How about the right to life: if you were deformed, Spartans would have thrown you down a cliff.
I’ve also read, but I’m not able presently to confirm it, that in some Thai society children did not stay with the couple that generated them, they were instead put in the hands of a community of elders which would educate them.
Do you mean that we should be careful not to count cases of natural infant mortality as infanticide; or that the high infant mortality rate changes the moral calculus of infanticide; or something else?
I meant “evaluation” only in the limited sense of “understanding the mental states of someone else”. I bring this up for the boring reason that people seem to forget this (most prominently in the butchered interpretation of life-expectancy at birth as being life expectancy at 18, which has only become a good approximation in modern times)
See also modern attitudes toward abortion. In various points in history both would have been considered equally acceptable (at least taking herbs believe to help induce miscariges) or equally abhorrent.
I’ve been thinking about Game of Thrones lately, trying to figure out why it fails to win my interest, and one of my hypotheses is that it focuses too much on the power struggle itself. In a monarchy, the stories I find the least interesting are those of the royal people themselves. I prefer the approach of e.g. The Pillars of the Earth, which dedicates far more attention to the lives of ordinary people and how the consequences of royal decisions affect their everyday lives.
How about the right to life: if you were deformed, Spartans would have thrown you down a cliff.
I’ve also read, but I’m not able presently to confirm it, that in some Thai society children did not stay with the couple that generated them, they were instead put in the hands of a community of elders which would educate them.
In the modern evaluation of historic infanticide practices, we should remember the astronomically high infant mortality rate.
Or perhaps the other way around? :)
Do you mean that we should be careful not to count cases of natural infant mortality as infanticide; or that the high infant mortality rate changes the moral calculus of infanticide; or something else?
I meant “evaluation” only in the limited sense of “understanding the mental states of someone else”. I bring this up for the boring reason that people seem to forget this (most prominently in the butchered interpretation of life-expectancy at birth as being life expectancy at 18, which has only become a good approximation in modern times)
See also modern attitudes toward abortion. In various points in history both would have been considered equally acceptable (at least taking herbs believe to help induce miscariges) or equally abhorrent.
Now the Netherlands allows to “abort” a newborn with a birth defect that would make survival impossible. We’ve gone full circle.
Ok, now add the right of the parents to kill any underage child and we’re getting somewhere.
I find it very worrisome that popular culture has turned to glorifying the Spartans. Screw the Spartans.
Modern culture also loves Game of Thrones where leadership is determined by who can kill the most other people.
I wouldn’t worry about it. People are capable of distinguishing something as “cool” while still not really wanting to emulate a given society.
I’ve been thinking about Game of Thrones lately, trying to figure out why it fails to win my interest, and one of my hypotheses is that it focuses too much on the power struggle itself. In a monarchy, the stories I find the least interesting are those of the royal people themselves. I prefer the approach of e.g. The Pillars of the Earth, which dedicates far more attention to the lives of ordinary people and how the consequences of royal decisions affect their everyday lives.
300 was just a soft porn movie.