Curt Doolittle

Theme: Civilization

  • Turkey is a ‘torn country’ meaning it is a borderland between two different grou

    Turkey is a ‘torn country’ meaning it is a borderland between two different groups, and because of it’s location it contains a pretty complex genetic distribution. (“Mongrel”)

    The west anatolian(black sea) and east iranic(caspian sea) branches did separate in the distant hunter gatherer age. Followed by post-natufian farmer introgression. mesopotamian empire expansion, Caucuses and steppe introgression, Iranic expansion, and of course the widespread travel under the muslim empires, including the capture of the islamic empires by the turks. But there is very little trace of turkic ancestry in their genetics. It was a largely cultural and religious transformation.
    I’ve humorously arguee that god went thru greece and turkey with an ugly stick punishing them for some long forgotten crime, because the different gene pools had a heck of a time practicing selection. 😉
    Now in practical terms, southern italian, greek, anatonian and some caucasian people are closely related. While half of turkey is populated by the Kurds, who really do want and need a separate kurdistan. And they are an iranic people.
    As for europeans the more westward you move into europe along the mediterranean from anatolia, the more hunter gatherer and steppe integration. And while italians are proud of their heritage they are heavily italo-celtic and germanic in the north.

    Reply addressees: @IndoCelticist

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-12 20:44:28 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1679230265502081024

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1679215992428285952

  • And of course, like Rome, we don’t yet grasp that the Christian destruction of t

    And of course, like Rome, we don’t yet grasp that the Christian destruction of the ancient world, (then the Muslim), the strategy was precisely the same. After all what is the difference between the seditions and false promises of the Abrahamic religion and the Marxist religions? There isn’t any: just sophistry combined with supernatural vs pseudoscientific argument. So fool me once shame on you. Fool me (us) twice shame on us.

    Reply addressees: @B595B @PeterZeihan

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-11 20:22:58 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1678862465646354432

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1678860939980881923

  • Without writing a missive: it’s poverty, ignorance, false prosperity in decorati

    Without writing a missive:
    it’s poverty, ignorance, false prosperity in decoration vs wealth, knowledge, and true prosperity in design.
    Today: Hindu buses, jewelry. Southeast asian temples vs German industrial design.
    The more competent the more purity of form, the less competent the more use of detail and decoration.
    General the MENA studied the Stars, and supernatural, and Europeans studied nature and supernormal. The difference between europeans saw a heroic man, the asians a disgusting man, and the MENA a hatred of man. This is their representationalism. Now, this also reflects the trust in societies: European high trust, Chinese medium trust. MENA low trust.
    All artistic variation between civlizatations can be explaind as a projection of their metaphisical, economic, political and technoligical development. Art is a technology like any other.

    Reply addressees: @BronzesolTiger @ArtyArtHistory @histofarch

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-11 14:34:43 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1678774826906062851

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1678755604423229440

  • Truth Before Face Is The Fist Test of Responsibilty for the Polity – Why Can’t W

    Truth Before Face Is The Fist Test of Responsibilty for the Polity – Why Can’t Women Handle The Truth?

    In a civilization, our Western civilization, whose first principles of self-determination by self-determined means, responsibility before non, truth before face, duty before… https://twitter.com/curtdoolittle/status/1678415874506588161

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-10 15:15:33 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1678422713176666114

  • You’re either responsible for your civilization, or you’re not. It’s rather easy

    You’re either responsible for your civilization, or you’re not. It’s rather easy to distinguish between the convenience of responsibility evasion and the costs of responsibility demonstration.

    Clock’s ticking.

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-09 02:32:02 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677868183355551745

  • FWIW: it’s a basilica (more of a public building than just a church or cathedral

    FWIW: it’s a basilica (more of a public building than just a church or cathedral) which is an evolution of the roman buildings dedicated to court and such.

    –“In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica was a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town’s forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its name to the architectural form of the basilica.

    Originally, a basilica was an ancient Roman public building, where courts were held, as well as serving other official and public functions”–

    So this ‘church’ was an evolution of the court building on the roman city forums, and is an example of how the church gradually took over the functions of the state.

    The design of this basilica was an attempt to depart from medieval gothic designs that included buttresses (and which took up space). Instead, this was the largest dome every made of brick. And at the time it was a technological marvel.

    Now, is this odd convergence of styles aesthetically successful over time as were the gothic? No. But Indian saris, east asian kimono, greco roman togas, English cavalryman’s uniform as the template for all modern suits. Are they?

    Reply addressees: @monitoringbias @kevinrcantrell

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-09 02:13:33 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677863530224144387

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677834803637370885

  • “Q: WHATS THE DEFINITION OF ART?” ART If you want to define art: it’s evidence o

    “Q: WHATS THE DEFINITION OF ART?”

    ART
    If you want to define art: it’s evidence of the mind and hand of man meant to externalize and ‘decorate’ the world in the broadest terms, which converts the alien and foreign to the personal and relatable.

    In that sense, in the broadest sense, art is domestication of the world into something more desirable by man, provoking more attention and emotion from man. If you mean can we separate craft, from decoration, from design, from representation, from meaning then, yes we can. And a number of other dimensions as well.

    In the most mundane evolutionary sense, art is nesting behavior applied to tool-making behavior, applied to mark-making behavior – satisfying a primal intuition for safety in familiarity.

    I did my first philosophical work on art (“Sciencing Art”), and yes, it’s explicable, but art, like mythology, is accessible on a hierarchy of levels. Just like all intellectual projects are accessible on a hierarchy of levels from myth to theology, to philosophy, to empiricism, to science, to the endpoint of science: operationalism (construction from first principles).

    Intro Slides from Course On Understanding Art
    Here are the slides from the introduction of my course on Art, covering the “Measurement of Art”:
    https://t.co/70NEqJsdOi

    I haven’t recorded that course because my work on epistemology, science, economics, and law is the more urgent priority given the rate of collapse of our last century’s ambition to end empires and their wars in favor of nation states and free trade.

    This Architecture As Art
    At the time this cathedral was built, the community celebrated its success and gave jobs to workers, often 20% of regional income, to the production of these buildings, which were as much the center of civic life as television and the internet are today.

    So, when you call this ugly, that means you don’t comprehend it. Is Gothic a better aesthetic? Well, in most things, it is.

    There is ugly work. And we can ‘science’ both beautiful and ugly. It’s not that difficult.

    One example is the decoration of buses with dangly bits in India. Is it gaudy? Of course, it is. Detail is a substitute for quality. But can we appreciate it on its own terms? Comparing it in context? Of course.

    So, for example (and this one is common), we might think people from different ethnic groups look better or worse. Where understanding what constitutes beauty in that form (Think of the Ainu of Japan), who are an interesting mixture. Or each of the macro races of Africa. There is beauty in the excellence of the form.

    So art, like all things, is a matter of understanding.

    And with art, like morality, everyone thinks they’re competent, but almost no one is. And it’s easily demonstrable. 😉

    It takes too much knowledge to comprehend whatever is outside or your experience bias, competency, and taste.

    Reply addressees: @monitoringbias @kevinrcantrell

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-09 02:03:55 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677861107707289601

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677834803637370885

  • Sisu (2023) Finland. Highly recommended. Why? Despite the woke attack on the wes

    Sisu (2023) Finland. Highly recommended. Why? Despite the woke attack on the west by NY/Hollywood this is a fresh return to the traditional western hero and western determinism. Yes it’s a bit over the top, as the protagonist is almost superhuman in his ability to endure…

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-08 15:04:57 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677695270702702593

  • Q: @curtdoolittle: “What should sulla have done differently to stabilize the Rom

    Q: @curtdoolittle: “What should sulla have done differently to stabilize the Roman republic after becoming dictator?”

    Ok. You’re gonna ask me one of the hard questions of history before I’ve finished my coffee? And on a Saturday Morning? ;). You’re a cruel, cruel man Blake Anderson. 😉

    I have a working session in twenty minutes I need to prepare for. But This is a smart question and one worth answering.

    The simple answer in advance, just to get you thinking, is that the population of Rome vs scale and costs of administrating the empire, and the slow speed of information across it, offset by the (low) productivity of the empire (the entire world), meant that Rome needed to be that big for safety, but lacked the economy to remain that big, because settlement of trade routes (domestication of an empire), invites more primitive people out of more primitive reasons, who envy the wealth of those whose resources are invested in increasingly fragile commercial relations and less able to resist them, and unable to unite to conquer them.

    Overexpansion.

    Similar to the West today. Much more detail though, that can answer your question.

    So the underlying question is ‘what to do about it’?

    Curt. 😉

    Reply addressees: @BlakeAn77455669

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-08 14:50:26 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677691617199763457

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677683711729451008

  • Testimony: –“You probably have the most daring project I’ve ever seen in my lif

    Testimony:
    –“You probably have the most daring project I’ve ever seen in my life. This is a reformation of civilization, it’s a herculean task and I don’t mean it in any pejorative way, it is just that it’s overwhelming sometimes. Takes courage to understand it all– Levi C.

    Source date (UTC): 2023-07-08 12:11:19 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1677651577392250880