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Marcus Aurelius rule
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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Marcus Aurelius is a privileged aristocrat speaking blasphemy.
Also, we've totally twisted human norms from the [perfect] society we had thousands of years ago.
Ok.
well, agriculture is a relatively fresh discovery. as hunter/gatherers we relied on one another, the concept of one human being having authority over another only developed when we "finally" had something to fight over: fertile land. game used to be divided freely prior to that
Almost all predator animals have a territory and they will fight for that territory to keep others out. Chimpanzees and other great apes have clan wars over territory. And they have social hierarchies where some get more food than others.
There is a 100% chance early humans were fighting each other long before the invention of agriculture.
we used to be much more like bonobos actually... at least sexually.
and last time i checked we aren't predators, wrong teeth.
anyways, i can see that there could have been fights. but killing other humans in wars became a thing only much much later, when game wouldnt be so readily available, the first large settlements formed and already made some people leave them to find better luck elsewhere.
the objectification necessary to enslave other humans came pretty much along with it. after all, a dead enemy is just a thing. so a living enemy could also be just a thing...
i wasnt trying to romanticize the era of hunter gatherers, but while rome might have been quite moderate at that time, practically everyone else were already patriachial to a point where most women would be second class citizens with little economic freedom, or economically free but sworn to celibacy, and their profits would return to their fathers
Many Celtic and Germanic tribes were still relatively gender-egalitarian (moreso than Rome, in many cases), as were many Berber and Arab tribes of the period, and Nubian/Ethiopian kingdoms, India, and the Scythians of Central Asia.
They were mostly still patriarchal, but less patriarchal than the European and Islamic civilizations that would later emerge where we get our 'clearest' view of Patriarchy from.
the book concentrated a lot on the bible probably as that is the most likely thing a reader might know. me attacking aurelius like that might be ill advised, but seeing a man talking about which emotions are acceptable and which not, makes me itch