==============Ed G said:
Many thanks to Ray for his detailed answer.
Ray Evans Harrell, <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > replied to Brad and Ed G
Brad said:
Needham's orienting question was: Why, when China was in many ways more
advanced than Europe even in the 1500s, did Europe "take off" but China
remained in feudalism? His answer,
which he did not like, was that Capitalism seems to have been the engine
which drove not just
the West's economic exploitation of the whole world, but also the great
flowering of genuine
Enlightenment in the West.
When Kazantzakis wrote out the "story" to explore these questions in
Odysseus a 20th Century Sequel he came up with the answer that it was war
that did it.
=========I have to agree with Kazantzakis. In an excellent book by David
Astle "Babalonian Woe" (Copyright 1975) he traces the causes of conflicts
from the time of Summerian dominance and attributes them to the infectious
anomaly of monetary systems.
=========The jacket quote is enlightening. "The intellectual faculties
however are not of themselves sufficient to produce external action; they
require the aid of physical force, the direction and combination of which
are wholly at the disp[oasal of money, that mighty spring by which the
total force of human energies is set in motion. [Augustus Boeckh;
Translated: The Public Economy of Athens, P, 7; Book 1, London 1828.
Ray's post continued:
"I praise you Helen for your heaving thighs that lit in slothful men a
raging war that opened minds and widened seas."
Einstein made the same point, more politely, in his essay. I think you
could ask what "needs" the Europeans "had" that made them finally use the
printing press, an earlier import that sat
for a good while before Europe broke forth with books for the common man.
You could also remember the problem with the first Millennium being that
the Spanish Catholics didn't understand zero or Al Jabaar until they had
expelled the Moors and the Jews just prior to the 1500s and translated
their books.
I would question the "needs" to which Einstein refers. My contention
continues to be that, while the printing press "sat for a good while" it
was only when its use as a means of excercising power over peoples minds,
thereby "moving" them, was realised, that it came into popular usage. (i.e.
it obtained the financial backing that popularised it employment.)
Ray continues:
After expelling the above there was ample reason to get these violent and
disruptive folks out of the country and into some safe activity like
murdering the Inca for gold to cover the ballrooms
of Europe. But, I think it is a mistake to mislabel the intent as profit.
No one wanted Cortez or Pizarro around in Spain.
========I see that as making my point. It is not neccessarily the invention
that is either good or bad for humanity. It is the (profit) purpose to
which the invention (new idea etc.) can be put in terms of geopolitics.
Ray continues:
The same could be said for Ceasar and Rome. Better that they fight "out
there." See what happened when he stayed home too long! If El Cid had
lived, he would have been off to America in no time at all.
The violence behind the ethnic cleansing, that had taken 700 years of
constant warfare, lent itself to conquest and Empire. The bankers were
the economic structure of choice but certainly not the motivation or the
intent for all of that murder and pillage that spread around the world,
including China, by the Hunter/Gatherers from the Europe of the time.
(See the NYReview of Books URL mentioned later.)
==========Without trade we could not have progressed beyond the family
stage into the extended and tribal stage of social organization. (in fact,
even within families trade takes place, albeit without the monetary
accounting practices.) At the time of Summerian acendance "money" as an
intrinsic value for purposes of trade already was well established within
and between city states.
Ray continues:
As to Needham, the real question for me and my tradition, is why a
"sedentary China" is considered less advanced than a predatory Europe?
Braudel not withstanding, the Europeans allied their businesses with their
Navies and in China's case made today's drug cartels look positively
virginal. The trade routes of Gengis were no more violent than the
opening of Hong Kong. The case has been made that the Hordes that so
traumatized Europe were actually more beneficial, and liberal in their
tolerance of all but fealty issues, than the Spanish and Brits on any level
in their Empires. Again Einstein makes the point:
"most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The
conquering peoples
established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class
of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land
ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The
priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a
permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people
were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social
behavior."
===========I have made the point before, (perhaps generously ignored), that
the international trade that took place between nation states in antiquity
were facillitated with money. The anomaly of monetary systems created a
balance of payments imbalance. That imbalance required the armys of the
creditor nations (and their mercinaries, paid for with money) to collect
the debts.
Ray continues:
This is pure European. Gengis and his relatives enjoyed war but treated
their subjects well and Gengis' Shamanism, even today, has a taboo against
predatory spiritual proselytization (PBS History Channel Series on Gengis
Khan and his Army, so this is not cutting edge heresy.)
I found the Einstein article gratifying on many different levels not the
least being his justification for the Arts in the life of the society.
"Memory, the capacity to make combinations, the gift of oral communication
have made possible developments among human beings which are dictated by
biological necessities. Such developments
manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in
literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art.
This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence
his life and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play
a part."
This is pure Herbert Read. His Education Through Art made the same points
but with a serious analysis of how it happened and what the implications
were for development of the young. (Univ. of London 1941) Read's work got
him knighted and his many books on art and culture
were the stuff of intelligent conversation of the day. Education Through
Art was written while the country was at war with Hitler.
I wonder how both Needham and Einstein would adjust their outlooks given
the current environment?
An interesting "take" on this can be found in the archives of the New York
Review of Books website. Below is the URL then search for the article
"Family Values."
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/archives.html
Dec 16, 1999 Robert Skidelsky: "Family Values"
The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849-1999 by Niall
Ferguson
The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets, 1798-1848 by Niall
Ferguson
For a "take" on progress that grew from the "Enlightenment" consider
the following Kimon Friar synopsis of Odysseus' musings on the
morning's massacre to come:
"As Odysseus walks along the river toward the harbor and a young
boy and girl proffer him flowers, he is seized with pity that even such
innocents must perish in the general massacre, but when he sees his
god hovering near him in the form of a pitiless vulture, he steels his
heart. He learns that in the holocaust of old values, many who are
innocent and blameless, or simply victims of circumstance, of
heredity and environment, must also perish."
What a pity that the art of working out various scenarios is so poorly
supported these days. i.e. fiction and the performing arts. Instead we
"act it out" on the world stage and discover our flaws only in defeat or
the death of a rival. We've come a long way from the Greeks, just
listen to the Western Church coveting India's millions (but not Bengal,
they have to fix the wells first. Who needs all of that grief? );
the Baptists coveting the Jew's intelligence and international success;
the RC's fear of Mexican peasant affluence; and the need for a
philandering Clinton to make both sides follow the Prince of Peace
in Northern Ireland; or the fear of syncretism in Brazil spoken from
the lips of those whose every move is stolen from someone.
They say: "But these folks," like the young British painter in Brooklyn
with his dark Madonna, "are not like us". "They are insulting and
prejudiced against us." How can there be a future of work when there
is so little rhythm, concept of team, or knowledge that the entire list of
fragments is far from explaining the whole of the future to the powers that
be?
Yes Ed, perspective had everything to do with it. The violent use of the
implications of gunpowder, zero and algebra in a vast population expansion
was mirrored in the art. Visual perspective set up the modern profession
of engineering and that fueled technology even more than the speculative
money and greed in the banking community. Brad says the Chinese had
it too but they used it for other things. I wouldn't be surprised if he is
right.
============== The corollary point I was submitting would be that just as
the importance of maintaining the monetary solvency of the military
industrial complex of the U.S. drives both invention and technology today,
the same drive (money) drove the implimentation of invention in previous ages.
Ray continues;
As for banking and speculation as motivation, Skedelsky makes the
point in his article: their sense of importance was inflated and lucky for
them that it was, for if they had the responsibility and power that they
claimed the bigots would have had a point. Even the "simple" act of
throwing Wagner in debtor's prison was a catastrophe. As William
Buckley never tires of saying, the rich are really terribly vulnerable,
and what remains unsaid is that it often makes them poor in their
judgement.
==========I would hope that I am not a bigot! My thesis is predicated on
the idea that it is the anonaly of the money system. Banking and
speculation are merely engaged in by those whose occupation it is, in the
same way that I use nuclear generated electricity without having a clue as
to how it is generated.
============
As to why western civilization developed the way it did, there's a lovely
book by Daniel Boorstien titled "The Discoverors, A History of Man's Search
to Know His World and Himself."
Inside the jacket in a personal note to the reader a paragraph asks,
"I have asked some unfamiliar questions. Why didn't the Chinese "discover"
Europe or America? Why didn't the Arabs circumnavigate Africa and the
world? Why did it take so long for people to learn that the earth goes
around the sun? Why did people begin to believe that there are "species"
of plants and animals? Why were the facts of prehistory and the discovery
of the progress of civilization so slow in coming?"
If there's any time after reading E-Mail, highly recommended.
Ed G
Personal to Ray:
I appreciate you replys. I would equally appeciate being disabused of any
errors to which I have subscribes in my limited search for answers.
"I once read a book and was exhilarated by how much I knew, then I
dicovered a library."
Regards
Ed G
