This is Mur @mur2501@social.cleverlibre.org

reading about the rather clumsy early attempts the English made at building a navy is funny. they sucked at it and resorted to piracy, sanctioned by the Queen, until they got their shit together.

i suspect that what gave Europe much of its edge during early modernity was the fact that they took Chinese gunpowder, mostly used for fireworks, and figured out how to launch lethal projectiles with them. having guns is pretty significant. add to this professional soldiers, army formations, naval manoeuvres, stuff the Germanic tribes of Europe likely picked up from the Romans, who were fanboys of the ancient Greeks, who were fanboys of the ancient Egyptians, and you've got highly organised military units equipped with firepower. at that point, you don't need anything like a superior bloodline to win battles...

not to mention the Islamic Golden Age. while Europe was in the middle of the Dung Ages, they were developing ancient Greek ideas further, making progress in higher mathematics and alchemy, the predecessor of modern chemistry, and their astrology, the predecessor of modern astronomy, was also quite developed as i understand it. who has the edge in terms of development seems to depend much on circumstances and historical accident.

i can see where they're coming from... ish. something about being of European descent and conquering other peoples and the explanation for this being that we are of superior stock and have evolved a superior culture because of that. if you just think very straight forward about it, with no further consideration, that's where you end up. that's what the West thought for most of its history, after all. but it's also what China thought for most of its history and what the Romans thought of themselves versus the Germanic tribes, though neither of them had a notion of racial theory.

Rome was a mix of ethnicities, but as far as the Romans were concerned, you were Roman if you walked and talked like one, for the most part anyway. a notion of races having temperaments existed but as i understand it, it didn't carry much weight. Paul, disciple of Jesus, was a Roman citizen, born in what is modern day Turkey and probably had a dark Middle Eastern complexion, but had all the rights of a Roman citizen.

i like to point to the ancient Nubians as an example of a highly civilised black people. South America also had great civilisations. i mean, racism doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny does it...

Oh and hello, it's me, I have introverted nipples and it made me be so mean to myself for so many years but I'm embrassing it today. 🥰

First time finding myself sexy in ages. What.