Hey
@Marduk, I wanted to open this (again lengthy) post by mentioning that since this is one of my favourite topics, I'm aware I can ramble about it at considerable length. If this is getting tiresome, please do mention it, and I'll stop replying to this line of debate. I really enjoy the conversation, but I don't want to be a bother.
Given that, in this post, I have left aside the points where we are basically in agreement, and/or where nothing else needed to be said. I've also shuffled a few lines of discussion to put my responses a little more 'topic-by-topic', and to avoid redundant responses. I hope that's okay.
I was specifically talking about the modern status of the theory. Pre-industrial, i would say it was quite accurate, as no equivalents of industrial revolution happened. You can bring up things like horse collar or advances of steel making, but in sheer scale they don't compare to the industrial revolution - which was effectively arrival of thousands of such inventions in a timespan of roughly a century, and even more of derivate ones in the following one. Quantity has a quality of its own, as they say.
Compared to that, history before the industrial revolution was easy to make models for.
Most people in any notable civilization probably make food, probably by farming, they feed themselves, and give some surplus to feed craftsmen, rulers and armies when such were needed, who in return provide protection, tools and some degree of guidance. Naturally that makes the people who own the farmland important and recognized as such.
That description was applicable to most, if not all remotely significant civilizations of the world, since settled civilizations existed... up until the industrial revolution itself. That's why we're talking of industrial revolution, not gunpowder revolution, or stirrup revolution.
Since then the amount of farmland and peasants anyone has is no longer on the minds of military leaders - after all, if your nation can consider yourself a remotely major power, then mere couple percent of population or less can farm enough food to feed it more or less without much issue, and if they know what they are doing, then by historical standard feed it lavishly.
As such nations could throw vastly larger amounts of men into their military and for longer times than before, as before doing so would mean there would be no one to farm and everyone would be starving. But then again, as much as warm bodies with rifles, even more important was coal and steel, to make cannons, tanks, battleships and so on, because everyone could notice that the warm bodies who had many of these things could defeat significantly larger numbers of warm bodies who didn't.
But we're way out of that period already. Even in these things, quality is becoming a more important than sheer numbers. No one wants a thousand T-55's or Shermans anymore, which we could build relatively cheaply, because everyone knows that mere 50 T-90's or M1A3's are going to turn them into scrap with contemptuous ease, and require far less manpower to staff anyway - so with late industrial\early information age, warfare is heading again into a quality (and all the industrial and scientific support infrastructure that allows it) over numbers focus, as people are increasingly more valuable to the war effort farming food building, developing and maintaining increasingly more capable war machines than being yet another levy conscript in the army.
Yes, history rhymes, but in that case barring a full on movie scale apocalypse, some big things did change. We're in unknown waters now. Unknown doesn't mean that none of the previous observations will apply. Perhaps some will. But we don't know that for sure, and we don't know which ones will they be.
We observe the same things, but estimate their meaning differently. I didn't mention the innovations that I did without cause. The assertion that "in sheer scale they don't compare to the industrial revolution" is not one with which I can agree. Consider that prior to the introduction of the heavy plough, considerable parts of the world -- including virtually all Europe to the North of the Rhine-Alps-Carpathian border -- was inherently unsuited to anyhing more than
marginal agriculture. At
best. But its heavy soils were very fertile, and the new plough precipated a population explosion that directly facilitated the future primacy of Northern Europe. There's a reason why Germania was bumfuck-nowhere in Roman times, but became the heart of Europe later on. Yeah, a fucking
plough stood at the basis of that.
I can point out how the Roman lack of stirrups and a good horse collar limited Roman productivity in key manners, and the invention of those things changed certain economic and social relations forever. Key advances in metallurgy changed the bounds of technical possibility. Gunpowder altered warfare forever: it didn't just alter the viability and usefulness of every pre-existing fortification, but also altered the socio-economic dynamics that decided how armies were organised and what role and states most combatants had. And reliable paper? Even looking beyond its role in facilitating the transmission of texts and the stread of literacy... paper money?
That had a pretty big effect, initially on the Chinese economy.
My point is that no, the industrial revolution was
not "effectively [the] arrival of thousands of such inventions in a timespan of roughly a century, and even more of derivate ones in the following one". The industrial revolution
included a few key innovations of comperable importance,
and (as you say) led to a great number of innovations of far
smaller importance. Since quantity indeed has a quality of its own, their sheer number may by itself be counted as one very great "collective innovation".
But that is something very different from claiming that the industrial revolution churned out a staggering number of very important innovations, each world-altering in its own right. That's simply not the case.
My position is that the industrial revolution is certainly important, and has certainly brought about changes. So did the thins that I mentioned. Those, too, truly transformed the world for the people living in it. Yet the resulting changes do not seem to have interrupted the greater cycle of history. Neither gunpowder nor paper nor the heavy plough nor the blast furnace (each and every one of which was invented in China first) interrupted the dynastic cycle. These are inventions with demonstrated the power to
determine continental geopolitics and
dramatically change demographic realities. But the overall course of history has brushed them off with barely a moment's notice.
Given this, I do not believe that the industrial revolution is somehow the exception. That this time, it's different. You have stated that we're in unknown waters now; that some of the previous observations may still be valid, and others may not. This presupposes that the industrial revolution
is the exception. If you continue to believe that, I don't think I'll be able to convince you otherwise. But I don't believe that. After all, the industrial revolution has only happened once. Just like those other things I mentioned. We have no control group. So either we believe that this time it's different, and a cycle that has been unaffected by the most dramatic of innovations is now invalid... or we believe that if all previous innovations didn't affect it, the present ones most likely won't do so, either.
I subscribe to the second view.
That definition of "modernity" applies to all time since Rome fell.
When the French Revolution broke out, the modern French language was only spoken in the immediate vicinity of Paris. The rise of actual nation-states, as well as the unprecedented intensity of their competition and the wave of near-obsessive imperialism that was born of it, is very much a trait of modernity. And
not of the preceding history of our culture, during which countries were amalgamated collections of holdings, typically with varying regional identities (to the point that they were effectively different countries, just united under one dynasty).
That's what you would absolutely expect to be true...
The big aberration is however, that at this moment it clearly isn't.
Because surely the West with some of the world's most powerful armies is not lacking for the means. It is limited mostly by own population's mores and customs.
If one day the whole West decided that they want to act in the world old style and demand that the whole North Africa cease all migrant and Islam related shenanigans, shut up, and pay tribute, or else they will all be regime changed and then be given some combination of Xinjiang\Chechenya treatment if they try guerilla warfare, no one could do anything about it.
Does the world not pay heed to the mighty Dollar? Is the West not omnipresent? Are American soldiers not based around the world? Or, in another vein: do you know how
bloody expensive (and just plain
bloody) it would be to hold the world under occupation?
Yes, it could be done. That's the revelevant bit. There are quite a lot of things that I could do, personally, but the negative consequences outweigh the positive ones. So I refrain from doing those things... usually.
That's kinda correct, but misses the temporal and geographical context - after all the Islamic World was not lacking in "violent anti-Westernism" before the west crippled it as such.
It also isn't lacking in violent anti-Dharmaism, violent anti-Persianism, violent anti-Hellenism...
Point being, Islamic World may be considerably more aggressive about bulldozing over cultures it conquers than the average.
I agree that they are quite, ah...
enthousiastic about their religion. And have long been. To some extent, that is an inherent element of the culture. I trace it back to a major disagreement about Islam's "proper" future back in the late 10th and early 11th century. I mentioned a stagnation problem in Islamic philosophy, and I believe the cause to lie there. (Note that things went the other way in Europe, but we actually faced the same issue. The Bishop of Paris tried to have Thomas Aquinas excommunicated. He didn't get his way. In the Islamic world, the analogous faction
won, and the results were highly negative.)
However, it sure has gotten way more intense in the more recent period. You know, dismantling the Ottoman Empire was a big mistake. All the crazies in all Arabia used to think the decadent Sultan was the vile devil whose very existence stood in the way of the glorious Caliphate.
Now, they think it's us.
They're not exactly wrong. Not about us being devils (that's just their partisan perspective), but about us -- "The West" -- having screwed the Islamic world over in a major way. And before altogether too long, they'll exact some revenge... or we'll finish the job. (Whoever wins gets to write the books that say he was right.)
Islam may gain enough strength to set up enclaves in Europe... But these will thrive only as long as the rest of Europe lets them.
On the other hand i don't think the Islamic World's kind of legitimacy is something that Europeans have a hunger for. If they did, they would be fine with the locally available equivalents already, but they hate those.
Half of the westerners view Islamic World as poor victims of history that need to be delicately enlightened to the better ways of progressive liberalism, while the other half views them as barbarian invaders they always were that ideally should be treated accordingly. Neither view is conductive to adopting their religion with all its mores that encompass most parts of life.
You point at the more probable outcome. I agree. As mentioned earlier today in a PM with
@Zyobot:
"
I [previously] posited [scenario wherein] the European Muslims embrace reform under a charismatic authority figure (their Caesar), and end up embracing stuff like Aristotelian philosophy again. Thus giving rise to a veritable Euro-Islam that is way more attractive to European converts. Western Europe becomes the heart of the Islamic world, with the rest of the Islamic world for a hinterland."
In this context, I imagined Eastern Europe hardening in its Christian identity, and staunchly opposing Islamic Europe (which I fancifully styled 'the Caliphate of Paris'). This would involve decades of Northern Ireland-like Christian terrorism in Western Europe. However, the scenario rests on the fact that Islam reverses its thousand-year-old "philosophical attitudes", and thus becomes a changed religion -- one more suited to Europe.
Again, this is not likely, but I note that Christianity managed it. Then again, Christianity was muh younger at the time. So there is
that.
I went on to write:
"
My 'mainline' expectation (...) involves unreformed Muslims setting up little urban caliphates throught Western Europe as society collapses into chaos, leading to an urban-versus-rural civil. Which is eventually resolved when the Americans (who go full Caesarist) and the Eastern Europeans march through Western Europe in a campaign of liberation. Which then ends when the American Augustus gets crowned as Emperor of all Christendom under the half-collapsed dome of St. Peter's Basilica by a collection of notables including the Pope and the various Patriarchs. Or, you know -- something like that."
As I added on to that: I'm obviously just making up the specifics. A little impressionism, to add flair.
So regardless of said impressionism, I think that our actual expectations regarding the future developments regarding Islam in Europe actually line up to a great degree.
Which raises a major criteria problem. If all nations within a High Culture assimilate to a single national culture, does it stop being a High Culture? That would be pretty ridiculous.
Do they stop being a High Culture if they get forced into a single polity, even if they resist assimilation to its national culture?
Or do they stop being a High Culture only if they both join a single polity and share a culture?
History answers all these questions. For starters, it is extremely difficult to utterly absorb all nations within a High Culture into a single undifferentiated whole. China, for instance, hasn't managed it yet. And they've been at it since 221 BC. Kind of paints the picture.
Lots of Gauls got absorbed into Rome (by Force), and by the time Rome fell, everybody over there spoke Latin. And they'd been tought that their old gods were just extra names of the Roman gods... before they embraced that swanky
new Roman religion. The one that has only
one God. (Much later on, lots of peoples up North resisted the appeal to embrace that God, and had to be converted by force. They clearly became part of Christendom. So that's that question answered.)
The point is not the erasure of national culture. The extent to which a common culture arises over time is not the relevant factor. The different bits of the High Culture were already bound together in key ways. When the High Culture unifies at the end, and becomes a Civilisation, that is merely the logical conclusion.
A highly developed nation of such cultural independence that it resists the pressure from all neighboring High Cultures to follow them should for all practical purposes be considered one too.
This is like saying that (for example) Iceland is of the same order as (also for example) Eurasia. You are very interested in the concept of cultures that stay
out of the High culture that has spawned them. Cultures, that for instance, deliberately refuse unification when it sweeps up the others. Such national cultures can exist. In time, they may diverge to such an extent that any future re-union with the "mother culture" is no longer sensible. Based on geography, it's likely that such cultures are often
literally cut off from the larger body. For instance: islands.
I would not expect them to share the traits of High Cultures. Because of that, they presumably won't adhere to the same cycle, and will instead become a thing of their own. Perhaps we should call them
Insular Cultures. I do suspect that they would be quite vulnerable to expansionism by much bigger neighbours. This may be why I don't find them to be at all common. Not even in the distant past. So this whole concept is rather theoretical.
It is a good example, but one also perfectly suitable for my argument. Its the divergence between these cultures that make the distinction, not their scale or history.
China, due to its current characteristics, is heading in a certain direction, and taking rather extreme steps to isolate itself from outside influences that would take it elsewhere.
Meanwhile Japan absolutely doesn't want to follow China, while being more influenced by the West.
How does that compare? Was the Britain of Empire times that much culturally different and getting increasingly different from its more and less imperial fellow western powers? Not really. In fact, considering the very fact that we are communicating in its language, through the use of invention of its rebellious colony, i would say quite the opposite - the massive success of the British Empire has made the whole West a bit more like Britain.
Your point goes to the geopolitical positioning and future of Japan. In that context, your observations are accurate and I agree with what you're saying. My point was about its status as a supposed High Culture. Namely that even if it stays independent, and no matter how powerful it becomes in its own right... that does not make for a High Culture by itself.
Regarding Japanese opposition to being absorbed by China, as contrasted with Britain's far greater (willing) entanglement in the fabric of the West, we should not forget that (to name just one example) the Greeks in particular detested the notion of being suborned by Rome. But suborned they were. And when Rome fell, the Greek bits lingered. And even when they were utterly Greek again in every single regard... they still stubbornly claimed that they were, in fact, the
Roman Empire. To name another example: the Carthaginians didn't want to be Roman, either. The solution was to burn their city to the ground, build a new one, and put Romans there.
Given such precedents (and they are practically beyond counting, throughout history), I daresay that Japan's mere opposition to being absorbed by China means nothing at all. Only Japan's ability to secure its independence matters. If it can, alone or in league with others, fend off Chinese expansionism then it will not be part of China. If it cannot do so, it will in the future be a Chinese holding.
But is seems....
China is going to try.
Overall its gonna be up to Japan itself, no matter how much or how little support the West provides.
...that we agree on that.
The obvious solution is to try to assimilate the Muslims... If they emigrate in outrage, problem solved. If they die fighting in rebellion, also problem solved. And if they stop being Muslims, then they no longer have much to do with the Islamic World, and problem is gone yet again.
This is a variety of the ""get rid of the Muslims" outcome. I agree that this is the most likely scenario in India.
One thing to watch out for here i think is excessive significance ascribed to religion as sole determination of culture here, especially in cases closer to modern times. After all, half of the Christendom is now agnostics, atheists and some variations of such, disproportionally in the ruling class and other culturally influential parts of populations, and the other half is split across so many different sub-variants of Christianity that most extreme outliers have nothing but few general theological generalities in common.
I would call that a severe under-estimation of the importance of religion. All of Western culture is shaped and informed by Christianity. It just happens to be implicit right now, rather than explicit, but all the basic tenet and assumptions are still there. They are, in fact, so obvious and so general that nobody even questions it.
As for secularism: that's rife with cultism, both of the "new religion" and of the "it's-not-a-religion-I-swear" variety. (As examples, I previously raised Scientology and socialism. Both cults of modernity. Both striking examples of the human need for a religious experience and community.) I already pointed out that every culture's "modernity" is rife with such cults... and that they rarely survive beyond that modernity. Instead, traditional religion comes back. (For a time, at least.)
In light of the above, i'd like to note that until more recent times in the West itself, when religion was relegated to playing second fiddle in politics of the West, when the Pope called Christendom to do this or that, Russia and the rest of the Orthodox periphery would generally not be expected to answer.
The Great Schism had that effect. But by the same standard, Sunni Muslims and Shi'ite Muslims are distinct. (Indeed, that's their version of the same thing.) But they are both Islamic.
Rome fell, but we can still see clear chunks of its culture and even political administrations up until today, as the people who used to be Romans as much as they were before its fall (which for many was partially at most), and didn't one day totally forget and change everything about their societies just for the hell of it. There are republics all over the West, wonder where did they get that idea...
A lot of what we see was latter-day re-discovery, re-invention and re-application (in new contexts). I said it in the other thread: the West is partially built on the ruins of Rome. It owes much to Rome, but it is not Rome itself. The tail-end of the Gothic Wars represents a pretty dramatic breach.
That seems like a quite specific prediction that could go all sorts of ways considering the scale involved.
It's not so very specific, I'd say. At the start of the post which you are quoting here, I described the same sequence of events as it occurred in China, Egypt and Rome. My prediction here is simply an application of that same sequence to our culture.
Naturally, it is true that it could go in all sorts of directions. That's another reason why my prediction is not all that specific: I outline the general trend, but I obviously can't predict the particular details. Consider that in Rome, Pompeius Magnus could have defeated Julius Caesar, and could have gone on to be the "last man standing". But despite the inevitable changes to the particulars, this would have meant filling the same historical role. At that point, the end of the Republic was already an inevitability. In the same way, things could go in various different ways in the modern West. But those different ways are, in my view, all iterations of the same underlying process.
