CM,

I find Japan to be a fascinating case study in the mechanisms of ancestral memory. Its my view that peoples inherit their most basic political instincts from an early age. There is no overt attempt to instil democratic instincts or authoritarian instincts into the populace,. Yet over the generations it becomes the accepted norm.

I'm most familiar with the Russians, particularly around the time of the fall of the USSR and the eventual rise of Putin. Initially there was fervour around the idea of creating a democracy, but as, inevitably, hard times struck, the instinct and inherent impulses of the Russians was to look for a father and leader who would save them from the messiness of democracy. Enter Putin. Most Russians I'm still in contact with today are aware of their relative lack of freedom as compared with the west but see that as the price to pay for the stability of the Kremlin's somewhat benign authoritarianism.

Japan, similarly, had a tradition of central rule and lack of personal freedoms. Emperor worship was one aspect of that, as well as reverence for the warrior classes. Yet today, that ancestorial memory is all but eliminated.

When Japan was defeated in 1945, it wasn't just a military defeat. The entire society was rendered asunder, back to first principles. Suddenly the warrior class was utterly humiliated. The Emperor was no long aloof and unknowable and infallible. And the women, so long just adjuncts to their men, were now bread winners and vital to the workings of society. (One of my many books on the Beatles points out that a Yoko Ono figure was only possible because of 1945). And then democracy and western notions of personal freedom were overlayed and became the new norm for a society that no longer had norms.

Japan is now a firm and devoted democracy, recognising western values of the individual and personal freedom. A 1925 Japanese would be thoroughly confused by a 2025 Japanese whereas a 1925 Russian would entirely understand the political views of a 2025 Putin-phile.

Anyone who thinks that talking about emission levels is the exact equivalent of talking about "coal statistics" really doesn't deserve my attention.

Anyone whose so dishonest and so determined to not acknowledge error as to continue to claim they were right to make that equivalency won't get my attention.

Canem Malum and mhaze,

This is exactly what I meant by caricature. “Asia = tyranny, West = liberty” dressed up in Machiavelli quotes and “ancestral instincts” isn’t history, it’s essentialism.

- Machiavelli had scraps of second-hand info, not a framework for all of Asia.

- Japan didn’t suddenly discover democracy because its “ancestral memory was erased in 1945” - it had a democratic tradition in the Taisho era.

- And Russians didn’t “inherit” authoritarian instincts. They had weak institutions, massive shocks, and elites who benefited from re-centralisation. That’s politics, not genetics.

Flattening 2,000 years of social and political change into “East likes strongmen, West likes freedom” isn’t lucid analysis. It’s the very caricature I was pointing out.

mhaze,

Not “exact equivalent” - linked. You leaned on coal to explain emissions, and now you’re pretending it’s irrelevant because I didn’t recite the word statistics back at you.

That’s the pattern: evidence when it suits, disown it when pressed, then declare victory because the wording wasn’t precise enough.

And as for “not giving me your attention”… well, you just did.