There are several times in history that Europeans would not be considered the peak of human development due to very measurable differences in quality of life.
You’ll also find other pseudoscience bullshit trying to justify the superiority of one group over another from at least Roman times.
The fact of the matter is that several areas had the resources and technical development to start the Industrial Revolution; it just happened to spark in the United Kingdom first and spread through Europe quickly.
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 8 months ago
I get what this guy is trying to say but the phrasing and unnecessary racialising explains the downvotes. A better and less offensive way to put this could simply have referred to climate: that you suspect the harsher climate in Europe rewarded industrial and penalised agrarian lifestyles in a way that wasn’t true for civilisations near the equator. Being white or not has nothing to do with it - correlation versus causation.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Yes, correlation is exactly what I’m saying. I’m not saying “white” as a race, I’ve been explicitly saying “white” as skin tone. The same environmental conditions which reward efficient agriculture and the conditions for industrialization also correlate to pressures toward sun-absorbant skin.
My position has nothing to do with “race” and everything to do with coincidentally correlated environmental effects. Was I not sufficiently clear? Even did I even bring up race, distinct from skin tone in-and-of-itself? “White” isn’t even a race, so far as race is even a rational concept.
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 8 months ago
I do understand the point you’re making actually, but you’re wading into emotionally charged waters here. I would argue “white” is an inherently racial term, but the more importantly, the correlation is not really relevant to the discussion and needlessly muddies your broader point (that climate may inspire or disincentive industrialisation) by injecting it with racial discussion.
atomicorange@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The fact that they refuse to acknowledge that the skin tone part of their argument is irrelevant leads me to believe that they are being disingenuous about their motivations. You’ve clearly pointed out that climate is a sufficient explanation and that references to skin tone are unnecessary and misleading.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I don’t know how else to specify that my point is purely about melanin levels in the skin being coincidentally correlated, and NOT related in any way to implicit genetic arguments. I explicitly defined “white” by melanin levels, not by race. “White” isn’t even a coherent race.
barsoap@lemm.ee 8 months ago
There’s something to say about winters leading to social orders around food storage and planning ahead, but then England didn’t really need to do that and they were the first to really start the industrialisation game. It was plain and simple pure capitalism. The Nordic countries, where those climatic conditions are very much real, are way more naturally Socdem than the Anglos.
Another geographic, not so much climatic, factor is the availability of water power: Europe is blessed with a metric fuckton of small streams large enough to build a mill on. That meant a comparatively productive agriculture, which meant more tradespeople, traders, and with that finally a bourgeoisie which could do that capitalism and industrialisation thing and exploit the serfs harder than the nobles ever managed to do, being stuck in age-old social relations which didn’t allow for ordering people around like that.