Wow, this is a
fascinating derail about freemasons. Allow me to side-step it entirely.
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...Not that the obvious alternative continuation of this thread (responding to
@Morphic Tide) is guaranteed to be
that much better, as I cannot help but notice that he has opted to cherry-pick sentences from my post, and
only interacts with those-- ignoring everything else. Going so far as to re-iterate claims that I've literally addressed directly in my preceding post, while pretending that I've never mentioned those issues.
For someone who claims that proponents of macro-history don't want to face counter-arguments, that's a
tad hypocritical, isn't it,
@Morphic Tide? You do the precise thing of which you accuse others. I must honestly say that I find this a bad show.
But perhaps you've simply not read my post very well-- even though I wrote it in response to your complaints about a supposed unwillingness to answer criticisms. So let's have a decent go at analysing the points you raise, since I do want to eliminate the possibility of my actual arguments being critically misunderstood. We turn now to
your arguments, which ultimately strike me as a repetition of three main points:
1) Technology is more advanced now, and therefore human behaviour will be fundamentally different.
2) The so-called "Modern" period is unique in allowing a greater degree of intellectual dissent than any period before.
3) Our current system of government (democracy) is unique in that it'll allow for change from the ground up, thus preventing major social conflict of the sort seen throughout all of preceding history.
Literally everything you say is a variation or elaboration on one of those three statements. The fact is that I've
addressed all these points, in quite a lot of detail, both in this thread and in other threads (that I have linked, for your convenience). Now, again, to be clear: there is no need to agree with me, but you go on to claim that I supposedly don't want to face or address these questions. Even though that's the exact false claim that I called out previously. Which leads me to the conclusion that you are either a very bad reader, or entirely willing to make deliberate false claims.
This, coupled with your choice to cherry-pick points to respond to, while deliberately ignoring points you don't want to engage with, makes honest discussion rather difficult. Especially since
you're accusing others of not engaging with opposing views. You'll note that in my previous post, I reponded to every single point you had raised, without trying to dodge any lines of discussion. But you don't show the same courtesy in response.
For this reason, I'm fairly hesitant to expend a lot of effort constructing detailed arguments to counter your claims. After all, what could I then expect in response, except just more cherry-picking? I like discussion, but I don't like talking to the selectively deaf. With this in mind, I'll post a very short
summary of my counter-arguments to your claims, with the understanding that I've already talked far more extensively about all of this:
1) More advanced technology makes no meaningful difference, except in scale. There have been many technological changes in the period of "civilisational history". Entire alphabets invented. Paper invented to write on. Iron-working mastered. The horse domesticated. The stirrup invented. Gunpowder discovered. The heavy plough developed. The blast furnace pioneered. The three-field rotation system introduced. Each of these were
world-altering. You pretend that modern technology is uniquely disruptive, but that only shows that your perception is skewed. That you don't fully appreciate how
dramatic the above factors (among many others!) really were. And yet... they did not alter the shape of history. They only altered its instantiations. Which mean that if you claim "it's different this time!", there's a pretty heavy burden of proof on
your shoulders. And thus far, you have not begun to shift that burden by even a millimetre.
2) Modernity is not unique, and vast, dizzying degrees of intellectual dissent have existed all throughout history. Even in notoriousy rigid China, there were the "Hundred Schools of Thought". I referenced that, but you opted to ignore that. Let me tell you, they had some
wild ideas back then! If you think our "modern" radicalisms are somehow unique, read up on stuff like mohism. And that's just the start. It gets a lot more radical and crazy. We are not as unique as you think. The fact that you may be
unaware of the nuances of far distant times and places doesn't mean they weren't there. Your assumption that we are special is the product of a blinkered view, not of knowledge. (Specifically: you under-estimate more distant history, compared to the present period, because you appear to know
too little about the more distant past.)
3) Democracy is not unique, in fact it has existed many times before. It has never lasted. It has never been any better (at anything) than other system, either. To be clear: unlike some ohers, I don't think it's
worse than another system, either. But the Greeks had kings before they had democracies, and they had kings again after democracy perished. This was also the case among the Tamil states. And the Indo-Chinese city leagues. And the Indonesian confederacies. And, indeed, the Romans also had Kings before they established a Republic. Tell me... did it last? (And if you want to argue that
our democracy is somehow unique, I merely have to point out that the introduction of mass democracy with the French revolution led to mass murder, and then to a despot-monarch seizing power. Or I can point out that diagreements -- such as secessions -- have still tended to be resolved with force of arms, no matter
what the people involved voted for!)
In short, we are not as unique as you think. Our current time is not the "special case" that you have imagined it to be. And if you want to claim otherwise, then you are the one positing the extra-ordinary claim. And as they say: extra-ordinary claims demand extra-ordinary evidence. Which you have not provided. Indeed, when I pointed out that
you are positing the equivalent of the "hockey-stick graph"... well, that's one of the points you chose
not to respond to. But it goes to the core of your misconception, so I do urge you to take this matter into some consideration.
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...Now, not to be too much of dick, but I do feel compelled to point out some less-fundamental but still pretty whopping factual errors in your post. Maybe you completely misunderstood what macro-historians actually claim (which would prove that you're not qualified to counter their arguments, due to lack of knowledge), or maybe you're poorly-informed on historical facts (which would prove... the exact same thing). But either way, if you want to claim someone else is Very Wrong, then I do think it's smart to first make sure that
you have the facts straight.
However...
The period in question, as I've only said like a million times, starts
intellectually with the Sokratic Revolution and is manifested
politically with Alexander the Great. As Peter Green said it: "Alexander to Actium". That's the period we're talking about. The Hellenistic Age. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Greece being absorbed by the expanding power of Rome happened in stages, and mostly towards the
end of that period, didn't it? That makes your statement more than a
little dodgy.
Really? It seems like
you're the one who is only talking about Roman history. Or are you suggesting that Qin had achieved hegemony over the Chinese world two-thirds through the Warring States period, rather than, say, only managing this by the very close of the period? And when it comes to Roman history, you might benefit from reading
Empires of Trade, an excellent book that really goes into the really quite gradual evolution of the intial Roman-dominated alliance system (what we now term their "vassals" in retrospect, they then termed merely "friends") into a true
Imperium. If you hold that next to a text describing, for instance, NATO... well, it's not entirely unfamiliar, what we see here.
What you describe isn't what the word "scarcity" means in an academic context. The term refers to the fact that resources are in practical reality
finite. That's why I mentioned replicators. The fact is that thorough investigation has shown that hunter-gatherers (contrary to the common misconception) only did very little work, and typically had plenty of sources of sustenance at their avail. The problem was that it wasn't a buffered system. No meaningful division of labour, no specialisation, little in the way of consistent transfer of knowledge... which meant "you break your leg... you're dead".
The neolithic revolution was the introduction of an alternative system. The one that still exists today. You claim that it's now obsolete, but that's not correct. The entire system is still about the same allocation of means (in fact, the same means, although refined and put to use in more complex ways), the same pretty basic set of divisions of societal power, the same specialisation of labour and the same resulting set of economic exchanges.
Again: that's why I mentioned replicators. If you move
beyond scarce means, you break the paradigm. Certainly. You'll know it when it happens, because it'll render both capitalism and communism (which are both systems entirely built around
the allocation of scarce means) obsolete very rapidly. They'll cease to exist. The division of labour as we know it will cease to exist. The current dependencies on existing socio-economic power structures will cease to exist.
That is a paradigm-shifting alteration.
But that's not where we are. You have mistaken a change in the
details for something far more fundamental. As I have argued: the details have changed before. It didn't change the shape of history. I'm not saying the current macro-historical analysis will be valid forever. On the contrary: I'm saying it almost certainly won't be. But the time where it ceases to be valid has not yet arrived. Like many,
many people before you, it seems that you have prematurely declared an end to history as we know it.
We'll be living within the existing paradigm's confines for a while longer, I'm afraid.
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P.S. -- Yes, this is my notion of a
short reply, because a longer one might be too much wasted effort, if the other guy is unwilling to discuss things without cherry-picking. Which I
think means we can pretty definitively dicard the ludicrous accusation that I supposedly don't offer an answer to opposing views.