Generational Dynamics World View

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-02-2020, 01:38 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: But you're suggesting something different, that a new Empire will lead the world, what we might call the "Asian Civilization Empire."  I believe that this was Toynbee's view, and 20 years ago I think I probably agreed with it.  But not today.

I've now spent 20 years developing Generational Dynamics, and I've written thousands of articles analyzing China and other Asian countries.  I've also spent many thousands of hours of research to write my book on "War between China and Japan," and also the book that I'm currently writing on Vietnam.

And my conclusion is unequivocal: Asian countries are incompetent to govern themselves, and couldn't hope to come close to governing an empire.

China is the obvious choice, but China has a chronic, corrosive core illness that makes it impossible for China ever to do anything but go insane and self-destruct.  That core illness has a name: Confucianism.

Confucianism means that a leader requires an imaginary "mandate from heaven" to govern, and that if something goes wrong, then the leader has lost his mandate from heaven, and it's time for an anti-government rebellion.  Confucianism means that the entire rest of the world is barbarians, and the only way to interact with them is to treat them as donkeys whose only function is to produce stuff for the Confucian Chinese, and who are to be treated as contemptously as possible.

It's common to identify Confucianism as a religion, as opposed to Christianity, Buddhism or Islam.  But the Chinese make it clear that they do not view it that way.  The opposite of Confucianism is not Christianity.  It's Democracy.  The Chinese Communists, who are the current incarnation of Confucianism, view Democracy as an evil ideology whose purpose is to destroy Confucianism.

I call the major flaw autocracy.  The elites and the king / emperor attempt to retain power, and thus do not take full advantage of democracy.  They run the culture for the sake of it's elite and military prowess, not for the people.  Confucianism is one form of it, but hardly the only form.  Tribal thinking takes different shapes all over the world.  Each culture makes a different mistake.  This includes but is not limited to invading Russia, but more broadly believing their culture is stronger than all others combined.

(10-02-2020, 01:38 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Getting back to the original subject, what I call the "Western Civilization Empire," starting from ancient Athens and Crete, has succeeded because it's based on the core principle of Democracy.  It has spawned sub-empires over the centuries, but in one form or another this empire will continue to lead the world, because only Democracy is capable of governing empires.

I am not sure the West is one continuous civilization or empire.  WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich Democratic) attributes it to the Reformation, to proposing everyone should learn to read the Bible, thus altering the dominant shape of the human mind.  If you learn to read you think different.  You can argue that the sequence of Rome leading to Catholicism ought to be labeled as a different empire or civilization than the protestant north, but even so Catholism was a definite precursor.  

Guns Germs and Steel identifies other factors that made the West dominant with the start of the Industrial Age.

But these are nitpicks.  As a whole I concur that Western thought and civilization are looking to continue dominance.  Tribal thinking used to be dominant.  Cultures had to develop military power or loose out in the race for dominance.  That changed as the Industrial Age took shape.  Thinking your culture and your state is oh so superior become a good way to get squashed, or at least become WEIRDer.  Xenophobia used to go hand in hand with elites trying to make a profit, and they could make up an idealistic reason easy enough.  Now, though, a defensive alliance often says no to such attempts at imperialism. They firmly say no.  Bush 43 was one of the latest to learn the lesson.  Even the Western core state can be told no.

It is strange that you are recognizing the virtue of Western Civilization, and still being obsessed with Xenophobia to the exclusion of idealism and profit seeking as reasons for war.  You don’t seem to get why the West has become so dominant.