You mix up your tenses in sneaky way, projecting bad aspects of the past onto the future:
I think this would normally be an astute observation but in my case mixing up tenses has been a persistent source of frustration for my editors. Despite the scolding I get and my efforts to watch out for it, I screw this up constantly (I don’t know if this explains it but English is my third language and I mostly learned it in an ad-hoc manner). All I can say now is that the tense mix-up was an inadvertent error on my part. When I talk about which cultural values “will become” the dominant paradigm, I wasn’t referring to the future or present, but rather a jump forward in time from one past date to another (e.g. from 600 AD to 605 AD or whatever). Same when I talk about which code “will replicate”, it’s about a date in the past that is future from another date in the past. When I talk about “this community” I was referring to communities in the past that materially profited off of warfare.
I’m normally really bad at conjugating verbs consistently, so the mixed up tenses should not be seen as evidence of any hidden messages. I don’t know if that clears up any ambiguity.
You speak positively of violence through the lens of past societies that needed it, without disclaiming that it’s bad in a present-day lens
You’re not the only one to make this criticism but I admit I’m confused by it. I’m generally an optimist about the human condition largely because of how personally thrilling and eternally grateful I am towards the steady obsolescence of violence as a solution in modern life. I think it’s a Good Thing™ that humans nowadays are significantly more inclined to favor peaceful cooperation over violent conquest. But if I had to include throat-clearing passages in between all my sentences (violence is bad! trade is good! slavery is bad! peace is good! etc.) I wouldn’t fault the reader who would find this patronizing and infantilizing.
So in the passage you quoted above, I relay an observation that Men of Violence were “appropriately” praised by their community. All this means is that, purely from a base material gain, the community had a reason to praise conquerors who bring back stolen and looted riches. “Appropriately” here serves only to distinguish whether the community was acting arbitrarily or rationally; it was not at all intended to be praise for that conduct. The description here was fully intended to describe what is, not what ought. I’m reminded of a similar confusion regarding the “evolutionary benefits” of rape. Describing how sexual coercion can be a “successful” evolutionary strategy is not at all the same thing as arguing that rape is “good” or whatever. I would hope that this distinction is well established within these circles.
I already worry too much about being overly wordy, so in the interest of brevity and also to reduce the risk of coming off as patronizing, I avoid repeating points I think are too obvious. So in this case, I didn’t find it necessary to repeatedly disclaim how much I dislike rape, slavery, and violence. The exclusion of my denunciations in my post should not be taken as evidence of endorsement.
I think this would normally be an astute observation but in my case mixing up tenses has been a persistent source of frustration for my editors. Despite the scolding I get and my efforts to watch out for it, I screw this up constantly (I don’t know if this explains it but English is my third language and I mostly learned it in an ad-hoc manner). All I can say now is that the tense mix-up was an inadvertent error on my part. When I talk about which cultural values “will become” the dominant paradigm, I wasn’t referring to the future or present, but rather a jump forward in time from one past date to another (e.g. from 600 AD to 605 AD or whatever). Same when I talk about which code “will replicate”, it’s about a date in the past that is future from another date in the past. When I talk about “this community” I was referring to communities in the past that materially profited off of warfare.
I’m normally really bad at conjugating verbs consistently, so the mixed up tenses should not be seen as evidence of any hidden messages. I don’t know if that clears up any ambiguity.
You’re not the only one to make this criticism but I admit I’m confused by it. I’m generally an optimist about the human condition largely because of how personally thrilling and eternally grateful I am towards the steady obsolescence of violence as a solution in modern life. I think it’s a Good Thing™ that humans nowadays are significantly more inclined to favor peaceful cooperation over violent conquest. But if I had to include throat-clearing passages in between all my sentences (violence is bad! trade is good! slavery is bad! peace is good! etc.) I wouldn’t fault the reader who would find this patronizing and infantilizing.
So in the passage you quoted above, I relay an observation that Men of Violence were “appropriately” praised by their community. All this means is that, purely from a base material gain, the community had a reason to praise conquerors who bring back stolen and looted riches. “Appropriately” here serves only to distinguish whether the community was acting arbitrarily or rationally; it was not at all intended to be praise for that conduct. The description here was fully intended to describe what is, not what ought. I’m reminded of a similar confusion regarding the “evolutionary benefits” of rape. Describing how sexual coercion can be a “successful” evolutionary strategy is not at all the same thing as arguing that rape is “good” or whatever. I would hope that this distinction is well established within these circles.
I already worry too much about being overly wordy, so in the interest of brevity and also to reduce the risk of coming off as patronizing, I avoid repeating points I think are too obvious. So in this case, I didn’t find it necessary to repeatedly disclaim how much I dislike rape, slavery, and violence. The exclusion of my denunciations in my post should not be taken as evidence of endorsement.