Astral Codex Ten

ACOUP

4 min read

ACOUP

Article

ACOUP is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 21, 2021 and September 24, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “a link to the ACOUP blog”; “Reading the ACOUP blog”; “Leading the ACOUP blog”. It most often appears alongside 9/11, A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry, ACOU.

Metadata

  • Category: Publications
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: July 21, 2021
  • Last seen: September 24, 2024

Appears In

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.

Highlights From The Comments On "Crazy Like Us"
July 21, 2021 · Original source
Some good discussion of PTSD, culminating in a link to the ACOUP blog, which says:
Inline links: which says
I think the evidence strongly suggests that ancient combatants did not experience PTSD as we do now. The problem is that the evidence of silence leads us with few tools with which to answer why. One answer might be that it existed and they do not tell us – because it was considered shameful or cowardly, perhaps. Except that they do tell us about other cowardly or shameful things. And the loss and damage of war – death, captivity, refugees, wounds, the lot of it – are prominent motifs in Greek, Roman and European Medieval literature. War is not uniformly white-washed in these texts – not every medieval writer is Bertran. We can’t rule out some lacuna in the tradition, but given just how many wails and moans of grief and loss there are in the corpus it seems profoundly unlikely. I think we have to assume that it isn’t in the sources because they did not experience it or at least did not recognize the experience of it.
Inline links: Bertran
The more interesting potential question is why. Considering all of the competing theories for that, I think, would take its own collections post. But for my part, I tend to think the difference lies in part on the moral weight placed on warfare – it was viewed not generally a necessary evil in these societies, but a positive good – which may have meant there was less sense that what had taken place was trauma at all. If that is the case, the emergence of PTSD would speak to improvement in our society: we have become more averse to violence and do it less, and as a consequence, feel it more. If you will permit me, we have more wounded warriors because we have fewer dead ones, on account of having fewer wars in general.
Inline links: not generally a necessary evil, positive good, fewer, wars
How Often Do Men Think About Rome?
September 24, 2024 · Original source
Reading A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry, of course.
Reading the ACOUP blog.
Reading Bret Devereaux's blogpost 'On Roman Values' (I'm a stalwart ACOUP reader)