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Your Next Project Starts with Brownstoner
lech – Unless you believe in string theory & every one of those events branched into alternate realities – we’re just stuck in ours.
Again, just to draw out the difference between law and history:
LAW: I had to steal a loaf of bread because, if I didn’t, my family would starve. The law does not care about alternatives. The law says go to jai.
HISTORY: We chose to let Germany exhaust itself killing Russians and French so we could have an advantage when we fought them. You don’t just go look up the law or some other norm to decide whether this was appropriate, you ask yourself what the world would have looked like if we had chosen differently. You have to consider the “fiction” that MM casually dismisses.
jackal – love you man (nh) but you don’t have your a-game today
Look at it based on what standards? Certainly not those shaped by western European influence via colonization. There are few countries in this world that haven’t adopted many of the norms imposed on them via colonization. Most people aren’t sophisticated enough in thought to speculate on such things without coloring it with their own experiences.
CH – thanks am looking forward to returning to those days, however I did have a windowless office – ha!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_modern_Africa
doesn’t really prove anything with regard to the debate above, but its eye-opening.
Every alternative that didn’t actually happen is speculative, ishtar. But that doesn’t mean alternatives should not be examined as the basis for historical judgment.
Was it appropriate to drop the bomb on hiroshima?
Should we have entered the First World War?
Should Lincoln have declared war on the South?
The answer to each question very much depends on an examination of alternative paths. You have to look at the “fiction” that never was.
lech, so judgment against speculative alternatives isn’t appropriate.
One day I will have my own office with a door and windowS. It will be on the 3rd floor of my brownstone.
In real estate news, my family was considering a move to Westchester a few years back. I still have the broker listings pop up in my google reader and WHOA am I glad we didn’t do that. Things that we were looking at in the 800-1mm range (taxes 20k and up) are now asking 600 and are sitting on the market. Those people must be freaking.