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I would agree with the Vedas being included.
Regarding South Indian Lit, KS Karanth was actually Kannadiga, though from the modern (1947-) period as opposed to the classical one. He is unfortunately the only prominent humanist I know from Karanataka.
I am not really a humanist, but I am an Indian, so I figured I should weigh in here.
The Ramayana and Mahabharata are paramount, no matter what your goals are. The myths serve as metaphors and references for Indians much the same way the Bible used to for Westerners.
I am with Tanner on Gandhi. He galvanized people across India in a way that few people ever have done. His statements on pacifism, agrarianism, renunciation, vegetarianism, his challenges to untouchability, etc. inform Hindu thought to this day. Sure, his English is not at the caliber of Tolstoy, and nothing he says is especially profound (in my opinion). But what he wrote arose from and contributed to the way Hindus think, and he’s worth looking at for that reason alone.
For the opposite reason, I would advise against including the Manusmriti, except as a matter of historical interest. Unlike Gandhi’s work, it does not really inform MODERN Indian thought. In fact, the only people who bring it up are Left-wing commentators who single out retrograde or embarrassing quotes as a way of attacking their political opponents and delegitimizing Hinduism. I don’t think anybody of any political persuasion actually studies the work in depth, it seemingly exists only to score culture war points.
Relevant:
I recently attended the local Dungeons and Dragons meetup. Obviously a very Left-leaning crowd, as they were hosting a “vaccination mandatory” event in Upstate SC.
I was literally the only non-White person there, in a city that is about 47% White.
Was somewhat jarring to see people dressed exactly as Portland hipsters speaking in deep Inland Southern accents.
Wow, you’re the best!
And yes, please don’t quote me by name. I still keep in touch with my old history professors, and I don’t want to inadvertently offend them with anything I said (one of them is kind of defensive about her field, particularly in the face of perceived encroachments from other disciplines.)
@Tanner: “Maybe it is towards these small c conservative sensibilities you are motioning toward?”
Yes, you hit the nail on the head, This thought had been floating around in my brain, but it didn’t come out until you mentioned it.
Put plainly, there is a group like the Arlington crowd you mentioned, Lefty in their aesthetics and disposition, but more pragmatic in their policy choices and way of life. They actually care about public order, schools, property values, etc. And I don’t think they will be converted by people calling their concerns “racially coded.”
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@Konstantin: I hear you, but I’m not sure how much of the homeless matter can be attributable to NIMBYism per se. Eg Miami loves building things, but the nicer parts of it deal with homeless people by…shunting them into the poorer parts (eg, Brickell is militant about keeping homeless people away from its more prosperous denizens. Don’t think I ever met one there in 5 years).
Good stuff Tanner.
Definitely agree with the shift over time between “tech being for loners” and “tech being for preps.” One of my professors in residency had actually been one of the loners passionate about tech in the 1980s, but his parents browbeat him into choosing a “respectable” career (law or medicine).
@Vingliote: My old girlfriend played the original Heroes of Might and Magic (I never did, funnily enough). If you are interested, there is a spiritual successor out in Early Access called “Songs of Conquest.”
I don’t know if anyone here has ever played Command: Modern Operations, but I once showed it to someone who works at the Pentagon (whose idea of gaming was Candy Crush), she was shocked and amazed that gaming has gotten to this point.
I agree with you that online connections based on gaming are relatively superficial. People will be very passionate and altruistic…but only about the game itself. They want you to leave your life at the door, for better or worse. (This is before we get into the simping/parasocial streamer stuff, which is honestly just sad).
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@Konstantin: Agree that it’s hard to get a handle on exact demographics. Inferring from the surveys, it seems that irreligiosity and university education are modal for passionate players of the popular MOBA games. Those things correlate with being middle-upper middle class, so it’s fair bet that the MOBAs skew towards that demographic.
I’m less sure about the FPS games, but at first pass, what Vingliote mentioned (skew towards a more blue-collar player base) is reasonable.
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I’m surprised to see so many people mentioning Paradox games here. I myself was a big fan of them, and started reading about 19th century history primarily because I played Victoria 2 way too much. The Vic2 community is impressively passionate and persistent, and I’m sure it will balloon when Victoria 3 comes out.
My time to shine, I suppose. I have spent many thousands of hours in various forms of gaming, from high-profile/AAA (eg LoL, Skyrim) to niche hits (eg Hades, Hollow Knight, Ultimate General: Civil War, Path of Exile) to beta-testing indie games (eg Urtuk, The Iron Oath).
I no longer play AAA games, but I will do my best to answer your questions.
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“How superficial are most gaming interactions/relationships”?
They are deep in one way and superficial in others. On gaming Discords and Subreddits, I’ve found that if you approach in good faith, at least some people will drop whatever they’re doing to help you to your satisfaction. This never happens in real life. Not even with doctors/nurses/social workers/etc (I would know).
On the other hand, this kind of interaction is limited to the game itself. People don’t like to talk much about life outside the game. (this is somewhat changing as young people get more woke and want to discuss woke politics). One exception was the Urtuk Discord (a hardcore indie turn-based strategy game) where it turned out that literally everybody was a Male from an upper-middle class STEM background. Which goes to your next question:
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“How class divided is the video game market between genres”?
I’m sorry man, I searched for answers to this question for LoL, DotA2, Fortnite, etc. I can’t find robust public data on this. The issue is that most gamers are youths or students.
I did find this Reddit-based survey of DotA2 players, with a sample size over 30,000. It was Reddit-based, so it reflects the overwhelmingly male, Blue Tribe makeup of Reddit. But it has no data on income.
Reddit-based survey of LoL players:
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“Can we think of any other institutions, or forums of interaction that draw a larger group from different races, classes, and backgrounds together in common cause”?
The issue is that the multiracial fields often end up being mono-class (eg American medicine).
Hmm.
I agree with you on Russia/Ukraine. My impressionistic view is that the popular-level politicization only really happened after Trump won (which would also go against Hanania’s hypothesis.) I think the current fervor for Ukraine is very much a bipartisan thing, except for a few fringe Righties (for THEM, Russia/Ukraine is an entirely a domestic issue).
Vis-a-vis Iraq, I think the decision to enter was NOT about domestic issues. But the debate about staying in Iraq very much was, and that’s why the mainstream Left-wing anti-intervention movement largely dissipated after Obama won.
I think the anti-gay bill played a role in galvanizing the American public (who largely doesn’t care about foreign policy except as a cudgel to use against domestic opponents) to disdain Russia, though no doubt Trump’s election played a much larger role.
I think for foreign policy circles themselves, everything you said is correct.
“No, Substack has found a niche in the market that it serves.”
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Interestingly, Substack doesn’t even fill this niche. In other words: I don’t think political dissidents are the preponderance of its base. I have attached data on Substack’s top accounts:
https://backlinko.com/substack-users
The Top 5 paid political accounts are:
Heather Cox Richardson (Leftist fanatic who has apparently outsourced her mind to MSNBC.)
The Dispatch (Nominally Rightist publication that broke from conservatism after Trump gained power, in reality it spends much of its time siding with the Left and attacking the Right.)
The Bulwark (Similar to the above, but much more overtly pro-Left)
Matt Taibbi (Leftist in provenance, formerly known for writing about corporate malfeasance, has since shifted to de facto Rightist)
Glenn Greenwald (Leftist in provenance, formerly known for writing about foreign policy, has since shifted to de facto Rightist)There is another top account in the “business” category that is actually a political account: Noah Smith, who is staunchly leftist.
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Substack is definitely a home for political dissidents, but 3/5 of the top political accounts support the current ruling political dispensation, so I don’t think it can be seen as a dissident platform.
I think the forum software auto-deleted my reply when I was editing it. Sorry if this is a duplicate.
Anyways, haven’t read much recently for a few reasons:
1) I had to work extra shifts during yet another Corona surge, hopefully it will be the last.
2) I got dragooned into babysitting my 5-year-old third cousin. It is an unexpectedly taxing job trying to keep small children out of trouble, and consequently I no longer desire to have a large family.
3) Russia mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, so much of my reading/learning time was dedicated to following up on that and its sequelae.
4) Twitter. Unlike the other three, this last reason is entirely my fault.—
That said I changed my mind and have read 300 more pages into Hahn’s book (in the 1870s right now). I stand by what I said before, this is an unremittingly pessimistic book. Hahn finds little nice to say even about major events like the Gettysburg Address or the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. He ceaselessly redirects his focus towards Black and indigenous societies…which is fine, but it’s something that has been done since “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” in 1970. That invalidates Hahn’s claim that he’s writing something seminal and transgressive.
That said, Hahn’s insights about how changing and expanding markets transformed societies in North and South are worth reading the book for, that is not something that gets covered in most history courses.
The other thing I found interesting was Hahn’s discussion of slaveholders and secessionists. Hahn brings up a difference between more established slaveholders based in the Upper South…
“In most places outside the southernmost states, slaveholders were still prepared—following Jefferson and the moderate voices of the Virginia dynasty—to regard slavery as an evil and a burden and to speak of a very distant day when it might no longer exist. For while they invariably held the upper hand in their state governments, they had to contend with constituencies of non-slaveholding whites…”
And a different group in the Deep South,
“In the Southeast and the emerging Southwest…Slave plantations ruled (or were coming to rule) the social landscape, black majorities (or near black majorities) were the norm, export crops liked cotton, rice, and sugar drove economic growth, and the planter elite was especially powerful. Few slaveholders there had been moved by the Enlightenment currents of the Revolutionary period and, unlike their counterparts in the Chesapeake and farther to the north, rarely manumitted individual slaves. Their representatives at the federal Constitutional Convention insisted that slavery had to be explicitly recognized as well as protected from unwanted government interference.”
Prior to reading this book, I understood secessionism as something that elderly, atavistic partisans had wanted. I am not sure how I came to hold this view, or who taught it to me. Possibly it arose from a larger image of the south as a stagnant, placid society, and slavery as a stagnant institution. Regardless, that view is incorrect. In fact,
“By and large, secessionism—at least outside South Carolina [where secessionism was de rigueur anyways]—proved most appealing to young, upwardly mobile slaveholders who imagined a prosperous future for themselves if slave property could be secured and the boundaries of slave territory were capable of being enlarged. Many were already in areas of the Deep South experiencing dynamic growth, and their horizons were to the south and the west. They likely delighted in the forays of filibusters, cast eager eyes on Cuba, and exulted in the cults of militarism and masculinity. They favored developing the South’s transportation infrastructure and hoped to see a transcontinental railroad built across a southern route. Some would even support the reopening of the African slave trade so that men like them could expand their labor force and non-slaveholders might have the
opportunity to join the slaveholding class. So long as their representatives wielded power in the federal government, they might be able to follow these paths within the Union; if the government passed into hostile hands, new directions would have to be taken. Not by accident were many of the radical secessionists—the “fire-eaters”—self-made men who began their adult lives as social and political outsiders.”Tanner touches on this topic as well in an older article,
It is interesting to see slavery and secessionism as a dynamic and expanding project, the way of the future (for the South), at least until its exponents got high on their own propaganda and started a war that ended horribly for them.
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I have other thoughts, but they can wait for later. I also read Yekelchyk’s book “Ukraine: What Everyone Needs To Know,” which is good so long as you keep in mind that the book is a bit sanguine about the Ukrainian project, and explicitly focuses on countering Russian state propaganda. There may be a better introductory text with a larger historical focus, but this is a solid text that immediately gives you an overview of political players and recent developments.She is verbally adroit and able to sound profound about a wide breadth of topics. But by itself that doesn’t get you an audience, you need a cool factor. That’s where her edginess and sordid past help her.
Jordan Peterson has a similar combination of traits. He’s verbally adroit and able to explicate on a lot of things. He had a very different profession than Aella, of course…but his heterodox stance on trans identity (and the vitriol he consequently received) was enough to make him cool and edgy.
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I have a baleful view of Aella, towards most rationalists really. They come across as young and arrogant, with an incorrect model of how the world works.
Well in that scenario it wouldn’t be something settled on by agreement, it would be a ceasefire after mutual exhaustion. Somewhat like Korea in 1953.
Agree with you that such a scenario would be disastrous for Ukraine, so I hope it doesn’t come to pass.
