If someone makes an appeal to tradition/history, I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that they're advocating for things which happened 4,000 years ago in a society completely alien to our own.
That’s fair, but if there argument is “At basically no point in history…” it is reasonable to mention that they are mistaken in that belief and the reverse was true for most of recorded history.
Which doesn’t mean I disagree with them, just that their argument isn’t sound. Slavery was also depressingly common and I am glad it’s become vastly less common today.
the weakness of his argument is that he didn't restrict himself to a certain people's history. the hammurabi code you cite wasn't the universal law, and only applied to subjects of hammurabi. savages live in groups and share all sorts of responsibilities (see edward burnett tylor's primitive cultures vol. 1 & 2). which gives some weight to his original assertion.
generally, human civilization is us picking and choosing sensible/humane parts of cultures we encounter. the romans who conquered greece were of barbarian culture, only civilized by their adoption of the greek culture, which they later spread to parts of the world the conquered. the greeks remained uncivilized for a long time as well. they attribute most of their development to encounters with egyptians and babylonians. thus, it's almost possible to see a primitive culture that upheld some of the core values of our civilization today: human rights (not too far back but pericle's athens abolished slave trade), etc.
Hammurabi was just an example, describing global attitudes vs children globally across all of written history is a monumental tasks so let’s just focus on infanticide as a proxy for how much society actually protects kids. Genocide and slavery show a disregard for some children rather than all children. But be be warned it’s not pretty and western civilization pre christianity defiantly practiced it.
“Most Stone Age human societies routinely practiced infanticide, and estimates of children killed by infanticide in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras vary from 15 to 50 percent.”
“Infanticide became forbidden in Europe and the Near East during the 1st millennium.” Except if you dig into the details those bans where very local, it continues:
“Christianity forbade infanticide from its earliest times, which led Constantine the Great and Valentinian I to ban infanticide across the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Yet, infanticide was not unacceptable in some wars and infanticide in Europe reached its peak during World War II (1939-45), during the Holocaust and the T4 Program.[2] The practice ceased in Arabia in the 7th century after the founding of Islam, since the Quran prohibits infanticide. Infanticide of male babies had become uncommon in China by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), whereas infanticide of female babies became more common during the One-Child Policy era (1979–2015). During the period of Company rule in India, the East India Company attempted to eliminate infanticide but were only partially successful, and female infanticide in some parts of India still continues. Infanticide is now very rare in industrialised countries but may persist elsewhere.”
Thus as far as we can tell it was common globally from the Stone Age, through Bronze Age up until quite recently. Also of note, those bans wouldn’t necessarily be reflected as a change in all cultures in that area only the options of those running the country.
Could you please stick to the site guidelines when posting here? You've already broken them more than once. The comment here is a particularly clear-cut case, since the guidelines include "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
“ According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average annual wage of the top 1% was $823,763 as of 2020”[0]
Or
“According to recent studies, to be in the top 1% of earners in the U.S., you need to bring in an annual salary of at least $597,815. This means that the other 99% of earners in the U.S. make less than this amount per year. When it comes to net worth, the top 1% of Americans have a minimum net worth of around $11.1 million.”
Even within FAANG, most people won’t be coming near that
I think my definition is actually useful. Your definition means if I am on a bus with 100 people, at least one of them has a net worth of 11 million USD. I don't think so. Totally don't believe this.
There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea, where anyone who comes to America and works hard can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful.
That often leads to the idea that if you’re poorer than me, you’re probably not working as hard as I am. And giving you handouts is unfair and offensive, because you just need to work for it
> There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea
America is objectively and statistically one of the better places to succeed in this way, despite the shortcomings. If you believe that nobody or very few people think the “American Dream” is real, you’re probably in a bubble. This kind of out of touch cynicism is only really rampant on social media.
Objectively and statistically speaking, it's really not. The Global Social Mobility Index 2020 places it at 27th place. Considering its economic place in the world that's pretty bad. At best you could say it's slightly above-average.
> "There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea, where anyone who comes to America and works hard can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful."
Which, in the case of immigrants coming to the United States, is often exactly what happens, proving that it is still mostly true.
It’s funny, I thought this comment was going to go the opposite way. The first examples I thought of in evolution were things like ant colonies, where individuals sacrifice themselves for the good of the collective gene pool, and are extremely successful as a species because of it.
But yeah, there are more individualistic species that are also successful. I guess it depends on the ecological niche, and both strategies can find success depending on the environment they are in?
He’s also become the richest man in the world over the last few years (at least publicly known wealth). That tends to bring you a lot of attention. His politics isn’t the only thing that changed
