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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Candelestine@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyz👀👀👀
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    8 months ago

    You can’t escape the inter-connectedness of human body systems. Improve something somewhere, something else gets changed too. This is why being a doctor is so hard.

    So, it’s only true from a 19th century understanding of science. Which a lot of people admittedly prefer, because of how simplistic it was. It’s a lot easier to feel like you understand things if you just ignore all the complex and hard parts.


  • Correct, I am not really approaching this in a dialectical way, I do not fervently ascribe to any specific ideology. I try to take all potential influences into account. Similarly, this does not mean human history is driven by “great men” or somesuch, only that individual decisions do have an influence on events, and should be taken into account.

    I do wish things could exist in such a simple way, where states operated in such a clear-cut manner, but that’s just too oversimplified. The world is just messier than that, and individual egos cannot be completely separated from people’s choices.

    Sure, states in the abstract do pursue their own interests, though there’s a great many very small states that see their interests differently from how larger bodies tend to. This is potentially distinct from the exercise of power though, and is not necessarily imperialism. To qualify as imperialism in a way that fits empires throughout history, I think you need two things: scope and expansion. An embassy, while a means of national power, is not really focused on expansion, but diplomacy. An embassy can be a simple defensive precaution. State media can be, depending on what message it is broadcasting. If it broadcasts a warmongering message, it could easily be imperial in nature. If it’s just reporting local news, not so imperial. Curbing other state media is just about stability.

    Nations exist, borders exist. Whether they should or not is more up to those individual peoples that live there, and how they want to set up their societies.


  • No, which is why I have a default position of suspicion towards the words of my own officials. Because they’re people, just like me, no better, no worse. They can make mistakes, exercise poor judgement, change their minds, etc etc.

    Not just national power, but expanding national power over people who were not part of your nation. The word is in its roots, people can redefine it into whatever they want, but it still has that historical root. I think this loyalty towards its historical meaning is more valuable than any redefining it for other purposes.




  • That would be the process by which you select your leaders. Not too different from a democratic republic. It does not mean every single one of them understands the inner thoughts of those leaders, though. It’s a selection process. Does a selection process give you the power to understand their secret minds, or do you simply think they have no secrets?

    Yes, national power is exactly what we’re talking about. Exercising it over a broad area, of people who did not before fall under your control, is empire-building. Or, imperialism. Power + new lands/people = imperialism.

    Hegemony simply refers to degree of competition. If an empire is contested by near-peers, it does not have hegemonic control. This is core to what the word means in the English language.

    I appreciate the sources, but if you as a believer cannot adequately explain these things from them, I’m not sure the sources will be of much benefit.