tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post3569369706149433429..comments2024-03-28T16:22:14.888-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: A theory of historical cultural stagnationUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-955852606141623832010-07-28T10:13:50.938-07:002010-07-28T10:13:50.938-07:00There's also the Malthusian / economic explana...There's also the Malthusian / economic explanation. Japan's real trick for economic take-off was having agricultural productivity grow significantly faster than food production, the same as in Europe. This was in part due to Daimyos (local feudal leaders) levying unusually high taxes on their tenants. In China, on the other hand, local control was weaker and a tradition of public service, leading to sympathy for the average farmer, meant that taxes were far lower, so population grew at a faster rate.<br /><br />Athens' cultural efflorescence was in part due to its ability to exploit the Delian league to reroute the resources of other states. By creating surplus wealth, it could invest it into intellectual activities.<br /><br />It's really quite similar to high tech R&D. The reason the Chinese do horribly at high-tech R&D is because their fields are rampant with piracy and companies have a highly competitive mindset. This drives profit margins down, so businesses cannot invest their profits back into R&D for more competitive products.<br /><br />You can also see this in the West, the most innovative companies typically have the highest profit margins. This allows them to slough profits back into R&D, which allows them to produce more innovative products to sell at high profit margins.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-46341658594113911692009-06-26T23:13:24.519-07:002009-06-26T23:13:24.519-07:00Well, they apparently proved entirely incapable of...<i>Well, they apparently proved entirely incapable of capturing European castles, and were terrified of crossbows.</i> <br /><br />They would've hated western Europe then; eastern Europe never did match western Europes development of castles, not even close. The closest they got was Teutonic Knights building castles to protect conquered territory in the Baltic region (13th-14th). Russia with a few exceptions pretty much transitioned right from wooden castles to the big earthwork-type fortifications that arose with the dominance of cannon and firearms.<br /><br />AFAIK the Mongols did eventually catch on to siege warfare, but the Chinese (and maybe the Muslims?) bore the brunt of it.<br /><br />Wikipedia says the crossbow mostly replaced the bow in "many" European armies in the 12th (I know the Italians were renowned for their mercenaries throughout the period, who were in turn were renowned for their love of crossbows), so yeah the Mongols would've been unhappy if your sources are correct.<br /><br /><i>A later invasion of Hungary around 1285 by the Mongols was crushed rather handily by the Hungarians under Ladislaus IV, apparently in great part due to military reforms iniatiated to implement what had been learned from previous Mongol invasions, such as building more castles.</i> <br /><br />Fascinating, I'd never heard of it. (Obviously my knowledge of the period is spotty and strictly for fun) I'll have to look that up, because I was asking myself just that question in pondering the fight that never was: how quickly would the Europeans have adapted? Obviously they'd have caught on eventually, but the Mongols had a tendency to be running one's country by the time "eventually" came around. And knights are known, perhaps unfairly, as stubborn, proud, etc. It may be an exaggeration, but I have seen this kind of stupidity in specific historical examples (the patchwork of European ethnies and cultures might've made an excellent vector for this kind of blindness; "so they beat some Slavs, we'll crush them" etc.).Svigorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09397917915404344439noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-64083459136910936332009-06-26T09:55:06.694-07:002009-06-26T09:55:06.694-07:00"What did I do to get continuously accused of..."What did I do to get continuously accused of relying on narrow pop culture snippets and video games to arrive at my thoughts on the subject?"<br /><br />Certain segments of the HBD and/or Kev MacD sphere seem to endorse this. There's an article over at The Occidental Quarterly Online titled "Digitally Dueling with Chaos:<br />The Educational Value of Role-Playing Games."<br /><br />http://www.toqonline.com/2009/06/digitally-dueling-with-chaos/<br /><br />Doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to think that this kind of stuff might influence and shape one's views.Deltanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67257149730218248042009-06-25T11:15:13.472-07:002009-06-25T11:15:13.472-07:00"What did I do to get continuously accused of..."What did I do to get continuously accused of relying on narrow pop culture snippets and video games to arrive at my thoughts on the subject?"<br /><br />It's probably because your photo makes you look like a massive nerd...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-21687720230672268092009-06-25T00:29:35.133-07:002009-06-25T00:29:35.133-07:00Who knows how the Mongols would've fared again...<i>Who knows how the Mongols would've fared against western Europe (which could have easily mustered another 100k men-at-arms against the Mongols) with their supply lines drastically extended, on varied terrain, vs. massed longbows?</i><br /><br />Well, they apparently proved entirely incapable of capturing European castles, and were terrified of crossbows. Further, the few areas in Western Europe where a horse army like the Mongols could find adequate fodder for their mounts happened to be the most heavily populated and thus heavily castled regions.<br /><br />At least, that's what I've read, anyway.<br /><br /><i>The sissies turned and ran, making excuses about how grandma was calling them.</i><br /><br />That seems to be more or less the right of it. Their supply lines were heavily over-extended and there was no shortage of Europeans ready to fight them (while Mongol casualties could not be easily replaced), so they retreated. A later invasion of Hungary around 1285 by the Mongols was crushed rather handily by the Hungarians under Ladislaus IV, apparently in great part due to military reforms iniatiated to implement what had been learned from previous Mongol invasions, such as building more castles.Templarnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-9630906077783382952009-06-24T21:45:53.235-07:002009-06-24T21:45:53.235-07:00"One part of Japan's success may be that ..."One part of Japan's success may be that they were hunter/gatherers for longer." <br /><br />I don't understand this line of reasoning, but it sounds interesting. Could you explain it some more, or provide references?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-69959794701847378542009-06-23T23:14:40.920-07:002009-06-23T23:14:40.920-07:00Svigor said...
I thought that, like much of the u...<i>Svigor said... <br />I thought that, like much of the upper class of Feudal Europe, the Samurai held the peasantry in higher esteem than urban types?</i><br /><br />Just remember the mnemonic acronym SPAM:<br /><br /><b>S</b>amurai<br /><br /><b>P</b>easants<br /><br /><b>A</b>rtisans<br /><br /><b>M</b>erchants<br /><br />That was roughly the caste ranking.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-27355452552739051522009-06-23T22:55:09.168-07:002009-06-23T22:55:09.168-07:00Nice cribbing from Wikipedia there, Truth.
Every...Nice cribbing from Wikipedia there, Truth. <br /><br />Everything has antecedents. So what? That doesn't mean that Zen Buddhism as we know it today wasn't given its own special flavor by centuries of Japanese development. And yes, Zen was practiced by only a small minority--mainly by the Samurai caste. Since a fair number of Zen monks were former Samurai themselves (it was the only honorable alternative for a Samurai who wanted to retire), it's not surprising that Zen doctrines weren't exactly antithetical to Japan's authoritarian culture. During WWII, Japan's military dictatorship tried to suppress most forms of Buddhism and promote Shintoism, but they left the Zen sect alone, since they correctly regarded it as more or less conducive to their purposes. In any event, most Japanese today could no more explain the difference between Shintoism and Buddhism than the average modern American could explain the doctrinal differences between Pentecostals and Evangelicals. To them it's all just a bunch ill-understood rituals they consider part of their collective ethno-religious heritage.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-3576988071229699162009-06-23T22:28:40.045-07:002009-06-23T22:28:40.045-07:00Svigor said...
What is "Asian porn," an...<i>Svigor said... <br />What is "Asian porn," anyway? I've heard of Japanese porn, but this "Asian porn" is a new one.</i><br /><br />Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that myself. From what I've heard, Jap porn is all about S&M bondage and cartoon schoolgirls being ravished by a space octopus. I'm not aware of China or Korea producing any kind of porn at all. But perhaps fsmrert knows something we don't.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-30911521673524956772009-06-23T21:18:00.864-07:002009-06-23T21:18:00.864-07:00I'm not so sure of this. Zen, the distinctly J...I'm not so sure of this. Zen, the distinctly Japanese version of Buddhism, accommodated itself very well to Japan's authoritarian society and its culture of ancestor worship. Most Japanese today make no distinction between Shintoism and Buddhism."<br /><br />Technically, Zen is not distinctly Japanese (nor, Daniel-san is anything distinctly anyone's). Zen is an imperfect analgam of Indian Buddhism and Chinese Daosim. The antecedent to Zen was called Ch'an in China. <br /><br />Confucionist influence and Shinto were actually much more conducive to an authoritarian society and a culture of ancestor worship then is Zen; Zen worship was always confined to a small, and later romanticized, yet relatively irrelevant portion of Japanese society. Imagine a religion here specifically followed by the police and you get the idea. <br /><br />As someone else here said, Japan was never anymore than nominally a "Zen nation", not anymore than the old west was an never ending series of gunfights and Indian scalpings.Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-49226642016825777082009-06-23T21:02:50.148-07:002009-06-23T21:02:50.148-07:001241
The next couple centuries saw rapid develop...<i>1241</i> <br /><br />The next couple centuries saw rapid development of military technology in Europe, especially west and central Europe. It was so rapid that technology was becoming widely adopted and then discarded in cycles better measured in decades than centuries.<br /><br />Who knows how the Mongols would've fared against western Europe (which could have easily mustered another 100k men-at-arms against the Mongols) with their supply lines drastically extended, on varied terrain, vs. massed longbows?<br /><br />The sissies turned and ran, making excuses about how grandma was calling them, so we'll never know. :PSvigorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09397917915404344439noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-87330231451406369762009-06-23T20:51:24.745-07:002009-06-23T20:51:24.745-07:00And for what it's worth, I never taught Englis...<i>And for what it's worth, I never taught English, nor do I have any particular interest in Asian porn. Really, I swear.</i> <br /><br />What is "Asian porn," anyway? I've heard of Japanese porn, but this "Asian porn" is a new one.Svigorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09397917915404344439noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-45894284524784295612009-06-23T20:49:59.957-07:002009-06-23T20:49:59.957-07:00the samurai class depended on the merchant class a...<i>the samurai class depended on the merchant class as middlemen between themselves and the lowly peasants(much less morally respected in the Japanese system).</i> <br /><br />I thought that, like much of the upper class of Feudal Europe, the Samurai held the peasantry in higher esteem than urban types?<br /><br />(if the urban types disappear, inconvenience; if the peasant types disappear, disaster)Svigorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09397917915404344439noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18587438927244246012009-06-23T20:25:58.043-07:002009-06-23T20:25:58.043-07:00Anonymous,
What did I do to get continuously accu...Anonymous,<br /><br />What did I do to get continuously accused of relying on narrow pop culture snippets and video games to arrive at my thoughts on the subject?<br /><br />I think there's pragmatic value in striving for objective disinterest in studying these matters. I'm open to the idea that we Westerners suffer from a relative defect that renders us vulnerable to invasive managerial elites. Imagine a fusion of Gottfried, MacDonald, and Cochran.<br /><br />If I implied at some point that America or the West should be "managed" by invasive elites, then I retract and apologize for that remark.Matt Parrotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00794652979966181081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-2222062978719398992009-06-23T19:46:44.039-07:002009-06-23T19:46:44.039-07:00Matt Parrott,
Fair enough.
As far as this fascin...Matt Parrott,<br /><br />Fair enough.<br /><br />As far as this fascinating topic goes, at this point without any quantities or measurements to work with, anyone trying to theorize about this is ultimately going to be working with some kind of superficial conception or other.<br /><br />In your initial post you posited that Jews and Chinese, due to similar priestly/mandarin selection pressures, share many similarities. Now the similarities between Jews and Chinese have often been noticed. Amy Chua's "World on Fire", which discusses various "middle man minority" groups such as Jews and overseas Chinese, comes to mind. But these comparisons often specifically point out the similar commercial proclivities and skills shared by Jews & Chinese. And these commercially skillful Chinese aren't the Chinese that were selected for under the Confucian Mandarin system. Confucianism placed commerce at the lowest level in its social heirarchy. Commerce was a vulgar, base activity below farming, artisans, and way below the summit of bureaucratic scholar mandarins.<br /><br />It seems to me that people are too quick to determine that holding the most prestigious positions/highest status in society automatically translates to so much reproductive success that successive generations are made up of increasing proportions of the offspring of the high status holders. I think we can all agree that this isn't happening now, after all it is the elite in this country with the highest prestige and status in society whose offspring will make up an ever decreasing proportion of the population in the future. So I'm not sure why we have to automatically presume that this it was the case in the past.<br /><br />The agricultural surplus that supported the parasitic mandarin bureaucratic class is also the same agricultural surplus that enabled the steady, stable, and massive population growth of China. It's hard to believe that the mandarin class drove this population growth through their reproductive success, or even managed to keep up proportionally with this growth.<br /><br />Also, where does Chinese warlordism fit into this picture? It didn't seem to ever go away during all those centuries of centralized mandarin bureaucratic rule and control. They were always around in the provinces, fighting when they could and always quick to take advantage of any power vacuums. They were extant in the 20th century. I believe Mao was the one to finally get rid of them.<br /><br />Anonymous wrote:<br /><br />"There is scant evidence that Chinese, Jews etc are natural genetically bred managers.<br />If you want to make such pop cultural comparisions, they might be likened to the Ferengi."<br /><br />That's a good point, and it's related to the point I'm trying to make. There is a significant strain among the Chinese, or at least among a significant subset of the Chinese, that consists of commercial proclivities and skills that can be likened to those of the Ferengi. And these are precisely the things that would not have been selected for in a system favoring mandarin scholar bureaucrats.westinghousenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-41911785106879594072009-06-23T18:39:10.070-07:002009-06-23T18:39:10.070-07:00Matt Parrott
There is scant evidence that Chinese...Matt Parrott<br /><br />There is scant evidence that Chinese, Jews etc are natural genetically bred managers.<br />If you want to make such pop cultural comparisions, they might be likened to the Ferengi.<br /><br />If there is one thing I don't want to see it is American business, and America itself, being "managed" by such people.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-10967537439916691472009-06-23T18:15:38.765-07:002009-06-23T18:15:38.765-07:00fsmrert said...
I can't and won't waste m...<i>fsmrert said... <br />I can't and won't waste my time speculating about several thousand years of Asian cultural history and evolution.</i><br /><br />But that's the whole freakin' <i>point</i> of this thread. Shit or get off the pot, fizzmert.nerdy white manga addictnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-38745343459157417872009-06-23T17:35:27.587-07:002009-06-23T17:35:27.587-07:00Westinghouse,
I would really enjoy having a dialo...Westinghouse,<br /><br />I would really enjoy having a dialogue on this subject and I'm ready to move past the presumptions. I'm not a gamer. I know what you're getting at, but that is really not where my imagination is at. I have never even played World of Warcraft.<br /><br />I'm neither Asian nor am I attempting to draw any conclusions from superficial examinations of Asians I know or Asian stuff I've heard about. I'm doing it on geography.<br /><br />I believe that Edward pulled the thought right out of my mind and would be interested in learning where he derived his ideas from. They're very convergent with my own independent research. I believe that the Yellow River, Indo-Gangetic, Tigris-Euphrates, and Nile River basins resulted in a transition from militaristic selection to "brahmanic/priestly/mandarin" selection.Matt Parrotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00794652979966181081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-23473783472875254382009-06-23T17:25:17.286-07:002009-06-23T17:25:17.286-07:00Bill,
"And this is what you have to offer?
...Bill,<br /><br />"And this is what you have to offer?<br /><br />Sit back and ponder your own special garbage. Nobody has offered less than you."<br /><br />Yes. I can't and won't waste my time speculating about several thousand years of Asian cultural history and evolution.<br /><br />I will, however, gladly speculate about the people on this thread theorizing out of their behinds on this topic.<br /><br />And judging from at least one overly defensive response to my initial comment, I seem to have hit a nerve and this leads me to believe that my initial comment is probably right for at least one commenter on this thread, and probably more.fsmrertnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-280700124265044982009-06-23T17:02:03.972-07:002009-06-23T17:02:03.972-07:00Matt Parrott,
"The reason that my proposal a...Matt Parrott,<br /><br />"The reason that my proposal appears ignorant of popular Western conceptions about Asian populations is that those conceptions are largely erroneous. I was working largely from Human Accomplishment and not pop culture stereotypes in my research."<br /><br />Your proposal does not appear ignorant of popular Western conceptions about Asian populations at all. You just employ a different set of popular Western conceptions and cultural stereotypes to make a different claim.<br /><br />That was part of the point of my initial post. All of your claims are actually based on plausible stereotypes and conceptions, and can be met with contradictory claims based on another set of plausible stereotypes and conceptions.<br /><br />"I hope you'll consider suffering us fools more gladly in the future, as there are a lot of us out here and we really can't help being stupid."<br /><br />I never suggested that you were foolish or stupid. I said that excessively playing fantasy, rpg games like Warcraft and Age of Empires does not make someone an expert in medieval culture and society.westinghousenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-71737510381346953612009-06-23T15:24:12.998-07:002009-06-23T15:24:12.998-07:00Japanese weren't river basin book-keepers like...Japanese weren't river basin book-keepers like the Chinese, Indians and Arabs. <br /><br />They didn't have an army of bureaucrats and priests playing mind games for the same agricultural surplus.<br /><br />They just got down to fighting. Like Europe, Japan was a coast and mountain society. So they had much more time for ideas, like different ways to slaughter people from weird angles.Edwardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06642260769998827550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19841325015237756102009-06-23T03:32:14.848-07:002009-06-23T03:32:14.848-07:00Westinghouse,
This was a blog post and not a scho...Westinghouse,<br /><br />This was a blog post and not a scholarly research article, so I left out several points between A and Z. Is it really so absurd to propose that millennia of militarism affected one society one way while millennia of mandarin mnemonic management affected one society another way? The methods of achieving status, resources, and mates were divergent for the two populations.<br /><br />The reason that my proposal appears ignorant of popular Western conceptions about Asian populations is that those conceptions are largely erroneous. I was working largely from Human Accomplishment and not pop culture stereotypes in my research.<br /><br />I hope you'll consider suffering us fools more gladly in the future, as there are a lot of us out here and we really can't help being stupid.Matt Parrotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00794652979966181081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-70324345431791803782009-06-23T03:01:41.388-07:002009-06-23T03:01:41.388-07:00fsmrert said...
Judging by this thread, it se...<i>fsmrert said...<br /><br /> Judging by this thread, it seems that more than quite a few commenters here believe that having an interest in Asian porn, or a stint teaching English in Asia, makes them experts on theorizing about the last thousand years or so of Asian history.</i><br /><br />And this is what you have to offer?<br /><br />Sit back and ponder your own special garbage. Nobody has offered less than you.Billhttp://www.welmer.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-73435417460618638672009-06-23T01:26:30.898-07:002009-06-23T01:26:30.898-07:00Matt Parrott,
Your thoughts on this are terribly ...Matt Parrott,<br /><br />Your thoughts on this are terribly confused.<br /><br />"The Chinese, like Jews and Brahmans, have been selected for managerial excellence, focus, and memorizing things."<br /><br />Managerial excellence, focus, and memorizing things are the first things that come to mind when discussing Japanese industry and business.<br /><br />"Whites and Japs are relatively new to the level of civilization at which management takes precedence over leadership. As such, their genomes have not been reshuffled in a "priestly" manner."<br /><br />The Japanese are renowned for their heavily bureaucratic, entrenched, consensus driven management, and for their lack of "leadership." They are infamous for lacking the kind of charismatic, dynamic "leadership" that the West seems to enjoy or obsess about so much.<br /><br />"They're more creative, more innovative, and more entrepreneurial but they lack the organizational skills and attention to detail that invasive priestly castes are glad to do for them."<br /><br />Wait a minute....the Japanese are the ones that are supposed to be uncreative, lack innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, but make up for it through organizational skills and attention to detail. The Japanese adopted everything the supposedly less creative Chinese developed, before adopting everything from the West.<br /><br />"Prediction: Chinese will gradually take on a role in Japan similar to the role that Jews have in the West."<br /><br />This sentence is enough to inform the reader that he or she can ignore everything you wrote before it. It reveals a complete ignorance of Japanese ethnocentrism and culture.<br /><br />Incidentally, I found that Koreans, whom I find to be closer to the Japanese than Chinese while of course independent from both in many ways, are proud that the Chinese have never been able to establish a large, flourishing, durable Chinatown within Korea. When I was in Korea and the topic of Chinese and Chinatowns came up, the Koreans would proudly exclaim that Korea was one of the few places in Asia in which the Chinese did not establish lasting Chinatowns with commercial power. They would point to countries in SE Asia, and the US even, and say how the Chinese were able to set up Chinatowns, flourish, and even dominate commerce, but not so in Korea. They considered this to be an achievement, and I suppose it kind of it is.<br /><br />Anyhow, your "theory" is rather comical and deeply flawed. It can be summed up as "Whites&Japs are Knights&Samurais (warriors) while Jews&Chinese are priests." This is the kind of analysis you get from kids who play World of Warcraft or some other computer game involving warriors, priests, wizards, etc., too much.westinghousenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6113588844721103172009-06-22T22:58:33.917-07:002009-06-22T22:58:33.917-07:00Anonymous said...
Warning: B.P.H.A.V.A.I.P.T.E. a...<i>Anonymous said... <br />Warning: B.P.H.A.V.A.I.P.T.E. ahead<br />Big Picture Historical Analysis Via Autobiographically-Influenced Pet Theory Extrapolation<br /><br />fsmrert said... <br />Judging by this thread, it seems that more than quite a few commenters here believe that having an interest in Asian porn, or a stint teaching English in Asia, makes them experts on theorizing about the last thousand years or so of Asian history.</i><br /><br />C'mon, dudes, that's how the game is played around here on isteve: We take a small sample of biased data and use it to construct vast, overarching Theories of Everything. If you don't want to play, fine. But don't spoil everyone else's fun.<br /><br />(And for what it's worth, I never taught English, nor do I have any particular interest in Asian porn. Really, I swear.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com