Authors author; it is what they do. I think Helen doesn't want to suffer trilogising; the Martin-Weber Effect; and getting shackled to one subgenre of a subgenre of a subgenre; i.e. being trapped in "The Kingdom of the Wicked".
From the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology, human "morals" are biological, an evolved characteristic that improved survival via intense social cooperation, shared knowledge and rituals and kindship level altruism.
Technological disruption and postmodern social conditions (suburban consumerism, globalism) are eroding the legacy form of "classically liberal" (high-social-trust) western civilization, but that also makes possible the emergence of a higher form of culture that evolves anti-fragility to tech disruption.
Social order in most of the rest of the world was traditionally based on clan and dynastic honor systems (which typically result in inbreeding of the local gene pool), fealty oaths, pre-literate verbal traditions, superstition, and so forth.
The US federal govt has preserved the pre-western sites of ritual human sacrifice in Hawaii to preserve indigenous traditions and for the edification of tourists.
"Wokeism" mostly fetishizes non-western culture, but some social scientists think that pre-modern Japan was near to evolving something like "classically liberal" culture (Constitutional order).
Islamic culture generally did not have the geopolitical, climatological or economic pre-requisites (trade+an expanding, literate, educated, urban commoner class) for cultural evolution toward a liberal social form. The Arab gene pool reportedly started becoming more inbred a couple of hundred years of the establishment and spread of Islam, after some initial mixing due to conquests. A liberal middle eastern historian I used to know claimed that muslim social elites came to an agreement about 800 years ago tht they had reached the pinnacle of advanced civilization (arts, architecture, libraries, international banking, etc.), so they needed to freeze the culture to prevent it from declining. But it declined anyway, becoming urbane, cosmopolitan, sophisticated but too weak to be able to fight off the Mongolian Hordes. To be fair, no one else had much fighting off the Mongolians, some of which converted to Islam after giving up nomadic life.
Without something like an industrial economy, the Muslim world was highly dependent on the slave economy for labor, which is why the Royal Navy made a big deal about abolishing slavery, to weaken the Muslim world and made its colonization easier.
In pre-liberal societies, social order is seen as an imperfect reflection of Divine or Sacred order. Improving social order is a religious project.
The "materialistic" basis of western Constitutional order (in the middle class merchant economy) is not seen favorably, at least not by traditionalists wanting to preserve the spiritual basis of social order (see Karl Jaspers and Karen Armstrong on the evolution of Axial cultures).
Ironically, it is via western "materialism" (science, genetics) that the influence of inbreeding becomes known in non-western/"clannish" cultures as a mechanism of (historical) resistance to liberal reforms.
(Note that in contrast to pro-western propaganda, european colonialization favored the more reactionary forms of religious fundamentalism (easily corrupted to put puppet govts in place) against liberal secular political parties.)
my personal definition of "religion" is pretty broad, I include any system of philosophy, metaphysics, or similar that was "contemplative".
we lived in Japan when I was a small child, I recall all sorts of temples, both Buddhist and others (Shinto?) because my mother was an artist that sketched them, and I got dragged along.
the important element is what Jaspers/Armstrong described as "Axial"
The anti-slave trade drive was mainly morally motivated. It being the first modern manifestation of organised mass politics. More Royal Navy effort was put into suppressing the Atlantic than Indian Ocean slave trade. The Sahara passage that was central to the Islamic slave trade was not amenable to British power until after their intrusion into Egypt.
Islam is one of the more mercantile religions — only major religion founded by a merchant. The crucial civilisational shift seems to have been the triumph of al-Ghazali's “accidentalist” theology and its entrenchment via Seljuk Turk investment in madrassas. Patterns that were reinforced by the reaction to the devastating Mongol invasions. (Though I agree, 1400 years of cousin marriage is not a positive.) So, the pastoralist-synthesis civilisation was knocked around by invading pastoralists: a deep historical irony.
Wahhabi theology and its entrenchment via Saudi investment in madrassas immediately comes to mind. The curious paradox of Muhammed Abdu fathering both "liberal" and "reactionary" Islamisms too.
Maiden, Mother Matriarch was just super! I'd left subtitles on; the AI trying to make sense of properly pronounced Latin in an Australian accent was added hilarity.
My extrapolation and inference:
The Romans extending citizenship for tax reasons doomed the Empire by creating the conditions for religious lunatics to take it over just as the Roman Warm Period and "Halcyon Days" were coming to a natural conclusion and an immigration crisis was emerging. We introduced Civil Rights and tinkered with Immigration Law just as another Warm Period was coming along naturally and ending our "Halcyon Days" as an immigration crisis was emerging. The unintended consequences (Including religious lunatics grabbing the wheel) will see our analogue for Humiliores and Honestiores rock-up. If we implement that (Whatever 'that' proves to be) with eyes wide open, we might save ourselves. If we don't account for the unintended consequences of our previous unintended consequences, (The car-crash of "Liberal Facism"; "Regressive Progressivism"; "Intersectionality; and "Wokism"; etc. with NATURAL climate change and migration crisis) we won't.
Authors author; it is what they do. I think Helen doesn't want to suffer trilogising; the Martin-Weber Effect; and getting shackled to one subgenre of a subgenre of a subgenre; i.e. being trapped in "The Kingdom of the Wicked".
From the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology, human "morals" are biological, an evolved characteristic that improved survival via intense social cooperation, shared knowledge and rituals and kindship level altruism.
Technological disruption and postmodern social conditions (suburban consumerism, globalism) are eroding the legacy form of "classically liberal" (high-social-trust) western civilization, but that also makes possible the emergence of a higher form of culture that evolves anti-fragility to tech disruption.
Actually, it is normative capacity which has evolved. How it is used is much more cultural (in the broadest sense). http://www.jordan-theriault.com/uploads/9/3/5/9/93598528/theriault_et_al_2021_w_comments.pdf
So looking forward to this....
Excuse typos, what happens when one's internet is on the fritz.
But money works in this case.
lol
It's kind of funny. I always heard The O'Jays For the Love of Money as:
many many many money
Brain typo.
"By contrast, the Netherlands has never codified its Roman-derived law.."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgerlijk_Wetboek
Meanwhile … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman-Dutch_law
Social order in most of the rest of the world was traditionally based on clan and dynastic honor systems (which typically result in inbreeding of the local gene pool), fealty oaths, pre-literate verbal traditions, superstition, and so forth.
The US federal govt has preserved the pre-western sites of ritual human sacrifice in Hawaii to preserve indigenous traditions and for the edification of tourists.
"Wokeism" mostly fetishizes non-western culture, but some social scientists think that pre-modern Japan was near to evolving something like "classically liberal" culture (Constitutional order).
Islamic culture generally did not have the geopolitical, climatological or economic pre-requisites (trade+an expanding, literate, educated, urban commoner class) for cultural evolution toward a liberal social form. The Arab gene pool reportedly started becoming more inbred a couple of hundred years of the establishment and spread of Islam, after some initial mixing due to conquests. A liberal middle eastern historian I used to know claimed that muslim social elites came to an agreement about 800 years ago tht they had reached the pinnacle of advanced civilization (arts, architecture, libraries, international banking, etc.), so they needed to freeze the culture to prevent it from declining. But it declined anyway, becoming urbane, cosmopolitan, sophisticated but too weak to be able to fight off the Mongolian Hordes. To be fair, no one else had much fighting off the Mongolians, some of which converted to Islam after giving up nomadic life.
Without something like an industrial economy, the Muslim world was highly dependent on the slave economy for labor, which is why the Royal Navy made a big deal about abolishing slavery, to weaken the Muslim world and made its colonization easier.
In pre-liberal societies, social order is seen as an imperfect reflection of Divine or Sacred order. Improving social order is a religious project.
The "materialistic" basis of western Constitutional order (in the middle class merchant economy) is not seen favorably, at least not by traditionalists wanting to preserve the spiritual basis of social order (see Karl Jaspers and Karen Armstrong on the evolution of Axial cultures).
Ironically, it is via western "materialism" (science, genetics) that the influence of inbreeding becomes known in non-western/"clannish" cultures as a mechanism of (historical) resistance to liberal reforms.
(Note that in contrast to pro-western propaganda, european colonialization favored the more reactionary forms of religious fundamentalism (easily corrupted to put puppet govts in place) against liberal secular political parties.)
“Improving social order is a religious project.” Not true in Confucian societies. Not even Japan.
How true of the classical Indian republics is an open question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaṇasaṅgha
Or of the mesoamerican republics.
https://www.science.org/content/article/it-wasnt-just-greece-archaeologists-find-early-democratic-societies-americas
The mercantile city-states of the Classical Mediterranean also seem to have avoided that perspective. Including Phoenician Carthage.
my personal definition of "religion" is pretty broad, I include any system of philosophy, metaphysics, or similar that was "contemplative".
we lived in Japan when I was a small child, I recall all sorts of temples, both Buddhist and others (Shinto?) because my mother was an artist that sketched them, and I got dragged along.
the important element is what Jaspers/Armstrong described as "Axial"
The anti-slave trade drive was mainly morally motivated. It being the first modern manifestation of organised mass politics. More Royal Navy effort was put into suppressing the Atlantic than Indian Ocean slave trade. The Sahara passage that was central to the Islamic slave trade was not amenable to British power until after their intrusion into Egypt.
Islam is one of the more mercantile religions — only major religion founded by a merchant. The crucial civilisational shift seems to have been the triumph of al-Ghazali's “accidentalist” theology and its entrenchment via Seljuk Turk investment in madrassas. Patterns that were reinforced by the reaction to the devastating Mongol invasions. (Though I agree, 1400 years of cousin marriage is not a positive.) So, the pastoralist-synthesis civilisation was knocked around by invading pastoralists: a deep historical irony.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FAk1f-FsGzHhGNZ-UX7144J9n-vYHFCR/view
Wahhabi theology and its entrenchment via Saudi investment in madrassas immediately comes to mind. The curious paradox of Muhammed Abdu fathering both "liberal" and "reactionary" Islamisms too.
Saudi Arabia was the last polity actually founded by pastoralists.
Read Ernst Junger’s “The Worker.”
The world is changing.
Maiden, Mother Matriarch was just super! I'd left subtitles on; the AI trying to make sense of properly pronounced Latin in an Australian accent was added hilarity.
My extrapolation and inference:
The Romans extending citizenship for tax reasons doomed the Empire by creating the conditions for religious lunatics to take it over just as the Roman Warm Period and "Halcyon Days" were coming to a natural conclusion and an immigration crisis was emerging. We introduced Civil Rights and tinkered with Immigration Law just as another Warm Period was coming along naturally and ending our "Halcyon Days" as an immigration crisis was emerging. The unintended consequences (Including religious lunatics grabbing the wheel) will see our analogue for Humiliores and Honestiores rock-up. If we implement that (Whatever 'that' proves to be) with eyes wide open, we might save ourselves. If we don't account for the unintended consequences of our previous unintended consequences, (The car-crash of "Liberal Facism"; "Regressive Progressivism"; "Intersectionality; and "Wokism"; etc. with NATURAL climate change and migration crisis) we won't.
Would those be fair inferences and conclusions?