Thoughts?
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
Just started reading this,
what are /lit/s thoughts on this book?
>>8167025
Reverse Racism is still Racism
>>8167048
>Reverse Racism
Im only a few pages in and I get that vibe already.
Is this book just political correctness propaganda?
Environmental determinism is a joke.
>>8167147
Yes, it is.
>>8167160
So then why is this book so highly regarded?
There must be some good points to it
>>8167184
>Highly Regarded
By who? Liberal commentators?
>>8167187
For starters it sold millions of copies worldwide,
and it won the pulitzer prize too if I'm not
mistaken.
I agree that the book is mostly politically correct
nonsense, but if there are people being
convinced by this garbage then the author must
be doing something right.
>>8167222
He's offering squeamish liberals an escape from the "why are dark skinned people stupid" question, how could it NOT sell millions?
>hurf durf librul feelgood bullshit
>no one actually critiquing his points
WE
>>8167048
What "reverse racism" occurs in the book? You clearly haven't even read it.
I mean if you really look at it, Europe does have far superior ports to any other continent in the world, like that shit is just curved all over
>>8167328
why no am domestercate zebrah?
>>8167184
It appeals to liberals who can't stand the fact that a civilization with no written language, no schools or learning institutions of any kind, and little to no infrastructure is going to be less intelligent than a civilization with all those things.
>>8167025
"evolution is a fact of reality except for allopatric speciation in humans in the last 60 000 years because i find it would be morally repugnant" – Jared (((Diamond)))
>>8167025
Worth reading, kids will cry a lot about the fact you are reading it but consider that most will not have read it but instead will be parroting other edgelords' criticism because of their political views. Normal for teenagers though, everything must be hated or loved, no middle ground of constructive thought.
His books are worth reading, he is an interesting man who has spent decades doing what he loves. Read, consider and make up your own mind instead of asking people whose criticism is poisoned with the politics of growing up.
It's a book mainly about crops, and how geography affects crops. and how those crops affect cities, etc,etc Diamond himself does not claim to answer all questions of human development.
I believe that very few of it's critics in /his/ or /pol/ have actually read it.
My understanding is that some of its claims are pseudo history and aren't considered valid, but it's still an interesting read. I read it for an Agroecology class and the discourse on the development of agriculture was intriguing.
>>8167025
/his/ here, its absolute shit
Follow it up with Charles C. Mann for a better perspective.
>>8167427
>its absolute shit
Post some actual criticisms, faggot.
>>8167025
overrated psuedointellectual book that lit loves because lit only has good taste in regards to fiction
most academics dont take it seriously
its popscihistory
this guy went through multiple chapters of the book and tore them apart
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2cfhon/guns_germs_and_steel_chapter_11_lethal_gift_of/
ITT: LIBKEKS GETTING ABSOLUTELY BLOWN THE FUCK OUT
Your time is over. The days of political correctness are numbered. By the grace of Lord KEK we are changing the narrative. People have had enough of the liberal crowd's doublethink and oppression of the white male.
Take this pleb-tier PC trash to reddit where it belongs. Here, we are race realists.
>>8167553
>His post is only constructed in meme-speak.
Please remove yourself from the gene pool.
>>8167553
You never read the book.
>>8167562
I'm white. I bet you're nonwhite and hence inherently inferior.
You are the one destroying the West
>>8167553
>>8167427
Care to post some actual critiques? Or
a suggestion for a better
alternative to this book?
My guess is you guys are just teenage
/pol/ edgelords who have never picked up a book
in their life
>>8167563
Let me take a guess, though:
>author: emasculated nu male cuck
>"white people are ebul!!! such noble savages that we "exploited", they were good boys then dindu nuffin!"
>"You should be ashamed to be white!"
>>8167568
>triggered SJW tumblrina xhemale who hates whiteness and is desperate to see a demographic shift in the West and wants to see black people mount his significant other
>>8167575
Not really, I'd consider my self a pro-euro
right wing in every way possible, the difference is
I don't go around spewing bullshit on the internet
in the name of fascism just cause I have a
miserable life
>>8167400
Wow a good post
>>8167553
>narrative
>realist
no. also libs don't necessarily agree with pc bullshit
>>8167570
This is /lit/. If you haven't read the book, don't offer your ill-founded opinions.
>>8167147
i didn't think so. he set out rational GEOGRAPHIC reasons as to why some nations developed and some didn't.
>>8167365
you haven't read it, have you, fucko?
did you skip over the three or four chapters where he brought up the idea of latitudinal vs longitudinal distribution of plant and animal life? or did you skip that part because of all the big words?
>>8167535
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
well, i'm convinced!
> no i'm not
>>8167339
Environment explains that
>>8167637
HOW DARE YOU DENY MY RIGHT TO EXPRESS MY OPINION JUST BECAUSE IT'S UNINFORMED YOU FASCIST
>>8167048
Why is it "reverse" racism? Being racist against whites is just normal racism.
>>8167657
The book isn't "racist against whites", dumbass.
>>8167651
Back to /pol/, kiddo.
>>8167705
>le back to /pol/ meme in 2016
How does he explain China? They had all the same advantages as Europe but it seems that through their own incompetence they let themselves get humiliated and exploited for at least a hundred years. They're not even on par with white countries now in terms of quality of life or intellectual achievement. The same could be said for India.
Look at this photograph, it was taken during the Second Opium War in 1860. You can see a fucking crossbow on the parapet, as well as matchlocks that would have been state of the art in the 16th century.
>>8167705
Back to tumblr faggot
Is /pol/ leaking again? Just because it mentions the history of your hated roody poos in any context other than American slavery, doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.
>>8167772
blacks are simply inferior to the white man, accept it.
they don't belong here. take the fucking redpill
>>8167780
What are you talking about?
https://reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2bv2yf/guns_germs_and_steel_chapter_3_collision_at/
>https://reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2cfhon/guns_germs_and_steel_chapter_11_lethal_gift_of/
>>8167025
Reddit/shitlib meme book
>>8167772
>Is /pol/ leaking again?
Passive aggressive liberal posters are my favourite.
>>8167748
How does he explain the Zulus beating the British too????
>>8167848
>british commander gets cocky
>divides his force into three groups and erects no defenses whatsoever
>gets surprised and memed on
>next time they decide to erect defenses and maybe not all sleep and tens of bongs murder hundreds of zulus
wew
>>8167788
The bad* subs are literally the worst place on reddit. Clueless freshmen who read a 101 textbook and think they know everything. Also 90% of them are communists for some weird reason.
>>8168001
>literally the worst place on reddit
convincing rebuttal
>>8168003
I reckon he wrote something retarded about philosophy, got linked and ridiculed, and is mad now.
OP here, this was actually my first post on
/lit/ hoping to get some good critiques
on this book. But wow, did this thread get
derailed. I wonder what causes these
fedora nazis to feel a need to prove
they're better than everyone whenever
possible. As much as I hate SJW libertarians,
I must say you guys are the same as them, if not worse.
Just a bunch of insecure chicks/faggots using
politics as an interface to vent your anger and dissatisfaction of your pitiful lives.
There are degenerate boards for
sad people like you guys called /pol/ and /b/,
why don't you use it?
>t-they didn't have draft animals
>those poor brown people!
They killed all the draft animals.
When man arrived in the Americas he encountered animals that had never before met a hunter this sophisticated, it's basically like the emu war but with bigger animals, so you can imagine that it's very hard to stop hunting if it's so easy.
All the big animals going extinct coincides with the arrival of humans in the Americas.
Meanwhile Europeans didn't hunt to death all the horses but those are clearly an unfair disadvantage
>it's an "you can't domesticate a zebra" episode
maybe if you aren't white you can't
The following is copypasta and there have been more academic works done criticizing Diamond's book, but it summarizes some of the issues nicely.
1. The unrivalled extent of the Eurasian landmass allowed the proliferation of many different civilisations, between which information could be exchanged allowing far greater cross-fertilization of cultures.
Wrong! However unified the Eurasian land-mass may look to a cartographer, it is intractably divided by formidable topographical features. Europe is isolated from Central Asia by the Alps, the Urals, the Caucasus, the Russian Steppes, the Taiga and the Anatolian plateau. East Asia is divided from Central Asia by the Thar desert the Himalayas the Gobi desert and the Tian Shan mountains. No significant cultural exchanges took place between these regions until the 15th century, by which time sub-Saharan Africa and America lagged far behind Europe and China in terms of technology and higher cultural attainment. Sub-Saharan Africa lies as close to the Fertile Crescent, regarded as the cradle of civilisation, as Western Europe and far closer than China.
2. A diverse abundance of potential food crops is necessary in order for settled agricultural communities to flourish.
Wrong! The Inca created a complex civilisation based on the cultivation of two food crops, the potato and maize. Large agricultural communities, like Cahokia in North America, flourished on the exploitation of maize. Western European agriculture was overwhelmingly based on wheat production, China's on rice.
3.The European biome contained a greater variety of domesticable crops than Africa and America and these crops were more nutritious.
Wrong! America had indigenous food crops which were more nutritious than European staples. Beans, corn, squashes and peanuts are superior to wheat and, if grown in rotation, create a self-replenishing agricultural cycle. Far from having no viable indigenous staples, Africa had okra, rice, sorghum, millet, the bambara ground nut, black-eyed peas, watermelons and numerous gourds and tubers, as well as immensely useful plants such as the oil palm and the tamarisk. African slaves actually introduced rice cultivation to the United States. The standard refrence on this subject is, "Lost Crops of Africa".
1/2
4. Eurasia had more domesticable large mammals than Sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas.
Wrong! Africa has indigenous breeds of sheep, goats and cattle which were spread from the Sudan to the Cape by 200AD. The South Americans domesticated the llama. The North Americans, like the Aboriginals of Australia, almost hunted their domesticable mammals to extinction. Why didn't Europeans hunt horses, cows and sheep to extinction?
5. Only urban civilisations can develop the levels of technological skill and social organisztion required for military conquest.
Wrong! The two greatest conquerors in history, Atilla the Hun and Ghengis Khan came from nomadic tribal civilisations. Rome was overthrown by nomads. The Indus valley civilisation was destroyed by Indo-European barbarians.
6. The transmission of European diseases helped European nations conquer non-European nations.
Wrong! The European nations had achieved such technological superiority to non-European nations by the colonial epoch, that there could be no serious question of a non-European army successfully resisting an attack by a European army. Europeans conquered huge swathes of territory with tiny armies (Pizzaro). Epidemic disease only became a factor post-conquest. In Africa, India and South America native diseases like malaria were just as deadly to Europeans as European diseases were to the indigenous peoples.
7. China lacked the type of convoluted coastline necessary for dissidents to hide out in.
Bizzare! Is Jared Diamond trying to claim that dissidents can only hide on convoluted coastlines? This is about as strange as his assumption that only large bodies of water constitute an effective barrier to trade and travel. China abounds in intractable wastes and remote mountain ranges where bandits and outlaws fled the authority of central government, the most obvious region being the famous water margin.
8. Urban populations are less intelligent than non-urban populations.
Western European civilisation sets a premium on education. Abstract reasoning skills are rewarded by better employment prospects, which in turn create enhanced relationship opportunities, meaning that intelligent people are encouraged to procreate with other intelligent people, unlike in Papua New Guinea, where the physical prowess is far more important than deductive logic.
Europe and China developed the worlds greatest civilisations in regions which were no bigger than the regions inhabited by any other cultures, which enjoyed no great advantages in terms of agricultural potential, which had no special abundance of handy food crops and which had particular disadvantages in terms of climate. Diamond's theory sounds so incontestable because he has edited out substantial volumes of contradictory information with the skill and shamelessness of a Stalin era Commissar.
2/2
>>8167645
That section is nonsensical.
Sure the primary axis of Africa is north-south, but it is actually wider laterally than Europe.
Granted Diamond argues from the perspective of Eurasia, which has an even greater lateral distribution.
Eurasia might predominantly occupy the same latitude but it is broken up by several substantial mountain ranges. In the real world Europe and Asia had limited interaction until shipping lanes linked them.
Africa failed to develop for reasons other than longitudinal distribution.
>>8168020
>SJW libertarians
You lost all credibility there.
>>8167568
>>8167025
Read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson and Political Order and Political Decay by Fukuyama. Both address Diamond, both blow him the fuck out.
The arguments these books make is that on the micro level, deviations in Diamond's predictions show his flaws. Countries like Argentina, arguably in the western tradition while possessing immense natural resources have lagged behind the world due to the behavior and activities of their elites and the functionality of their institutions, conversely Costa Rica and Botswana both have shown themselves to be lights in the third world darkness. Furthermore Diamond does not touch the "great man" thesis which demonstrates how Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Caeser can totally upend established civilizations based on whim and some genius
States succeed due to their institutions and human capital. Exploitative states burn their human capital before they spend it, inclusive states accrue human capital to spend, the main evidence given is the latin colonized south american and its institutional flaws, and anglo colonized north america. Furthermore societies where clientelism and corruption are endemic become exploitative because most human capital is exchanged on black markets and is not made available to the state.
It has nothing to do with fucking zebras
>>8168068
>fucking zebras
How rich would you have to be to fuck a zebra?
>>8168080
You cant ever teach them to fuck, they are untrainable
>>8168146
checkmate, Jared
nigs are just dumb as bricks, get over it
>>8167402
>one person read it
typical
also, question I never see talked about by environmental determinists:
What are the current hypotheses for what made the humans that currently occupy not-africa leave africa? What made that group of humans split off and the other group stay? I'm sure it was messier than just a clean split, but I'd like to know if anyone has read anything about this. Can crops be enough to explain the migratory patterns of groups of humans?
>>8167025
Iam going to post what I always post and that is that this book is terrible.
If you're patrician read North's Violence and Social Order. If you're a pleb read Why Nations Fail
>>8168316
>North's Violence and Social Order
Been trying to remember this title for months, ty
>>8168260
There's enough evidence for several "out of Africa" events but the first one may have died out, with at least one group going back to North Africa, and some coming to Madagascar from
Here's one rough map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations#/media/File:Mt-Haplogruppen-Wanderung.png
This one is simpler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spreading_homo_sapiens_la.svg
It's impossible to tell why some groups left - competition for resources? Politics? Religious epiphanies?
>>8168332
Thanks for that. I'll definitely read more! I'm not going to give up though. I think thinking about decisions is still a worthwhile thing even if it might be impossible to ever determine.
>>8167025
It's a compelling read, and I would love for more books to approach subjects with such scope and ambition. However it is mostly regarded as shallow and simplistic by academics. Moreover it suffers from 'I have a theory and so lets pick and choose facts that match said theory' rather than looking at the subject holistically and making a theory based around all the facts and the current state of things.
Also Diamond isn't an anthropologist, so he's a bit out of his depth. It's like a computer scientist writing about the history and development of cooking across the world - it might not necessarily be bad, but there are certainly more qualified people out there to do it.
>>8167048
No it's not.
>>8167657
"Reverse" racism is a complete bullshit term. Racism is racism.
>>8167025
The book's good OP. Don't listen to these inbreds. Anything that doesn't conform to "there are communities of people who are inherently inferior to me" annoys them. It isn't laughed out of academia like some of these people claim. Like any researched text, it presents a view of the world which has some good insights and some claims which could be argued until the end of time.
White people were the bitches of the world until they rediscovered Greco-Roman culture and found ways to fuck up indigenous peoples and politically manipulate entire foreign continents. That's pretty fucking obvious if you look at history. It's not some politically correct bullshit.And that's the basic premise of the book, that European dominance was shaped largely by geography, but he makes more developed arguments than that. Forget the people saying its a pop history book, because it IS a pop history book, but so is just about all history that non-history PhD read.
>>8168068
>Furthermore Diamond does not touch the "great man" thesis which demonstrates how Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Caeser can totally upend established civilizations based on whim and some genius
kek. Great man thesis is a bunch of reductive baloney which should be obvious to anyone who isn't stuck in the 18th century.
>>8168065
There are social justice focused libertarians.
Scientists and historians recommend not reading it; plebs who read dumbed down, pop nonfiction recommend reading it. Whose recommendation you choose to follow is up to you.
>>8171191
Academics are never going to be entirely satisfied with any pop nonfiction, because they generally don't read it. It isn't helpful for them. Your appeal to authority actually isn't an indictment on this book. It's a decent book, with some good arguments, even if they're a bit simplistic.
>>8167748
they had no enemies
>>8171198
Most historians are morons.
>>8171209
It's as great a book as one on conducting satanic rituals -- in that it's harmful. Reading pop nonfiction isn't necessarily bad but reading bad pop nonfiction is, and this is bad pop fiction. If you do a quick search you will find both historians and scientists lambasting the work for being unscientific and unprofessional.
How things turned out is how they turned out. Attaching a moral value to how things turned out is the realm of the social justice warrior, the realm of someone who is resentful of how things turned out. It will go on until the heat death of the universe because we're animals and we do what animals do.
>>8171165
wow man white people are bad thanks for telling me, manipulating whole continents!
My indian father told me the muslims were the worst rulers of india but in reality I see the futility of this thinking, the technology and education the british bought was far worse, damn whities.
>>8167025
(((diamond))) BTFO
War and Peace and War by Peter Turchin gives a much better systematic answer about why some civilizations end up succeeding, and others don't. The guy has some much more technical scientific work but I'd recommend the popular version first if you're looking for historical science that will enable a broader understanding of history in general.
>doesn't explain everything by race, but neither does it deny it
>>8171454
My Pakistani friend says that everything good in Pakistan was brought by the British. He loves Kipling.
y'all niggas ignorant of trade and the effects of specialization. baka
>>8167222
the pullitzer is run by jews for cucks
selling millions is not an indicative of quality but of popularity
Read this instead
Seeing "blacks" and "whites" as distinct groups with different political and moral agendas whene there is no reason to is a spook. The only time it can be applied is when the groups have a different culture, which can happen inside a country. And then what's the point? What are you gonna do about it in the end? Race wars? No, you're going to vote trumpand shitpost.
Threads like these are how I know everyone on /lit/ is a pseud, their only interest is in empty banter.
>>8171454
>wow man white people are bad thanks for telling me, manipulating whole continents!
Well, I didn't fucking say that did I? Dipshit. Lots of cultures have done a lot of shitty things. The book just tries to explain how the West became dominant in this way.
>>8171241
You'll find people saying that about any book if you specifically search for it, or even if you don't. It isn't bad pop non-fiction, if you take it as gospel then you're just a bad reader.
>>8171454
You deny that Europeans fucked up North America and South America?
>>8168343
I've been reading The Pursuit of Glory (a history of Europe 1648 - 18whatever) and at some point it talks a lot about how farming was extremely hard before crop rotation, since the usual crops would just take Nitrogen and other nutrients out of the soil without anything going back. Once your yields depleted it took more than 10 years for the soil to regenerate - I'd wager a large reason for early moving was depleted soil.
Nowadays you rotate your plants with nitrogen-fixing plants like lupin or clover so that the soil regenerates, and you have phosphate/nitrate-based fertilizers to add the rest.
>>8171281
>>8168044
>1. no significant cultural exchange until 15th century.
what is silk road? sure, they two ends of the silk road did not interact face to face but that does not necessarily negate significant cultural exchange.
>2. complex civilization based on single food crop
yes, the incas only ate potatoes and corn. that's it. nothing else. europeans only ate bread. nothing else. just bread and bread drink. *roll my fucking eyes* chinese civilization was thriving before rice became a staple crop.
i agree with 3 but it ignores what the european diet contained and focuses on how more diverse and nutritious other continental food crops are.
>>8168048
i don't even get what the 4th point is trying to state. i have realized i am falling for a pasta with spicy memeballs. eurasia does have more domesticable large mammals than the americas because as the passage states, "they were all eradicated by humans, not domesticated."
the fifth point is one of those unanswerable questions of history. there are no safeguards for certain victory in conquest. it all depends...
>there could be no serious question of a non-European army successfully resisting an attack by a European army.
except there was always resistance. and it was never one sided. the victorious battles of european nations subjugating others usually comes after numerous failed confrontations and setbacks.
the seventh point is ludicrous.
the eighth point will be eaten up by anthropologists.
i'm not sure why this thread is framing the book as a tool for liberals. from my eyes, the people who have talked about this book as valid are alt-right or libertarians. they argue the book explains why white people are better and west civilization is on top. "the superiority did not come from an inherent trait within europeans but by mother nature herself!"
new face, same god.
>>8171212
Are you kidding me?
>>8167025
Waste of time.
>different races are different because of environmental factors
The reason there are different races in the first place is because they evolved different because of different locations.
Plus I could still be racist and accept everything in that book; I would just say that the environment I grew up in is better and people who grew up with a bad environment are inferior. Some people already do that too; they have pride in the land and hate outside the land especially other races because being another race is a clear sign of being born somewhere else.
The whole thing is stupid.
>>8167400
Seconding this post, a very rational anon.
>>8167400
>Read, consider and make up your own mind
Really? When the facts are wrong? If so, at least supplement it with facts (that happen to run contrary to what's claimed in the book).
