The Philosophy of Robin Hood

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"In the forest of fortune, the true archer is not he who hoards the golden arrows, but he who aims to share the bounty with those who have none." - some guy living in a forest...

On my recent trip to Japan I came across the grave site of Nakamura Jirokichi aka Nezumi Kozō (The Rat Kozo). He was the "Robin Hood" of Japan. After being caught, he confessed to burglarizing over 100 samurai estates worth over 30,000 ryō (yen at the time) in a span of 15 years. When Nezumi was arrested, very little money was found on him making the daiymo believe he gave his taken treasures to the poor. Prior to being caught, Nezumi Kozō served his wives divorce papers to save them from perishing from the same kind of persecution and punishment, as devreed by the law of the time. He was tied to a horse, a true spectacle as he was paraded around town, and was eventually beheaded at the Suzugamori execution grounds. He is revireed as a folk hero and his exploits have been dramatized in Kabuki theater for years and years. I guess people frequently take pieces of his grave stone because I saw signs specifically stating how it is a crime to do so, I suppose people want some of Nezumi's luck/skill with them?

Horses casually selling a sword named "deathbringer" in his merch shop is exactly the correct amount of insanity

hi mr horses. i suffered a loss on my family and these past few days have been horrible. this video was able to make me focus on something else for a while. thank you for providing me some minutes of distraction from my grief.

He's selling a f**king sword😭😭😭✨✨✨✨

I take issue with the counter-examples proposed at 10:30. The Robinhood philosophy does not need to mean "steal everything from the rich until they are poor" but "steal enough from the rich to redistribute to the poor until all are equal". So the example of a doctor killing one person to save 5 feels like the result of a slippery slope when the Robinhood approach could actually be better interpreted as "take a kidney from one person to save the life of another" now both people have one working kidney. In this case then, the correct thing to do to save those 5 people is to find 5 donors that can give what they can without themselves dying. An extreme case might be a heart transplant in which case it would not make sense to trade one person's life for the other when they're supposed to be valued equally. That whole thing sounds like some economists slippery slope fallacy as to why we can't have universal healthcare.

A big factor that led to the rise of gangs and squatters doing "robin hood" activities were the introduction of enclosure acts and the phasing out of the open field system during this period, which led to many being uprooted from the land their families had spent generations on and many having to leave and become day laborers or starve. It becomes a lot easier to decide to try and make it as a thief and outlaw living outside the system than toiling for pay.

This channel is pure gold. Thank you for the visual, audible and philosophical treat.

on the commentary at the end about reductiveness in the folklore - i believe truly mythic memes that stick around for centuries like this aren't reduced, but distilled. there's a core essence that appeals to us, and the historical-contextual details of the original story are essentially boiled away through time and repetition. the result is something like a nugget of wisdom in story form, but it also acts as a pointer referring us back to the historical context that created that story so we can understand that wisdom more fully

A new Horses video AND it's about philosophy? Today's a good day!

He stole from tax collectors and gave back to the taxed. I think the depression is when it really started getting heavy handed into “stole from the rich, gave to the poor”.

This topic has fascinated me since I was a kid watching the anthropomorphic Robin Hood. Ty for making this

Hey man, I just wanna say that I appreciate the hell out of these videos. You're an essential part of my schedule and I watch your videos before work. Thanks man

best merch I've seen from any youtuber hands down

The plaque at 9:15 is located in a little village called Fulking, in West Sussex, UK. It’s about 20 minutes from my house and is right next to a very nice pub 😊

That's not a horse

Absolutely love your editing, narration, and scripts. It's inspiring to see how you make so few assets interesting to watch

How does this only have 74k views? I am basically writing this and hitting like, which I never do, in support of this quality.

just sliding in to say the new thumbnail is so sick