this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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Rough Roman Memes

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A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.

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  1. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, etc. The past may be bigoted, but we are not.

  2. Memes must be Rome-related, not just the title. It can be about Rome, or using Roman aesthetics, or both, but the meme itself needs to have Roman themes.

  3. Follow Lemmy.world rules.

Not sure where to start on Roman history?

A quick memetic primer on Republican Rome

A quick memetic primer on Imperial Rome

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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Increasingly repugnant actions must have increasingly disproportionately beneficial results to balance them out, I would say. There's nothing that I would automatically disqualify from a utilitarian analysis, but the more repugnant the action, the less likely there's any real-world justification for a scenario where that's the lesser evil out of the choices presented.

But again, my argument is not an absolute assertion of "Roman conquest was good", and I initially rejected the argument entirely precisely because it is a different argument from the question of Roman rule entirely, my argument is that the conflict of Roman and British polities and the conquest that resulted does not have the very modern dynamics you are ascribing to it.

[–] Lyre@lemmy.ca 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, ok I understand. Personally I do think we can project our morals backwards and judge historical figures and cultures. I think it helps us analyse them so long as it doesn't result in us misconstrueing the truth. I think remaining completely objective can result in repeating the past, or excusing morally reprehensable things in the present. I come from a litarary background, so maybe I'm predisposed to that kind of analysis.

But i see your side as well, I'll admit how alien the past can be and how different the idea of morality can be from culture to culture.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Dunno who downvoted you, but I upvoted you, I enjoy a good argument.

[–] Lyre@lemmy.ca 2 points 16 hours ago

Haha thanks man, same. If we came to the internet expecting everyone to agree with us we'd go insane pretty fast.