HanEmpire
Delicious
Too late, it's already spreading everywhere. We need to somehow reconcile Wyrmyn ethnic nationalism with an imperial civic nationalism.
Paths of Civilization II: Paths of Industrialization
On the one hand, this is a valid point. That would be a very logical thing to happen.
On the other hand, it requires me to believe that not!imperial Japan would actually just accept a loss when their homeland wasn't even invaded.
I mean, technically we don't know what they're like, but they are definitely not!imperial japan started early.
I suppose my most relevant question is, what form of government is the Empre if New Hespranxia?
liberty90
Evil Neoliberal Cat
- Location
- Poland
Romantic philosophy is pretty much antithesis of rational thinking.
Civic nationalism would be great, yeah.
Last edited:
- Location
- Austria
Given that, say, eugenics, for example, are a product of rational thinking, I am not sure I care?
Or rather, I am reasonably sure philosophical anti-rationalism has nothing to do with anti-intellectualism, but rather with philosophical debate on some points - one where every side is definitionally pro-intellectual, only with different philosophy.
Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
You need to unlock Romanticism before you can research Realism. That's how the tech tree works.
He didn't and he will not. That'll defeat the whole purpose of his actions now, all for the sake of selfish desires. He was shown to be smarter than this.
liberty90
Evil Neoliberal Cat
- Location
- Poland
Romanticism believes emotions and art to be superior to science. Obviously it supports intellectual pursuits, for example writing of very long books about failed uprisings and moral superiority of people who do not think about military tactics, but bravely die while talking about moral & philosophical superiority of their cause.
Romanticism is very intellectual, refined and... horrible.
Last edited:
Given that romanticism is quite necessary to reviving the Greater Sacred Forest, we will have to endure its unpleasant side effect.
Unless we do a shitload of botany.
Dutch
Bored Spearman of the Wind
- Location
- CET
You mean that thing that generally evolved from the ideals of the enlightenment and the revolution?
Yeah...
About that...
Last edited:
HanEmpire
Delicious
It's gonna be bloody as hell, yeah.
Maybe we could promote the idea of dual nationalism, a unionist one and a national/ethnic one, by emphasizing the shared cultural heritage of the OYE. Don't know what name we could slap on the imperial unionist identity, but it would preserve the smaller unique national identities of the constituent parts while still supporting the indivisible wholeness of the empire. Kinda like how the UK is composed of English, Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish parts I guess?
Last edited:
- Location
- Austria
Pan-Ymarynysm is the closest we can get, but this will sound very very troubling for Styrmyn, Kielmyr and Black Sheep because a bigass empire on their border would now be going all "all of us share roots and thus rightly should belong to one country, namely ours".
But yeah, it'll be a mess. We might want to stock up a bit on SoL to be able to take unpopular decisions.
Horologer
Incertae sedis
- Location
- a risen sea
Philosophy doesn't really have a neat "tech tree", except for the most basic forms of reasoning, like the fundamentals of logic and inductive reasoning.
You can have realism as a reaction to romanticism or romanticism as a reaction to realism. Either works. The presence of various philosophies in mainstream thought tends to ebb and flow based on the cultural zeitgeist and what influential figures support. There are certainly traditions or intellectual innovations that help kickstart new philosophies, but they're not usually strictly necessary for them to occur.
And sometimes anachronistic philosophies kinda just show up out of left field, because philosophers tend to be a bit weird.
Basically, it's pretty unlikely that one school of philosophy "has" to occur before another.
For that you need either PW iinvestment to maintain contact, put a Company into place with vested interests to build contacts(like say, a Khemetri Canal Company) or get some telecommunications. The problem with embassies is that when its a several months trip for the embassy to confirm matters, with most ambassadors lacking the authority to actually DO anything outside their defined agendas(OR if they do have the authority, they'd have to guess at the state policy, leading to things like the Hung Princess negotiating an alliance with a Great Power rather than a barbarian tribe, which her court would have strenously objected to)
Well, the Nohon problem is simply that, if they lose control of the few ports they've set up, they've lost.
The ocean barrier is too much of a bitch
Not at all selfish.
We know his criteria from the highlighted options:
-He prefers Republics - Sending him to a non-republic state would reinforce his beliefs of the ills of Monarchy, making it more likely that he becomes more of an ideologue.
-He prefers European Culture - Sending him to a European colony gives him a better standard of living and basic human interaction. Sending him to where he doesn't speak the language, and can expect nobody to speak HIS language is not going to be good for his mental stability.
Ergo, the options which piss him off are the options which turns him into a person much more dedicated to the end of the Monarchy.
If you sent him to some place that pisses him off you're probably best off arranging for an assassination and praying you get away with it
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Update slightly delayed for incoming rant on rationalism, especially during the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
HanEmpire
Delicious
Hmm, this is troubling. If we could pull this off then our internal unity will be fine, but our diplomatic front is going to tank instead. Our Peoples (plural) will be demanding that their fellow Peoples outside the border be brought in too for their own good, by force if need be. And if we don't answer domestic demands to keep peace with our allies that'll go against our Stewardship ethos and will cause political problems instead. Weakning Pan-Ymarysm to balance both sides could unravel the whole concept and destroy the unionist idea and cause our state to explode. Bah.
Last edited:
- Location
- Austria
Mmhm.
And actual internationalism was, uh. Ganged on upon by a bunch of neighbours who did not want their peasants getting uppity.
I mean, it's not all bad and in theory we can adopt it later on, but it will be really later on; that's what you get for not allowing radicals with genuinely good idea to throw out millenia of worthless baggage.
Granted, they'd also throw away at least some of millenia of not worthless one. Not really perfect ones by any stretch.
Well if internationalism had been a bit more, you know, not tied by the waist to a complete overthrow of every existing government in the world, it'd have done fine.
The problem is nationalism will lead to more pointless divisions among humanity, and we already have more than enough. The fact it's tied by the waist to romanticism which is almost by definition the philosophy of irrationality just means people won't even stop to consider if their situation will actually be bettered by revolting before they do it.
Last edited:
- Location
- Austria
First, please do not conflate philosophical anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism. Former is a cogent and coherent philosophical position which gave birth to some extremely well-thought out and influential works and, well, philosophical lines of thought. Latter is, well, latter.
Second, the thing with nationalism and internationalism is that...it did not, at the start? Both here and in OTL reactionaries declared war on France/Hex first, the latter before that mostly cared about removing oppressors and extinguishing fire from economy. After they started going "you know what, these fucks will want to kill us until we are dead anyway, so I guess we should overthrow all government because it's not like they leave us alone".
Or rather, there were calls for more international revolutions, but it was not necessarily the position of all or even of majority? Most just wanted nobles to stop the thing of "spend on shit in a day enough to feed a village a year, wonder why the treasury is empty, hike taxes, cause starvation, kill unrestful ones, repeat". Which is not necessarily international, for most of populace. There definitely were some who wanted to help or hAlp others too, but until First Coalition I don't think they were majority or listened to all that much.
HanEmpire
Delicious
@Academia Nut do we have internal tariffs?
That's an amazing post. Thank you for it.
I have a minor quibble, however, that you might be downplaying the role of French Nationalism in the French Revolution and the First Republic.
- Location
- Canada
Now I'm really hoping the sidestory involves the Princess visiting Hung and trying to explain the large Empire she married into by pointing at a map while her new husband who can't speak the language is looking around smiling like an idiot.
Please make it happen @Academia Nut
I mean, I don't expect them to be anywhere near Rome levels of bad, but I do expect them to be very stubborn and not take well to anything that is humiliation.
That said, I did ask what form of government the Empire of New Hespranxia is for a reason. If they're likely to join up with the UPM then holy crap is that a bad idea. If they are likely to be enemies then this could give the Nohan breathing room. If they're likely to be something inbetween then... eh? It probably depends on information we don't have so we can't make a safe call there.
I suppose it also depends on relations.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay, so to preface this, Romanticism absolutely has sins to answer for, and anti-intellectual streaks to it that are distinctly troubling and have caused and continue to cause suffering in this world. However, a lot of strict rationalism has this dirty little secret that it doesn't want to get out...
What is and is not rational is a political decision and thus intimately tied in with emotional contexts.
"These savages are doing nothing with this land, and if they continue to waste its potential the only rational thing to do is to exterminate them."
"These brutes are utterly lacking in civilization and seem incapable of developing it, it is right and just that we hold them in bondage so that they might benefit from some of the fruits of civilization by doing the grunt work that frees their intellectual betters to do more worthwhile tasks that labour away in the fields."
"Women are too emotional to be trusted with political power, they aren't rational enough to make the necessary decisions properly."
"If the workers don't like the conditions of the factory they are free to leave at any time. It's not my problem they are frivolous with their money and can't afford to feed and shelter themselves."
"Your language gets in the way of communication, you should speak mine and mine only so that we can interact more efficiently."
And if you ever have a sick feeling in your stomach that what you are doing is somehow wrong? Those are just emotions getting in the way of making a rational decision, you need not pay attention to them.
This also feeds into this ideal of a 'neutral' perspective. While the reduction and compensation of bias is generally a good thing, the most biased person is always the one who is certain that they have no bias, that they are the only one who sees the world as it actually is and everyone else is just letting emotions or an agenda cloud their ability to see the truth and do the necessary. They of course will respond with righteous anger if their lack of neutrality is questioned, but of course righteous anger is the 'rational' response in this scenario. Oft times 'rational neutrality' comes off as "So now that I have shoved your hand in the inactive wood chipper and have my finger on the switch, you are clearly too involved and emotional about the situation to make a rational decision about whether or not I should flick this switch, while I at a more removed distance from the scenario am clearly the best person here who can sort out whether or not this machine should be on or not."
Romanticism was born out of much of this sort of thinking. It was people looking at the destruction of social institutions and the degradation of the world and feeling sick to their stomach but still lacking the philosophies to fully express the distress they were experiencing, to not be dismissed by the rationalists of their time. They went "Fuck it, I'm just going to attach intrinsic meaning and value to culture, nature, and feelings! I don't need to justify why!" Now, this caused problems, but a big thing is that it also helped fight against a lot of dangerously reductive ideas, and get people to recognize that relationships and interactions have their own existence and value. Now, there are a lot of toxic ideas within the broad umbrella of Romanticism (something being old or 'natural' in no way makes it categorically better than the new or 'artificial'; all things must be analyzed individually and within their context to decide what is 'best' to achieve whatever goal you set), but to say that you should skip the field altogether is both foolish and impossible. While much of your research has been guided up to this point, that has in large part because you are working with restrictive models. As you liberalize your economy and academics there will be an increasing amount of stuff happening outside your direct control. Now, if you want to strangle stuff like eugenics or race theory in the crib in your own lands I am fine with that, but do note that many unpleasant or just wrong ideas will be impossible not to go through in order to get better stuff later on.
Like, just as a 'rational' example, you cannot skip across the idea of luminiferous ether straight to special relativity because on the face of it luminiferous ether makes absolute sense, and the only way to get the data to prove special relativity is to go looking for the ether and not find it. A lot of science is going to stem from people going "You know what, I like nature, let's take a look at it close just because I think it is beautiful" and only discovering the significance and importance of what they are looking at later. Although from a purely rational perspective 'importance' is irrational, because it is impossible to assign goals from pure rational thought alone, you have to have some motivation that stems from a non-rational desire before you can apply rationality and logic to working out the ways to get to that goal and the costs and benefits of your different approaches.
Anyway, sorry for the extended rant but a lot of nerd wanking about 'rationality' tends to really be 'rationalizing why I am best' and it really annoys me. To disclose my own biases I am an Anglo adult cishet male living in Canada and pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering who weekly goes to watch four to six hours of anime with other nerds, so I'm pretty sure I have a 'rationalist nerd demographic' bingo already. Due to external scheduling changes the update will likely be later tonight.
What is and is not rational is a political decision and thus intimately tied in with emotional contexts.
"These savages are doing nothing with this land, and if they continue to waste its potential the only rational thing to do is to exterminate them."
"These brutes are utterly lacking in civilization and seem incapable of developing it, it is right and just that we hold them in bondage so that they might benefit from some of the fruits of civilization by doing the grunt work that frees their intellectual betters to do more worthwhile tasks that labour away in the fields."
"Women are too emotional to be trusted with political power, they aren't rational enough to make the necessary decisions properly."
"If the workers don't like the conditions of the factory they are free to leave at any time. It's not my problem they are frivolous with their money and can't afford to feed and shelter themselves."
"Your language gets in the way of communication, you should speak mine and mine only so that we can interact more efficiently."
And if you ever have a sick feeling in your stomach that what you are doing is somehow wrong? Those are just emotions getting in the way of making a rational decision, you need not pay attention to them.
This also feeds into this ideal of a 'neutral' perspective. While the reduction and compensation of bias is generally a good thing, the most biased person is always the one who is certain that they have no bias, that they are the only one who sees the world as it actually is and everyone else is just letting emotions or an agenda cloud their ability to see the truth and do the necessary. They of course will respond with righteous anger if their lack of neutrality is questioned, but of course righteous anger is the 'rational' response in this scenario. Oft times 'rational neutrality' comes off as "So now that I have shoved your hand in the inactive wood chipper and have my finger on the switch, you are clearly too involved and emotional about the situation to make a rational decision about whether or not I should flick this switch, while I at a more removed distance from the scenario am clearly the best person here who can sort out whether or not this machine should be on or not."
Romanticism was born out of much of this sort of thinking. It was people looking at the destruction of social institutions and the degradation of the world and feeling sick to their stomach but still lacking the philosophies to fully express the distress they were experiencing, to not be dismissed by the rationalists of their time. They went "Fuck it, I'm just going to attach intrinsic meaning and value to culture, nature, and feelings! I don't need to justify why!" Now, this caused problems, but a big thing is that it also helped fight against a lot of dangerously reductive ideas, and get people to recognize that relationships and interactions have their own existence and value. Now, there are a lot of toxic ideas within the broad umbrella of Romanticism (something being old or 'natural' in no way makes it categorically better than the new or 'artificial'; all things must be analyzed individually and within their context to decide what is 'best' to achieve whatever goal you set), but to say that you should skip the field altogether is both foolish and impossible. While much of your research has been guided up to this point, that has in large part because you are working with restrictive models. As you liberalize your economy and academics there will be an increasing amount of stuff happening outside your direct control. Now, if you want to strangle stuff like eugenics or race theory in the crib in your own lands I am fine with that, but do note that many unpleasant or just wrong ideas will be impossible not to go through in order to get better stuff later on.
Like, just as a 'rational' example, you cannot skip across the idea of luminiferous ether straight to special relativity because on the face of it luminiferous ether makes absolute sense, and the only way to get the data to prove special relativity is to go looking for the ether and not find it. A lot of science is going to stem from people going "You know what, I like nature, let's take a look at it close just because I think it is beautiful" and only discovering the significance and importance of what they are looking at later. Although from a purely rational perspective 'importance' is irrational, because it is impossible to assign goals from pure rational thought alone, you have to have some motivation that stems from a non-rational desire before you can apply rationality and logic to working out the ways to get to that goal and the costs and benefits of your different approaches.
Anyway, sorry for the extended rant but a lot of nerd wanking about 'rationality' tends to really be 'rationalizing why I am best' and it really annoys me. To disclose my own biases I am an Anglo adult cishet male living in Canada and pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering who weekly goes to watch four to six hours of anime with other nerds, so I'm pretty sure I have a 'rationalist nerd demographic' bingo already. Due to external scheduling changes the update will likely be later tonight.
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
This was quite informative and a good read and I'd be glad to hear you rant about stuff like this more often
- Location
- Orlando, Florida
Totally agree, AN. There's been a ton of misinformation about how the Enlightenment was supposedly some proto-Yudkowskian circlejerk, when in actuality most Enlightenment thinkers held views similar to your own. I feel like mass media and pop culture have created this ridiculous false dichotomy between "reason" and "emotion," when both really are just different tools in the human toolbox.