Philosophical Open-Thread, post # 5

Let this be an open thread for general philosophical considerations, no sense burying them in one of the many chapter comment locations. You won't get notification; I'll just change the post number.

I will make additional posts to this open thread, putting the newest at the top. Too many emails if I separate them. Perhaps you can refer to the post number or the date of each, to aim your comment.  Click these anchor links to jump to a post.  Push up the scroll bar to return to the top. (Or read them all, 16 pages and 5,000 words.) Please comment.

Post_V  Histories are stories, woven around doubts.

Post_IV We learn to perpetuate blind-spots in our own society

Post_III Process of hiding our base notions through lucky avoidance.

Post_II  Continual conflict in ancient world.

Post_I   Why read these Books.

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Post_V

What are we learning from ancient history?

First of all, we see that knowing a chronicle of events may be knowledge, but it is far from understanding.  In fact, the more that these events become uncovered, the more we create conundrum and contradictions.  How could there be "two sides that are contradicting each other" - in nature?  Then contradiction must be only in man's interpretation of his perceptions.

Here we are not researching only the events that occurred with one people, (one clan, tribe, ethnicity, nation or empire).  We are considering a zone of interaction, most likely geographical, during a certain period.  What were all the neighbor's necessities, and how were they interacting with our subject matter?  How did they complement and how did they denigrate each other?

As the whole zone rises and falls and shifts the power structures, more clarity becomes evident.  But still this leaves a lot of holes in our understanding.  What was the life really like for the majority of the people?  Why did they do what they did, and follow what the ruler said, and how was that possible?  It looks like most all of the rulers were self-serving villains.  Especially during succession of power; you had to murder all your brothers and uncles, and have a civil war, to come to power.

In some (most) periods there were continuous wars.  Many were capricious wars, just at the whim of the king.  Still, he was able to convince people, that those others need to be curtailed. (killed).  Why did the people accept that?  The king hired mercenary armies, in no short supply if you have the money.  Also, a male part of the population was in the military, and females did the work to support it.  Was there a part of the population that was less affected by these wars?  If they lived in the city, when the city was plundered and burnt to the ground, they died too.  Outer villages were also sacked and burned.  What was the scale of it?  For instance, populations migrated, in droughts and wars.   No history I've seen reports on the necessary logistics of making these moves?  (No small thing).

The rise and fall of the economy of ancient eras is quite difficult to trace, again due to the incompleteness of the information obtained from primary sources. But there is an indicator - military power. As far as the new age is concerned, there is no doubt about this, but for two thousand years the case has been exactly the same, and not only among sedentary peoples, but also among nomads.  An example will be the 100's of years when the calvary was the most advanced weapon. 

For a campaign one had to have not only well-fed, strong and not tired people able to draw a bow "to the ear", and to sword fight with a heavy sword or a curved saber, the latter which was even more difficult. You had to have horses, about 4-5 per man, taking into account a wagon train, riding horses and packs.  War horses were not loaded on the march, they were rested, if you wanted to win battles.

A stock of arrows was required, and making them was a labor-intensive business. There was a need for a supply of provisions, for example, easier for nomads - a flock of sheep and, consequently, shepherds with it. And eat the dead battle horses.  One needed a reserve guard to guard women and children.  In short, even then the war cost money, and also a lot of it.

To wage war at the expense of plundering the enemy is only possible after the first, and not small victory. And to win it, requires a strong rear, a flourishing economy, and, accordingly, optimal natural conditions.

Using military power as a surrogate for the economy is not good enough for me.  When they say an army of 20,000 warriors, that means 100,000 horses trailed behind.  When they say an army of 100,000, (are you crazy? I don't believe it), and two of those huge armies meeting.  Does it mean 600,000 horses are hiding in the bushes, and eating hay every day?

These are gaping holes in our understanding.  We blindly follow the sequences of wins and losses, as if it was a video game, not questioning how it could ever be possible.

So far, I am looking into many Eurasian cultures from about 400 AD to 1,400.  Western Rome was pretty well finished by then.  Troubles started for everyone in the 2nd century when Goths migrated to the south.  They were pirates and lived by raiding and plundering.  The most valuable thing that Slavic villages had were women for the sex trade, and all the children were sold into slavery.  Slave traders transferred these captives to the middle east and to Spain, Morocco and Egypt where the buyers were.  Many powers bought baby boys to raise in the military.  Some gained rights, and may were always expendable slaves.

With wholesale aggression on all sides, many rulers relied on mercenary professional armies.  Often, they suppressed their own population and did not want to give them arms.  The mercenaries kept domestic order and engaged in the foreign excursions.  As long as there were a few rich foreign empires, and if they could be conquered, gold poured toward the aggressor, and paid for all armies.  But when wars no longer paid for themselves with the spoils, money had to be borrowed to keep it going.

Money lenders built up capital with control of the trade routes, (the silk road).  Sometimes the route was blocked by conflicts, and sometimes silk production was halted by Chinese uprisings. Then the money lenders became the major slave traders, in case silk didn't trade.  When rulers couldn't pay their debts for their mercenaries, the money lenders demanded slaves in payment.

These payments created the need for continuous war, to collect more slaves.  The scenario for 100's of years was total annihilation of warriors, and capture of all females and children; then burning the city to the ground.  (Continuous).  Sometimes part of the population could run and hide in the forest, and rebuild the city in a couple of years.  This encouraged reliance on a central authority figure to organize defense, no matter what kind of scoundrel they were.

The rest of "international trade” was a billionaire game (of the 1%).  Furs, honey and wax from Northern Europe were a free tribute to the princes. The peasant population got no benefit from giving it.  Same with Chinese silk, it was a tax on the Chinese peasants.  they got nothing out of it.

I WOULD CALL IT HELL.  I see nothing of value for our present-day age from this past.  All the heroes, valor, patriotism and loyalty were only based on arbitrary aggression.  All of it unneeded.   That's in the pure sense of it, but the real-politic of the day required every last drop of blood.

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Post_IV 

August 30, 2023; So far this library seems to be only for Lev N. Gumilev writings. That’s alright, because I get a lot out of them. They are all my translations from the Russian. In Russia, it is a lot easier to download free books than in the profit seeking west. A while back, when I looked for these books in English, I didn’t find any, (maybe one). I did all this work, why not share it?

I am sure there are lots of great books both from Russia and the Western countries. I wouldn’t put them here though, unless they were my own effort to make the English edition available. You can get them somewhere else. What am I learning by doing this? First of all, I learn that I CAN do it. I approached it very slowly over the years, because it seemed like an awful lot of work. It is. But work that gives back and that you love isn’t work.

We learn from the past by what we acknowledge about it, and it’s now in our current mind-set. But I am realizing we also learn a completely different thing from what we don’t acknowledge about the past. We learn to perpetuate the blind-spots that were necessary to digest the horrendous violence of a millennia of our progenitors. Those blind-spots are still with us (because we are blind to them).

Most of our history doesn’t investigate the real blind spots. When you write about American settler-colonial history, you don’t say the foundation was the free land through the extermination of the indigenous population. You don’t say that your honored ancestors paid a bounty on an “Indian scalp”, maybe the same $5 they paid for a wolf’s tail or a little more. (It didn’t have to be this way. It is only “who we are”, the Us vs Them.)

Oh Yeah - - - - , but that was way back then. WELL? So what. That is who you are. It is in there somewhere, until you root it out and reject it, and you don’t root is out by continuing the blind-spot.

I don’t see much value in the manicured biographies of early American “heroes”. Those are made for the continuation of the blind-spots through what is being ignored. Maybe there’s some value of the simpler people, who had an inclination to just say what they saw, instead of adopt the narrative of "us vs them". Why do we now describe everything through the lens of good (us) and evil (them)? Victimhood is a way to offload responsibility for the non-performance of our society. It does perform for some dwindling segment, and that is who these narratives are directed to. For the growing others, it is not our leaders that are deficient, but our "enemies" that are at fault.

I tend to believe that all the stereo-types of behavior of Americans were formed on the European continent, for a couple of thousand years. To discover them you must read the ancient history of Eurasia. That is where humanity developed. Of course, humanity also developed in the indigenous populations of America and Africa. But there are no histories about it, it is a complete mystery.

The first premise of this site WAS to listen to the points of view of our supposed adversaries. I wrote on it in the "ABOUT" page, and I even named the site "conciliation", getting along with others. I must be a peacenik. I can just as easily translate from the Chinese, although I don't know how to operate in Farsi (Iran). But with Gumilev histories, the site is much more than a Russian perspective.

✓Gumilev is very precise about Eurasia. He doesn’t recite the sequence of events in just one country, but covers all the relationships of that country, and the interacting developmental factors of the entire zone, in each time frame. You might claim there are way too many details, and facts about the actions, beliefs and forces of umpteen tribes (or empires) that you know nothing about. But that is how complex the web of humanity is.

My take-away is that the past has nothing to base the future on. Maybe there are glaring examples of what not to do. Frankly, I am not here to propose a future. With this gift of insight that I am giving you, it can be up to you to propose the future to me. My opinion, - don't look to recreate the past though.

This is just another a story. He compares his story to what was believed before. There's a huge difference, but that still does not prove that it is true. I think he was always open to update his story.

✓NEXT ON THIS SITE COMES HIS THEORY OF THE FORMULATION OF CIVILIZATIONS. It is a model also. But it is a model that fits into the historical record of many ethnicities. It has a record of working (explaining the past), and a predictive value.

The alternative to his theory is our current theory of victimhood. Powerful people, the oligarchs of the deep state, the bankers and financiers enslave the 99%. The owners against the proletariat. Some people insist that it is “The Jews”. Let it be that way. But those people are not God-the-creator. They fumble, and besides they don’t know exactly what they are doing. They make some moves, yeah, it devastates a lot of people. Most often they take advantage of unforeseen disasters, to further push down the many, and to raise themselves.

Gumilev’s theory doesn’t replace what we see, but it certainly broadens it.

✓Third, if we want to know and trust how a social scientist works, he will teach you the research, considerations and precision that goes into divining the past. Maybe people won’t devote much time to this part of his knowledge, but it is also a valid pursuit.

I have many other translations besides Gumilev. But please let me concentrate on him for now.

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Post III; 

August 27, 2023; Part of managing life is to gather (accepted by you) options for projected behaviors under varying circumstances. Another part of that management is to arrange society to avoid those kinds of circumstances that we reject. In the modern age we might say that we don't adhere to some forms of violence. And that is fine as long as the system can keep the avoidance going.

If that avoidance breaks down, (really in every country in the war-on-terrorism, where the west purposefully destroyed the governments that were maintaining stability), then you don't know what primal urges will bubble up. The avoidance part maintains the illusion of modern morality. It is the curtain that covers that blind spot. But the real "European Killing Urge" has seeped through the cracks in our fractured era, and it is plainly visible for anyone who wishes to look at it.

The European ethnos is the same as American, and all of the western world. The "G-7" killing instinct has been re-kindled. All that don't object to it, are the passive part of it. Reading the ancient EurAsian history on this site will tell you what that basic stereo-type was and is. I suppose that it is OK, if that is what IS. But no sense denying it, to live in a FAKE world.

It is the possibility of hiding a substitution of notions. It becomes obvious that cultural monuments do not tell us everything about the people who created them. When we admire the statues and paintings of the Renaissance, we lose sight of many things. In particular, the fact that all the cultural content of the Renaissance was created by the work of several dozen talented artists and humanists.

We're fascinated by antiquity at a time when manslaughter was a daily occurrence for Western Europeans and it took on unimaginably massive proportions. But neither Raphael's Sistine Madonna nor Michelangelo's David will tell historians anything about the atrocities of the Borgia papal family or the violence perpetrated by the Sforza dukes. Therefore, for a person interested in what really happened, it is vital not to confuse works of culture, with the system of behavior of the ethnos that created that culture.

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All countries need a sense of identity in order to function with cohesion and "togetherness". So, all countries rely on the common myths, and they reinforce their history and traditions to build up their identity. In the modern age there is a lot of mixing of populations, so that those from the outside don't internalize the same myths. Therefore, the function of myth-building needs extra thought and extra work in this modern age. Maybe it can't fully work.

[Is myth the best way to develop a coherent identity? Actually, I think not, but that will have to be another discussion, not covered here.]

Many countries extol the benefits of diversity. Of course, that is because they already have diversity. What are they going to say? "All you foreigners; GET OUT". At least a couple of societies do say that. We call them apartheid regimes. Diversity could work (in my opinion), and be a cross-fertilization of ideas. But it would have to be done slowly, and in a period of abundance and stability. Other than that, history proves that people live best together, when living apart, in separate zones.

Mankind doesn't think like they did throughout history. For instance, not even very long ago, the means of production was only human labor. Even with the use of draft animals, a human had to lead them. Any expansion needed more humans to power it. But the expansion didn't have the surpluses needed to pay more workers, (or it was too slow that way). Therefore, throughout all of known history, some people were captured and pressed into slavery.

And even in the modern era, when the third world was trying to industrialize, they first entered world markets with the advantage of cheap labor. Cheap labor is only possible with cheap food prices. So, farmers were always suppressed into a subsistence living, in all modernizing countries. (Even now, and this is for sure.)

Therefore, the famous figures (our heroes) from our past history had their own thinking. They did things which don't fit in with our modern concepts, part of which we have now defined as "Flaws" in their character. But still, they built our nations, and we have to build our national identity based on these historical people. So, we have to ignore, overlook or pardon some of their sins.

It comes down to part our common identity is about honoring these heroes, and another part of that identity is about pardoning (winking at) flagrant deviations of our principles. We become a nation of winkers, about both our past and present transgressions. But even without winking, we can also admit that the law of the land is often not being applied equally to those in the power structure, which is even more of a temptation for them to knowingly deviate. And we can wink at that one also.

This habitual “winking” may be the major flaw in all current national structures. It comes from having to ignore and pardon the horrendous part of our own history. (And I believe that it was horrendous, in all cultures.)

All cultures were not winkers though. In the Mongol society, any betrayal of the government or even of your colleague, and especially in war, was punished by immediate death. You were killed and transformed into crow meat on the spot. No matter who you were. Can you imagine if the Mongols took over a society of winkers, like America? There wouldn't be anyone left. Winking was the highest sin with the Mongols.

IS THE PAST SOMETHING THAT WE CAN BUILD THE FUTURE UPON?

There are two kinds of possibilities: The system may break down, and crumble, due to top-heavy inequality. That is sort of a revolution. Very risky and with assured suffering. What's left of the world would have to be rebuilt from scratch. (And under what premise?)

Or somehow, could the system morph (?) in such a way that slowly injustices and inequality would be resolved? Some people place their bets on the “American Rule of Law”. What are their actions to make that wish come true?

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Post II; 

August 22, 2023; EurAsia is rich with recorded history. I don't know that much about Africa, and I think not much is written about it. 500 years of American history are only about Settler-Colonialism. In ancient times there are only the small renderings of anthropology. American Settler Colonialists have European historical roots. Later migrations have Asian roots.

There's a lot of ancient Asian history on our Library site. I have reread it all while posting it, literally as of now in less than a month. As you get into reading about it, you begin to WONDER??

There is a hell of a lot of conflict in the ancient world. How is that possible? Well, maybe you're skipping through the centuries, conflict may have been not-every-day. Or was it? Some cultures were continual Raiders. Many peoples saw continual brutal conflict, meaning that they killed others, and without a doubt, they were surely killed themselves in droves. Raiders took food and valuables, if there were any. But mostly they captured all the children and sold them as slaves. The captured women were sent into the sex trade. The men were killed 100%. So, your tribe couldn't grow, no children no future.

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There are enormous doubts are about possible military logistics. The archers needed 1000's of arrows. Who can make them? The infantry were usually pikemen, with spears and shields. Everyone had a sword, and maybe some kind of armor.

Who was growing a surplus of food? Were there wagon trains of supplies that followed every campaign? Not all successful armies had a rich society behind them. I think it would be very risky to count on stealing food for 1000's of men along the way. Killing a whole city to take their store of food. It was done though.

The highest technology before firearms was the mounted cavalry with bows and sabers. They were effective at a distance and devastating in hand-to-hand combat. Each warrior needed about 4 backup horses. This huge herd had to follow, to be tended and fed tons of fodder. Horses had to be in top health to win battles.

Campaigns on the Steppe during the grassy season had the horse problem solved. But not all wars were on the grassy prairies. For the nomadic warriors there were also following herds of cattle and sheep to feed the troops.

One possibility is that military statistics were greatly exaggerated. What should we believe when we hear stories of 100,000 warriors against 150,000? How did they even coordinate such numbers, just get them to attack at the proper time and from this or that flank? I think it is all inconceivable exaggeration. Maybe there were only 10,000 troop. Are these only my doubts?

Nomads were the most flexible. During favorable (wet) periods the herds would multiply faster than the humans on the rich steppe. If each warrior took 10 concubines as battle spoils, (many battles), they could radically expand also. Each woman was a cannon that shot out 10 - 15 soldiers. 10,000 could become 1,000,000 in one or two generations. The expanding herds could feed them. It happened that way with the Huns, Turks and Mongols.

Logistic necessities prove that the majority of the population were in support roles. If soldiers ate grain, agriculture could not be expanded as fast as cattle herds could. Who was making all these armaments? They got paid to do it, and that necessitated another campaign to bring back more money. Also paying the soldiers was very expensive.

What was life really like in those societies? As I said, I have read everything on this site in the last month, (as I posted it). It is only the tale of the elite 1%. But somehow there were also vast armies. What was their alternative to soldering, to be a subsistence farmer? One thing that ran the continuous war is the human reflective nature. If you try to kill me, then I will try to be killing you before you can do it. Who started this mess anyway?

Let's face it. Ancient to Medieval soldiers loved to be in the army. They loved battle and plundering the cities, and serving the whims of their 1% generals. It was the only route to riches for them. They could take any woman that they got their hands on. Their job was killing. Often it wasn't that difficult. Many of them were also killed. Perhaps the mentality of the time couldn't conceive of percentages, and the probability of them being the next to die. (Higher mathematics.)

Actually, the peasants were also used to obeying the 1%. Why, is a good question. They needed some central authority is such horrific periods.

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Then these complex stories are all inconceivable too, (if you want to believe them). The enemy of my enemy is my temporary friend. So-and-so got on a horse, rode 500 miles, and somehow got in to see the other king. Let's both go to this other, we'll pledge a triple alliance and sign some treaties so that we'll send an army to destroy that other army, which is also a triple or quadruple alliance. Then in 30 - 50 - 60 years we'll all switch sides and conquer whoever was left over. "Let's do this for centuries or millennia".

Who was hurt worse, the enemy, or your own peasant population? In the Chinese era of the three kingdoms, the Chinese total population was reduced from 50 million to 7.5 million. The 100-year war between England and France 1337 - 1453. The war of the Roses in England 1455 - 1487. In another 30-year war, Protestants against the Catholics, 1618 -1648, the population of Germany was reduced (killed dead) by 75%. Central and South Asia were the same.

But those mentioned wars are just some highlights. War never stopped, between all groups large and the small.

WHAT OF VALUE CAN BE GLEENED FROM HISTORY? That can be useful for running the world today?

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Post I; 

August 17, 2023; Why read these books, or any books when I am so busy with my other preoccupations?

First, I'll make two distinctions between (A) the undying principles of reality, versus (B) the ever-changing mutability of mind/matter/consciousness.

A. Optic one into reality are the fundamental principles which govern the universe. Physically we see them. Particles, waves, matter and energy, fields, gravitation, life as a product of chemistry, the result of bonds, valence in the electron shells of atoms. At this temperature and pressure it is all rather stable.

From there we can jump to immutable principles in man's relationships, principally with nature, and how nature functions and regenerates itself. The idea of fundamental principles is also the basis for the notion of a God, morality, ethics, justice, and really the basis of society. Humanity knew these precepts even in ancient times, and they wrote down "the words of God" in the scriptures.

It might be a curiosity to know some of these fundamental "truths", but, if you find any, there is nothing you can do with them if they are immutable. So we can only make ourselves adequate to them.

B. Optic two into reality reveals that everything is in movement, everything is changing. Is our life changing, or do we have to change it to be adequate to the times? Yes, nature still works to regenerate itself, but it also gets damaged. Many of these time-frames are not on a human scale, so is it safe to ignore them?

And where WE CAN interject change, is in man's relation to man, and that could be in movement, in total flux. Except there are powerful interests that get advantage from certain imbalances, and it's in their interest to retard change, or to maintain the way it is now. Retarding change is an (A) phenomenon. "It is based on, “we have found these immutable truths, and we will hold to them at all costs", (perhaps ideologies, maybe like capitalism). Or they might insist that There Is No Alternative, (TINA).

Looking to facilitate change, for a better way, which surely will always exist, is a (B) phenomenon. We're willing to change for the better, but how to determine that? Of course, you have to set aside a social laboratory and experiment with different changes, and check the results.

First principle: we ought to acknowledge that today appears like it does because of the actions we did yesterday. Tomorrow is going to appear out of the actions we are doing today.

How do you make a change then? You have to do something different.

How do you do something different? You have to change your mind.

How do you change your mind? You have to determine that what your are now thinking is defective, it doesn't translate into the desired result. Your thinking is in words, so the descriptors are not accurate.

That is where humans have good luck, because they can share these descriptors, through books.

1 Some books are entertaining, they take you away from your daily cares, (those that must seem oppressive both because of your powerlessness and from the circumstances). That's nice.

2 Some books are familiar. They assure you that what you think is continually being verified. You must be holding some "principles of truth". Just try to apply them a little bit harder to get the missing result. It is an (A) phenomenon, and it means you are one of those perceiving some advantage from the status quo.

3 Some books attempt to break the old pattern, or offer a new interpretation, and with a new understanding maybe a new action could be possible. It’s (B)

Second principle: is that we always judge by the result, and never by stated good intentions and excuses. If you didn’t produce what you said; You’re OUT!

There are stages of human thought, starting with the new-born they go in the order of:

Wonder, Learning, Knowing, Telling, More Wonder, Discovery, and maybe another kind of Knowing.

Many books have stalled out in Knowing and Telling, as if they could give you a transfusion of their belief systems. I look for books that seek to share Discovery. They may give you a few "hints", but basically you have to Discover for yourself.

So far with Russian authors, I am intrigued most by Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev. He has three thrusts of interesting work. First he studies the methodology of the Anthropologist/Geographer. He takes us on many detective stories of discovering who was where and when, and what the climate and topography were at the time that facilitated what they became and did.

Second, he has done a very wide range of research on the ancient clans, tribes, cultures, nations, and ethnicities of Asia, in recorded history from about 1,000 BC to 1,900 AD. Maybe they are past trajectories, recorded histories, chronicler assumptions, archaeological discoveries and projections, stories, legends, myths, or just hear-say. Or maybe it is a fairytale told to your grandchildren or a fabulous “Yarn” (a story in a long endless string). In any case it is more vast than most people have ever heard about, and they continuously illustrate certain principles.

And third from this experience he has taken these principles and developed a theory of Ethnogenesis. What is the raw material for a civilization, where does it come from, how does it develop, how does it fall, and where does it disappear to? Of course, it comes from the level of "DOERSHIP" of these populations. First, they have this energy, he calls it passion, then they lose it.

Most interesting is to compare this theory with today. Do we as a people have a will to do? With this further understanding you can get an idea of where we are headed.

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