Quote from: jhkim;481206I'm in favor mainly of (3).  However, anyone personally bothered by Howard's racism should totally feel free to change or de-emphasize the racist parts.  That doesn't make them elitist - it's just a difference in taste.

I, eh... I find 95% of Howard's work to be non-racist.  I tend to ignore the other 5% for game purposes - "What do you mean you don't want to massacre the village of your black allies?  There's a white woman needs saving!" just hasn't come up in my Conan games.  

Quote from: Benoist;481342I'm not so sure. Joseph Campbell had a way to classify certain aspects of myth. For instance, he talked about the natural myth, which is the constant or parallel aspects of myth you can find back all throughout human history, which relate to human nature, the stages of development of our bodies and identities, how we relate to the cosmos around us, etc., and the societal myth, which is basically a series of dogma or laws on how to behave in society and fit in with the culture we are part of.

The part that evolves over time is the societal myth, while the natural myth is endlessly reinterpreted and retold through various stories, songs, dances, with patterns or archetypes which remain constant.

I believe that good and evil as values are constant. Their existence transcends the field of human experience. There are things that are "right" and fit in the plan, or design, of what you are and who you are and how you relate to others and the world and beyond, and things that are "wrong", which you should not do because that affects your soul, your being, how you relate to others, yourself, the world and beyond.

What changes is each society's interpretation of what, exactly, that means on a societal level, what exactly is a crime, and related punishment, what harms others, and what is okay. It's the societal interpretation that is different.

I don't disagree.  Violating Taboos is always Bad; but what constitutes a Taboo changes over time.  Who can kiss who; whether it's Good or Bad to object to that kiss, etc. We had a very big shift in the UK in a few years under New Labour recently - it went from homosexual kissing being taboo, to objecting to homosexual kissing being officially taboo, in about 5 years, 1997-2002.

Quote from: S'mon;481345I don't disagree.  Violating Taboos is always Bad; but what constitutes a Taboo changes over time.  Who can kiss who; whether it's Good or Bad to object to that kiss, etc. We had a very big shift in the UK in a few years under New Labour recently - it went from homosexual kissing being taboo, to objecting to homosexual kissing being officially taboo, in about 5 years, 1997-2002.

That's right. That's what I'm talking about.

Quote from: S'mon;481339Obviously wikipedia is edited mostly by cultural Marxists like yourself.    If we leave out the "as a consequence... " bit then yes, most people throughout history, and today, meet the wikipedia definition of racist.  Since identifiable races do by definition have identifiably different "traits"*, that would seem to be inevitable.

*Americans typically claim that 'race' is about 'skin colour', but from what I've seen (& I've looked at this a fair bit), American black vs white racial categorisation is not dependent on skin tone, but on nose shape.  In the US system you can have brown skin and be "white", but if you have white skin and a 'black' nose, then you're 'black'.

I dont think it is quite that simple in the us. We tend to use skin color as a starting point, but also rely on other indicators. Also because of our history the white/black distinction is an important one. I believe i mentioned this on another thread but my grandfathers old boxing card from the 40s had a place for "complexion"--he was listed as medium.

Quote from: Sigmund;481261First, I didn't get anything like a feeling of The Iliad from playing in your game. It came across as much more gritty and down-to-earth to me. I did not see anyone PC or NPC that came across to me as being anything like Achilles, for example. If your campaign world is mythic, it's only in the write-up as far as I can tell.

That's cuz I'm sneaky-pete about this stuff in actual play. If you remember the four Geornlings you fought and how that fight developed and ended, I structured it intentionally on the kind of dipylon fighting that the Iliad presents, with a champion (Borvr) and some shieldmen supporting him.

More formally, the naming of enemies and the presentation and development of them is a well-known feature of the poem that I try to bring over into my games whenever possible: Everyone who dies is named, and often even given a epithet and explanation, and their deaths are tragic but inevitable outcomes of their participation of the agone of combat. These features are also present in the Icelandic sagas, another major "mythic" source for my games. I find the pre-Christian heroic ethos that develops in and from Greece tremendously interesting and useful in roleplaying games.

QuotePlus, I'm not sure I would lump The Iliad and The Odyssey in with the same kind of mythic as the myths of Perseus, Theseus, Hercules, Beowulf, etc.. In those myths, the good and the evil are pretty clear, and not debated very much. The heroes are super-heroes, but still "human". The enemies are monstrous and terrifying. "Absolute good and evil are mythic" comes from me, because I've been reading mythology since I was a small child. I have never, not once, read a myth where the protagonist agonizes over whether their enemy can be "redeemed". They go in, kick it's ass, and move the fuck on.

That's because "redemption" is a Christian and post-Christian concept. They're not interested in redeeming their foes because their foes aren't fundamentally evil. Even creatures like the Medusa and Minotaur, while loathsome, are ultimately vicious and dangerous entities like particularly powerful rabid dogs, rather than "evil". Perseus and Theseus aren't killing them because they're evil, but because to do so is a challenge that will demonstrate their virtues (mainly arete) to win the favour of the gods, as well as glory from their fellow men and women.

That to me, as I said earlier, is fundamentally different than "Orcs are evil, so we're merely being proactive in taking them out when they're helpless". In fact, slaying the helpless and weak is particularly contemptible in the heroic ethos because they are not a challenge, not a "fit" opponent to strive against. Neoptolemus demonstrates no virtue at all by killing Astyanax, and it's one of the great crimes hanging over the Greeks' sack, despite its sensibility from a geopolitical / piratical asshole viewpoint (Astyanax would be obligated to avenge his father's death and dishonour on Neoptolemus once he became an adult).

Quote from: S'mon;481335Going on: 19th century American slavers were racist; whether slavers in the various parts of the rest of the world where slavery was endemic were racist would take a lot of analysis - at a guess I'd say Arab slavers were pretty racist, but added in more religious bigotry to the mix; African slavers weren't particularly racist except in a 'my tribe is stronger than yours, ergo better' sort of way, Brazilian slavers were racist but not as rigid as Americans, etc etc.

18th century - Were early 18th century black slave owners racist against black slaves?  I suspect not?  AIR modern American racism really emerged in the late 17th & early 18th century with first the ban on black ownership of white slaves in the American colonies, then the ban on white slavery.  By several decades before the American Revolution/War of Independence the racial slavery system we're familiar with was in place.

You're not answering the general question, by specifying only a black slave-owner being racist against blacks, or whether people have "modern American racism".  I completely agree that early racism is going to have differences from modern racism.  Obviously a black slave owner is unlikely to be racist "against" all black-skinned people, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't discriminate towards any race.  

However, the question is - do you think it is more accurate to say that most people were "non-racist" or "not racist" in history - as opposed to saying that they were racist in different ways than modern racists?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;481350I dont think it is quite that simple in the us. We tend to use skin color as a starting point, but also rely on other indicators. Also because of our history the white/black distinction is an important one. I believe i mentioned this on another thread but my grandfathers old boxing card from the 40s had a place for "complexion"--he was listed as medium.

Black/white is done by the noses.  Trust me, I'm married to a Southerner.  

I think skin tone did use to be more important - it was especially important among upper-middle-class mixed-race black Americans, with the 'paper bag test' for social acceptibility.  But whites also cared about complexion; fair WASP & Scandinavian complexions being seen as superior to darker Mediterranean tones, such as typical for Italian-Americans of Sicilian origin.   That strong emphasis on skin tone among whites seems to have been a Yankee thing from what I can tell, and prompted by the late 19c immigration waves.  Among white Southerners you could be dark like Johnny Cash, and as long as you had a straight nose & straight hair you were 'white', and (typically) not ranked inferior to someone with pale white skin.  (There might be talk of your 'Cherokee ancestry' - occasionally even real!)

Whereas in all parts of the US if you have a 'black' nose you were and are black, the one-drop rule applied and applies.  So Henry Louis Gates is 'black' despite being paler than the average Italian-American.

Quote from: S'mon;481362Black/white is done by the noses.  Trust me, I'm married to a Southerner.  

I think skin tone did use to be more important - it was especially important among upper-middle-class mixed-race black Americans, with the 'paper bag test' for social acceptibility.  But whites also cared about complexion; fair WASP & Scandinavian complexions being seen as superior to darker Mediterranean tones, such as typical for Italian-Americans of Sicilian origin.   That strong emphasis on skin tone among whites seems to have been a Yankee thing from what I can tell, and prompted by the late 19c immigration waves.  Among white Southerners you could be dark like Johnny Cash, and as long as you had a straight nose & straight hair you were 'white', and (typically) not ranked inferior to someone with pale white skin.  (There might be talk of your 'Cherokee ancestry' - occasionally even real!)

Whereas in all parts of the US if you have a 'black' nose you were and are black, the one-drop rule applied and applies.  So Henry Louis Gates is 'black' despite being paler than the average Italian-American.

I am not from the south, so your wife might have a point about southern united states. But here in the north east I think we usually begin with skin tone followed by other general features (though to be honest the nose has never been a strong indicator for me personally). I've never heard of a nose rule before.

Quote from: jhkim;481358However, the question is - do you think it is more accurate to say that most people were "non-racist" or "not racist" in history - as opposed to saying that they were racist in different ways than modern racists?

I think that by your definition, almost everyone in history was racist, as you say.

In the "like the Nazis" definition which is at very least the undercurrent in all uses of the word, I'd say no, before the Enlightenment it's a meaningless concept. The roots of American 'racism' lay in the Enlightenment view of Human Rights (Christian in origin, but secularised).  If everyone has Human Rights, but we still want to enslave those guys, then they can't be fully Human.  This applied to a lesser extent to European colonialism in general, I think.

Then the Nazi ideology combined 19th century ideas of race-superiority with Rousseauean romanticism into a Total Race War ethos, a lot like the Communist Total Class War, and from very similar roots.  

Modern Racists - people who would actually call themselves Racists - always refer to the Nazi model of race-hate and genocide.

Kim, you're a smart guy, stop wasting your time explaining racism to a wanker who uses the term "cultural Marxism" semi-seriously.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;481364I am not from the south, so your wife might have a point about southern united states. But here in the north east I think we usually begin with skin tone followed by other general features (though to be honest the nose has never been a strong indicator for me personally). I've never heard of a nose rule before.

It may not be conscious with you, but it's remarkably consistent.  IME people with African noses are always classed as 'black' in the US, even if their skin is lighter than that of most whites.  If you look at a bunch of the black intellectuals & politicos around Obama (like Gates, or formerly Rev Wright), you might see what I mean.  Many of them are lighter-skinned than the average Sicilian.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;481368Kim, you're a smart guy, stop wasting your time explaining racism to a wanker who uses the term "cultural Marxism" semi-seriously.

That always really bugs the scum, for some reason.  On rpgnet they even start vomiting.

Quote from: S'mon;481339Obviously wikipedia is edited mostly by cultural Marxists like yourself.    If we leave out the "as a consequence... " bit then yes, most people throughout history, and today, meet the wikipedia definition of racist.  Since identifiable races do by definition have identifiably different "traits"*, that would seem to be inevitable.

Quote from: S'mon;481366I think that by your definition, almost everyone in history was racist, as you say.

In the "like the Nazis" definition which is at very least the undercurrent in all uses of the word, I'd say no, before the Enlightenment it's a meaningless concept.

OK, sure, the Wikipedia entry was phrased badly - but that's ignoring the other source I gave.  In fact, all the dictionaries that I've browsed have minor variations of the same theme - discrimination and belief in superiority based on race.  If you have a source for the "Nazis-only" definition of racism, I'd love to see it.  

In any case, I can see this as a clear source of discrepancy.  For example, Tolkien sent a reply to potential German publishers where he said, "But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."  Now, this clearly establishes Tolkien as not a Nazi - he hated them.  However, in doing so he refers to Jews as "that gifted people" - which doesn't reject the idea of racial superiority/inferiority in general.

Quote from: jhkim;481379In any case, I can see this as a clear source of discrepancy.  For example, Tolkien sent a reply to potential German publishers where he said, "But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."  Now, this clearly establishes Tolkien as not a Nazi - he hated them.  However, in doing so he refers to Jews as "that gifted people" - which doesn't reject the idea of racial superiority/inferiority in general.

I don't think most people would categorize Tolkein's description of Jews as "that gifted people" as racism. It also needn't have been a statement about race. He could simply have been refering to Jewish culture.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;481382I don't think most people would categorize Tolkein's description of Jews as "that gifted people" as racism. It also needn't have been a statement about race. He could simply have been refering to Jewish culture.

Remarking on an actual extant culture is merely reality...I am Scottish, does someone's noting my paleness count as racism?  I think not....