Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 April 21

= April 21 =

modern lifestyle bring more harm than good to us?
????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Airene Sim (talk • contribs) 10:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

This question cannot be answered because:

122.107.207.98 (talk) 10:26, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) You cannot define harm.
 * 2) You cannot define good.
 * 3) You cannot compare harm (of X) with good (of Y) without first assigning a scalar value to each of them.
 * 4) You cannot come up with a scalar value (for Z) that everyone would agree upon.

Whilst agreeing with 122.107 that this qwuestion is effectively unanswerable. Evidence in favour of modern life could include...Modern average-life-spans lengths are almost universally higher than historically (how much of this is due to lower Infant mortality i'm not sure). Similarly average Working time has come down in the modern era too and there's evidence to suggest more people have more Leisure time too. It's hard to find out for certain but i've also heard that there since World War 2 the world is a period with very low numbers of wars occuring compared to most of documented history - and i've heard it suggested that modern warfare is less bloody than historic wars (though again it's hard to research). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 10:28, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * "It was the best of times... it was the worst of times..." etc. - Dickens. "The quiet past is inadequate to the stormy present." - Lincoln. "The worst moment of being alive is better than the best moment of being dead." - Dennis Miller. 122 is right that it would be difficult to measure. And there's another aspect to this: "Compared to what?" The OP is implying that older lifestyles might have been more good than harmful. But in what sense? What era does he think might be superior to this one? The one where lynchings of minorities evoked a shrug of the shoulders? The era when there was no running water, and if you got sick, you died, end of story? As regards war, look at the casualty figures for World War II compared with Iraq or even Vietnam and tell us if you would prefer to live in that era. "The best time is always right now." - Paul Harvey. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:25, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at the writings of the Traditionalist School. René Guénon's "The Crisis of the Modern World" would be a good place to start. -Pollinosisss (talk) 14:45, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Compared to preindustrial life, there are many improvements (as mentioned above) but there are quite a few health problems associated with our recent lifestyles such as increased heart disease and possibly allergies and autoimmune diseases. Also, our chemical and nuclear advancements mean people are more likely to be exposed to harmful substances.\
 * If we're going further back to pre-agriculture, there are some more stark differences: foraging peoples typically have more leasure time, better nutrition, and a more sustainable lifestyle. It's likely that agriculture became widespread because it supports larger populations (which can then easily conquer foraging peoples and force them to cease their foraging ways) and allows workforce specialization that includes an elite class that rules over others.  Since agriculture allows larger populations, it also allows the formation of cities, which then facilitates the spread of diseases.
 * Going back to the OP's question, you'd have to assign weights to the good things and bad things, which can be pretty subjective. But, now that you know the sort of things to look at, you can decide the answer for yourself.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  17:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * One theory about the "Garden of Eden" and other creation stories is that they express nostalgia for hunting-and-gathering lifestyle ("living off God's bounty") vs. agriculture, in which man attempts to control the environment rather than letting the environment control him. Nostalgia or idealism for the past, and being blind to its negative side, is what led Will Rogers to say, "Things ain't what they used to be... and never was!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:23, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * See Doomsday Clock. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

The principle of natural selection prohibits outrageously poor practices from continuing very long. Vranak (talk) 21:00, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Natural selection prevents practices that are poor for the continuation of the species to last very long. It says nothing about individual comfort or the amount of leisure time available. Buddy431 (talk) 00:06, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The only thing that I personally find to be better from the years past is entertainment. Movies and music were, in my opinion, much better than that of today and you didn't have talentless idiots becoming famous for absolutely no good reason. But that aside, I'm thankful to be alive today and I wouldn't have it any other way, even if presented with the opportunity to travel back in time (unless I'm guaranteed that I can return to the present whenever I feel like). From a social and technological point of view, we're the best that we have ever been. That being said, ask any American minority if they think life was better 30-40 years ago, and they will answer you with a resounding "HELL NO!". 24.189.90.68 (talk) 00:53, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There were always talentless idiots, you just forget about them. And in 25 years you'll forget about today's talentless idiots who seem to be omnipresent. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:34, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Reality shows didn't exist back then, did they? Unless the trend of people becoming stars from reality shows, sex tapes and the internet dies down, we'll probably just keep seeing more of the same. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 03:12, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * They had their equivalents—their media spectacles, their celebrities for celebrity's sake. Daniel J. Boorstin's The Image makes this quite clear—he puts Charles Lindbergh in basically that category: carefully engineered media fete (the flight) is then spun out into a personal drama. The trick is that you don't remember most of these kinds of people, and in fact it's always good for a laugh to remind people of who used to be popular for no great reason. (Half of the jokes in Family Guy are based on this kind of humor—remember when MC Hammer was cool? Ha, ha!) --Mr.98 (talk) 12:11, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Lindbergh was in significant peril during his flight (a French counterpart had disappeared over the Atlantic not long before), and also just happened to be the one who was ready to go from New York, as there were two other American teams at the same airport trying to be the first to fly the Atlantic solo. Regarding "reality shows", that era had its own equivalent (or ancestor) of "American Idol" or "Star Search" (or "The Gong Show"), which was Major Bowes' radio show, the Amateur Hour. He didn't have Simon Cowell, but he had a gong and didn't hesitate to use it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:40, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If you want an example of a pointless media celebrity of 100 or more years ago, just click on Steve Brodie (bridge jumper) or Mary Toft etc. etc. -- AnonMoos (talk) 13:18, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

As a word of warning, I will say that we must be careful when comparing our experiences to the past, because our experiences (i.e. people with access to a computer, probably living in an English speaking country) are not representative of all people's experience. A poor farmer in Ethiopia would almost certainly have been better off in terms of health and leisure if he had lived in a hunter-gatherer society 15 000 years ago than now. Maybe he would have been better off 500 years ago, when those pesky guns weren't so readily attained that make it so easy to slaughter people by the thousands. On the other hand, there have been numerous advances that have benefited even the poorest in recent times: antibiotics, mosquito control, vaccination, etc., so it's not a clear cut case for anyone, and we must assign a subjective metric to get any meaningful results. I just think we should keep in mind that Wikipedia editors are not a representative sample of the world population. Buddy431 (talk) 02:57, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Native American Culture without European Involvement
I often times find myself wondering what direction native American culture would have gone in had it not been for European settlement. I was wonderng if anyone knows of any fiction related to this idea, or if there are any anthropologist that have theorized about it.--160.36.38.126 (talk) 12:27, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Do you mean no contact at all ? Or would they still be exposed to European alcohol, guns, disease, horses, and ideas ? StuRat (talk) 12:42, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Fiction? Two sort-ofs: Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt and Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. There may be more if you check the Uchronia website. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:20, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * (ec) Fiction relating to the idea would be "Alternate history", and theorising would be "Counterfactual history". List of alternate history fiction has some examples which might fit the bill, including Aztec Century, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, Conquistador (novel). I have read none of these, but the plot summaries sound like they might interest you. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 13:21, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, guys.--160.36.38.126 (talk) 13:51, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Given how thoroughly inaccurate many representations of pre-Columbian Native Americans are, you may also want to check out 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus for a very up-to-date and well-referenced assessment of current knowledge of the topic. Once you know what things were like in 1491, you'll have a better idea how to imagine an alternate 1492 (and onwards). Matt Deres (talk) 20:21, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * And if you are more in the mood for viewing than reading, try Apocalypto by Mel Gibson. It has taken its fair share of criticism, but I did learn something from it. Vranak (talk) 20:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Correction -- Apocalypto gained some passionate champions in the Hollywood community. Actor Robert Duvall called it "maybe the best movie I've seen in 25 years". Director Quentin Tarantino said, "I think it's a masterpiece. It was perhaps the best film of that year. I think it was the best artistic film of that year." Actor Edward James Olmos said, "I was totally caught off guard. It's arguably the best movie I've seen in years. I was blown away." Vranak (talk)


 * I thought it was so-so. They missed a golden opportunity when the chief baddie told his minions to jump over a waterfall, while standing in front of them.  I expected them to say "you first" and give him a good shove.  Not that "our hero" had anything to risk.  Anyone who can outrun a jaguar while seriously wounded clearly has super-powers, so he should have just flown away.  I was glad to see his father die, though, as he was too stupid to ask why the other villagers were fleeing and take some action to protect his village.  And what happened to the village kids ?  They just dropped that thread midway thru the movie, it seems. StuRat (talk) 21:00, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Though not quite a direct answer, the the "First People" series of books by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neil Gear are basiclly finctional stories based on archeological evidence. While these stories give us a picture of what aboriginal culture may have been like, we can probably extrapolate that over the course of their collective history there were cultural changes that naturally occurred over time that were impacted by many influences (climate change, migration, inter-tribal relationships, etc.). Thus, there were different kinds of ebbs and flows as there was in european, asian, african and other areas. Given the different spiritual focus of aboriginal peoples (and they were as complex as any other culture!), one can speculate with confidence that a "Myan" or "Incan" style of culture would have developed. Would the aboriginal peoples have developed technology such as metalurgy, writing or other "advanced" sciences, who knows? History can follow a "natural progression," so the better one understands the historical context of a culture's development, the better one can speculate. As was noted in a previous thread some months ago, it does not appear that aboriginal peoples were much better at conservation than we are now - due to our current level of technology, we are just more efficient at polluting and creating environmental havoc. ..

In reading the above reference to the "First People" series of books, I have read a few and have enjoyed them. I wonder how "accurate" the books are in relecting or hypothesizing about pre-Columbian Native culture. I know that there are references at the end of each novel. Has anyone spoken with Native communities to see how accurate these book are? Just wondering.

Immaculate conception of Elizabeth?
Just read Luke 1 recently, where Gabriel reveals: "He (John the Baptist) shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb" and "And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible". Is that a reference to immaculate conception of Elizabeth and immaculate birth of John the Baptist? 213.154.11.120 (talk) 18:51, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The articles on Elizabeth (Biblical person) and John the Baptist seem a little vague on that point. I don't think Lizzy conceiving John was "immaculate", but "merely" miraculous. But it would be better for a biblical expert to step in here. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:01, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No. An "immaculate conception" is conception in which the child avoids the stain of original sin, and the only person the church has ever thought of in this way was Mary, Mother of God. It refers to the child, not the mother; thus the Immaculate Conception was the conception of Mary by her parents, not Jesus by his. Mary was the result of an immaculate conception.  No such claim is made for Elizabeth; the claim is that she miraculously conceived late in life when seemingly barren. - Nunh-huh 19:04, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, it's coming back to me a bit: Mary was conceived in a normal way, but God declared that she was without original sin. God Himself became the father of Jesus by impregnating Mary (by turning Himself into a sperm cell, or whatever - those kinds of details were unknown in biblical times). Hence Jesus was born without original sin. Right? The remark in one article about God having graced Liz probably means simply that this miracle happened, not that God took away her original sin. Right? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Priests always squirm whenever you press them to elaborate on the dynamics of the Immaculate Conception.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 19:24, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Especially as it's reasonable to assume the beneficent God gave Mary one Holy "Big O" in the process. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:26, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * More especially if you're dealing within the Mormon mythos, where God physically schtupped Mary with His big ol' God-penis. - Nunh-huh 19:36, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * And I bet that's the exact word He used, being Jewish and all. And it came to pass that Mary sang out, "Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found Thee!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * But it may be worth noting that we seem to have slipped into discussing the virginal conception rather than the Immaculate Conception. - Nunh-huh 19:42, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's a common misconception (choke) and which confused me also until you reminded us of it. Mary needed to be free of original sin so that Jesus would also be. There was no such need with cousin Elisabeth. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:46, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * And for some interesting coincidences (?) regarding naming, check out the articles on Miriam and Elisheva. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:49, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I always thought the Magnificat was the Biblical equivalent of an orgasm! --TammyMoet (talk) 19:36, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If God can't give a woman an orgasm, then who can?!!!!!!--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 10:36, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You cannot be serious! Vranak (talk)

The serious point is, there's no "immaculate conception" in scripture or in early apocrypha. Instead, this is part of what the RCs term "tradition".--Wetman (talk) 18:21, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, certainly not in those words, but Catholics actually do maintain that their belief in the immaculate conception has a scriptural basis. In fact, they maintain there is a scripture basis for many of the doctrines of Catholicism that Protestants object to. And of course, if one is judging ideas on the basis of their antiquity, the idea of the "immaculate conception" (though not its proclamation as dogma) pre-dated that of "sola scriptura" by centuries. - Nunh-huh 23:32, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Gendered unemployment question
This week in my Introduction to Economics class, the professor showed us graphs of recent monthly unemployment in the US by gender. I don't have them on hand right now, but I noticed that male unemployment tended to peak at the 1st of each month, whereas female unemployment tended to peak around the 15th of each month. Do you know why this is? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 22:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * If it was monthly figures, how do you know when in the month the peaks were? --Tango (talk) 21:36, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah. Here is a PDF from the US's Bureau of Labor Statistics and they measure everything monthly.  I have never heard of an attempt to chart the daily unemployment rate.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:17, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I should have said daily. I haven't found the graphs yet, but I remember with certainty that male unemployment peaked at or near the start of each month, and female unemployment at or near the middle - the respective peaks and troughs appeared to alternate almost perfectly. (I know this does sound odd, and I have no idea where my TAs got the graphs from, but they must have gotten them from somewhere.) --Lazar Taxon (talk) 22:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You're going to have to ask your professor. I've never heard of daily unemployment figures. --Tango (talk) 23:34, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like it's a monthly data set, with the male data justified to sit 'on' the month-line 'crosshair' thing along the axis, with the female one justified to sit between the two months - IE. the male Jan datapoint is directly beneath the line for January on the axis, with the female one halfway between Jan and Feb points. Not sure why the lecturer would set it out that way, though. --Roydisco (talk) 16:10, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * It could simply be reader error. The chart is a monthly barchart with male on the left and female on the right for each month.  The reader assumed that the male bar was the first of the month and the female bar was the 15th. --  k a i n a w &trade; 16:17, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * That wasn't what it was - it was two completely separate line graphs. I think Roydisco might be right. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 20:14, 22 April 2010 (UTC)