Don't you feel bad for this class of warrior-nobility who have lost their place in a rapidly modernizing society, though?
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Replying to @Cybren @arthur_affect and
Yeah, it's kind of like if someone from another country did a sentimental film about the confederacy or something. Like Last Samurai really is a romanticized "lost cause" narrative. God, in a weird moment of anticipatory awfulness it even references effing Sparta FFS.
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Replying to @dreamingnoctis @arthur_affect and
It's like doing a movie about Qin Shi Huang saying that he was good, actually, because he unified ch...wait
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Replying to @Cybren @dreamingnoctis and
The funny thing is that's a take with a pedigree Like one of the artifacts of the Cultural Revolution that produced the most discussion among Western sinologists was this essay the government put out saying Confucius was Bad and Qin Shi Huang Good, Actually
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
Wait why did the Maoists hate Confucianism
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @Cybren and
Well because Confucius exemplified feudal values, obviously
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
In a way the reason the article was worth talking about isn't so much that it's surprising a Maoist would hate Confucius -- he was a sexist jerk who said that social lessers should obey their betters etc. -- but that they would have so much passion for it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
That kind of makes more sense in the present moment in the US, when so much of history is the site of intense cultural fighting. Like, people are still fighting about Aristotle.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @arthur_affect and
aristotle fucking sucked tho
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Replying to @Cybren @arthur_affect and
I'm for anyone who overshadows Plato. I guess the more direct analogy here might be like, an American anti-clerical faction who gets really into Pontius Pilate.
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Well, who gets really into Julian the Apostate, like when Gore Vidal wrote his book about him (Pontius Pilate isn't really important outside of the Christians' own stories about him, which tend to end with him becoming a Christian)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
Ok, fair. And there is a pretty broad "Rome fell because it became Christian" take out there in Western historiography, usually lauding the pagans.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @arthur_affect and
in other news I am reminded of the time a fundie religious weirdo on an online forum once tried to tell me that Pompeii was destroyed because of gays.
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