Astral Codex Ten

Confucianism

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Confucianism

Article

Confucianism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between June 17, 2021 and October 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “This coincided with another powerful factor in the macroparasistic balance: Confucianism”; “Confucianism won the philosophical squabbles in China around the birth of Christ”; “the local mix of Buddhism/Confucianism/Taoism gave way to modernism”. It most often appears alongside China, India, America.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: June 17, 2021
  • Last seen: October 04, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Plagues And Peoples
June 17, 2021 · Original source
Around 600 BC extensive farming started in the Yellow River Valley. It took enormous collective engineering effort to build canals, irrigation systems, and flood controls to turn the vast flood plain into a productive carpet of rice paddies. Chronic warfare ended around 200 BC with consolidation of power in the Han Dynasty. This introduced a double layer of macroparasitism: private landowners and the Emperor both demanded taxes be paid. This was still better than tumultuous chronic warfare. This coincided with another powerful factor in the macroparasistic balance: Confucianism. The ideals propagated “a culture among imperial officials and private landowners internalized an ethic that strenuously restrained arbitrary or innovative use of power.”
Yellow River Basin The Han Dynasty never made it very far south towards the Yangtze. Political and military obstacles were relatively unimportant, and the climate and land meant longer and more productive growing seasons for agriculture. The Yangtze also has more predictable and manageable flood plains. Yangtze Valley is prettier too. Why not extend civilization southward? In McNeill’s words “for in moving southward and into better farming regions, Chinese pioneers were also climbing a rather steep disease gradient!” The climatic gradient is steep, like New England to Florida, in a shorter geographic distance. For a Chinese peasant, the mutually tolerable accommodation with the state and with the microparasites of the Yellow River Valley was maintainable. But more microparasitic intensity made the balance unmaintainable. The Han Dynasty and Confucianism really only worked at a certain latitude. By the way, guess which major Chinese city is on the Yangtze? (You can look back at the map.) In contrast to the Ganges Valley in India, with a civilization and farming starting around 600 BC but remained unstable and never consolidated. The Ganges Valley is hugely productive agriculturally but also warmer and wetter than China’s southern Yangtze Valley. “Classical Indian civilization thus took form under climatic and (presumed) disease conditions that the early Chinese found too much to bear.” It took a long time for China to populate the Yangtze River basin- biological accommodation to a microparasitic climate will take a long time. By that time, around 1200 AD, there is also evidence the Sung Dynasty was a less powerful and less demanding macroparasite. “To achieve such a mass population [100 million by A.D.1200] two things were needed: a suitable microparasistic accommodation to the ecological conditions of the Yangtze Valley and regions farther south, and a regulated macroparasitism that left enough of their product with the Chinese peasants so that they could sustain a substantial rate of natural increase over several generations.” Epistemic Status: A convincing narrative with zero evidence McNeill explicitly and regularly reminds the reader that this overarching thesis has little to no evidence. But it does have lots of examples. It’s the same problem that most overarching histories of humanity face: lack of documentation. Except this time it’s lack of documentation 10,000 years ago of something we discovered existed 300 years ago and is invisible without a microscope. In some way, though, this complete lack of documentation makes his case stronger- the invisible forces are stronger than the visible ones. We all kind of knew the narrative that the Spanish decimated the Aztecs and Mayans with help of smallpox. I just never extended that logic towards humanity’s escape from Africa, the march of civilizations into the countryside, and what type of social structures worked best at certain ‘disease gradient’ latitudes. The documentation of the conquistadors was almost adequate to infer disease as a massive influence. But earlier medical records and writings lack such detail. When McNeill contrasts this force of microparasitism balancing with and against the adequately vague force of macroparasitism, it’s hard not to nod your head and agree. McNeill provides as much detail and admits lack of detail as possible. The book is about on fifth footnotes. But the most convincing arguments for his narrative is the sum of parts that make up the narrative. I’m going to just list a few more examples that fit his framework because they are all interesting and also paint a more convincing picture of the importance microparasitism played in human history. The way that Europeans decimated Native Americans with smallpox blankets has been a key driver in ancient civilization expansion. The moment the city folk come in contact with tribes, smaller towns, anyone in the countryside they also bring the city folk diseases. This makes civilization expansion fundamentally easier.
Inline links: Yangtze Valley is prettier too
Book Review: What We Owe The Future
August 23, 2022 · Original source
This might not be impossible. For example, Mohammed asked Muslims not to eat pork, and they still follow this command thousands of years later. The US Constitution made certain design decisions that still affect America today. Confucianism won the philosophical squabbles in China around the birth of Christ, and its ethos still influences modern China.
Against The Cultural Christianity Argument
October 04, 2024 · Original source
But the Christian cultural package also fell apart and became the current post-Christian world. This wasn't just a one-time coincidence either. Protestantism gave way to modernism in Scandinavia, Germany, and the US. Catholicism gave way to modernism in Spain, Italy, and Latin America. Orthodoxy gave way to modernism in Greece, Eastern Europe, and Russia (with a slight Putinist resurrection-in-name-only which hardly seems to have produced a flourishing liberal society). Meanwhile in China, the local mix of Buddhism/Confucianism/Taoism gave way to modernism. In South East Asia, Buddhism gave way to modernism. Only 10% of Israeli Jews are ultra-Orthodox, and it would be lower if they didn't breed so fast. India is moderately Hindu but still noticeably modern. Even the Middle East is gradually becoming less Muslim.