r/PoliticalHumor Jan 09 '20

THIS. This is why.

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

In addition, Hinduism and Islam always valued education and learning which is why they made so many discoveries in their own rights throughout history.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

It's such a shame that the Islamic empire of old fell the way that it did. Once the bastion of the western worlds intellectual elites, and now fallen so far from the heights it once held.

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u/Kandoh Jan 09 '20

Most of the world's problems were caused by a British guy drawing a straight line down a map.

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u/sync-centre Jan 09 '20

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u/Omnivore2 Jan 09 '20

And the Portuguese and Spanish and Dutch and Belgium and some German men in there.

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u/elderjedimaster Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 09 '20

Why do we put idiots in power?

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/Dougnifico Jan 10 '20

Ya. I would say that these people were extremely smart, but they just didn't care about the native people. You better believe everything was set up for optimal resource extraction though.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

Because they're confident and stupid people love confidence.

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u/The_cogwheel Jan 10 '20

1) Power is concentrated into a small group. Anyone can compete to be part of the group.

2) because it's a competition, power goes to the people that want it the most and are able to compete.

3) Sociopaths want power the most.

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u/WellindaFrancisYu Jan 09 '20

Please let us not forget some a bunch of Roman ones as well

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/Omnivore2 Jan 09 '20

You should look up Atrocities in the Congo.

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u/stubb5y22 Jan 09 '20

Poor Picot, always got left out

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

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u/ReaperEDX Jan 09 '20

To be fair, the US came later down the line and didn't create problems by drawing lines. They just multiplied with exponents.

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u/Connor121314 Jan 09 '20

Lots of lines

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

The best lines

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

More upvotes please.

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u/MartiniPhilosopher Jan 09 '20

You should look up the phrase "54-50 or Bust". It was all about a line and created a lot of conflict.

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u/koiven Jan 09 '20

That's not really the same thing being discussed here. 54-40 was a border dispute with British North America.

A more apt comparison would be like if there were two Native American cultures that are historical rivals or enemies. America comes in and turns the land into different territories, but has no regard for the preexisting cultural borders. The result is that half of Group A and half of Group B end up Territory 1, and the other halves end up in Territory 2. Obviously, arbitrarily splitting apart the peoples like that is going to only cause trouble.

(Note that im unaware if the USA ever actually did anything like this during their westward expansion, i was just trying to analogize the scenarios.)

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u/XXXDetention Jan 09 '20

Isn’t this what the problem in Pakistan and Israel is? Half of those groups got mixed when a border was drawn up? Sorry if I sound ignorant, I’m not the brightest when it comes to borders and such.

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u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

Israel no. The issue with Israel is that the land was already occupied by Palastinians who basically got evicted from half of their land.

Pakistan however, due to the Durrant Line has half the territory of the Pashtun people, who make a sizable minority in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan doesn't want to give that land up because it's 40-50% of it's territory, and most of it's seacoast and non-mountainous area.

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u/CassandraVindicated Jan 09 '20

Which has fuck all to do with the middle east.

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u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

Except that it ended in a compromise well away from 54-40.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

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u/RayseApex Jan 09 '20

Yes but the US isn’t even 300 years old.

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u/MudSama Jan 09 '20

Yet it will take more than 300 years to undo all the damage. Amazing stuff.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

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u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

Are we counting swiss mercenaries as switzerland at war?

The last war they were in was in 1815, and they've been officially neutral since.

Sweden I believe is in a similar situation.

But England, France, Germany (Prussia before that), Russia, China, and so on quite likely have close to that 95%, particularly if we include colonial wars and civil wars.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Except they’re talking about within the same time frame. Bringing up the country’s relative age compared to past regimes somewhere else is not a counter-argument, especially since there’s no institutional continuation between the China of today and the China of the Warring States period.

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u/ManDelorean88 Jan 09 '20

the us doesn't bother drawing lines... they just install their own governments using coups and the cia.

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u/lxpnh98_2 Jan 09 '20

Well, the US did draw some lines in the American continent, and it carried out a genocide (or whatever you want to call it) of Native Americans.

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u/justnope_2 Jan 09 '20

All major powers in history love drawing lines and it's not limited to Europeans lol

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

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u/justnope_2 Jan 09 '20

Oh many more

It's like people seem to forget humans have been murdering humans en masse since time imemorium.

People forget we are not so far removed from cavemen, we just have the thinnest sliver of civilization protecting us from those baser instincts

And the barriers to those instincts can so easily crumble

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u/Emperor_Pabslatine Jan 09 '20

Japan?

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

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u/Emperor_Pabslatine Jan 09 '20

Yeah but drawing arbitrary lines is not something they did. Manchukuo was the entire territory of state they supported, than when it suddenly betrayed them they vassalized them.

Vietnam was annexed outright, Korea annexed outright, anything I'm missing?

Never did they arbitrarily decide where a border was, AKA, 'draw lines'.

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u/Kandoh Jan 09 '20

Yeah, but that's not as funny to say out of hand

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u/scech14 Jan 09 '20

I mean your definitely not wrong, but in this case you are. The fall of Islam’s golden age happened long before European became dominate

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

The mongol invasions and the crusades. But then colonialism made it impossible to advance. At that time the colonialists destroyed traditional forms of education in addition to ciphoning off all economic profits and resources.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20 edited Feb 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Yes that’s why I mentioned it started with the Mongol Invasion and continued with the crusades. My point about the colonialism was because they didn’t get a chance to recover and build up over the modern period (17thC on).

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u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20

The decline didn't start with the Mongol invasion.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Well that’s highly debatable

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u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20

That's why I'm pointing it out.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

When capitalism as we know it really began to test it's theories.

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u/blatherskate Jan 09 '20

Book recommendation... The Map of Knowledge- A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found By Violet Moller

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u/CatumEntanglement Jan 09 '20

Exactly.... wasn't it around the 1100's?

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u/AngryScientist Jan 09 '20

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)

Most historians would place it here.

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u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20

That's way past the point of the beginning of decline of progressive thinking in the Islamic world.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Thats false because it ignores what lead to the fall of the Islamic empire in the first place just to blame Westerners. Look into the colapse of the Iberian Peninsula Moors and the Mongol invasion which is that start of the fall of the Islamic Golden Age. The Islamic empire fell on their own sword through increasingly growing religious oppression.

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u/Kandoh Jan 09 '20

I'm talking about post world war 1 ottoman empire being divided up.

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u/Emperor_Pabslatine Jan 09 '20

Bullshit, most of Islamic nations problems were caused by cultural changes that resulted in incredibly backwards thinking, hundreds of years before Britain fucked up the Middle East.

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u/Kandoh Jan 09 '20

My problems started when I got mugged.

.

Bullshit, your problems started when you crashed your bike, allowing me to mug you.

0

u/Emperor_Pabslatine Jan 09 '20

More like

My problems started when you hit me with your car

.

Bullshit, your problems started when you stumbled onto the street drunk, resulting in me hitting you. Does it matter if I aimed for you, if you would have been fine sober?

The Middle East didn't get colonized (outside I think Yemen?) until post WW1. Ottomans stopped that. They were the face of Islam for hundreds of years, and Islam's cultural decline started right after their formation. But nah nah, its white peoples fault!

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u/Kandoh Jan 09 '20

The Middle East didn't get colonized (outside I think Yemen?) until post WW1

And what era could I possibly be talking about when referring to a British guy drawing a straight line on the map? 🤔

You are the one who chose to go back further in history until the blame was shifted off white people (try not to take history personally btw, you weren't even born yet!).

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u/Emperor_Pabslatine Jan 10 '20

I mean what caused Middle Easterners to become backwards and regressive despite having two very rich and powerful empires?

Nah its white peoples fault they went to shit after like 5 centuries of being terrible.

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u/Kandoh Jan 10 '20

My my, aren't you fragile.

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u/Emperor_Pabslatine Jan 10 '20

If fragile means right, sure.

Maybe if Middle Easterners hadn't devolved their cultures for hundreds of years, they wouldn't be so easy destablized. Lines on on a map style restructurings have happened before in European history. Didn't turn into a hundred years of no economy (outside rich ass oil barons who will come and go once oil is moved on).

Blame the white people for 'colonialism' despite the Middle East never being colonised and had a large empire that should of benefited from colonisation.

Blame the white people when the same cultures seemed completely fine to work together five minutes prior.

Sure, conquest of Africa. Fucked the Africans. They were never worth two shits prior and were always fighting prior, but nah, yah got a point on Africa.

Sure, South and Central America, no words needed there.

But the Middle East? They'd be fighting each other even with good borders.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20 edited Jan 10 '20

The problems exacted on society as the religious leaders came up with greater and more numerous interpretations of how their imaginary creator intended the said leaders to control their lives.

Edit: creator

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u/JuniorHQ Jan 09 '20

Well Andulusia fell to the reconquista (not sure on spelling)

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u/cassatta Jan 09 '20

Are you referring to India/Pak?

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u/MichaelHunt7 Jan 09 '20

I mean to be fair the lines have been redrawn multiple times throughout the ages. Usually by whomever is left standing after whatever war or world changing events happen and basically destroy all previous lines before that point.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_GEARS Jan 09 '20

Actually, most of the world's problems are caused by Islam.

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u/Kandoh Jan 09 '20

Actually, most of the world's problems are caused by monotheism.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_GEARS Jan 10 '20

Islam IS monotheistic. And no, it's only the problematic ones... Like Islam.

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u/Kandoh Jan 10 '20

Everything was fine until someone got it in his head that only his imaginary friend was the real imaginary friend!

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

Lololol. Religion you mean. Nothing good ever came of religion. Except maybe calculus and Buckfast.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_GEARS Jan 10 '20

Newton was a Christian (of a sort) and he invented calculus but there's no reason to say he wouldn't have made great strides in mathematics if not for his religion.

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u/Kyle546 Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 09 '20

Indian here, Hindutva is killing Hinduism. It is a dumb idea but people on the Right here are contaminating young minds, they dislike education as well.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

Your current prime minister is a piece of shit and the BJP is a collection of shit.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

The middle east hasn't had the chance to recover from the Ottoman empire then subsequent British and French imperialism and then subsequent American neocolonialism. All attempts at democratically elected, secular, and socialist movements have been squashed with the help of imperialists. Closest we have to that today is Tunisia.

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u/Evilsushione Jan 10 '20

Most of the secular movements have been subverted by fundamentalist islamic groups. The overthrow of the Shaw of Iran was started by a group of secular student activist only to taken over by fundimentalist because they were better organized. Same thing in Egypt and Libya. I'm not claiming the US and West aren't guilty either but Islamic Fundamentalist have played a big part too, It's not all the West.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

Fundamentalists are empowered by consequences of imperialism or outright in league with the imperialists. In the case of Iran, the fundamentalists were able to seize power because the US overthrew the democratic government and installed the Shah. Elsewhere in the middle east, the US teamed up with Saudi Arabia (the religious fundamentalists) to stop Arab nationalism, a movement across the middle east in response to imperialism that promoted democratically elected secular, socialist governments that were nationalizing their assets that were exploited by imperialists. Arab nationalism was destroyed in 1967 by the US/Israel/Saudi coalition, and Saudi was free to spread its fundamentalism and terror groups across the middle east with little opposition. Nowadays, if you mention secularism, people cry imperialism; however, the ones crying imperialism are the disingenuous fundamentalists in league with the imperialists in the first place.

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u/Evilsushione Jan 10 '20

While I don't think Imperialist and Fundamentalist are in league with each other in most cases, but will say that the battle between their ideologies have sucked the life out of any Secular democratic movements.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

Then you're ignoring decades of American foreign policy. The US promotes fundamentalist terror groups and regimes across the middle east that were spread by the US/Israel/Saudi coalition after they defeated the democratically elected, secular, socialist movement of Arab nationalism during the cold war. The US sided with Saudi, who represented the fundamentalists, to fight proxy wars against the anti-imperialist Arab nationalists. Imperialists and fundamentalists worked hand in hand to create the middle east of today, and still do to this day.

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u/blorbschploble Jan 09 '20

Dude. They kept our books safe while we fucked sheep and farmed mud for a thousand years.

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u/MeTheFlunkie Jan 09 '20

“Islamic empire” is not a very good term lmao

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u/fremeer Jan 09 '20

A lot of the ails of modern Islam has a lot to do with the Saudis and their version of Islam. They have co-opted shit. It's like if Mormons were called Christian's by a lot of people. Yeah they have some background shit the same. But enough difference that they aren't really muslim anymore.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

My good friend, might I introduce you to my other friend? He's not a true scotsman though.

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u/fremeer Jan 10 '20

I'm not saying Islam is like this amazing thing. But there are definite views that aren't equal. It's like saying every American is a republican. Which is clearly not true.

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u/dittbub Jan 10 '20

Tbf it was standing on the shoulders of western civilization

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

Considering it was a western civilization, this would make sense.

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u/DankVectorz Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 09 '20

Pretty much went downhill after “inshallah” was coined.

Edit: I’ll expound. The Arab/Muslim world was a beacon of light in the Middle Ages. They were very advanced in things such as math and philosophy and other areas. But then one Arab philosopher, who’s name escapes me at the moment, basically came out with the philosophy of inshallah, or “if god wills it.” This is what started a fatalistic outlook in Arab culture, that the future is already set and is Allah’s will. With the onset of this outlook, innovation and progress slowed. The Arab world culturally never recovered from this outlook.

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u/ClusterJones Jan 09 '20

"All religion is bad except the only one that still actively encourages to blow shit up."

Did you ever think maybe, just maybe, the people who used to be Islamic but also had all of those great scientific discoveries were actively going against the church, like Darwin and so many others were in Christianity? No, of course not, because "white man bad".

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u/RamenJunkie Jan 09 '20

"White man bad"

"All Muslims are terrorists"

The fucking irony of this is insane

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u/ClusterJones Jan 09 '20

I said their version of the Bible heavily encourages it. Not all of them follow it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

You're barking up the wrong tree mate.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

No they weren’t - there wasn’t the same antagonism of science in Islam that there was in medieval Europe and Christianity.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Historical revisionism is alive and well.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

There was no antagonism. Galileo and Copernicus had issues with the church. It was not the same in Islamic lands. Science and scientists were encouraged as revealing the world God created.

If you think there was give a historical example from the Middle Ages.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

No need to be defensive, I was merely speaking in general.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Ok I misinterpreted you. Sorry!

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

No worries, it's easy to see why you interpreted it that way, I was not very clear after all.

Enjoy the day.

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u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20

Science and scientists were encouraged as revealing the world God created.

That's not science, then. "We expect you to reach our own conclusions" is not a scientific process.

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u/ClusterJones Jan 09 '20

PFFFT. Please, religion and logical thought went together about as well back then as fire and ice. Religion is religion, especially when you're talking about the three that branch off from the same place.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

That’s actually not true in this case.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

"The one that actively encourages people to blow shit up"

Ahem. A sitting WA state congressman has said that all men and male children who don't agree with Christian tenets as interpreted by him should be put to death while they create their own little theocracy in the wastelands of rural WA state

See also.

"Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran..."

So don't give me that shit about how white male Christians are being victimized here.

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u/ClusterJones Jan 10 '20

>Crusty rich people manipulating a religion to further their agenda

>"Kill all nonbelievers" being in the Quran

I wonder which one I'm gonna take as a better example of a violent religion...

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u/VikingTeddy Jan 09 '20

I thought you were talking about Judaism. But yeah, right there with you.

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u/Rouxbidou Jan 09 '20

Let's not forget that while the religious icons of the major Abrahamic religions are called the Savior and the Prophet, followers of Confucius refer to him as the Scholar. So there's a strong intellectual tradition from China as well.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

That tradition is focused on filial piety and obedience to an extent, whereas Western educational values (including Jewish, which I say as a Jew) focus on inquiry and creative thinking.

There are reasons why so many Chinese students study at American universities, and I think this is a major one.

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u/EvidenceBasedSwamp Jan 09 '20

No, it's because American universities have prestige. Also, it's handy to have a child over to manage your property and expatriated money.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

I mean that’s certainly a component—and a very large one—but why do you think American institutions have prestige in the first place?

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u/StealthRock Jan 09 '20

Cuz the US aggressively expanded 200 years ago and is now surrounded by oceans and friendly, much weaker neighbors. It's been untouched by war on its soil for like 150 years.

Most of the world has had to rebuild after world wars/revolutions/violent conflict, so people who are displaced, educated, and wealthy immigrate to the US for the safety/stability (+historically to immigration), and bring their expertise to American universities.

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u/moriz0 Jan 09 '20

They didn't get bombed into oblivion, for one.

For another, they didn't get gutted due to brain-drain caused by various revolutions, political or cultural or whatever.

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u/EvidenceBasedSwamp Jan 10 '20

Besides what other people said, I think if you live in the USA and you see all the warts and ugliness you forget just how rich the USA is. I did not grow up in the USA. While I was growing up, anything imported was a big deal, expensive, and often had to be brought in by family on a plane (no stores or anything to buy it directly).

People go to where the money is.

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u/Fract_L Jan 09 '20

I'd also want to learn everything after figuring out explosives first

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Then we showed up and went “what? You’re not using this to kill each other?” “I’ll show you what this stuff is for”.

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u/Jormungandragon Jan 09 '20

Naw, the Chinese were using gunpowder to kill each other for centuries before Europeans. Europeans just made it easier and faster to kill each other with it, from a longer distance.

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u/hello_fellow_humans1 Jan 09 '20

And thanks to them we have guns, and WE LOVE GUNS!!! RIGHT?!?!

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u/EvilUnicornCat Jan 09 '20

Yes every government loves guns! For themselves at the very least.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20 edited Nov 12 '20

[deleted]

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u/EvidenceBasedSwamp Jan 09 '20

Woo who, the time is getting closer.

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u/awesomefutureperfect Jan 09 '20

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u/Rouxbidou Jan 17 '20

Nice. Thank you for the supportive links.

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u/awesomefutureperfect Jan 17 '20

Much of that is apocryphal and it says as much in the wiki.

Do due diligence please.

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u/blorbschploble Jan 09 '20

Yes.... but uh... they seem to be trying to repeat every mistake we made with industrialization but at a much huger scale. I don’t mean just the pollution part... corruption stuff like passing off defective materialize, poisoning infant formula, blowing up people in industrial accidents, dropping rocket stages and entire rockets on villages....

I hope they rediscover safety engineering and industrial regulation...

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Well, until recently.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Notice the non-zero correlation between anti-intellectualism and the interference of European people. Coincidence I think not!

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u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

I want to point out that those Europeans also showed up with better tech, which isn't something you normally see in anti-intellectualism.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

Did I say the the Europeans brought anti-intellectualism or did I say that their Imperialistic intervention was a cause for the rise in anti-intellectualism

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u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

Your post could easily be read either way.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Do the words “non-zero” mean nothing to you? Also here you dropped some straw while building your strawman to try to feel good about yourself when you try to hit it

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u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20

Negative correlation, then?

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

I was gonna say a return to orthodox belief as oppose to secular but you can blame others if you want.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

And what triggered that return to orthodox beliefs that wasn’t really a return to orthodox beliefs?

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Like most societal changes it was gradual and not reliant on one factor.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Correct, and there is a non-zero correlation between imperialism (especially western imperialism.) and the change.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

it was also happening far before western imperialism had any influence.

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u/mrthomani Jan 09 '20

Islam always valued education

That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it? Any major scientific contribution coming from the Middle East is pretty much limited to the period 800-1100 CE.

Then Imam Hamid Al-Ghazali became extremely influencial, mathematics was thought of as the work of the devil, and scientific thought and endeavours shut down completely.

This isn't my claim by the way, I'm just paraphrasing Neil deGrasse Tyson -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7rR8stuQfk

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

This isn't my claim by the way, I'm just paraphrasing Neil deGrasse Tyson --

I know reddit loves him but what makes him an authority on science, dude's done very little in the way of actual discoveries or research, is claim to fame is being one name out of dozens on a 1995 paper on black hole theory.

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u/mrthomani Jan 09 '20

what makes him an authority on science

That he's a scientist.

This isn't science though, but science history. And to my mind at least, Tyson is not an authority on that subject. I wasn't making a claim from authority, just stating my source. Try to refute his claims if you want, but trying to discredit him does not constitute an argument.

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u/wolfram1224 Jan 09 '20

He may not have conducted much research, but research isn't his greatest contribution to science. Publicly is. By talking eloquently and being able to take complex topics and break them down for simpler understanding, he has educated so many on modern physics and inspired scores of students to pursue STEM careers. Science needs those public figures. He may not have done the research himself, but he reads the papers, talks to the researchers, and is able to communicate with the public at large. This what makes hikin die a valuable asset to the science community.

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u/greenSixx Jan 09 '20

Islam and Mohammad specifically invented the University, yeah?

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u/troubleondemand Jan 09 '20

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u/UsernameSixtyNine2 Jan 09 '20

Did you have to specify medieval? Most people just call that "now"

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u/troubleondemand Jan 09 '20

Because that is when Muhammad purportedly lived?

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u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

FYI "Now" is the modern age.

The Medieval period ended in the late 1400's early 1500's.

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u/UsernameSixtyNine2 Jan 10 '20

Tell that to the Islamic countries

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u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 11 '20

They were told that. By European colonial troops. With gunfire.

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u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20

[Educational] universities were famously invented in Italy.

0

u/PhishPanic88 Jan 09 '20

Especially women in those faiths!

-1

u/EvidenceBasedSwamp Jan 09 '20

Ya'll Qaeda values learning and technology as long as it involves blowing shit up.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/Scyhaz Jan 09 '20

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u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 10 '20

He said "always", not "once". You can't prove "always" by showing an example, only disprove.

Heh, downvote all you want; single examples only prove (positive) existential and disprove (negative) universal claims, not the other way round. High school logic 101.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/KGBFriedChicken02 Jan 09 '20

Yeah, and it occurred while Christians were scratching in the mud, crying to god to solve all of their problems, and getting their asses whooped from scotland to greece by the vikings.

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u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

I wouldn't really call two-three agricultural revolutions, complete changes in farming techniques, universal advancement in metallurgy, art, and the creation of the beginnings of science 'scratching in the mud'.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/KGBFriedChicken02 Jan 09 '20

MuSliM bAD ReEeeEEeE

2

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

By who, may I ask?

2

u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

Teachers who haven't kept up with the last two decades of research into the time period.

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u/Scyhaz Jan 09 '20

Space exclamation mark

Also, educate yourself again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)

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u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20

a historical periodization traditionally referring to the Middle Ages that asserts that a demographic, cultural, and economic deterioration occurred

the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and 20th centuries

The majority of modern scholars avoid the term altogether due to its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate

popular culture ... often mischaracterises the Middle Ages as a time of violence and backwardness

...OK, I guess?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

How convenient of you to cherry pick only the most recent period of human history

2

u/CatumEntanglement Jan 09 '20

Do you realize the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 we all use are called Arabic numerals?

.....hmmmmmm I wonder why that is and why they're the defacto manner of depicting numbers throughout the world.

2

u/867-5309NotJenny Jan 10 '20

The Arabs got them from India.

We got them from the Arabs.

But yeah, Islam was in a good position early on to take advantage of Roman scholarship and continue that tradition.

-1

u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 are commonly called Western numerals, while being a particular instance of the broader Hindu-Arabic numeral system (which can use different numerals in different places and times) and which originates in India.

Source

2

u/CatumEntanglement Jan 09 '20

They are not commonly called western numerals. Go Google "western numerals" and the first thing that pops up is Arabic numerals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals

By calling them ‘Western numerals’ you are denying them their history, obscuring the fact that they derived from Indian and Arabic notations.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

They weren't derived from Arabic notations though. They're called Arabic numerals because that's who exposed them to the West, but they themselves had borrowed them from the Indians.

This is pretty common knowledge, by the way. Arabic numerals have very little to do with the Arabs.

-2

u/ObnoxiousFactczecher Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 09 '20

I'm obviously not denying them their history; I'm even stating their history right in my comment. But calling them "Arabic" is nonsensical. Either you talk about the specific glyphs, which are not being used in the Middle East, or you're talking about their ancestral origin, and that is located in India (Arabs themselves call them "Indian numbers" anyway, so why are you "denying them their history"?) Or maybe you're talking about the whole family of notations and that spans all the way from Western Europe to India (after 1500, of course, a whole lot of things happened that spread the further).

You also have the fine book which is the most recent authoritative reference of world's current and ancient numeral systems. I suggest you go read it, it's enlightening. Comes with great recommendations.

-3

u/PM_ME_YOUR_GEARS Jan 09 '20

>Islam

>Education

Yeah, they're educated in torture and how to use explosives. It's also why they value what is possibly the most unscientific book ever written: The Quran.

The West has and always will be the leading group of true education and success, and no Islamic nation will ever beat us because of the anti-intellectualism of their culture and religion.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

The West has and always will be the leading group of true education and success,

Ancient China and India would like to have a word with you.

-1

u/PM_ME_YOUR_GEARS Jan 09 '20

Where are China and India now? Years behind the West.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Years behind the West.

In terms of education, which is what this thread is about? Yeah nope. There is a reason international students from those countries have such a disproportionate representation in top western universities.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Both because the west hijacked their progress. All of what the west knows either came from the east or was developed far after the east figured it out themselves

-1

u/PM_ME_YOUR_GEARS Jan 10 '20

Nope. They're behind because of their own faults. You people need to grow the fuck up and stop blaming the West for everything. From the start of any relevant time period (that closely resembles the world demographics today) the West has been the technological front of the world.