I enjoy this blog, the articles are usually very well informed.

But this kind of grand theory in History is inherently flawed. There is a lot of irreducible complexity in History and trying to draw conclusions from sweeping low resolution panoramas is circular reasoning. It all depends on definitions and suffers from heavy survivorship bias.

> And it is quite clear from that evidence, that at the dawn of civilization, it was the least Fremen societies who tended to win the most.

This conclusion for example is simply not true. There is a mention of the Amorites overrunning Mesopotamia c. 2000 BCE. But there's evidence of several cycles of invasions, raiding, and take overs of established cities by nomads and pastoralist peoples just in the 1500 thousand years between the earliest evidence of writing and this Amorite wave. In fact, the political fabric that the Amorites impacted was itself a hybridization of early settled Sumerian polities and the nomadic/pastoralist Semitic peoples around it. It is a recurring theme that can be observed in stone engravings and the written record.

The dynamics can't be resolved in terms of whether civilized or nomadic peoples are stronger, mainly because the grouping is always arbitrary. It is more of a system of attractors in a sort of 'settled-nomadic' continuum in some phase space that people's life trajectories approach than a matter of easily distinguishable types that can be ranked.

I think it's a dumb aphorism, but ACOUP's article isn't really a good refutation, instead it's mostly an excuse for him to elaborate upon some specific historical misconceptions.

I was just joking, and don’t hold that quote as a serious belief. :) Poe’s law, alas.

Thanks for the article link, so far it’s interesting reading!

Just finished a book about the Hundred Years War, before that, one on the Thirty Years War. Both have a glaring similarity, the "weak people" were consistently plundered, raped and killed by the "strong" people.

When will the working class people understand that the elite are just a few bad decisions away from their total destruction? (Here in the US we seem to be on some kind of precipice.)

Another way of reading the saying is that the weak men are weak mentally, they're cruel and inept. So maybe outwardly "strong"... but not really.

Then those men you're calling „weak“ are actually strong...

You don't understand the saying. If you want to find some of the most anti-war people there are, speak to veterans who have lived through such. If you want to find some of the most pro-war people there are, talk to people who have never experienced the consequences of such. Out of curiosity I just looked up 'us warmonger political advisor guy' because his named temporarily escaped me, and search delivered - John Bolton. [1]

I wanted to see his history because it's just about always the same - and yeah, good ole Yale grad who was a draft dodger getting his college deferment then immediately getting a national guard position to avoid conscription. For those that may not understand the latter - National Guard units were basically never deployed, extremely difficult to enlist in, and basically worked as a means for the well connected to avoid service. Bush, Cheney, Biden, Trump, Clinton, and all of them - draft dodgers, often using similar tricks.

It has nothing to do with political systems. There have been great times under dictatorial systems and horrible times under democracies. It has to do with weak people trying to be strong, which drives chaos. Maybe it could be framed up succinctly in that the "hard decisions" are indeed hard for strong men, but for weak mean they happily make them without the briefest of hesitation, though of course they'll put on a solemn face for the cameras.

[1] - https://search.brave.com/search?q=us+warmonger+political+adv...

I don't see how anyone can look at the generation that survived the great depression, and look at boomers/millenials/gen Z and not see the truth of it

> This is such a dumb saying.

It can be aptly applied throughout history, so while maybe not the best word choice, the spirit of the message can't be dumb.

You're missing the point. The strong men are the ones building roads and sewers and buildings and exploring and policing and making safe and guarding and inventing and transporting, and the weak men are the ones deferring and allowing things to slide into safety and overly generous (with someone's money) social programs and overseas programs and politeness laws, and when things go wrong, populism, and the circle continuing.