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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit MACLUNKY -- The Lit Forum Maclunky Thread, v3

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Point Given , Sep 12, 2015.

  1. Amon_Amarth

    Amon_Amarth Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jan 27, 2005
    Neat vid, but It's probably just the Rebels aftermath week or whatever, and I've been shouting "Lothcats>porgs!!1" at anyone who sent me porg-media recently.
    Guess this is what show hangover looks like.
     
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2018
  2. Onderon1

    Onderon1 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 18, 2008
    Lothcats are :cool:, true. :D

    And yeah - there's a definite sense of ... I don't know if emptiness is the right word, but I wish there was firmer news on new animated SW. :confused:
     
  3. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 7, 2012
    My birthday is today... I always knew I shared it with Yuri Gagarin and Vyacheslav Molotov, but I had no idea that it's also Oscar Isaac's birthday until my girlfriend mentioned it today.

    It was doubly funny to learn it from my girlfriend, as she is from Guatemala and gets very frustrated whenever she sees Isaac referred to as a Guatemalan solely because he was born there.
     
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  4. comradepitrovsky

    comradepitrovsky Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2017
    Oh, hey! It’s also my birthday today! Strange coincidences...
     
  5. Senpezeco

    Senpezeco Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2014
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    (Steve I know your gift looks awfully small in comparison but I promise it's just as awesome as a shiny new TIE fighter)
     
  6. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 7, 2012
    Definitely saving that for next year, cheers!
     
    Senpezeco likes this.
  7. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    I have spent a week in the mountains over here skiing and taking it easy. Where I was I could not get my phone or internet to work, so to get in contact with the rest of the world we had to drive for at least 20 min

    Also I'm reading The Chrysanthemum and the Sword right now (as part of my study literature) and I have to say I really don't like the way it generalise thing. I mean, it threats all of Europe as if the whole area was one whole unite, as if all the different countries and cultures that makes up Europe had the same historical social system and development.

    Do you know what they did with the unvented surplus animals that most have appeared? I mean, when you get to many calves or a calf of the wrong gender and non-other around wanted to take it, over here you would just slaughter it and eaten/preserve the meat.

    Also do you know if farmers use wagons or similar? I'm wondering since non of the pictures I have seen depicting pre-Meiji-era has shown wheeled vehicles.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2018
  8. jSarek

    jSarek VIP star 4 VIP

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2005
    1. The book is a product of its time and purpose.
    2. The book is an attempt to understand Japanese culture, not European culture.
    3. For most purposes, Europe DOES have the same historical social system and development. There's a reason we talk about "Western Civilization." Every country in Western Europe (and its colonial descendants) either directly experienced, or assimilated culture from places that had directly experienced: Roman law, Christianity, feudalism, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and countless other broad and narrow factors that together make Western Civilization a single thing. Sure, each country has its own particulars, but they all share a common historical social system and development that set them apart from other civilizations, including Japanese.

    The original source is a physical book so I can't verify it, but Wikipedia's article on rickshaws claims that they were invented "after the lifting of a ban on wheeled vehicles from the Tokugawa period (1603–1868)." So maybe not, for at least those years?
     
  9. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    I know that. Did you see me complain about how overt patriotic it is when it making comparisons between Japan and USA? Or how the description of Japan's culture or its history is heavily coloured by the author’s American-ideal perspective? No, because that’s something to be expected.

    I actually find the book more interesting in how it show the American self-image looked then in how it describe Japan.

    By the same token can't we not say that East Asia is one big block then since it has returning religious, philosophical & law believes and have been affected by similar historical developments? And have we not been told not to do that?

    Also while you have a point that there are returning points all over Europe I will have to disagree that Europe can be generalised to one big block, f.ex. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword seems to think that all peasants in Europe were landless. Yes there was serfs and contract farmer that worked on land not-their own but there was also farmers that owned the land they worked on and some of them could be rather rich.
     
  10. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    You realize there's a difference between Westerners generalizing other cultures (esp. cultures they've exploited) vs Westerners generalizing themselves, right?


    Right?
     
  11. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    We are talking about Americans generalising Europeans.
     
  12. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    I said Westerners for a reason, Gamiel. I have the very tiniest of violins to play for Europeans wondering why East Asians can't be generalized in a complaint about Europeans being generalized in a book that's like 7 decades old.

    Get over it. Not gonna mince words, sorry. Your question is infuriating and horrible.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2018
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  13. jSarek

    jSarek VIP star 4 VIP

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2005
    Most analyses of civilizations I've seen take after Samuel Huntington, who does regard Japanese civilization as distinct from (though clearly related to) the Sinic and Buddhist civilizations of mainland East Asia, while having the West as a single civilization. Huntington isn't exactly my favorite guy - I think the way he paints the Clash of Civilizations as inevitable is rather myopic, and tinged with more than a bit of Islamophobia - but I think his division of civilizations is fairly sound.

    But that's kind of a side point. The book's purpose (Point 1) was to attempt to make Japanese culture intelligible to Americans (Point 2). It did not serve the book's purpose to either nitpick the differences between Western cultures, nor to make a stand on whether or not Japan was part of the same civilization as the rest of East Asia (since Chinese culture wasn't that much better understood by most Americans of the time anyway).

    I presume this relates to feudalism in the West, in which case the number of people who owned and worked their land was small enough to amount to a footnote exception to the rules. Manorialism was a defining characteristic - perhaps the most defining characteristic - of European feudalism across the board.
     
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  14. Barriss_Coffee

    Barriss_Coffee Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2003
    For the first one, it was common practice in most societies around the world that raised captive animals to kill animals for food once they were fully grown, because it wasn't worth investing in them more than that. Usually some females would be kept longer to have offspring (or if you had cows, milk, but ancient Japan really wasn't into cows). This is likely what they did with mammals, and they probably timed the breeding cycle during the year so they'd have enough meat over the winter because Japan can have a pretty extreme temperate cycle. But for the water buffalo, those are sort of difficult to raise in large numbers (today it's common, but before hormones and factory-style animal breeding it wasn't). So I think that if those were probably traded around as soon as they had offspring because they'd be in demand.

    Regarding the second one -- yes! Lots. Wagons were common. They also had chariots. They show up in the art sometimes. Actually Wiki has a good image of one 1500 yrs old:
    [​IMG]

    Also (random) -- I worked a few years ago on a fox project and Japan. I'm not a Japanese archaeologist so it was sort of out of my area, but we were trying to track the ancient fox populations from the east Asia mainland and northern Japan to see if they were related and when they diverged. I left the project before it was finished, but there seemed to be evidence of people bringing foxes from the mainland (Korea maybe?) to northern Japan, not too long ago. So you can probably add foxes to your list of animals people were keeping around.
     
  15. AdmiralWesJanson

    AdmiralWesJanson Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 23, 2005
  16. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    Sorry, misunderstood your comment. And yes I do understand the difference, I did not mean any insult and I think I worded my senteces wrong since you seem to have taken something from it that I did not mean. Mistakes was made and I will try to learn.

    Hej, it's my part of the world we are talking about here I feel like I have the right to feel a very tiniest bit of irritation over this [face_beatup]

    I realise that I seem to have failed to communicate how serious I am about this complain: I don't take it so serious and the only reason I took that up was partly that it was the only part of the book (which I'm reading for a course) I felt I could really complain about (regarding its age, why it was made and how it was made), thought it would be a somewhat fun bait and switch (seems it was not), and I have recently read some modern text (popular science I admit) where they did similar generalisation of Europe so that thought was in the front of my mind.

    Actually, since I have just read that part of the book I can say that it do say that Japan is part of Chinese cultural sphere and took much culture and ideas from China but Japan just took the surface parts and not the real, good stuff. F.ex. the author complains that they took in Confucianism from China but did not incorporate the meritocratic system thereby allowing the parasitic aristocracy to continue to rule instead of having people that have earned their position by merit, among other stuff.

    And, as I said above, I think I worded my senteces wrong since you seem to have taken something from it that I did not mean. I never meant to say that the book said anything about Japan being part a or not of East Asian civilization or that I had any problem with any of that.
    Eh, maybe I'm provincial here but I do have to point out that serfdom did not exist in Sweden* and Norway and the Estate Diet of Sweden, that existed between 1436 and 1866, was made up by four estate, one which was the peasants. And I would like to think that Sweden was more than a footnote exception with all the stuff we did during at least parts of that period. But I have to admit that going by English Wikipedia so was serfdom more commonplace then I had got the impression of by some Swedish material.

    * which was made up by what we today think of as Sweden and Finland give or take some land (until 1809 when we lost Finland to Russia).

    ----------------

    @Barriss_Coffee thanks for all the information :D. Regarding wagons, I have seen the same thing as @jSarek mentioned regarding a ban on wheeled vehicles from the Tokugawa era, do you know anything about it?
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2018
  17. BobaMatt

    BobaMatt TFN EU Staff star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2002
    A cool thing about the TLJ deleted scenes coming out is people complaining about the choices made in them as if they weren't cut from the movie for being suboptimal.
     
  18. Supreme Leader Woke

    Supreme Leader Woke Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Dec 29, 2017
    Your snark has been on fleek lately, Matt. ^:)^
     
  19. BobaMatt

    BobaMatt TFN EU Staff star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2002
  20. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    NOT CANON
     
  21. BobaMatt

    BobaMatt TFN EU Staff star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2002
     
  22. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    So has Jello been assassinated yet?
     
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  23. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    His least favorite EU character made it into the new canon recently, so I would say that, for all intents and purposes, he has
     
  24. BigAl6ft6

    BigAl6ft6 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Nov 12, 2012
    Huh, fell down a wookieepedia rabbit hole from a Dark Horse planned invasion comic storyline link and ended up finding a Legends Finn

    http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Finn_Galfridian

    Yikes! Doesn't look things turn out too well for this Finn

    [​IMG]
     
  25. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    Multiple times, all day long. Seems to happen every year. Weird.