In the Confucian well-ordered society, the nuclear family was supposed to be a template for the state at large. The ruling class was supposed to be moral, caring, and benevolent to it's citizens like the good father was supposed to be in the familial social construct.
Books that matter: Analects of Confucius
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Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
That's a nice fantasy, but power corrupts. Once removed from the immediate family, "other people" just become widgets, numbers, pawns, etc.
A major difference between a traditional society and a modern society is family. My family is scattered across six states, soon to be seven when my Coast Guard SIL gets her PCS orders. A traditional society has even cousins just around the block or in the same village.
This is one reason why, in a world of limited resources, socialism doesn't work. Sure, socialism is great for a tribe or village since everyone can participate or listen to leaders discuss problems and solutions then interact with them directly. It's hard to argue with Xi when you're just a villager up to your knees in pig shit.
What was the "groan" for?
I hit groan by accident i will see if I can change it.
That is a huge difference bewtween Eastern and Western thought. The western emphasis on individualism contrasts with the Eastern mode of communalism
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
No worries. I have one "groan" given but it was an accident and I have no idea to whom it was given.
Agreed about Eastern and Western thought. IMO, Eastern thought is more holistic, encompassing the entire human brain but Western thought is primarily linear, focusing on the Left Brain over the Right Brain. Western thought is good for machines, industry and logic but it's lacking in human growth as people.
Geeko Sportivo
Verified User
I agree.
I believe Confucius is under-rated or well- under studied and under-appreciated. He should be on the Best-Seller list.
Thanks for giving him a plug!
According to professor Robert Andre LaFleur, Buddhism was unable to displace Confucianism as the dominant social construct in China because Buddhism was always seen to some degree as a foreign influence; the eschewing of familial bonds by Buddhist monks was an anathema for the Chinese/Confucian emphasis on reverence for family; and the concepts of suffering and impermanence is something that Confucianism did not really address.
On the flipside, Buddhism did make substantial inroads into China, particularly in the working classes because it addressed issues more directly relevant to the individual than does Confucianism, with it's emphasis on hierarchy, order, and social ritual.
On the flipside, Buddhism did make substantial inroads into China, particularly in the working classes because it addressed issues more directly relevant to the individual than does Confucianism, with it's emphasis on hierarchy, order, and social ritual.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
This is an analogy of Sun Tzu v. Clausewitz in their approach to warfare...
classic scene.
Noteworthy that Sun Tzu's life was contemporaneous with Confucius'.
Some scholars have noted how peculiar it is that most of humanity's enduring and long-standing religious and intellectual traditions can be traced back to individuals whose lives were roughly contemporaneous in a 6th to 5th century BCE axial age, aka Confucius, Siddhartha Guatama, Laozi, Socrates, Plato.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
To what do you attribute that? Tech? In their case, writing and libraries?
Note that Native American tribes rarely wrote. Much of the history of the Comanches in Texas is completely unknown except through archeological digs since they never recorded their history.
I do not think anyone really knows why such enduring religious and intellectual traditions blossomed across the earth at about almost exactly the same time. One theory I read about is the the first millennium BCE saw a lasting increase in war, violence, conflict. And against that backdrop, people as individuals were looking for meaning in their lives.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
I can see post-war/violence people looking for meaning, but it's a nearly global phenomenon since there was little contact between the East and the West in those day.
Note that it's only 2500 years ago compared to the roughly 10,000 of known history....preceded by up to 300,000 years of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. One caveat on the 300,000 year thing is that modern thinking man may have only developed about 30,000 years ago. About 3,000 years ago if one accepts the controversial Bicameral brain theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human
Among the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens are those found at the Omo-Kibish I archaeological site in south-western Ethiopia, dating to about 196,000 years ago,[2] the Florisbad site in South Africa, dating to about 259,000 years ago, and the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, dated about 300,000 years old....
...Following the peopling of Africa some 130,000 years ago, and the recent Out-of-Africa expansion some 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, some sub-populations of H. sapiens had been essentially isolated for tens of thousands of years prior to the early modern Age of Discovery. Combined with archaic admixture this has resulted in significant genetic variation, which in some instances has been shown to be the result of directional selection taking place over the past 15,000 years, i.e. significantly later than possible archaic admixture events....
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanit...-early-societies/a/where-did-humans-come-from
Overview
- Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago.
- The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.
- Humans are the only known species to have successfully populated, adapted to, and significantly altered a wide variety of land regions across the world, resulting in profound historical and environmental impacts.
I like how you do your homework!
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
The old "How we got from there to here" question always interests me.
What also interests me is that fact that there are huge multi-thousand year gaps there. If we came from the Axial Age in 2500 years after 10,000 years of known history, did we do the same a few times in the previous 30,000 years? 200,00 to 300,000 years?
Was mankind forced into a reset by natural phenomenon or did mankind do it to himself?
As noted elsewhere, the ME used to be fertile. Are there massive civilizations buried under the jungles of Africa from 100,000 years ago?
Maybe there are historical cycles we are unaware of becasue writing did not exist.
I think that up through the Neolithic, humanity was just not populated enough to cause longstanding violent conflict for resources between groups. We were just small bands of Hunter gatherers spread out across the planet.
The establishment and spread of agriculture, animal husbandry, new technologies like bronze, and the consequent explosion in population undoutedly increased the violence, scale, and longevity of conflict for resources.
The Jewish and Persian prophets were around several centuries before the so called axial age, so people were searching for meaning long before Confucius. Probably why scholars look at the axial age as unique is that those religious and intellectual traditions have lasted 2,500 years and are our direct inheritance.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
The city-states and their agricultural base certainly would set up conflicts between other city-states as they each grew toward each other or adversely impacted each other. The wars of the Bible document such violence....albeit a bit one-sided in the telling.
The history of glacial periods obviously impacted humanity. It's doubtful that any human civilizations runover by a glacier would have left any survivable evidence behind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period
We would have better luck looking for evidence in Africa. Space-based mapping radar has found interesting things; Space Archeology.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/SpaceArchaeology
Early Light from the Space Age
For centuries, if archaeologists wanted to find an ancient or mythical site, they trudged through desert sands or rainforest thickets armed with little more than rumors and hand-drawn maps. They worked from historical accounts and biblical texts and a lot of educated guesswork.
But all of that changed in the late 20th century when some of them began using a new tool: remote sensing. By gathering data and images from satellites and aircraft, researchers began to uncover a wealth of new finds. Like the glow of a flickering bulb, images taken from above were shedding light on previously dark landscapes....
...In his first year at Stennis, Sever worked by day scouring imagery to make agricultural maps. But by night, he was chipping away at his passion project: mapping archaeological sites. Using several tools—the Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS), the Calibrated Airborne Multispectral Scanner (CAMS), and the Advanced Terrestrial Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS)—he charted Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, home to the highest concentration of pueblos in the southwestern United States. Poring through images, Sever found ancient roadways that let to sacred sites—roads 30 feet wide and “straight as an arrow.” Fieldwork by ground-based teams verified the finds. “It was ten for ten.”...
...“Lidar allowed us to see how big sites are, and that takes you in different directions,” said Arlen Chase, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Chase and his wife, archaeologist Diane Zaino Chase, have been conducting excavations in Mesoamerica for more than 30 years. Early adopters of lidar, they have uncovered thousands of ancient Maya artifacts and made several important discoveries, including Altar 21—which recorded the defeat of the ruling Tikal dynasty by the citizens of Caracol—and royal tombs that date back to 537 C.E. Lidar maps helped them detect the outlines of sites that were covered by thick jungle vegetation and otherwise invisible to the naked eye. The imagery also overturned archaeologists’ understanding of the ancient city.
NiftyNiblick
1960s Chick Magnet
Is this a thread about the guy who prints those little paper strips inside of fortune cookies?
How does one get a job like that?
As a retiree, I might find that to be a nice little part time job for extra pocket money and something to do.
I'd have no problem coming up with what to say. My opinions are endless.
Sticking the papers inside of the cookies looks like it could be a little tricky, though.
Hopefully, the baker does that.
How does one get a job like that?
As a retiree, I might find that to be a nice little part time job for extra pocket money and something to do.
I'd have no problem coming up with what to say. My opinions are endless.
Sticking the papers inside of the cookies looks like it could be a little tricky, though.
Hopefully, the baker does that.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
No North American tribe, pre-Columbus had a written language. The Cherokee were the first to develop one in the 1820's. Mesoamerican tribes in Central America were the only ones to develop written languages-- Maya, Aztec, etc. The Inca had a very odd "string language" that was quite unique to world history.
The city-states and their agricultural base certainly would set up conflicts between other city-states as they each grew toward each other or adversely impacted each other. The wars of the Bible document such violence....albeit a bit one-sided in the telling.
The history of glacial periods obviously impacted humanity. It's doubtful that any human civilizations runover by a glacier would have left any survivable evidence behind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period
We would have better luck looking for evidence in Africa. Space-based mapping radar has found interesting things; Space Archeology.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/SpaceArchaeology
Early Light from the Space Age
For centuries, if archaeologists wanted to find an ancient or mythical site, they trudged through desert sands or rainforest thickets armed with little more than rumors and hand-drawn maps. They worked from historical accounts and biblical texts and a lot of educated guesswork.
But all of that changed in the late 20th century when some of them began using a new tool: remote sensing. By gathering data and images from satellites and aircraft, researchers began to uncover a wealth of new finds. Like the glow of a flickering bulb, images taken from above were shedding light on previously dark landscapes....
...In his first year at Stennis, Sever worked by day scouring imagery to make agricultural maps. But by night, he was chipping away at his passion project: mapping archaeological sites. Using several tools—the Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS), the Calibrated Airborne Multispectral Scanner (CAMS), and the Advanced Terrestrial Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS)—he charted Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, home to the highest concentration of pueblos in the southwestern United States. Poring through images, Sever found ancient roadways that let to sacred sites—roads 30 feet wide and “straight as an arrow.” Fieldwork by ground-based teams verified the finds. “It was ten for ten.”...
...“Lidar allowed us to see how big sites are, and that takes you in different directions,” said Arlen Chase, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Chase and his wife, archaeologist Diane Zaino Chase, have been conducting excavations in Mesoamerica for more than 30 years. Early adopters of lidar, they have uncovered thousands of ancient Maya artifacts and made several important discoveries, including Altar 21—which recorded the defeat of the ruling Tikal dynasty by the citizens of Caracol—and royal tombs that date back to 537 C.E. Lidar maps helped them detect the outlines of sites that were covered by thick jungle vegetation and otherwise invisible to the naked eye. The imagery also overturned archaeologists’ understanding of the ancient city.
anonymoose
Classical Liberal
Many translations of course but I recommend good place to start is here.
I wouldn’t consider this a slog (unlike a Russian novel, lol).