The arrogance of the lolbert is quite something to behold. If monarchy is so shit, how come it has been the semi-default method of governance since Sumer?
History Western Civilization, Rome and Cyclical History
- Thread starter FriedCFour
- Start date
The arrogance of the lolbert is quite something to behold. If monarchy is so shit, how come it has been the semi-default method of governance since Sumer?
Because its pretty simple.
You get cheiftian or other important figure and with his charisma and skill in battle he conquers a set area, he has a son and people looking for stability decide to put the son in charge. As long as said family produces people of great or mediocre skill things go fine.
But sooner or later you get a bad roll, and well that can go very badly depending on how much power the position of king actually has.
Because leadership qualities are not hereditary, and royal family squabbles can easily lead to their own civil wars.
Monarchies have been on the way out since the French Revolution, and for good fucking reason.
Yes.Masons making revolutions and World wars to get their World Goverment ruled by them.
I know a Free Mason. Apparently they do chuckle about the conspiracy theories at their meetings and dinners.
Not all.All importants.
1789 - french masons working for England.They lost control and their heads,but without them it would not work.
1917 - Wall Street send Trocky there.Only logical reasons for them to do so was becouse they were masons,too.Normal bankers would not do such thing.
Of course,only leaders knew thing about that.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
The reason being that increase in standard of living has allowed people to have more free time, which allowed them to start complaining and even trying to get more power. So powers that be allowed representation to shut them up. In fact, rich bankers wanted monarchies gone, because representatives are easy to buy off whereas a monarch... isn't. Look who bankrolled literally every revolution against monarchy since the French Revolution onwards: bankers, merchants... everybody who, even today, is busy pushing globalism, leftism, communism, genocide and so on.
That's it. Doesn't mean democracy is somehow superior to monarchy, just that socioeconomic conditions have changed enough to make democracy into a default mode of governance. Ironically, people had more representation when there was a monarch to protect them from plutocrats.
EDIT:
"Freemasons" and "lizard people" are just codewords. They can mean either Jews, plutocrats, or both, depending on who you ask.
People like the illuision that some one is actually in control of this maddness.
The fact that when you get down to it no one really is in control or really has a clue what their doing is fucking terrifying.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
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. I alrady pointed out this this is a fale accusation, and I referenced my long history of discussing this subject with the highly skeptical. Yet you ignore that, and repeat the false accusation in the face of proof to the contrary. 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 too much 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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 discard the ludicrous accusation that I supposedly don't offer an answer to opposing views.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...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. I alrady pointed out this this is a fale accusation, and I referenced my long history of discussing this subject with the highly skeptical. Yet you ignore that, and repeat the false accusation in the face of proof to the contrary. 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 too much 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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 discard the ludicrous accusation that I supposedly don't offer an answer to opposing views.
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Indeed.Human nature do not changed- and probably never would.Wow, this is a fascinating derail about freemasons. Allow me to side-step it entirely.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
The One Char
Well-known member
If things are going to go differently it's not gonna be because of democracy or that this period of modernity is unique. While technology might help it wont be because of it changing human nature, it help because of this...
One big thing where modern technology could well make a difference is simply its so powerful. Which overall isn't a good thing when leadership is so poor even when people aren't scared of some threat or other. A collapse in the modern period, with widespread warfare - or a collapse from other causes such as environmental destruction, which is possibly more dangerous as it could sneak up on us - could be something than there is no successor for, at least not for a prolonged period of time.
Simonbob
Well-known member
I have to admit, I'm not really qualified to say much.
The only point I can see, has already been brought up, tech. Today's tech allowing greater communication, the sheer amount of food and other stuff avalable, the transport possiblities....
On the other hand, I also complain about stupid govenment restrictions, they often make the actual avalable resources barely relevent, and for all the avalable info, we're the most propogandised people in history......
I don't think it'd affect the pattern much, humans being human. Nural-Link and the like might, though. I wonder if the tech would make things change faster, or slower?
Huh. There's a LOT of mind affecting drugs around. I wounder how much effect that might have?
Interesting stuff, macro-history.
The only point I can see, has already been brought up, tech. Today's tech allowing greater communication, the sheer amount of food and other stuff avalable, the transport possiblities....
On the other hand, I also complain about stupid govenment restrictions, they often make the actual avalable resources barely relevent, and for all the avalable info, we're the most propogandised people in history......
I don't think it'd affect the pattern much, humans being human. Nural-Link and the like might, though. I wonder if the tech would make things change faster, or slower?
Huh. There's a LOT of mind affecting drugs around. I wounder how much effect that might have?
Interesting stuff, macro-history.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
This argument is far superior to the assertion that the mere existence of present-day technology has magically lifted us acoss a threshold whereafter "the rules no longer apply". I cannot rule out the possibility that a future event (namely a conflict fought with incredibly powerful weapons) would render macro-history meaningless.
After all, we're talking about the study of civilisations, and something that would be powerful/disruptive enough to end civilisation would thereby also end (or at least disturb, as you say, "for a prolonged period of time") any civilisational cycle.
That being said, I'm not sure that any future conflict would be altogether that disruptive. For starters, look at the Black Death. Some 40% of Eurasia drops dead. Didn't meaningfully affect the civilisational cycle of any of the civilisations involved on a truly fundamental level. It enhanced certain trends that were pretty much "part of the model" anyway. Loads of people dying is, when viewed on the grand scale, not a massive disruption-- it's a feature of history.
(And those who think that we're now beyond that are deluding themselves. In fact, plagues tend to manifest as a feature of over-population. That's a factor of mutation, plain and simple. More masses of hosts means faster mutation + faster spread. This means we're probably living in the run-up to a new major plague. Covid is nothing. But wait until something like that but 50 times deadlier shows up. And that's only a matter of time...)
Regarding outright warfare: I've already argued that the situation we're in lends itself to a conflict more akin to a "civilisation-wide civil war", and that such a conflict is less likely to invite the use of weapons of mass destruction on a large scale. It defeats the purpose of the participants. They don't want to destroy, they all want to rule.
As I said: Caesar didn't want to burn Rome, and a future counterpart in a similar position would (for the exact same reasons) not wish to nuke Washington or New York.
Furthermore, when we look at the Warring States period of China, we see armies of millions. We see, in the last phase of the conflict period, millions dead. And then Qin Shi Huangdi killed millions more during his terror-regime. And this was in a time when there were way fewer people around, so those death tolls were proportionally far more relevant! And yet, this didn't disturb Chinese history. In fact, this was -- if not a typical feature, then at least one that was accounted for.
So, all in all, while I certainly don't rule out the death of literal billions over the next century or so (and in fact I expect that to happen), I'd argue that this is actually... normal. Not desirable, perhaps, but ultimately something that periodically happens throughout history. You can't even stop it, although certain choices can minimise such things. For instance, China was an example of how bad things can get at the end of a "chaos period", whereas Egypt was an example of how mild and bloodless such a transition can be. Rome was somewhere in-between. (Where we will end up on this scale remains to be seen. Could go in various directions, but I tend towards a pretty mild outcome. Which means enormous numbers of people still die, but mostly due to overall chaos and breakdown of infrastructure during the worst years, and of course due to disease and starvation.)
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Anything that truly makes us "post-human" would take the "human" out of "human nature" (as we know it), which would invalidate the observations of macro-history to a significant extent. Similarly, true artificial intelligence being unleashed -- or, for that matter, intelligent extra-terrestrials arriving with anything constituting a 'significant presence' -- would similarly force us to fundamentally reconsider our previous conclusions.
After all, history will no longer operate by the same rules, if it stops being (exclusively) human history.
I doubt the great significance of this. Drugs have been around since (long) before civilisation. It's generally assumed that Neanderthals... "partook", of what they could find in nature, if it could make them feel funny in a pleasant way. (Hell, monkeys do this!)
Our present age is, hilariously, unusually restrictive about drug use. (This hasn't curbed consumption, of course, but our modern governments are absurdly fixated on trying to stop or regulate drug use. A preposterous obsession that will come to naught. I certainly don't expect drug prohibitions to survive to the start of the next century. But they could potentially be tightened, before they are finally abolished!)
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Morphic Tide
Well-known member
The absence of formal recognition means that bringing them to account for abuses is not an overthrow of the system, but an enforcement of it, meaning that corrections have no requirement to be violent like the times the British Crown were dragged to the table in chains to confirm limits on their power.
The general population has a lot more power than before because they hold the purse that the upper class's bottom line comes from, even before getting into election upsets showing the system is in fact able to tell establishment politics to get bent. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the fools must have money to be parted from, the system doesn't work with a slim margin between bounty and starvation like before.
But not in anything like the way they were in the previous "cycles". The seats are fully separated with the military seat subordinate to civilian ones, and the military is far removed from domestic enforcement of political authority. These are structural differences very impactful to the particular course of events.
It's because I have massive attention span problems and so need to parse down what I'm replying to to keep track of the conversation. A few passes of skimming to try to identify the "key points", quoting those, then responding to the points made as can be held in memory.
It's up to you to show that there's not a meaningful sociological change from the many novel factors like population decline from unwillingness to have children, spectacular urbanization, most countries requiring trade to feed themselves, and so on. The bounding factors responsible for decision making have been overhauled dramatically from ones common between the example cases forming macro-historical theory.
The difference is that the Hundred Schools of Thought were reliant on a lapse in and fragmentation of authority, whereas today such variance is actively protected by the legal system. And also was before the rigidity in question, IIRC. Pressing against it now is contrary to both tradition and policy, it's those who wish to force a homogenous worldview that are the outlier.
It was certainly vastly more violent, the modern world's missing quite a few civil wars and revolts within major powers. You certainly don't see ideological shifts like the Civil Rights Movement happening peacefully in Rome or China, the adoption of Christianity's about the closest for the former and resisting it involved routine executions.
So I mixed the frequently-mentioned-elsewhere comparisons with the fall of the Roman Empire, being damned near the only thing Cherico ever says about the topic, with the "Chaos-period". Almost like it's a pain in the ass for me to keep track of many things at once so I try to boil it down to few enough points for me to keep track of.
China's self-recognized cyclical history certainly seems to rely on a thoroughly different definition of these things, given that it's predicated on the bureaucracy and cultural norms not changing between dynastic cycles, and thus the cultural experimentation just wasn't there.
When the fuck has this been a meaningful political consideration? "Scarcity" for actual decision-making has almost always been about accessibility, not raw amount that exists. The entire concept of moving society to "renewables" is because of this, something that's also rather novel because we actually can burn out opportunities forever now.
Again, generalizations to the point of being wholly inapplicable to the details that actually cause things to happen. The "specialization" of the Neolithic through the industrialization of agriculture was a minority of craftsmen, with the majority of the population being in self-sufficient socially-cohesive communities.
You are claiming that you have a model that makes useful predictions, and yet respond to a request to show that its inputs are actually still there with a request to show they've changed. You expect someone against your theory to dig into its details and a wide range of information about the modern world to prove the model they reject, rather than showing the work of anyone who's done so previously to verify the model's applicability to the present.
Macro-historical analysis is prescientific heuristics, not a logical model, because by everything you've said the proximate causes are ignored. It is nothing more than extensive elaboration of pithy statements like "an empire long united must divide, and an empire long divided must unite" without any actual data being worked with. The data required is infested with known unknowns to boot, as is inevitably the case for "cycles" of multiple millennia of human activity.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
This comes across to me as a flimsy excuse, but even supposing that it's true-- it then proves that you are incapable of discussing this matter on the required level of complexity. You outright admit that you can't manage it. That's fine, but then don't have such a damned strong conviction that you're right. If you literally can't keep up with the people you're debating, it's time to give up.
Regardless of whether you're 1) bullshitting to get out of the responsibility of debating honestly, or 2) genuinely not capable of discussing this matter comprehensively... the result is that you apply "easy mode" for yourself, while calling out others (including myself) for supposedly not being willing to discuss critical views.
It's really fucking hypocritical.
Even worse, you then go on to reverse the burden of proof:
...when in fact, I already pointed out that you're the one claiming the present is unique and special. Which is the big deviation from what has thus far been observed. You're the one defending the equivalent of the hockey-stick graph. So it's not "up to me to prove" this. It's up to you to prove that you are right.
I'd advise you to stop trying to dodge your intellectual responsibility when carrying on a discussion, or otherwise to stop trying to even participate in serious discussions. Because if you're unwilling or unable to do it properly... then why do it at all?
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P.S. -- There are quite a few further errors in your post. For instance, your comments prove that you know fuck-all about Chinese historiography, since I've only used concepts taken directly from Chinese historiography when discussing the matter, but frankly... going on to point out all your factual errors (again) seems pointless now. Because you're just conveniently "boil down" the discussion to not have to address the criticism at all.
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KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
To kind of go loosely with what @Cherico is saying it's because people are slothful, stupid, and weak, and because of that they look for the path of least resistance. It's to place the solutions (and blame) of your personal problems onto someone else and people are more than happy to ignore the wolves licking their lips so long as it's NIMBY and then when those predators and problems inevitably march onto their own backyard that can blame it on some mystery or supernatural force. To show you just how weak people are, look how easy it is to convince people to kill themselves either directly (Through war and such) or straight outright (Jim Jones, Fuedal Japanese culture Blue Whale Challenge ect.)
Anything that breaks this sheep mentality and doesn't bow to the mob mentality regardless of whether the actions committed are the exact same are viewed as a threat. "They do not fear what we fear, they do not follow who we follow, they aren't us so they must be evil" Then eventually society, as it's known collapses in some shape or form, restructure itself, and then rinse wash repeat. Contrary to what the propaganda likes to say. France of the 1700s is not the same as the France of the 1000s, nor is England. Nor is America of the 1900s the same as the America of the 1700s.
These things are not "Good" just because they are easy nor have they truly lasted forever. That's our own arrogance and rose-colored glasses talking.
Honestly the fact that humans as a species have lasted as long as they have is something I can only contribute to Godly intervention as we seem to very much be an anthesis of Evolution we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot as much as we excel and prosper. We've managed to survive as long as we have in spite of ourselves not because of it. I also can't help but think that eventually even God's patience has its limits. Perhaps I should just be thankful that for whatever reason we have not reached that point yet.
Simonbob
Well-known member
That wasn't quite what I was thinking.
I was thinking, "The moment you can read and write a brain, you can also edit it." Being able to make people think something, being able to simply re-write what a person thinks? Added, anybody plugged in is likely searchable as well....
If the majority is plugged in, then no rebellion can happen from those drones.
It's not certain to happen like that. But, if it does.....
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
And when have they ever been brought to account for abuses? Only people I ever recall that happening to are some meaningless and rather expendable "representatives".
At least with kings and nobility, you could bring them to account, even if it required a rebellion to pull off.
Uh, we always held the purse that the upper class's bottom line came from. Didn't exactly matter, and doesn't matter today.
Election upsets are irrelevant, because elections themselves are irrelevant. Elections are just a clown show, no different from the gladiator games that Roman emperors threw to keep the unemployed poor of Rome docile.
Slim margin between bounty and starvation disappeared entirely because of the technological advancement.
Try and remove the politicians when they cross the line and you'll see how "removed" military is from domestic enforcement...