I greatly dislike this reductive sort of pop culture history. Where does it end? The Religion act of 1592? Henry VIII deciding that boats 'n' hoes are more important than being Catholic? Some field in East Sussex in 1066? A bridge outside Rome? Some uppity carpenter? A bunch of jews sick of building pyramids? Some apes that stood up? Some rat-like things that managed to not get eaten by dinosaurs just long enough for a space rock to hit our planet?

The first identifiable steps of the assembly of the myriad (and exponentially increasing the further back you go) of necessary key preconditions that come together to result in a thing that happened does not mean that that's when that thing started happening. We are all sitting at the tail end of an incomprehensibly long line of specific events that were in no way pre-ordained and ultimately depend upon a lot of chance and individual whims.

The american revolution could have been prevented in the 1770s and maybe we'd have turned out like Canada or Northern Ireland. The civil war could have been prevented as late as 1860 and we'd have probably got rid of slavery in the 1870s or 80s like Brazil.

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brookst 9 days ago | parent | next [-]

Odd take on causality.

It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.

The ceramic bits on the floor were caused when I dropped the bowl, even though they could have been prevented had I managed to catch it.

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akhosravian 9 days ago | parent | next [-]

The comment you are replying to was replying to a comment that was more akin to “the ceramic bits on the floor were caused by your parents meeting” though

	▲	brookst 7 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Saying the civil war was seeded decades earlier is more akin to saying the dish was dropped because you put it away covered in oil the day before. It wasn’t some unforseeable eventuality.
	▲	DangitBobby 8 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		But in the case of history, how the plate got in your hands to begin with is often the most important to learn from, not the dropping it part.

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potato3732842 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Odd take on causality.

If you have something to say say it like a man. This is an internet comment section, not a bunch of mean girls pretending to run a parent teacher association.

>It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.

The problem is that it's a meaningless statement. Everything "has its origins" or "was caused by" the prior situation which has its origins (or whatever comparable verbiage you prefer) in a nearly infinite set of things that created the immediate necessary preconditions. Like if the middle east didn't suck you might not have got Colombus when you did and the resultant effects. Or if the middle east sucked a little more you might not have gotten Marco Polo when you did having the resultant effects. But this all just devolves into a stupid "look how smart I am" exercise where we're all just basically listing things that came before and circle jerk about the ways they put their metaphorical thumbs on the scale of the future.

	▲	soiltype 9 days ago \| parent [-]
		sexism aside, they did say exactly what they meant.

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andrepd 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, we are conditioned by the long thread of history and each event followed from those that preceded it. It's a good observation even though many people think things happen in a vacuum :)