The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney

This post has 9 comments with rating of 5/59

• 
  caesar963
  June 15th, 2023
  

  

  Fair play, you’ve got the fada in there as well - it’s of diacritical significance, of course. There’s another Western idea, I think (Aristophanes of Byzantium, no less).

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney
• 
  cluckers
  June 15th, 2023
  

  

  You could say that Western civilization was just a wild power grab with massive violence interspaced with moments of pure genius. This could also be said of all of humanity. The need to dominate and subvert others to the individual will is the core of all politics and human history. We just like to add art and literature as icing on the cake of evil and violence. This is just a observation of mine. I am most likely wrong.

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney
• 
  apnea
  June 16th, 2023
  

  Narrated by: Shaheen Khan
  Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins

  Female narrator never works for me.

  I agree with cluckers, but none of these fictions matter or soon won’t because of a number of existential OVERSHOOT predicaments and problems that have already begun to smash civilization like it’s made of Lego.
  Humans, like all life forms have evolved to be ON every waking moment and no creature has evolved brakes. I hate climate change deniers, but they do not use any more energy/consume than your average liberal who thinks there is such a thing as green capitalism.
  I for one have thrown off me shackles and embraced the reward seeking rapacious cancer ape I am. In the big picture there is no one to blame - If you want blame at the top is thermodynamics which guides evolution.

  I’ve looked high and low and the only reason I can find for why we exist, is to reduce gradients. I’ll bet anyone the only way we will ever slow our fossil fuel use is when it becomes harder to extract, which has already happened. Peak oil, crude-conventional and unconventional are past peak. It still provides net energy, just way less surplus energy than before.
  There should be no guilt in being a rapacious ape because that is the purpose the universe gave you. There is no higher power than thermodynamics.
  ~
  *The purpose of life is to disperse energy*

  The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.

  The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.

  There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life’s complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one’s bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.

  Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy.
  .
  https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10674

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney
• 
  caesar963
  June 16th, 2023
  

  You’re again guilty of comment OVERSHOOT.

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney
• 
  koloko
  June 16th, 2023
  

  “Western civlization” is simply acting like you don’t fart, get pimples or masturbate because you’re a “good person”. Shave your face and cut your hair, because those evil darkies have beards and long hair. Wear as many clothes as possible, because only savages show their bodies. Don’t sing, dance or laugh, because that’s what those inferior people do…. then give a vomited word salad lecture about how smart and “moral” you are, like the other guy in this comment section… Ignore nature and reality - THAT’S Western Civlization

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney
• 
  casba
  June 18th, 2023
  

  There is no parthenogenesis in anything including civilisations, thanks to land and sea trading networks that existed from time immemorial one civilisation branch that moved geographically west building one one another is in broad terms: Mesopotamia sedentary formation - Sumerian - Egyptian - Minoan-Mycenaean-Classical Greek- Roman -Byzantium - Islam - Renaissance - Enlightenment- Scientific and New geographic Discoveries - Trading Companies - Industrial Revolution - various wesestern european empires - US of A etc

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney
• 
  qp1029384756
  June 18th, 2023
  

  caesar963: June 16th, 2023 - “You’re again guilty of comment OVERSHOOT.”

  Soggy caesar salad, the narcissistic, HYPOCRITE boy-child, loves to lecture about guilt.

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney
• 
  WangLaoshi2020
  July 1st, 2023
  

  Thank you for this!

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney
• 
  caesar963
  July 25th, 2023
  

  q-anon - what are ya blithering on about, q con?!

  The West: A New History of an Old Idea - Naoíse Mac Sweeney

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