02-28-2021, 07:20 AM
(02-27-2021, 02:35 PM)Captain Genet Wrote:(02-27-2021, 11:53 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The three countries that you mentioned as "Natural" society are all Islamic by religion. Could some other religion have retarded modernity at some point, perhaps only to abandon the retardation for economic reasons? The Catholic Church used to be hostile to commerce and repressive of any dissent... but when it found that commerce and science make life better it changed its ways. The well-off farmer or skilled tradesman might put more money into the collection plate.
There are very Natural societies in Africa, Melanesia, the Amazon or Indian outback which follow pagan religions or nominal Christianity. But yes, Islam is the least conducive to Weird values among major faiths. Hinduism is slightly better but not much so. At least India learned democracy from the British colonialists, and still practices it.
Much of modernity is the recognition that what is 'natural' is simply superstition or the unexamined life.
Quote:Quote:I see the far East as more conformist than collectivist. Neither China (obvious enough with that political system), South Korea, nor Japan is a good place for a rebellious person. In the advanced industrial world, Japan is arguably the worst place in which to be a criminal. Although Japan has solid protections of freedom of conscience and has a free and competitive political system, it treats criminal offenders much like the PRC treats political offenders. The good thing to say about the Japanese penal system is that some offender who goes into it as an offender has been broken of attitudes that made him an offender. Of course, criminality is not quite WEIRD.
Yes, they look like a perpetual 1T. Though the collectivist ethos is strong in Confucianism, which remains an important factor. The prophetic wing of Far Eastern culture, Taoism, encourages withdrawal into solitary contemplation, or even ecstatic sexual experience, rather than challenging the establishment.
Interesting view. This said, the generational cycle may be more profound in the USA and some other countries with Enlightenment values as the uncontested core of public values and those societies that pick and choose.
Quote:Quote:Positive feedback. If Marxist economics really worked (and Marxist societies succeed to the extent that they abandon the economic strictures of Marxism-Leninism do) they would likely foster WEIRD culture. Marx is definitely a figure of Western thought. Marxism isn't anti-intellectual by design (contrast fascism, Nazism, and Ku Kluxism which are all hostile to independent learning). Marxism is in part a quest in any rural and agrarian society that undergoes a Marxist takeover to industrialize rapidly. China and Russia were quite poor when the Commies took over, and under Commie rule they became much richer within 70 years than they had been. (It is telling now that the PRC is on the brink of lasting longer than "Soviet Russia" did).
What isn't WEIRD about any society informed upon Marx in politics (even if it has abandoned Marxist economics as has China) is the rejection of democracy. Marxism still has the concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and one thing is certain: if one is of proletarian origin and has a role in governing any political system beyond voting in elections, one is no longer part of the proletariat. The dictatorship remains, but it is still not that of, by, or for the proletariat.
In the 1920s the Soviet Union was a pioneer of many artistic and social trends, including "free love", but it later abandoned that in favour of more conservative social policy, allegedly because workers didn't appreciate Bohemian culture. On the other side, no society which fully embraced Weird values has a strong communist party. Jeremy Corbyn, despite being only a moderate Red type, suffered a devastating loss in the last British election. Commies had their big time in the transitional period, when Natural ways had already lost their appeal, but Weird culture wasn't fully formed.
I remember seeing a college-level text that showed what characteristics of society facilitated Communist revolutions. Certain patterns were true:
1. Early stage of industrialization. Such is a time of huge dislocation and social disruption. Peasants barely making a bare living as farmers and farm laborers who expect to have nothing so long as they remain where they are hear tales of marble streets and plentiful gold. The problem is that those semi-literate, unskilled people join the low end of the proletariat and exchange the rural hovel and the complex relationships of rural life for a new set of hardships in firetrap slums while working for harsh management. Disparities between the rich and poor may be at their worst. Proletarian revolutions do not succeed in pre-industrial societies because there is no urban proletariat.
2. Absence of democracy. A wide variety of systems from feudal autocracy to colonial rule to military dictatorship is possible, but all lack one thing in common: genuine democracy. Where there is democracy there might form political parties that recognize the working-class majority and respond to its desires for better lives, if not for the workers themselves, then at least their children. Voluntary organizations such as trade unions that address pay and working conditions typically emerge where there is democracy in even an early-industrial society. But where there is no semblance of democracy, the workers are on their own against ruling elites that turn to brutality when challenged.
It is worth remembering that in Imperial Russia before 1905 the Tsar was absolute and needed no parliament. He trusted the industrialists and big landowners who needed no partisan politics. Political activity such as one might expect in the USA, the UK, or France did not exist. Such as there was was secretive, extremist, conspiratorial, and violent to the point of terrorism -- as necessary for countering the secret police that dashed any attempt at social reform. There was no moderate tendency in politics that could counter the appeals of the Bolsheviks.
3. Breakdown of traditional rule. The system of command-and-control normal in an undemocratic plutocracy can fall apart in war as it drafts large numbers of young men into military service and compels hardships upon masses expected to work harder for less for a war effort on behalf of an economic elite that demands more and offers less. Food shortages signal the end of the credibility of the leadership of the time.
4. Geographic concentration of economic activity. The first countries to industrialize had their focus on consumer goods -- textiles, shoes, and housewares. Such manufacturing could be done as cottage industries, and people typically did their manufacturing work during slack times for agriculture. Things were made locally for local use, and seemingly everywhere. There was no need to concentrate economic activity in a few giant cities where there would be a large and disappointed proletariat that might assemble to hear the appeal of demagogues who promised everything so long as they could take power and exterminate the capitalists.
5. Emphasis on exports, military weaponry, and heavy industry. Such supposedly allowed more rapid economic growth than the cottage-industry sort of development, but it also ensured that the industrial workers would endure great hardships. What they were making could never improve their lives.
6. Corrupt, incompetent, and irresponsible leadership. That goes with the territory with despotic and dictatorial government.
Poverty may have been as severe in India as anywhere else in the world... but at the least when India was undergoing its early stage of industrialization...
2. India at the least had a quick transition to a free-wheeling democracy with by most standards were free and fair elections.
3. India was on the fringe of the conflict of World War II, so it did not have the social disruption that most countries endured.
4, 5. Mohandas Gandhi himself promoted cottage industry, which may have slowed industrial development but at least avoided creating the social stresses.
6. Free elections result in the rejection of bloodthirsty extremists either as reactionaries or revolutionaries.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.