I believe you’re referring to an incident that took place when Sultan Ibrahim I of Turkey suspected that one of his harem girls had taken a secret lover. He had all 280 harem women tied up in weighted sacks and thrown into the Bosphorus, where they all drowned but for one, who was rescued by some French sailors.
As an aside, when I toured the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, as we’re being escorted from room to room, each filled with more and more stupendous furnishings, we were shown the sultan’s bedroom. I was pretty curious to see what the bed the sultans did all their sexing in looked like. After the spectacular furniture in the rest of the palace, I was thinking to myself, this bed had better be the side of frickin’ Montana!
Then I saw it, and it’s a… pretty normal looking bed. Comfy-looking, but not extravagant. Talk about a WTF? moment.
People accept as “normal” what they see around them every day. An Amazonian woman doesn’t feel embarassed to walk around with her boobies swinging free in front of God and everybody because everyone around her does the same. An Amazonian woman who suddenly started covering her breasts out of a desire for privacy would probably be thought of as very odd. Likewise, if I suddenly took to wearing a burkha whenever I leave the house, people would wonder why.
Think of this, as well. I’d imagine most Islamic women know that Western women go around without their faces being covered but I’m sure that few of them wish to do the same. Why? For the same reason why I don’t want to walk around with my breasts exposed. I’ve been taught by my culture that those parts should be covered and I’d be very embarassed.
“Embarassment” is culturally created. We learn shame just like we learn to talk and walk. If I’ve shared an outhouse all of my life or have had a groom of the stool to wipe my bum, I’m not going to suddenly develop an embarassment of it and desire privacy even if I’ve heard of other cultures who have different practices.
Wait a minute. Good point, bad example. Most of the women alive in the Middle East today were around before veiling became mandatory. They are educated, bright women who used to wear Armani suits and high heels in their jobs as doctors and lawyers and teachers before the Islamic Fundamentalists came into power - and even after that, there were periods of “laxity” where women could drive or go around unveiled.
In 100 years, you might have a point, but cultural relativism doesn’t apply yet. These are oppressed Westernized women, not Amazons who have never known a different life.
If you’ve not read it, I sincerely recommend God Knows by Joseph Heller, which you just reminded me of. Lots of humourous moaning from King David about how his wife Bathsheba won’t let him go in unto her, and keeps fobbing him off with younger concubines. Plus great bitchiness about how brilliant he is in general, and how that hack Michelangelo didn’t get his penis right.
Bad example. Kings and queens knew that other people had a measure of privacy that they didn’t enjoy. They knew that other people were not followed around 24/7, so they could have wished for *that *measure of privacy, not necessarily the kidn of privacy that we enjoy today.
Well, assuming that cultural relativism is ever appropriate when deciding if people are happy with their lot (which is what **Lissa **was talking about), then surely it can’t apply to people who lived a different way and were forced to change within living memory. They are not content with the way things are because they’ve been taught them by infancy, as **Lissa **suggested. They may be content for other reasons (although I don’t think that’s true for the majority of women in fundamentalist Islamic states, based on what I’ve been reading lately), but it’s not because “it’s always been that way” and they can’t fathom feeling differently.
Like I said, I don’t neccesarily disagree that people should be able to live within their own cultural framework, or that what you grow up with is comfortable for you, but I disagree with her using veiling of all Islamic women as an example.
The more I think about it, the more I think the Rulers Of Old still got a better deal.
I don’t see a state of Australia called “Martini”, there isn’t a “Martini Falls” in East Africa, and an entire period of history is not yet referred to as “The Martini Era”.
Sure, I’ve got my internet, and my computer games, and my cellphone, and my car, and my DVDs… But if I could trade all that and be ruler of the British Empire, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Don’t try and tell me being Emperor of India, Large Chunks Of Africa, Hong Kong, And Assorted Parts Of Asia And The Middle East wouldn’t be a billion times better than my life as it is now…
“Ordinary” people didn’t have it much better. Maybe they weren’t followed and hounded like kings, but there was rarely a moment when no one else was around. The poor generally only had one room in their houses. Everyone slept, ate, eliminated and worked together.
The wealthy had their own courts which were similar in structure to the king’s court. They had their own hangers-on who begged for favors and appointments, just like they themselves begged the king. The whole system worked that way: you always tried to get close to anyone of higher status. For an untitled merchant, it would be the local lord they sucked up to, and that local lord probably sucked up to a baron, who in turn sucked up to the earl, who in turn sucked up to the duke, who in turn, sucked up to the king.
So, everyone the king knew lived the court lifestyle, being begged for favors by those lower then they and in turn, begging those above them for favors. The opnly people exempt from it would have been the peasants, and it’s doubtful a king would have envied anything about their lives.
I wouldn’t do that, but only because I know little of your life. As for me, though… I’d pass the emperorship to someone else. I can sit here drinking wine and writing bullshit with you guys without having someone hassle me about unrest among the Hindus or the latest Zulu attacks or the trade situation in Ceylon or Chinese attempts to encroach on Hong Kong. I’ve spent the day doing precisely whatever I felt like, eating good food and playing games with friends. The Emperor of Alotofstuff doesn’t have days like that.
I mean, seriously, what’s the big upside to being the emperor? I can see the upside of money, but what’s the upside of power and responsibility? Call me unambitious, but while I wouldn’t mind a hundred hot wives (provided they all actually, you know, liked me) the power and social stature can go hang.
That’s the thing… I’d love all that. People coming to me with unrest amongst the Zulus, Hindu and Muslims fighting in the North-West Frontier, The Chinese complaining about all that Opium we’re flooding their country with, the Ceylonese wanting better trade terms for their Tea, and so on, at which point I could make them kiss my Imperial Pinky Ring, dismiss them with a wave of my hand, then summon another underling to put my decisions into action.
See above… Power corrupts. Absolute power is incredibly cool.
Hey, read the book and tell me what part you disagree with. It’s not just life expectancy. I threw out a few quick examples, but there are many more. Let’s say Rockefeller had muscle aches and needed some Advil, or he wanted some Lean Cuisine pronto, and can’t find the damn microwave, or wanted to chat with his friend in San Francisco while he was walking through downtown Boston…It’s endless. But if you value social status and power then there’s no argument, Rockefeller wins.
there is an interesting series of books from eric flint that happen in the 1630’s. the people from the 1600 are gobsmaked by the weath of the average west virginian of 2000.
yeah, rulers had a gaggle of women, but they didn’t have healthy sharpshooting cheerleaders.
they were able to id the tsarina (alexandra) by her teeth. the amount of dental work she had done without novacain… oh goodness, i live a lot better than her. she must have been in unbelievable pain a good portion of the time.
just think about the fires for a minute. large city fires. surviving burns even 30 years ago, let alone 100 years ago. glad i live in the usa today.
I saw in some show or other that a significant proportion of pharaohs died of dental-related diseases. Apparently because they used stone mills to grind the wheat a lot of sand ended in the bread, which in turn corroded their teeth down to stumps. :eek: They lived in pain for years and then died in pain. Thank you but no.
You want to see what it is like? Tune in to a Jerry Springer show and multiply that for ten.
