Books that matter: Analects of Confucius

NiftyNiblick said:
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.
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fortune cookies would be a good gig.
Confucius is probably widely misunderstood in the west.

Fortune cookies strike me as pithy little prophecies or predictions.

Confucius was laying out a system for how societies should function. First an foremost, by an individual quest for virtue and striving to live the exemplary life.
 
Cypress said:
fortune cookies would be a good gig.
Confucius is probably widely misunderstood in the west.

Fortune cookies strike me as pithy little prophecies or predictions.

Confucius was laying out a system for how societies should function. First an foremost, by an individual quest for virtue and striving to live the exemplary life.
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I'm sure that Mr. C. was on top of things, ethically, but once I returned home from the army, Buddha became my Eastern role model, at least in one respect.
There was a time when we could wear the same trousers.

I used to stand next to the Buddha statue over at the China Blossom in North Andover--to compare tummys--and the hostess would get a big kick out of it.

I'm a little better now, but nobody mistakes me for Manute Bol yet.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
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.
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Yet, regardless of their lack of writing, tribes rose and fell, battles won and lost, people lived and died for over 10,000 years....but with that time span I wonder if there were cultures with writing. We've come a long way in the last two thousand years. Would it be silly to think human beings haven't done so before in the past 10,000-30,000 years?
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Yet, regardless of their lack of writing, tribes rose and fell, battles won and lost, people lived and died for over 10,000 years....but with that time span I wonder if there were cultures with writing. We've come a long way in the last two thousand years. Would it be silly to think human beings haven't done so before in the past 10,000-30,000 years?
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Writing seems to have developed as a consequence of commerce, but you never know what we might learn in the future.

It was not that long ago that we thought art and abstract thinking only dated back to about 20,000 years ago.

However, there seems to have been recent discoveries of rock painting in Africa dating to about 70 to 80 thousand years.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Yet, regardless of their lack of writing, tribes rose and fell, battles won and lost, people lived and died for over 10,000 years....but with that time span I wonder if there were cultures with writing. We've come a long way in the last two thousand years. Would it be silly to think human beings haven't done so before in the past 10,000-30,000 years?
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There's no evidence of any systems of writing among N. American pre-Columbian peoples. Even the most socially organized, the various mound building civilizations failed to produce a written language. Some of these were actually visited by the Spanish and recorded and there's no mention of a written language. So, while it is clear that some aspects of Mesoamerican culture had spread to N. America, it wasn't universal and many aspects hadn't been adopted such as building in stone.
The same can be said of the Amazon civilizations that existed.
 
Cypress said:
Writing seems to have developed as a consequence of commerce, but you never know what we might learn in the future.

It was not that long ago that we thought art and abstract thinking only dated back to about 20,000 years ago.

However, there seems to have been recent discoveries of rock painting in Africa dating to about 70 to 80 thousand years.
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The timeline allows for something. Probably not a space-faring culture, but Iron Age? Maybe small industrial before something took them out like the Anasazi?
 
T. A. Gardner said:
There's no evidence of any systems of writing among N. American pre-Columbian peoples. Even the most socially organized, the various mound building civilizations failed to produce a written language. Some of these were actually visited by the Spanish and recorded and there's no mention of a written language. So, while it is clear that some aspects of Mesoamerican culture had spread to N. America, it wasn't universal and many aspects hadn't been adopted such as building in stone.
The same can be said of the Amazon civilizations that existed.
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It appears all had Rebus writing, but not letters/characters as we and the Mayans had: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanit...merica-beginner/a/mesoamerica-an-introduction
Writing
Mesoamerican writing systems vary by culture. Rebus writing (writing with images) was common among many groups, like the Nahua and Mixtec. Imagine drawing an eye, a heart, and an apple. You’ve just used rebus writing to communicate “I love apples” to anyone familiar with these symbols. Many visual writing systems in Mesoamerica functioned similarly—although the previous example was simplified for the sake of clarity. You might encounter the phrases “writing without words” or “writing with signs” used to describe many writing systems in Mesoamerica. It is also called pictographic, ideographic, or picture writing.

They only go back about 4000 out of the 10,000-30,000 years.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
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?
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Strongly disagree.
The best results are generally somewhere in between Individualism & Collectivism.??
But, family is important.
A strong nuclear family is important... The breakup of that since roughly 1950 explains the decline in happiness in the USA.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
The timeline allows for something. Probably not a space-faring culture, but Iron Age? Maybe small industrial before something took them out like the Anasazi?
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I would never categorically rule anything out, but as of now there is no evidence of any commerce, culture, civilization, or written language prior to the late Neolithic.

It makes sense to me that writing would have evolved in concert with cities, finance, and commerce.

Unfortunately the archeological record of the Paleolithic is extremely sparse.
 
Jan Sobieski said:
Strongly disagree.
The best results are generally somewhere in between Individualism & Collectivism.??
But, family is important.
A strong nuclear family is important... The breakup of that since roughly 1950 explains the decline in happiness in the USA.
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Of course you do.

When you are smarter and calmer, perhaps you'll let go of your prejudices and see I never said anything about "Individualism & Collectivism."

Yes, family is important. The US excelled in the 1950s and continued to do so for decades. Not my fault if your family couldn't ride that wave.
[url]https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-America/GDP-per-capita[/URL]


https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/real-gdp-per-capita-pennwt
real-gdp-per-capita-PennWT.png
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Of course you do.

When you are smarter and calmer, perhaps you'll let go of your prejudices and see I never said anything about "Individualism & Collectivism."

Yes, family is important. The US excelled in the 1950s and continued to do so for decades. Not my fault if your family couldn't ride that wave.
[url]https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-America/GDP-per-capita[/URL]


https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/real-gdp-per-capita-pennwt
real-gdp-per-capita-PennWT.png
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Lol, typical idiocy from you in general.

Real wages which adjust for cost of living are more akin to the actual wealth.

You assume that success is the ONLY factor influencing happiness, apparently.??

You're ignorant beyond belief.
 
Cypress said:
I would never categorically rule anything out, but as of now there is no evidence of any commerce, culture, civilization, or written language prior to the late Neolithic.

It makes sense to me that writing would have evolved in concert with cities, finance, and commerce.

Unfortunately the archeological record of the Paleolithic is extremely sparse.
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Exactly. No evidence. A lot can happen in 2000 years much less 20,000. Besides searching all of Africa for ancient cities, another factor is the reverse of global warming flooding cities; cities moving closer to the ocean as it dropped during the last Ice Age.

Once the Ice Age began ending, those cities would eventually be abandoned and up to 120M underwater:

https://noc.ac.uk/news/global-sea-level-rise-end-last-ice-age
Global sea level rose by a total of more than 120 metres as the vast ice sheets of the last Ice Age melted back. This melt-back lasted from about 19,000 to about 6,000 years ago, meaning that the average rate of sea-level rise was roughly 1 metre per century.

Commerce is a natural human development as their cities expand and make contact with other cities.
 
Jan Sobieski said:
Lol, typical idiocy from you in general.

Real wages which adjust for cost of living are more akin to the actual wealth.

You assume that success is the ONLY factor influencing happiness, apparently.??

You're ignorant beyond belief.
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Awesome. Then you should have no more need for my input. Adios, muchacho.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Agreed. It's a different mindset than Western ideology.

When I was taking a course in International Relations, one of the first classes was International geography. We studied how borders matter, how borders change and why that matters. The main thing I remember from that class in 1989 was "If you want to understand a different culture, study their history and their geography."

The whole Israeli/Arab Wars thing is some history but mainly geography. The Arabs want the Dome of the Rock. Killing all the Jews is a bonus for them.

Had to look up Daodejing but it made sense when I read Lao Tzu and Tao.

The Dao de jing, Americanized. I haven't read it myself. I've been sitting on a copy of "The Tao of Physics" for too many years. I'd like to slog through that. LOL
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Killing Jews is a bonus?
Lol!
Prejudices against Arabs.

You have the nerve to say my Prejudices are emotional?
 
Cypress said:
I would never categorically rule anything out, but as of now there is no evidence of any commerce, culture, civilization, or written language prior to the late Neolithic.

It makes sense to me that writing would have evolved in concert with cities, finance, and commerce.

Unfortunately the archeological record of the Paleolithic is extremely sparse.
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And, as mentioned previously, either buried in African jungles or over 300 feet underwater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level
The current sea level is about 130 metres higher than the historical minimum. Historically low levels were reached during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), about 20,000 years ago. The last time the sea level was higher than today was during the Eemian, about 130,000 years ago.[2]

Over a shorter timescale, the low level reached during the LGM rebounded in the early Holocene, between about 14,000 and 6,000 years ago, and sea levels have been comparatively stable over the past 6,000 years. For example, about 10,200 years ago the last land bridge between mainland Europe and Great Britain was submerged, leaving behind salt marsh. By 8000 years ago the marshes were drowned by the sea, leaving no trace of former dry land connection.[3] Observational and modeling studies of mass loss from glaciers and ice caps indicate a contribution to a sea-level rise of 2 to 4 cm over the 20th century.


https://noc.ac.uk/news/global-sea-level-rise-end-last-ice-age
 
Cypress said:
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.
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The Neolithic era did have some violence, like the Talheim death pit.
 
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