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.

Thanks mhaze for your comments. It sounds like I believe that there are still remnants of Confucianism in Japanese culture and you don't, that's ok. I'll keep a note of your view when I read and hopefully I'll be able to see through your eyes at some point. I've found the following book useful but the version I read was an old edition.

The Japanese Today- Edwin O. Reischauer
There seems to be a review here of the new version though I'm not sure it's as good as the old one.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674471849

Gustav Le Bon talked about western institutions in foreign cultures in his paper on The Crowd. It seems that Le Bon would say that Japan's culture was compatible, or became compatible, with western institutions, or at least a version of western institutions that look western from the outsite.

I believe that Confucianism is more similar to Catholic Hierarchical Subsidiarity than either Buddhism or Taoism. Confucianism sees society similarly through the hierarchical model, and believes in rule of law. I'm sure there are other similarities. Buddhism has links with Hinduism it seems, seemingly emphasizing the chaotic emotional nature of society.

In the movie Julius Caesar- from memory- Cleopatra says that Rome is logical, Egypt is emotional, Rome is sun, Egypt is moon, Rome is daylight, Egypt is twilight, Rome is masculine, Egypt is feminine. Rome could be seen as the ancient European West, and Egypt ancient Asia.

One of the difficulties with culture is it's more about relative differences than absolute ones. So society is characterised by a dynamic environment with moving goal posts. Some have used the perception of the practitioners as a way to create more objectivity.

Sorry for the related but slightly off topic sidebar- of "climate policy in the context of geopolitical history of conflict between Europe and Asia".

I see Marxism as compatible with Buddhism in a sense, and Marx was Hebrew a Middle 'Eastern' derived tradition. Of course, correlation doesn't prove causation, even if it implies it. Though Judaism probably has much in common with Zoroastrianism (universal monotheism vs pantheism) and perhaps predicts Mani too. (Perhaps it says something about the forces of integration vs independence.)

At the time Zoroastrianism was forming Europe was still pantheist as was China. Greece and China went through learning about philosophy at about the same period of 400BC, but it appears that this is where West and East diverged.

The alliance of Asian nations with either Buddhism or Confucianism seems to be the trigger that led either to Marxism or Democracy.

"In the movie Julius Caesar- from memory- Cleopatra says that Rome is logical,"

I think you'll find that's from Shakespeare. But it's not really accurate and reflects Elizabethan perceptions of Egypt as it was in the 16th century. In fact Cleopatra was Greek being the direct descendent of Ptolemy who was a Lieutenant of Alexander the Great who was in turn a disciple of Aristotle and through him a follower of Socrates and therefore Athenian philosophy. Wheels within wheels.

It was said that after Rome conquered Athens, Athens conquered Rome meaning that Rome adopted Athenian thought and philosophy or more accurately incorporated it into their weal.

But Shakespeare does accurately reflect the dichotomy between East and West, just that at that time of Cleopatra Egypt was more west then east. Herodotus, writing at the beginning of the beginning of the 5th century BC, made similar observations about the dichotomy.

Added to that is the fact that the Greeks were also in Judea for 300 years prior to Jesus and that their thinking imbued Christianity such that it became a combination of eastern monotheism and western philosophy. All of which combined to make the west what it became.

As to Zoroastrianism, there's every chance that it heavily influenced Jewish thinking during the period they were exiled in Babylon. Unfortunately for the world Zoroastrianism was effective neutered by Islam in the 8th century. A Zoroastrian Middle East would be a very different place than today's M-E.