Wealth & Power
After reading the book “Wealth and Power”,
which describes the fate of the Chinese civilization for over 2000 years, I
have finally come to understand how human civilizations can change and how
laborious it is - Because of memes – not the spam word but Richard Dawkings original definition of Memes.
For more than 2000 years, Chinese civilization
was dominated by the thinking taught by Confucius and his philosophy.
Ever since the fall of the Roman Empire,
Chinese civilization was by far the most successful civilization on the planet.
As Europe developed during the Renaissance,
the Enlightenment and industrialism, European civilization took over the
leadership position as the most successful civilization on the planet.
When the Opium Wars of the 19th century
(1839-43 and 1856-60) clearly indicated that China as a nation had fallen
behind, many individuals in contemporary China were quick to point out that
their homeland had to deal with the shortcomings of its ancient civilization by
imitating and learning from the West.
But the Chinese Confucian establishment was completely
uninterested (or incapable) of abandoning its fixed ideas about the superiority
of their ancient civilization, despite these humiliating defeats in war.
When even Japan (which had realized that it
had to learn from the West) defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War (August
1894 to April 1895), there once again appeared a multitude of individuals in
China who pointed out that it was necessary for China to imitate the Europeans
and modernize China.
But the old Confucian elite and culture were
still uninterested in new teachings. The established authorities in China
continued in old accustomed footsteps.
The influence of Confucianism was not
sufficiently limited when Sun Yat Sen's revolution in 1911 took place.
Even after Chiang Kai-shek took over the
leadership of the Kuomintang, Confucianism continued to rule the country's
elites.
It was only when Mao Zedong carried out his
purges of all the old elites in China that the influence of Confucianism was
severely limited. This in turn led to Deng Xiaoping being able to reform and
modernize Chinese civilization.
From this brief description of China's
development over the past centuries, you can learn a lot about the art of
changing civilizations and the people who rule
Again, it might be time to learn about what
people mean by memes (mener) at:
https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2015/02/our-factory-of-reasons.html
Todde
Also
check:
https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2024/05/we-europeans-are-becoming-tiny-minority.html
and:
https://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2024/02/we-are-good-guys-it-is-excellent-to.html
