 children)

in all societies (even physically separated ones, the same argument he uses about sexism). However, his conclusion is the opposite: that rascism is not biologically rooted but rather is cultural. He does acknowledge that racism still abounds. So why are they different? He gives no good reason and, in fact, rebuts the popular arguments for a biological scaffold to support sexism.

And gods, he hates the modern world.

3/3

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (5 children)

He posits that rascism is a foolish social construct, but that sexism is clearly natural.

His argument is that since elephants and bonobos have matriarchal societies and since human societies are overwhelmingly (exclusively?) patriarchal, there must be a patriarchy genetic imperative. Interestingly, in his discussion of racism, he speaks for a while of the overwhelming prevalence of slavery as a custom...

2/3
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#JustFinished Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

I feel like he spent too much time working at being cutesy and not enough at internal consistency. It was an amusing book, however. Taken as a light historical fiction about the run-up to modern life, it's good enough.

One example of the issues with the book follows:
He sets up the straw man of biological essentialism, then knocks it down with social consctructs.

1/3
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I learned a ton about American history that was never taught in my schools. Maybe I am particularly ignorant about U.S. history, but even if I am in the lower part, I still feel I am around average. Of course, high school courses really are just high-level overviews. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, but it certainly made me wonder why the Filipinos still like us.

2/2

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#JustFinished How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr

It is an incisive economic analysis of empire, focus on the U.S., but touching on other modern empires. Starts around the mid-1800s and goes through the fall of that type of empire building and the reasons behind that as well. Late in the book, he gets into the current military-based empire we run. The author used a nice mix of personal stories and facts in accessible prose.

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