Tartaria
Article
Tartaria is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between September 23, 2021 and September 03, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “This is the setup for my all-time favorite conspiracy theory, Tartaria”; “So, is it just me or is the Tartaria conspiracy theory”; “Have you ever heard of Tartaria? All history before the World Wars is a lie”. It most often appears alongside China, French Revolution, Google.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: September 23, 2021
- Last seen: September 03, 2024
Appears In
- Whither Tartaria?
- Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture
- Interview Day At Thiel Capital
Related Pages
-
- China (2 shared issues)
-
- French Revolution (2 shared issues)
-
- Google (2 shared issues)
-
- San Francisco (2 shared issues)
-
- Taj Mahal (2 shared issues)
-
- 1980s (1 shared issues)
-
- 19th century African art (1 shared issues)
-
- 20th century (1 shared issues)
-
- 9-11 (1 shared issues)
-
- abstract art (1 shared issues)
-
- Air Force One (1 shared issues)
-
- Aka (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
This is the setup for my all-time favorite conspiracy theory, Tartaria. Its true believers say we are those savages. We live in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, Art Deco skyscrapers, etc. But our buildings look like this:
Inline links: Tartaria
While changes in building materials, cost-cutting, etc might have a role, I think it would be myopic to focus too hard on architecture-specific explanations. The shift from Tartarian to modern aesthetics is consistent across art forms:
There is a lot of writing about "the modernist turn" and the origins of modern art, but I haven't been able to find anything that links all these artistic fields and tries to explain what happened in general. I am sure you will link me to great resources about this in the comments. Until then, some speculative responses that one might give the Tartarians:
Thanks to everyone who commented on Whither Tartaria (currently 1079 comments). Many of you really like modern architecture, and many others of you really hate it. I appreciate most of you being able to accept disagreement on that and move on to the bigger question of why there’s so much more of it now.
Inline links: Whither Tartaria
The most interesting thing I got from the comments was Chaostician linking to Wikipedia’s page on the Great Male Renunciation - men’s fashion changing from ornate colorful clothing to dark suits. Wikipedia seems pretty convinced that this was because of egalitarianism norms:
Inline links: Chaostician
For example, cost. Long Disc writes:
Inline links: writes
“Exactly. It’s a conspiracy. Have you ever heard of Tartaria? All history before the World Wars is a lie. The real story is a global civilization called Tartaria, centered in Asia, which was destroyed in some sort of flood. All the buildings we can no longer make today - the cathedrals, the Victorian houses, the Art Deco skyscrapers - are Tartarian relics. The elites disguise the true history to prevent us from realizing how far we’ve fallen. My theory is that the Tartarians were bright yellow, and our folk iconography is a skeuomorph from their culture.”
Inline links: Tartaria
“This is also why newborn babies are born with jaundice so often. It’s the Tartarian genes reasserting themselves. The doctors take them away and bombard them with UV rays to hide their true nature and prevent us from realizing the con. The elites even got us to use ‘yellow-bellied’ as a synonym for ‘coward’, so that we would shun and bully whoever they didn’t catch. What do you think?”