Carl said:
>Martin, you're defeating your own point here.
>Sure, you interpret things differently from, say, Sandy. However, you
>and Sandy agree that, oh, the Russian Revolution took place in Russia
>in 1917, you agree on the dates and locations of battles, you agree in
>almost every case on who won the battles.
Yes we would agree on the basic facts. However, if I were a communist I would argue passionatley that the defeat of the Tsar and the rise of the people was the next step in the social evolution of the people, to throw off our bourgoise and aristocratic oppressors and seize our future. =
Whereas Sandy might argue that the communists were a ruthless bunch of opportunists who slaughtered the royal family, butchered their own people=
and suppressed all dissent with a merciless abandon that even the Tsars o=
f
Ivans day would have been impressed with. These facts are open to
interpretation.
>Whereas, in Gloranthan history, you claim that we can't even know the
>names of the players, WITH a scorecard.
Rubbish. I never claimed any such thing. I have said repeatedly that to=
Gloranthans the gods are absolutely real and that events did happen but
their interpretation of those events mythically changes with time, politi=
cs
and heroquests. The gods are mutable but extant. We know the name of th=
e
players, we know how the game works but the names of the players change,
the abilities of the players change and the scorecard changes. Seems lik=
e
a sensible, logical team to me.
>(I also consider "national character" arguments like the above
>fallacious, but that's not as directly relevant.)
Really? So you think that American troops would launch themselves in wav=
e
attacks? as the Chinese or Russians do? Are Californians not more layed
back than an Bostonian? Are the British and the French not xenaphobicall=
y
opposed to each other though mostly British troops have died many times
over to protect France? I think you are buying into this cultural metlin=
g
pot idea without actually looking at the evidence of national character -=
its pretty damn obvious actually. I'm an British guy in Canada and belie=
ve
me the Canadians are very different from the Brits and the Canadians are
very different from the Americans down the road in Seattle. =
Ask Dave Pearton if the South Africans have a different national characte=
r
than the Americans. Ask Neil Robinson if the Dutch have a different
charcter to the British or the British to the Americans. If you have liv=
ed
in more than one country you must have done so with your eyes closed.
Martin Laurie
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