![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
underlankers.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsOne thing that interested me as far as the course of history is concerned is that on the whole, cultures/peoples/states will tend to last no more than 200/300 years. Yet the Chinese and Ancient Egyptian civilizations lasted very long times, and the Jewish culture, alone of that part of the world, has survived more or less intact from the 1st Century AD. The Chinese Imperial system was created by the most successful totalitarian movement in the history of the world, Shang Yang's legalism in the 3rd Century BCE. It would last, with periodic disintegrations that would inevitably lead to new dynasties reforming out of the ashes of the older one, into the 20th Century, toppled almost a century ago, to be precise.
Yet it lasted total 2,200 years and withstood two foreign conquests.
Ancient Egypt began its existence 6,000 years ago, at the same time as the other cultural center of Western civilization began to form cities in Sumeria. It would last in its original form until the last Pharaoh, Nectanebo II, was slain in a war with the Persian Empire.
The Jewish people, too, arose in Ancient Israel and Ancient Judah before even the Achaemaenid Empire existed, much less Imperial Rome or any of the other societies of the last 2,000 years. They've gone all over the world, and always are good and loyal citizens of the societies they've lived in. Yet this people, more clearly than any of the others, has preserved not merely a language and name intact, as with the Greeks, but in fact preserved the actual cultural institutions of 2,000 years ago in modified form, a form that was able to adapt to succeeding eras.
But why is it that in these cases these societies have lasted while most others well....don't?
It's instructive to note that in all three cases education and writing were extremely valued in those societies. In fact both Egypt and China shared a scribal caste who were able to function with and without the absolute monarchs who underpinned both systems. As a result the political system could and did vary drastically in practice, but the dependence on a consistent caste of scribes would serve as a centrifugal force, enabling vastly different dynastic systems to have similar practice. Similarly Jewish culture has long valued writing and scholarship more than can be said for most cultures it co-existed with.
However blending with this was an irrevocable and powerful conservative impulse that led all three of these societies to strongly limit change whenever possible, and to work within the existing system. In Egypt's case it was the concept of the theocratic pharaoh and the scribal caste that preserved things, in the Chinese case it was the existence of the scribal caste and a precursor to the idea of abolishing governments whenever they screw things up too badly that did the deed, and in Jewish culture it was the exclusion of Jews in most meaningful ways from participating in broader society that did the deed.
Ironically the very aspects that led these societies to be so long-lasting in the cases of both the Imperial Chinese and Pharaonic systems made updating them to face realities of later eras difficult at best, and ultimately impossible for both. To me I think that the secret of the abilities of those three cultures to have preserved and to preserve themselves is ultimately that they were simultaneously focused on a group of individuals who could preserve the culture of the people in question independent of a state and its associated coercive power, while all three also showed a powerful cultural flexibility, and an ability to assimilate the best parts of other cultures without feeling that their own was endangered. And all three have and had elements of xenophobia in them as well.
In my view, the ability of each of the three cultures to have lasted as long as they did is an impressive testament to some stubborn, ornery people who kept something going far longer than would be reasonably expected. It's something to be commended and valued, not condemned.
So....what do you guys think? Why do you think that the Ancient Egyptians had a civilization that lasted 3,000 years, the Chinese one that lasted 2,200 years, and the Jews one that's lasted almost 3,000 years and counting? Whenever revolutions happen a lot of older social customs and mores naturally go out the window, and humans are nothing if not a fractious, squabbling species. So how did these three last so long do you think?
Yet it lasted total 2,200 years and withstood two foreign conquests.
Ancient Egypt began its existence 6,000 years ago, at the same time as the other cultural center of Western civilization began to form cities in Sumeria. It would last in its original form until the last Pharaoh, Nectanebo II, was slain in a war with the Persian Empire.
The Jewish people, too, arose in Ancient Israel and Ancient Judah before even the Achaemaenid Empire existed, much less Imperial Rome or any of the other societies of the last 2,000 years. They've gone all over the world, and always are good and loyal citizens of the societies they've lived in. Yet this people, more clearly than any of the others, has preserved not merely a language and name intact, as with the Greeks, but in fact preserved the actual cultural institutions of 2,000 years ago in modified form, a form that was able to adapt to succeeding eras.
But why is it that in these cases these societies have lasted while most others well....don't?
It's instructive to note that in all three cases education and writing were extremely valued in those societies. In fact both Egypt and China shared a scribal caste who were able to function with and without the absolute monarchs who underpinned both systems. As a result the political system could and did vary drastically in practice, but the dependence on a consistent caste of scribes would serve as a centrifugal force, enabling vastly different dynastic systems to have similar practice. Similarly Jewish culture has long valued writing and scholarship more than can be said for most cultures it co-existed with.
However blending with this was an irrevocable and powerful conservative impulse that led all three of these societies to strongly limit change whenever possible, and to work within the existing system. In Egypt's case it was the concept of the theocratic pharaoh and the scribal caste that preserved things, in the Chinese case it was the existence of the scribal caste and a precursor to the idea of abolishing governments whenever they screw things up too badly that did the deed, and in Jewish culture it was the exclusion of Jews in most meaningful ways from participating in broader society that did the deed.
Ironically the very aspects that led these societies to be so long-lasting in the cases of both the Imperial Chinese and Pharaonic systems made updating them to face realities of later eras difficult at best, and ultimately impossible for both. To me I think that the secret of the abilities of those three cultures to have preserved and to preserve themselves is ultimately that they were simultaneously focused on a group of individuals who could preserve the culture of the people in question independent of a state and its associated coercive power, while all three also showed a powerful cultural flexibility, and an ability to assimilate the best parts of other cultures without feeling that their own was endangered. And all three have and had elements of xenophobia in them as well.
In my view, the ability of each of the three cultures to have lasted as long as they did is an impressive testament to some stubborn, ornery people who kept something going far longer than would be reasonably expected. It's something to be commended and valued, not condemned.
So....what do you guys think? Why do you think that the Ancient Egyptians had a civilization that lasted 3,000 years, the Chinese one that lasted 2,200 years, and the Jews one that's lasted almost 3,000 years and counting? Whenever revolutions happen a lot of older social customs and mores naturally go out the window, and humans are nothing if not a fractious, squabbling species. So how did these three last so long do you think?
(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 17:54 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 19:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 20:19 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 19:05 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 20:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 19:05 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 20:41 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 20:53 (UTC)That's no big deal. Actually, I know very little about Western history (at least by your metrics), and I have been meaning to ask you about it for some time, but I've been way too preoccupied with work for that. And now it's 2:20 a.m. here and I have to get up early tomorrow for some remaining assignments. Hope to catch you soon with some spare time for a discussion :)
(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 20:55 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 23:44 (UTC)Because OMG China OMG. :-)
Don't worry, India does matter. At least for us Bulgarians. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 07:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 03:09 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 08:00 (UTC)Incidentally, did you have the movie "Jodha Akbar" in mind while commenting? I have heard that it's good but haven't gotten around to watching it yet. Akbar was without doubt the greatest Mughal emperor; he was the most "liberal" of them all and his reign was a period of remarkable flourishing of art and culture and of religious cross-fertilization.
(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 12:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 15:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 17:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/3/11 11:43 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 20:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 20:27 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 20:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 21:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 21:12 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 22:21 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 21:30 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 22:22 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 23:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/3/11 00:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 21:53 (UTC)However, I also offer a counter example. The Yolngu of Arnhem Land in northern Australia; they were a merchant culture, but did not set up trading posts or colonies, nor did they have writing in a form that we know it, but they have a 20 000 year old continuous civilisation (possibly as old as 50 000-120 000 years), by far the longest continuous civilisation in history. Now, they had to suffer war and attack, but the big difference is that wars were never so professional as to be able to kill off an entire race of people; there just simply wasn't the resources or technologies to field big armies that could easily kill thousands of people.
One of the most important cultural artefacts to the Yolngu are their songlines. These tell you about the old days, all the allegorical and teleological nature of the universe, the rules and law of thousands of generations; much the same as the books do for the other civilisations. The Yolngu still have many of their songlines left, but even in just 50 years of conquest (white occupation of this part of the country doesn't really start until the 1960s) they have lost a lot. So what has kept the Yolngu culture for millennia is the combination of their songlines without an external force able to take them from them.
(no subject)
Date: 21/3/11 22:08 (UTC)Australia and New Guinea were the odd ones out, globally, gatherer-hunting society survived in Australia far longer than it did anywhere else (where the decades-long drought followed by massive floods may explain why the Aborigines decided "Meh, we don't want to farm") while New Guinea developed farming but not the state or the city.
(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 00:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 00:55 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 00:59 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 01:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 02:59 (UTC)Were any of these societies situated at an earthly coordinate of any significant resource?
(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 12:02 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 17:08 (UTC)what about their ability to reproduce/breed? if they were extremely successfully in this for an extended period of time, then it is safe to assume that their resources (and monies) permitted the ideal circumstances for it. would you think?
(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 17:43 (UTC)Their ability to breed has nothing to do with it. Europe, which provided the basis for all but 2 of the big Empires that fell apart in the World Wars, was the poorest and one of the least-populated parts of the world when its rise began. China, by contrast, since the 3rd Century BCE has *always* been one of the most densely urbanized and populous parts of the world, and there were long spans of that 2,300 year period where cities like Chang'an were larger than any elsewhere in the world.
(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 17:45 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 18:12 (UTC)(i'm trying to factor out writing as a means of preservation)
(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 18:25 (UTC)I might note, too, that the Chinese Empire went through two periods of foreign rule, the Qing and the Yuan Dynasties, whose most famous ruler was Khubilai Khan. The foreign rulers had the linguistic effect that the Frankish Germanic tribes did on Romance Latin.
Too, the Chinese actually invented gunpowder, firearms, and rockets as weapons of war along with precociously early ironclads (which weren't used in fleet-against-fleet combat until the Austro-Prussian War).
(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 19:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/3/11 22:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/3/11 06:12 (UTC)