Based Camp - The One Civilization Theory： It Was Only Ever Rome (The Misnomer of ＂Western Civilization＂)

00:00:00.000 hello simone this episode is definitely going to go in the best of category for base camp because

00:00:06.480 it is a theory that i came to which completely transforms how i see the history of humanity

00:00:15.360 and it is probably the single most offensive theory that we will air on this channel if it

00:00:21.120 becomes a mainstream theory it will almost certainly always appear any video that shows

00:00:26.640 it will have a little explanation at the bottom by like the un or something about how this theory is

00:00:32.080 inaccurate historically i had this view that i think most people have is that human civilization

00:00:40.880 basically emerged in a few different regions and that you would have these periods of growth where

00:00:48.240 sometimes one region would be ahead other times another region would be ahead totally yeah like

00:00:55.040 oh china's the the most cutting edge right now and and now it's japan and now it's it's egypt and

00:01:03.040 whatever yes totally yes this theory posits that that view of history is mostly downstream of what

00:01:12.240 i can only call the deif vacation of the historical narrative and that the vast majority of beats of

00:01:22.080 civilization were created by one civilization oh no and now i'm worried awkward and it came to me

00:01:37.680 when i was studying ancient rome and ancient greece recently because i've been on a kick watching a

00:01:43.760 a number of videos on ancient rome and greece and one thing really hit me as i was studying these periods

00:01:50.240 whenever rome would retreat from a region and the roman empire would fall temporarily in a region

00:01:57.280 that region would fall back into a period of people essentially fighting over who had the nicest mud hut

00:02:06.400 like very little was happening in those regions during that period and this includes the region

00:02:10.800 that my ancestors were only when we were under roman colonization during the period of the roman

00:02:16.720 empire did we really do anything meaningful civilizationally speaking okay so to be fair

00:02:23.200 you're not arguing that it's your own ancestors who were somehow superior from a culture yes not my own

00:02:27.760 ancestors my ancestors were mud hut people for example i am pretty much british irish scottish english the

00:02:35.440 british islands you might say well come on your ancestors must have produced something aren't there any great

00:02:44.320 ruins in ancient british isles i was like well you know there's unga bunga like stone hinge i wouldn't

00:02:51.520 call that a great ruin and they go come on there must be some great architecture in the british isles and

00:02:56.160 i would say actually there is in the 70s ad there was this beautiful bath complex built in bath where

00:03:03.600 they're like ah you see the british can do something i go well unfortunately the romans built that and it

00:03:09.280 was in a a nowhere backwater of the roman empire and britain didn't build anything comparable for

00:03:17.520 literally thousands of years this was their equivalent of like a district like sub district

00:03:23.840 that nobody cared about but now you might be going through your head what what led me to this thought

00:03:28.560 so i was studying the roman empire thinking of all these ruins and i started thinking okay okay okay but

00:03:32.720 what about like the other civilizations of earth during this period right like i've traveled all over the

00:03:38.640 the world i've been to something i think it's over a hundred countries like i've done a lot a lot of

00:03:43.040 travel and so i started thinking okay what were the other major civilizations i was like okay you have

00:03:48.320 mesoamerica mesoamerica had great ruins right yes your your machu picchu for example um but and and

00:03:55.680 ancient mayan and aztec ruins are extremely impressive right but as anyone broadly knows those ruins are

00:04:02.480 fairly recent like machu picchu was built in the 15th century and so but i gave them a

00:04:08.480 i'm like okay that doesn't really count you know they got their civilization started later but

00:04:12.560 there's also like in nia and china and japan right like they're all ancient civilizations and i've i've

00:04:20.160 been to these countries before and i was like okay so when i was in japan i must have seen some

00:04:27.200 ruins that had any sort of equivalency to even like roman backwaters in like spain and stuff

00:04:34.080 and i started thinking about it and i was like what okay okay china i've i've seen some hint that

00:04:40.880 there was a civilization there and then i was like no oh oh no no no no no no no i have seen an east

00:04:49.520 asian ruin impressive at the roman ruins there was anchor watt and in india there was hampi and then

00:04:54.720 i look up the dates of those ruins the 15th and the 14th century those ruins were built anchor watt was

00:05:01.120 built when king's college chapel was being built in cambridge in 1446 like they were built incredibly

00:05:10.160 recently and so then i was like okay okay okay okay okay but egypt i consider egypt to be the

00:05:16.480 ancestor of greek civilization so it's one line of civilization the greeks considered egypt to be

00:05:22.400 the ancestor of their civilization did they really greek literature they would say oh we got our

00:05:27.280 civilization from egypt they're always borrowing from egypt so basically the the single line of

00:05:33.360 civilization that i can track goes egypt mesopotamia greece and greece really takes over

00:05:40.000 the the flame from egypt and then rome takes over the flame from greece and then charlemagne takes over

00:05:45.680 the flame from rome and then charlemagne's kingdom splits into the various distinct sort of warring

00:05:52.480 kingdoms that take over the flame from that and then the flame is taken over by the british empire

00:05:57.040 and then it's sort of seeded around the world but to get back to the story here i was like okay but

00:06:02.240 works of literature right i have heard about all of these great works of literature by totally

00:06:08.880 disconnected cultures like for example the romance of the three kingdoms or the journey to the west did

00:06:15.120 you know when these were written romance of the three kingdoms was written in the 14th century

00:06:22.640 journey to the west was written in the 16th century i was like okay well what about like a water

00:06:28.720 martyr martyrdom often known as outlaws of the marsh or our dream of the red chamber right i've never

00:06:33.600 heard of these in the 18th century respectively to give you an idea of how late these were written

00:06:39.520 to works of literature that i can clear consider just like as somebody who has read translated works

00:06:44.640 of literature and i'm just like this one grabs me these two don't don't have a tiny comedy was

00:06:50.480 started writing it in 1308 and he finished writing it in 1320 hundreds of years before any of these

00:06:57.120 works how about the tales of genji the tales of genji that's japan and that was i think even written

00:07:02.640 by a woman the 11th century simone so that was written only 200 years before dante's divine comedy

00:07:08.640 when did you read the tale of genji have you read the aeneid yeah and okay that's a lot better

00:07:16.160 so when was the aeneid written yeah okay admittedly way way way before the tale of genji like by more

00:07:21.760 the aeneid was written in 29 or 19 bc the tales of genji were written literally thousand years later

00:07:29.040 and were literally less sophisticated and complex that's fair yeah it's not like it's even close and this is

00:07:38.400 like when i started having this i just started going through i was like oh god this can't be real

00:07:43.600 and again i'm not saying that there was like no japanese civilization that they didn't produce any

00:07:49.200 art that there was no chinese civilization that there was no indian civilization but what i'm saying

00:07:53.920 is and you'll actually see this is that these civilizations advanced artistically literarily at

00:08:01.200 about the speed of my own ancestors which were the british until the british met the romans and then

00:08:06.640 after the british were fully colonized the british began like as civilization spread out from charlemagne

00:08:11.920 again they began to do some you know more sophisticated things but what i'm saying is

00:08:17.600 just that civilizationally along almost every metric they were dramatically behind the one civilization

00:08:25.280 yeah so there's basically what you're arguing is there is one civilizational lineage that has ever

00:08:30.800 actually kicked ass started with egypt went through mesopotamia greece rome etc and sort of into europe

00:08:38.720 broadly and there's just kind of nothing that competes with it and and no one has spontaneously

00:08:45.760 figured it out the way that this has so everyone who is most competitive now is standing on the

00:08:52.160 shoulders of that one giant there is only one giant there is only one giant and every time it

00:08:58.400 touches another region right usually first they rebel it leaves it just spins into savagery again

00:09:04.640 then they come back they they try to set something up and by the time they set up any sort of permanent

00:09:10.560 civilizational infrastructure in the region then that region undergoes a rapid increase in prosperity

00:09:17.040 in the amount of artistic works they're producing in the amount of industry they're producing in the

00:09:21.360 amount of science they're producing so it's not that it only works for one people my people yeah

00:09:28.160 insofar as a culture is willing to adopt it and build upon it they can thrive yes and they can

00:09:33.680 build their own iterations of it but that no one has independently captured this civilizational dynamo

00:09:39.760 i guess you can kind of look at how japan just started killing it after world war ii when it started

00:09:44.320 embracing elements of western culture and how they took many elements of western culture did it so much better

00:09:49.200 and in the sort of unique japanese way so yeah like doing jazz on it like doing putting your own

00:09:54.400 spin on it and being additive with it can give you a lot of power but it is definitely pulling from

00:10:00.080 that one derivative and the other big change that has happened in my understanding of world history is

00:10:06.560 my opinion of the mesoamerican civilizations has gone up dramatically because of the one civilization

00:10:11.760 theory which is to say that historically my take on mesoamerica is mesoamerica was largely

00:10:17.600 backwards compared to most of the world but that was only because they got a late start

00:10:23.840 yeah it took people a long time to get down there compare india china and japan and ignored the one

00:10:31.360 civilization to what was happening in mesoamerica mesoamerica kind of was schooling them at various

00:10:37.600 parts in its history fair point and that was the other thing that really got me when i was thinking of

00:10:42.320 like great ruins i visited and stuff like that so to give you an idea of what i mean here simone

00:10:48.400 i want you to compare two ruins now keep in mind roman ruins you've seen roman ruins you know most of

00:10:55.040 the roman ruins you've seen are either a hundred years pre like they're either like 50 a.d or 50 bc like

00:11:03.360 the roman bass right we're built in 70 a.d in the back also just everything in rome itself it's so

00:11:09.280 impressive i mean even just the the building material that everything is made of because you

00:11:15.520 know rome sort of was torn down to create what now is rome you know it is impressive just the very

00:11:21.360 building blocks of the city yeah yeah so i'm going to send you some pictures so when i was looking for

00:11:28.000 ruins in japan that were from around the period of say tikal which was from the force to the

00:11:33.120 10th century so you see tikal that's the first picture of mesoamerican ruins there gorgeous so

00:11:39.040 when tikal was built that's when japan was building what is now the hizmura temple ruins from the 11th

00:11:45.760 to 12th century bc so first of all you can see it's pretty trivial compared to what they were doing

00:11:52.240 in mesoamerica at the same time period yeah not only that it's trivial compared to like anything rome

00:11:58.640 ever did in their history it's trivial compared to the baths that were built literally thousand

00:12:04.400 years before so wait what's what is special about hirazumi it's one of the only old ruins i could find

00:12:10.400 in japan it's like one of the oldest buildings or something yeah uh we'll go over some other

00:12:16.320 buildings in japan that are older than this but most of them are just going to look like destroyed

00:12:20.720 mud huts or completely reconstructed buildings i feel like i visited some really old ones in kamakura but

00:12:26.080 maybe we'll go over them like there's a palace complex but it's it's it's fairly small when

00:12:31.120 contrasted with something like tikal yeah i guess the argument is they're all just very handsome

00:12:35.920 wooden buildings and your point is that when it comes to monumental architecture or stuff that really

00:12:40.720 shows a level of sophistication yeah i mean like these are these are exquisitely built buildings but

00:12:48.880 we're still talking lincoln logs versus like carving stone and achieving yeah it's lincoln logs versus

00:12:56.560 like grand huge projects that require hundreds of thousands of people cooperation infrastructure

00:13:04.720 giant economies so don't get us wrong because we love japan we're we're big we're big sinophiles okay yes

00:13:11.520 weebs as you would say in low culture but i was disappointed and we'll go over like actual japanese

00:13:17.520 literature and compare contemporary japanese literature to to other literature at different

00:13:22.240 parts of the world but impressive in comparison i'm conceding that okay the next temple series you

00:13:29.760 have here is chichen itza in mexico this was built in the sixth to 13th century so again like that's

00:13:37.280 actually really impressive for mesoamerica yeah that's like roman level stuff there where it's like

00:13:43.680 like genuinely unique and and sort of shocking art now we're gonna go in a hostile environment

00:13:50.720 china must have had something in the in that period this is the closest major ruin site i could find to

00:13:57.920 like a roman ruin site in china this was built in the 14th century it's guan chang what about that

00:14:05.200 underground complex with rivers made of mercury that seemed really impressive we'll get to that but that

00:14:12.080 we'll get to that in the art section okay because i go over that one in the art section and it is not

00:14:18.480 as impressive as you'd think but when contrasted was what rome was doing and so i asked ai this

00:14:24.880 because i was like this cannot be true yeah all right uh so i was like okay like where are the roman

00:14:32.320 like ruins in japan right like and they're like well japan has some ancient ruins they're generally not as

00:14:36.960 as extensive or monumental it's all found in rome angkor or mesoamerica however japan does have

00:14:41.440 several significant historical sites that offer glimpses into its ancient past so this is what what

00:14:46.400 ai came up with so we had something called nara which was built 710 to 784 so you want to look

00:14:54.880 up what the nara ruins i've been so consider what you're looking at here like consider this compared to

00:15:02.720 any roman ruin site you have ever been to and we'll do it we're still talking lincoln logs versus

00:15:08.160 this is 700 years after rome and it's lincoln logs yeah like versus transporting obelisks it's just

00:15:15.920 this is cute let's take it and move it okay then you're like okay okay okay so there's got to be other

00:15:21.120 stuff well this is the 1300 year old buddhist tempo the ganjing temple so the ganjing temple i'm like okay

00:15:29.120 okay okay that's cool this is just a building this is not like a grand complex or anything like that

00:15:36.080 and it's like okay okay okay okay so here's one i found one that's 14 000 to 300 bce it's called the

00:15:44.720 sina majuri mayana site okay what about it what does it look like oh this is mud huts okay this is like

00:15:51.360 similar to what i'm talking about like norwegian mud huts like it literally i wouldn't know if this was in

00:15:56.480 my ancestors had built this in the uk before they met the romans or not you know like it is it is

00:16:02.080 mud hut style and again we're not just people can be like oh well maybe the ground here wasn't good

00:16:07.920 enough for building right like maybe it was too many natural disasters maybe they only had trees right

00:16:13.760 and i'm like yeah then how come nobody else did it okay i can see that explaining japan alone

00:16:23.040 okay it can't explain japan korea china every africa no but there's not even an excuse because

00:16:30.400 the the point i was going to make about mayans and aztecs for example is that they're dealing in

00:16:35.120 incredibly hostile jungle environments where you are fighting an aggressive environment and they still

00:16:42.480 managed to build a ton so i just don't feel like you have that much of a legitimate excuse when it comes

00:16:47.360 same with the romans it's not like the romans did big architecture when the weather was nice

00:16:53.200 and they're right by corrosive oceans and waters and stuff yeah pretty much every part of their empire

00:16:58.960 had giant works in it whether it was a backwater like britain or you know the the antioch or in their

00:17:05.680 african colonies like if you go to tunisia you can see giant things like it's it wasn't like a sometimes

00:17:12.160 they did it sometimes they didn't thing so that excuse doesn't really hold so okay now we're going

00:17:17.520 to go to china because of course china must have done something china yes and china is all about

00:17:23.040 being like we're the og civilization we did all this first we invented electricity we invented

00:17:30.000 aerial combat etc we're going to get to chinese claims of inventing a bunch of things as well because

00:17:35.280 they were also less that face that was a cute face i look i don't like this is true like i always try

00:17:44.080 to take the most pluralist understanding and the only way i can even say this theory is knowing that

00:17:50.320 i come from a mud hut people okay i am only comfortable disseminating this theory or even having these thoughts

00:17:58.560 because my ancestors had nothing to do with rome or greece and they were flinging poo at each other

00:18:05.600 when when they were gifted civilization through college oh yeah your ancestors were literally

00:18:10.400 the barbarians that romans couldn't even bother to hang on to because they're like you know what

00:18:14.800 there's really nothing much so i'm mostly scottish in history they literally just like built a wall and

00:18:20.000 keep them out this was the first wall build a wall build a wall yeah but by the way by the way literally

00:18:28.320 about a thousand years before china builds the great wall but we'll get to that in a second

00:18:33.840 it was heavily restored in both the 1950s and 1980s i didn't know that not even old bricks

00:18:43.280 am i missing something here so the old stuff's gone on it really and then it doesn't count it shouldn't

00:18:48.640 be a wonder then you can't just build something on it and still get all the tourists in when it's not

00:18:52.800 what it says on the tin what i'm looking at is basically a wimpy home bears in here what's this

00:19:00.480 all about though it's almost like they know that the wall isn't that good it's like what else can we

00:19:05.120 give them we've charged them like seven quid to get in to see an old wall well it's not an old wall

00:19:09.200 it's from the 1980s i've got a mate who's got some bears stick them down at the bottom this is the

00:19:14.480 original wall isn't it or is it i don't know is it just badly done this is pretty shit isn't it

00:19:22.880 you having a laugh

00:19:26.000 this isn't a great wall is it you're kidding me i mean i like the way there's no tourists and that

00:19:32.480 well then why would they be okay so i would send you pictures of it but um it's from 4800 years ago

00:19:43.200 and it's believed to be the remnants of the shoe kingdom it's yielded many bronze artifacts basically

00:19:47.280 you just see piles of artifacts and otherwise it's a fairly flat area there's not even anything really

00:19:52.240 to show you then i have the yingzu ruins so this is a unesco world heritage site in the hanan province

00:19:58.480 yingzu was the ancient capital of the shang dynasty 16th to 11th century bc so this was the capital of

00:20:05.680 their entire civilization oh oh sweeties oh dear yeah it's very much a oh sweeties that is not

00:20:16.480 a civilizational capital crap and i feel like you know what you're really gonna get is a

00:20:23.840 a it was just so convenient from like an everybody getting a long standpoint that we pretended and we

00:20:31.920 we kept matching i think things that were happening thousands of years later in other parts of the

00:20:37.920 world to things that like the ancient greeks were doing and through not like putting dates on them

00:20:44.480 we were able to in our head have this idea that like different civilizations were developing sort of

00:20:50.400 parallel to each other when this just wasn't happening yeah fair point yeah there's just sort

00:20:58.160 of the ancient japanese and the ancient greeks and the ancient chinese and the yeah and you knew i i

00:21:04.480 never thought about comparing time by time and i've never seen a history class do that which is quite

00:21:10.000 interesting so yeah well and it also breaks a lot of the things people be like well you should look at

00:21:14.720 like you know why the west is winning for now that like shows that this is all due to like

00:21:19.120 geography and like accidents and it's like yeah well then explain to me why when rome fell the west

00:21:24.480 went back to a bunch of mud hut people until somebody reignited the torch of civilization

00:21:28.400 specifically charlemagne why why is it that every time rome left a region like spain like spain was

00:21:34.320 able to produce great art when rome was there they were able to produce gate buildings they had a great

00:21:37.760 economy rome leaves they go back to mud hut people it's not like no sorry but it's not it's not like

00:21:44.000 like europe it's not like it was anything special with europe in fact it didn't even start in europe

00:21:49.600 it really started with egypt and mesopotamia yeah so i don't think that like when you look at

00:21:54.640 mesopotamian ruins which we'll get to in a second like some of the very oldest civilizational ruins or

00:21:59.520 egyptian ruins and then you compare it to like capital of china from this like they're not even in the

00:22:04.480 same league and this is now the thousands of years earlier so now we're going to go to the

00:22:10.560 lang ziru architectural room and note this is an ai being exhaustive towards me trying to find all of

00:22:15.840 the best ruins it could to impress me so this is one only dating back 5 300 years so you know this is

00:22:23.760 like around when like a little bit before dante's inferno was being written and and look at it well

00:22:31.200 based on what you've been saying about findings it seems that these are people who've been more

00:22:36.480 interested in clothing and accessories and not so much grand architecture apparently they also

00:22:42.480 weren't interested in art which we'll get to in just a second but you can see here the the the site

00:22:48.320 it's just like a flat site like there's nothing there it's like a few outlines of previous foundations

00:22:54.160 and that's it yeah no this looks like the beginning of a housing development that's weirdly

00:23:00.240 based i don't know how else to describe it but that's what i'm getting from this it gives housing

00:23:06.960 development yeah and people can be like wow you know it was all wood or they used more wood and

00:23:14.160 stuff like that but again like these roman things are there even things that used wood and that's the

00:23:19.440 really interesting thing you can go and look at like one civilizational areas you can walk around

00:23:25.280 their old buildings and in the very old churches and everything like that you'll see wood you'll see

00:23:31.280 blah blah blah you know like you'll see stuff that is supposedly why this other stuff isn't there anymore

00:23:36.080 right yeah but also i think that you should get points as a civilization for demonstrating long-termist

00:23:43.120 thoughts and building to last so when when you look at ancient mayan and aztec i guess not that ancient

00:23:52.400 but when you look at that and and you see these stone artifices and you see what people built even

00:23:56.960 stonehenge you got to admire it more because these are people who are like this has to last for

00:24:02.240 thousands of years i'm gonna build this to last instead of short-term thinking so the the one thing

00:24:10.800 that the chinese built that was actually you know potentially like equivalent in impressiveness

00:24:17.360 is the emperor jing zong's mausoleum which is where the terracotta army is however the only thing

00:24:23.920 that really makes it impressive is how many terracotta figurines there were nothing else about the site is

00:24:29.280 particularly impressive the rivers of mercury were not impressive to you note the rivers of mercury thing

00:24:37.280 we don't know if this is real it's not like archaeologists when they were excavating this area found rivers of mercury

00:24:43.360 a guy writing a hundred years after the tomb was constructed created a mythologized account that

00:24:49.360 there was these giant rivers of mercury sort of set up in the tomb but and we have detected that there is

00:24:55.760 some mercury in the tomb but it's not like we found it or anything so we don't know it could be a myth

00:25:00.400 could be a fairly modest thing i don't know like so so let me explain to you what i mean like the terracotta army

00:25:05.840 like logistically speaking it may be a lot of people and we're going to go into the artistic merit of it

00:25:11.360 later to compare it with equivalent greek statues or or other statues that were made around the same time period

00:25:16.240 right that one it artistically wasn't very sophisticated compared to what was going on

00:25:21.280 in the mediterranean region at that time period again i'm not mediterranean and it also

00:25:27.840 was architecturally not particularly like it was something like it was a lot more than the later chinese stuff i'll give it that

00:25:34.400 like i mean the the statues themselves had unique facial features it was from around 200 bc as well so

00:25:42.240 you know pretty impressive but again and so now we're going to get to the last major architectural

00:25:46.400 ruin site that it was able to find for me in china and this was the jihon ruins and i will send this to

00:25:53.200 you oh that was the ones that we went over like the well the housing development so these ruins in china

00:26:01.120 yeah they were the ones along the silk road we went over them earlier just not very impressive

00:26:05.040 okay so then people are like well what about the great wall right the great i think other than the

00:26:12.560 terracotta army that's the one thing in east asia i may give some credit to but it was from the 7th

00:26:18.400 century a.d well and also no sorry to 17th century a.d i sorry i need to make that clear yeah

00:26:26.080 yeah no if you compare the great wall which is a wall i've walked the great wall it is

00:26:34.720 it's a wall it's and it's not that big this is pretty shit isn't it are you having a laugh

00:26:43.760 to the roman aqueducts they they've got water significantly before the great wall we'll

00:26:51.040 be looking at they had heated floors they had heated floors and bath houses

00:26:58.560 it's just there's no comparison there's no comparison and i'd mind you that the great wall

00:27:04.880 was started 700 years after the roman aqueducts were built and it wasn't finished until 1700 years

00:27:12.320 after the roman aqueducts were built it's just not a comparable thing then you have i was talking

00:27:19.040 with a friend about this and they're like no this this can't be true what about the suey dynasties

00:27:24.720 grand canal that was a huge thing so this was from uh 581 to 618. the problem is it was big it was

00:27:34.080 big it was not one of the things that ai primed he was and it probably should have been because it's

00:27:37.360 actually fairly impressive in terms of just this the the sheer size of it the problem is that the sheer

00:27:44.160 size of it or the complexity of it is pretty not big compared with the roman road network again 500

00:27:53.680 years before this and uh you know what they're doing with the canals is they're digging pits and then

00:28:00.160 they are lining them and putting various buffers on them so that water can flow through them the

00:28:05.600 problem is that the roman roads which were much much much more extensive did the same thing you needed to

00:28:11.360 dig about three to five feet down and then put multiple different types of layers of rock and

00:28:19.280 stone down to create these ultra durable roads which still exist today so again civilizationally we're

00:28:26.960 just talking about a different scale here okay so i mean the people are like well what about africa

00:28:33.840 you can't forget africa africa did some things what about great zimbabwe okay okay okay let's look at

00:28:38.800 great zimbabwe i'm not familiar with great zimbabwe excited for this okay oh i like the rounded the

00:28:44.160 rounded it's interesting architecturally but it's not like particularly impressive it looks like a it

00:28:53.280 looks like a fortification yeah it looks like a fortification really but it doesn't it's not a

00:28:58.720 particularly large fortification i'd say it's about the size of like a star fort yeah if that it looks pretty

00:29:06.400 small yeah it looks pretty small and that's like that's called great zimbabwe that's the one thing

00:29:12.480 they got there it is not particularly impressive now again people are like are you saying that there

00:29:19.200 was no great monumental architecture or art produced in africa oh this is a medieval city so this is not

00:29:26.720 this is the city began the construction in the 11th century and it was abandoned in the 15th century

00:29:33.360 so yeah she's right medieval a thousand years after rome was doing its stuff and it's

00:29:38.080 nothing compared to a roman thing i'm like no i'm not saying that at all i i can go to tunisia

00:29:44.400 and see amazing architecture the problem is it was built while they were roman colony i can i can

00:29:50.800 i can go and read great writings from alexandria the problem is that that's the descendant of egypt

00:29:56.960 and a lot of things for breton during greek or roman colonization and people are like what do you

00:30:03.120 mean greek or roman colonization there's so many great egyptian figures that aren't from the period

00:30:08.720 of greek colonization like cleopatra the ptolemaic greek princess oh yeah greek lady that's the other

00:30:17.200 thing about the way that this civilizational system works is it appears to sort of pass the torch on

00:30:23.840 to sort of the next iterator on it yes yeah well and yeah i mean you have argued to me many times

00:30:32.160 and i'm obsessed with egypt in various periods right i go through that great courses lecture

00:30:37.840 and i'm like oh this is amazing but you point out quite fairly that they do stagnate they kind of just

00:30:44.560 they get really good at just keeping things the same and that's why i think your point about passing

00:30:50.560 the torch and the collective iteration upon this one line is meaningful i know i'm going to show you

00:30:57.440 the one exception to the one civilization theory and this is a few things in extra ancient india

00:31:03.760 specifically right now for architecture and we're also going to go into literature because extra

00:31:07.440 ancient india did compete with the one civilization in literature okay it's almost like it almost had a

00:31:12.480 a civilizational explosion and then didn't so this is the anjati and elor caves those look amazing bc

00:31:21.760 10th century second to 10th century bc okay really old we got we got a contender here absolutely it may

00:31:30.080 not compete with most roman things but it definitely competes with the greeks who they were contemporaries

00:31:34.160 of if you've been to ancient athens yeah that is impressive and we'll keep seeing this in india the

00:31:41.200 most impressive monuments are often the oldest which is a little weird and we'll go over what

00:31:47.440 might have happened there it's the same with their literature if you go to their like bce literature

00:31:51.920 and this is sort of going to be a giveaway but you will find a flourishing of literature that definitely

00:31:56.560 competes with the greek literature of the time period but if you then go 500 years 10 000 years in

00:32:03.200 the future and you compare it with what's coming out of the one civilization it's just

00:32:06.560 like popol vu stuff sorry i i don't mean it's like this animal did this and this animal did this

00:32:14.080 and then there was the you know this and it's like oh come on you guys can do better than this you guys

00:32:18.720 wrote so many great works 10 000 years ago like what is this yeah there there seems to be absolutely

00:32:24.240 nothing that will prevent a a great culture from entering a dark age if the selective pressures

00:32:30.880 necessary to keep the torch bright aren't there i will note though that the differences between

00:32:37.840 india's great works when contrasted with uh time gated great works in europe in the one civilization or

00:32:46.560 even time lagged great works in the one civilization do not fall as far behind as those of china or japan

00:32:54.240 so here i have on screen here two temples each built in 12 000 ce and while they aren't these sorts of

00:33:04.480 large complexes that were being built in mesoamerica at the time or the giant giant cities and ruined

00:33:12.240 structures of rome that were built uh well a thousand two hundred years before this they are at least

00:33:19.040 interesting and impressive to a degree generally speaking this one civilization theory new perspective

00:33:26.080 i have has dramatically risen my view of ancient indian civilization and ancient mesopotamian

00:33:33.200 civilization and dramatically lowered my view of ancient east asian civilization particularly china

00:33:41.280 which just sunk to almost nothing in my opinion specifically because i used to think of them as

00:33:47.280 like an equivalent to what was going on in rome and stuff like that and they just like factually

00:33:54.640 weren't and people would be like well what about their economy what about their economy like wasn't

00:33:57.760 their economy so big it's like this is when people act like masa musa represented some giant civilization

00:34:03.120 happening in africa at the time and yeah i mean there was a people and a culture there but they weren't

00:34:09.440 producing things equivalent to like what the ancient greeks or romans were producing just having a lot of

00:34:15.840 wealth doesn't translate into cultural production and i think that this is in a way more damning that

00:34:24.320 a culture with all this wealth wasn't able to turn it into the types of things like you know the aqueducts

00:34:31.040 or the rome road network or the ruins everywhere you go or the art or the literature this is a

00:34:36.960 mesopotamian ruin site that i'm sending you here okay um to give you an idea to just contrast everything

00:34:42.640 that we've been looking at right now this is a mohenjar dara this is from 2500 bce

00:34:52.240 no what we're looking at it seems to be some kind of kind of city complex uh a massive city complex

00:35:00.880 yeah why doesn't china have a single one of these why doesn't japan have a single one of these when we

00:35:07.120 have one from uh inhospitable reason made with mud from 2500 bce from the one culture

00:35:17.600 well it's not just mud it's proper bricks but yeah yeah but what i mean is you can't just say

00:35:23.840 we didn't have stones yeah yes right to carve etc yeah this is an incredibly impressive site

00:35:31.520 uh but okay let's also look at some other things just so you can remember for people who might have

00:35:36.320 forgotten what rome was doing and when were they doing it the coliseum of rome consider that many

00:35:42.160 of these that we've been looking at were around the 10th century was made in 72 a.d the coliseum of

00:35:49.040 rome like nothing that we have looked at to me comes at like one tenth of the coliseum well and and

00:35:54.560 most people are accustomed to seeing the coliseum ruins and not thinking about how it was with

00:35:59.520 mechanical floors you know this this big underground complex the coliseum literally had naval battles

00:36:05.680 in the center of it right yeah twi-wings and like we don't presently have even stadiums that do the same

00:36:15.040 level of crazy shit that the coliseum did so fair okay and maybe cruise ships are pretty

00:36:24.160 impressive i i i know their scene is so trashy but i'm just so impressed by cruise ships they're

00:36:29.600 like these amazing spaceships so now what i'm sending you here this is from ad 2 212 okay this

00:36:36.320 is the bath of carcala okay yeah we've got towers we've got complex buildings that this is an archways

00:36:43.040 yeah unique architectural elements this is a buried building yeah all right so this is an aqueduct from

00:36:52.080 1 a.d in an outer territory in france okay point de garde france this is dramatically more impressive

00:37:00.480 than like the great wall for example yeah huh yes and it's literally hundreds of years early many

00:37:07.120 hundreds of years earlier this is the original wall isn't it or is it i don't know is it just badly done

00:37:13.440 this is pretty shit isn't it are you having a laugh this isn't a great wall is it you're kidding me

00:37:27.680 so now we're going to look at paula arena and this is in croatia 27 bc but it basically looks like the

00:37:35.440 coliseum and okay we're like what about distant because people kept hearing me talk about tunisia right

00:37:40.720 like what what was tunisia like okay this is tunisia in 238 80 so like distant colony right

00:37:47.520 this is what rome was putting up in africa backwater whoa what it's uh just another whoa okay

00:37:57.040 sorry this is it's very it's a very impressive coliseum building yeah it is an impressive coliseum

00:38:02.720 building and it was 238 which is way before any of the other sites that we're looking at now we haven't

00:38:07.600 gotten to the art or or or literature yet okay but so far because when i first brought this theory

00:38:13.360 up to you you were like that cannot possibly be true yes you know are you beginning to be like oh

00:38:18.880 this is a bit bigger than i thought it was in terms of the scale of differences i'm i'm kind of already

00:38:24.400 sold i i'm concerned about this now because it's gonna make me look really bad at parties if i bring

00:38:32.800 this up thank goodness i don't go to parties anymore those were all built later in the one

00:38:39.200 civilization let's go to the athenian temple ruins okay so these were built in 432 bc oh wow yeah yeah

00:38:48.800 that's what i was really better than a single set of ruins i was able to find anywhere in japan or china

00:38:56.400 yeah massive columns still standing after so many years actually i think the columns fell down at

00:39:02.080 one point and it was rebuilt oh okay okay but that was recently that they fell down i think it was

00:39:06.800 due to like bombing and like the napoleonic campaigns it was 1687 and it was an explosion

00:39:13.040 caused by venetian bombardment that severely damaged the temple causing many of the columns to fall

00:39:18.320 so they stayed up till 1687 i don't know i'll have to find it but yeah i hope not they stood for

00:39:24.880 a very very very very very long time the same was egypt like nothing in any of these other places

00:39:29.520 comes close to egypt really the only place you get close again is super ancient india and then nothing

00:39:34.640 from up into modern times wow okay yeah okay and i'll put on screen here some pictures of like roman

00:39:42.160 settlements in turkey and spain so you can see this isn't like an isolated thing it's like literally i can't

00:39:46.960 find a single thing from these other civilizations and yet everywhere the romans go they're building

00:39:52.960 something so if i'm anticipating what listeners are thinking it's okay fine your point is made about

00:39:58.960 architecture i'll believe in the one great culture or civilization theory of architecture um maybe

00:40:06.000 literature which you brought up but i don't know like the art who care like i've i've been to so many

00:40:12.320 i don't know like you know asian art museums to refute this and yes and the reason why that

00:40:18.640 refutation works in your head is because you haven't compared across time when the asian art you're

00:40:26.640 looking at was made versus when the greek art was made um okay i'll go straight to art instead of

00:40:33.840 literature i was going to read a bunch of literature texts but no we'll go straight to art all right so i just

00:40:39.840 decided to do so a random search for greek art and this was the first picture that came up you know

00:40:45.120 there's lots of beautiful greek statues ancient greek statues oh yeah this picture came up and this is

00:40:49.520 440 bc okay 440 bc okay wow you're looking at the statue right so yeah i mean it's so realistic

00:41:00.320 for those who are only listening we're looking at a classic greek statue but it's a very highly

00:41:05.040 polished polished marble of a nude male with you know extremely realistic detail this could just be

00:41:13.360 a human who is painted and is naked but you know very small penis for whatever reason but yeah that's

00:41:19.120 the only part of it that doesn't seem realistic yeah and i had this this moment where i asked google

00:41:23.360 i go okay give me examples of japanese art from 440 bc well like first i said statues because i wanted to

00:41:29.520 compare like was like yeah there are no japanese statues from 440 bc and i was like wait this can't

00:41:36.480 be real so i managed to find some piece of japanese art from this time period oh dear oh i don't know

00:41:44.000 what this is but stylistically but this could just be that we're biased you know we're looking at very

00:41:52.960 no human in history if you showed i guarantee you if you showed that greek statue to somebody from

00:42:01.520 most of japanese history and you're like you prefer this or this japanese art they'd be that i know i

00:42:07.120 know yeah you show that to like a japanese person like and you know i guess if you delivered that greek

00:42:13.360 statue to someone in that same period of japan they would be extremely they would prefer to have the greek

00:42:20.800 statue for sure yes you want to know what my ancestors were doing during this period uh yeah

00:42:27.200 i'm sure nothing that impressive right you're gonna get a kill it with fire moment here oh what no that

00:42:34.880 is literally the best my ancestors were able to do when the greek were we're putting on this like

00:42:43.440 perfect physique of humanity and and then the the the the my ancestors are like

00:42:50.800 welcome to jurassic park

00:43:20.800 yeah i'm getting that meme where like they begin to play john williams jurassic park theme and then

00:43:27.920 it goes to like a recorder playing it terribly the recorder playing one

00:43:37.040 oh no it's terrible oh i need to not look at that i need to look at the statue again the palette cleanser

00:43:46.400 even though it has a micro penis okay okay what about the chinese what did they have well again

00:43:50.080 with the chinese i ran into one of these problems i was like give me statues that the chinese made

00:43:53.440 around 440 bc and they were like chinese didn't make any statues around 440 bc and i was like okay so

00:43:58.720 what were they making uh it goes well they were very skilled bronze crafters so i will show you a

00:44:04.800 a bronze bell and they they also carved jade well i like bells pendant from china during this period

00:44:11.520 and you've got to click on it to open it pendants okay okay i mean yeah yeah it looks like it was made

00:44:17.760 by a kindergarten yeah it's not very impressive the bell's fairly impressive i mean that that requires

00:44:22.000 metal forging that requires technology and so it's not a difficult metal to forge simone

00:44:29.760 we're in the bronze age here the the the okay anyway but but again like just nothing really

00:44:37.360 there and so you can be like okay the terracotta army all right yes it must compete with that greek

00:44:43.120 statue we looked at no see there's two little problems here one the terracotta army is literally

00:44:49.200 200 years after that and two you might not have looked at the terracotta army no i yeah no it

00:44:55.920 doesn't come it doesn't come close the the terracotta army is impressive in its mass customization and

00:45:02.400 its scale it is not impressive because the statues themselves are really you might forget just how

00:45:08.400 unimpressive it is compared to that greek statue i just sent it to you so you can compare it no i i i

00:45:12.880 have a pretty good let's see if if memory is accurate here yeah yeah that's exactly what i

00:45:19.280 pictured well yeah but okay now we're gonna get to and you always find ancient ancient india that's

00:45:27.840 where you get things that come pretty close this is india a few hundred years after those greek statues

00:45:33.360 okay okay it's it's nowhere close but it is like in the realm of contention yeah yeah well and i mean

00:45:41.840 and they're they're going for fan service here in a way i would argue kind of matches the the fan

00:45:47.920 serviceness of the greek statue so yeah we've got polished stone you know very very very skilled

00:45:55.680 stonework so yeah this is this is good yeah and you could argue malcolm that the lack of

00:46:04.240 we'll say photorealistic accuracy is is a stylistic choice here so yeah i'm gonna give this credit

00:46:14.080 yeah i'll give it credit but again this falls into my thing is something seemed to be happening in india

00:46:19.120 but it seemed to have died out and this will be more clear when we talk about literature and stuff

00:46:22.880 like that but yeah now people will go like ah but china they had so many great inventions and so

00:46:28.960 it's right yeah i had remembered this i was like gunpowder and then as i started going back to it i

00:46:33.920 was like gunpowder's doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in my brain right here when i'm trying to

00:46:38.080 think of chinese and i'm thinking flaming lanterns that have explosives am i getting this wrong gunpowder

00:46:44.320 again gunpowder is doing a lot of the heavy lifting so when you look at the things that china

00:46:50.400 invented that the west did not invent you do have some impressive things you have paper making

00:46:57.680 second century a.d awesome i will point out though that 3000 bce papyrus was invented now paper is

00:47:06.720 cheaper to make lasts longer and and easier to just like store so just like strictly better so you got

00:47:13.200 paper making definitely gonna give them that yes you've got wood block printing this is in the sixth

00:47:18.640 and seventh century and that's good that's great gunpowder the ninth century that's a good one okay

00:47:26.320 then you got the compass in the 11th and 12th century that's a good one that's awesome yes yeah

00:47:32.720 but here's a problem when i started trying to to to investigate this silk it's not really an invention

00:47:39.360 that's a byproduct of an insect but yeah no come on okay so we'll count silk so we have paper making

00:47:45.760 printing gunpowder the compass and silk and the one civilization you know what they invented

00:47:53.520 literally everything else

00:47:57.040 that's the problem okay whoops yeah that's gunpowder and and all of the things you see here

00:48:03.440 are not things that require civilizational infrastructure to invent they're not actually

00:48:09.120 particularly complex inventions they're more like discoveries of like chemical phenomenon

00:48:15.600 right that's the problem with this okay or or a unique process for making something right

00:48:22.880 i'm not saying that these regions never had like great individuals who would come up with these

00:48:30.000 interesting ideas i'm just saying that whatever this civilizational infrastructure that seems to have

00:48:35.680 spread through the one in civilization did is it gave these people the ability to crank out

00:48:43.360 tons tons tons tons more stuff then you would get an equivalent great mind in one of these other

00:48:50.320 civilizations and so we need to figure out why but i need to continue to go with proving my point

00:48:55.600 because i'm not done with proving my point yet specifically what i mean is like if a leonardo da

00:49:00.160 da vinci had been born in japan for whatever reason he wouldn't have had the infrastructure

00:49:06.240 to be as voluminous and diverse in the things he was producing but sorry i need to go to literature

00:49:12.880 because you yeah you got me off the ball when we got to literature okay literature well as you remember

00:49:19.200 a lot of the literature that we think of as being like the definitive works of china are actually pretty

00:49:24.160 late like the romance of the three kingdoms and the journey to the west 14th and 16th century

00:49:28.880 respectively well after something like the divine comedy you do which was written in the 13th century

00:49:35.440 you do get to and i don't think of the reason i'm using the divine comedy here is because i think of

00:49:39.760 the divine comedy as being a fairly modern work within the tradition of the once century you know

00:49:46.320 i'm not going back to something like the aeneid or the odyssey for great works here you know the

00:49:52.640 divine comedy honestly reads like fan fiction to a great extent it reads like fan fiction but the

00:49:58.080 reason i'm using it as my benchmark is in my mind the divine comedy is a modern work yes so when i say

00:50:05.040 that these works are hundreds of years after the divine comedy i'm saying they are very very modern

00:50:10.400 works well there's also like machiavelli's the prince which i think is probably a better piece of

00:50:15.200 literature to refer to because it's more product of like it's less derivative that was written 1513 okay so

00:50:22.160 that would have been written at around the same time as you know well the a bit before the journey

00:50:28.160 to the west and a bit after romance of the three kingdoms yeah and i would say as somebody who's

00:50:32.160 read excerpts from all of those and actually spent a significant amount of time studying the prince

00:50:36.880 the prince blows their pants off in terms of its complexity and depth it still has good advice for

00:50:47.040 people today yeah where you're like dang that's a good point where i don't you know read journey to

00:50:52.720 the west and i'm like wow that's a good point that really changes my perspective yeah you're

00:50:56.080 making it and acting differently after reading it that's fair yeah well because it's it's just at a

00:51:02.560 level of sophistication that's like not even remotely touched in these these other regions but okay come

00:51:08.880 on let's let's keep going here so we got the book of songs which is ancient chinese poetry again

00:51:15.360 poetry which is like fine like i've read a little bit of it it's fine this is the 11th century to

00:51:20.080 7th century bce which is like good but it's like like generic old stuff for an example here is a poem

00:51:25.920 from it called fish hawk the fish hawk calls high above the water it flies i long for my beloved

00:51:32.880 who is far away from my side it doesn't really you know i'm not particularly impressed with it with

00:51:38.640 i compare it to something like the iliad right you know and then you got the records of the grand

00:51:42.720 historian this is the first century bce a comprehensive history of china written by

00:51:47.680 sima kwan which is like cool that they had historians but like the one civilization doesn't

00:51:53.520 have like the one historian it's got like hundreds of historians that we rely on just like the rate

00:52:00.080 it produced historians with also way way way higher and then people can be like well you know

00:52:06.160 what about the art of war fifth century china bce first of all have you read the art of war

00:52:17.520 i've read parts of the art of war it's not a very impressive work if you haven't read the art of war

00:52:23.520 here's an example of some quotes from it that ai thought were particularly poignant

00:52:28.000 the quality of a decision is like a well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy

00:52:33.840 its victim or if you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the result of a hundred

00:52:39.440 battles secondly the reason why i'm like do you happen to know if a similar canon was had in the

00:52:48.480 one civilization and they're like you know i i've never really looked into that and i'm like why

00:52:53.280 haven't you looked into that and i'm like well because i guess it would be totally unimpressive if

00:52:58.640 one did exist i would sort of expect the ancient greeks or romans to have a book on how to do war

00:53:04.400 and they did they they had who wrote it was aeneas tacticus that's where the word tactics comes from

00:53:10.960 in fact he had a whole series of them he had such a comprehensive series of these books that only one

00:53:18.960 survives today and it's on specifically how to survive long sieges and it goes into detailed stuff like

00:53:27.280 how you build things in the harbors to prevent the boats from entering so just dramatically more

00:53:34.080 detailed and practical than the art of war and it was like a whole encyclopedia on how to do war

00:53:39.840 and it was considered so unimpressive within the time period when contrasted with the other works

00:53:45.840 no they couldn't be bothered to save it wow

00:53:50.640 didn't click save yeah read it and didn't bookmark it whoops bookmark it but we can tell from the one

00:53:56.480 book that it was basically an entire encyclopedia on the practicalities of how to do war was in that

00:54:01.360 time period wow that is i mean yeah and you're right it's not at all surprising that something

00:54:07.840 like that would have existed this is not to say that he doesn't have the short little piffy quotes

00:54:13.040 similar to the art of war so we just go through a few of these that ai thought were relevant and i

00:54:19.440 think that you'll just see that the quality of them is much higher and they're they come off as more

00:54:23.680 profound to me so these are from tacticus in war events of great importance are often the result

00:54:30.000 of trivial causes a bad piece is even worse than a war the desire for safety stands against every

00:54:37.440 great and noble enterprise it belongs to human nature to hate those who you have injured that

00:54:43.600 last one i just think is really profound it is human nature to decide to hate someone that you have

00:54:49.520 injured and it's something i see so often and that's like actually even like in a modern time

00:54:53.920 like a profound quote that's not like a live laugh love sort of a quote which unfortunately

00:54:59.040 a lot of the art of war stuff kind of is so you got me on the literature too okay hold on no no no no

00:55:04.720 no we're gonna give every civilization their fair oh are you gonna dunk on beowulf again because i feel

00:55:09.440 like on in every single episode we've done recently you find some obscure opportunity to dunk on

00:55:14.400 beowulf oh beowulf is gonna get dunked on beowulf is i don't well i dunk on it because it's my

00:55:20.800 ancestors it's your ancestors it was it was written you know so so so low it's like gilgamesh

00:55:27.680 quality right people are like it has themes it has narrative through lines it was slightly coherent

00:55:37.280 i'm like oh my god just sweetheart you know that it is not a product of a civilization it is a

00:55:43.520 product of people who flung poo at each other it is it is not complicated when contrasted with

00:55:49.360 contemporary works produced by the one civilization before they deem to uplift my people but let's go

00:55:56.160 to japan here so okay okay okay we got a good one here we got mana yushi the collection of 10 000 leaves

00:56:04.720 compiled uh around 759 a magnificent anthology of poetry containing around 4 500 poems mostly takana

00:56:13.440 and some choka and so i was like oh oh this is great okay well so what sort of poems were they

00:56:18.960 one of the most well known is an attribute to kantimoto no a prominent poet from the 7th to

00:56:27.200 early 8th century i'm just loving the pronunciation of these names okay the poem expresses longing for a

00:56:33.760 loved one and uses imagery of nature to convey emotion and i want to come while we will be shitting on

00:56:39.520 japanese art right now my favorite artistic production in the world is done by japan i

00:56:44.560 predominantly watch anime and read manga i think that this is not an ethnic thing against the japanese

00:56:51.600 i think that they produce some of the best artistic work in the world and i said that i think the

00:56:56.160 koreans produce the best drama in the world out of the drama i've seen this is not saying that they

00:57:00.800 can't produce this stuff it's just saying that they once they're touched by the one civilization as my

00:57:06.160 ancestors needed to be then they became able to produce this stuff so the poem expresses a longing

00:57:11.680 for a loved one and uses imagery of nature to convey the emotion it's like that is a very simplistic

00:57:16.400 thing and it's from the 7th to 8th century okay so and then in another one in this tanaka hitemoto

00:57:21.680 compares his feelings of longing to the rising smoke from mount fuji the imagery of smoke rising

00:57:27.040 endlessly into the sky parallels the depths and persistence of the poet's emotions

00:57:30.800 i didn't know mount fuji was an active volcano for that long another famous poem from the mana yoshi

00:57:38.720 is yamba no ashitako which describes the beauty of mount fuji covered in snow this poem uses vivid

00:57:44.880 natural imagery to create a striking visual scene hmm now that is just that i'm sorry like you can be

00:57:54.960 like oh it's really touching it's like saying mountain is beautiful is not an impressive it's

00:58:00.160 really touching but that's 700 years after the aeneid you know that is that is just not particularly

00:58:08.320 impressive when i look at the complexity of something like the aeneid and even the aeneid is not like

00:58:13.920 this is the thing when i'm looking for like japanese work like it'll bring up like these like five like

00:58:18.160 these are the great things in rome like you forget about tons of work because they just had so many

00:58:24.240 many many awesome things or the greek plays that like we don't even have anymore because they were

00:58:28.560 like oh yeah that was a great play that was like as good as this other play we still have but like

00:58:32.320 yeah but like haven't you heard of season five it's so much better yeah okay so the tale of genji which

00:58:39.200 you went on about that's from the 11th century all right so let's let's go into this is the tale of

00:58:45.680 genji here so keep in mind 11 a thousand years after the aeneid one famous example is the yugao

00:58:52.320 chapter which describes genji's romance with a mysterious woman of lower rank in this chapter

00:58:57.120 genji disguises himself as a hunter to visit yugao in secret the story creates a dreamlike atmosphere

00:59:03.280 it betrays their clandestine's meeting and budding relationship that what that's like just that's like

00:59:09.920 something you would see in the ilion yeah well yeah and also talking about sex and relationships is not

00:59:15.200 interesting i think what also makes the iliad really interesting and the odyssey as well is it

00:59:22.240 it takes the fact that men and women can be attracted to each other for granted and then

00:59:26.800 talks about the way that these basal human instincts conflict with civilizational needs

00:59:32.880 you know it talks about a deeper theme and yeah like oh you know paris's attraction to helen

00:59:40.240 ultimately was extremely damaging and here's what happens when you succumb to those basal needs and

00:59:45.920 then also you elevate the the wife of odysseus who despite having every reason to believe that her

00:59:53.920 husband was dead um used her wiles and used her intelligence to stave off a bunch of suitors who are

01:00:01.680 basically sieging her home and and just for context here the stories she's talking about

01:00:07.520 are from 725 to 675 bce yeah yeah the tale of genji to contrast was written in the early 11th century

01:00:18.080 consider how long it took them to not even surpass the one civilization in terms of what they're writing

01:00:26.640 and if you want an example of like short quotes from the tale of genji they're supposed to be like

01:00:30.720 piffy revelatory things you can sort of connect them with what we went over from tacticus or what

01:00:35.120 we went over from shenzhou here are some quotes real things in the darkness seem no realer than

01:00:40.800 dreams there are as many sorts of women as there are women no art or learning is to be pursued

01:00:46.800 half-heartedly and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort

01:00:52.480 made to study it the world know it not but you autumn i confess it your wind at night fall stabs

01:01:00.240 deep into my heart life is full of uncertainties perhaps one day some unforeseen circumstance would

01:01:06.880 bring her into this life once more just as a reminder for like the types of things that you're

01:01:12.080 getting from tacticus who you probably haven't even heard of because these were seen as just like

01:01:17.840 mundane within his period it belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured and keep in mind

01:01:24.320 tacticus was writing about 1 000 years before the tale of genji was written and i'd like to point

01:01:30.640 out that if you are from one of these cultural groups and you feel deeply offended that i'm saying

01:01:35.200 all of these things keep in mind i am saying them from the perspective of my own culture did nothing until

01:01:42.720 it was touched by the one true culture my ancestors produced nothing they produced less than even what

01:01:49.280 your ancestors produced i have the humility to admit this and i think accepting the one civilization

01:01:56.160 theory it's a lot about just having the humility to admit that cultures that you might have personally

01:02:02.560 identified with in some way whether it was because you lived there for a while or whether it was

01:02:07.200 because you married someone from that culture or whether it's because they represent your own ancestors

01:02:11.760 that they may not actually be that as impressive as you thought they were and that maybe we can all

01:02:20.880 admit that we are children of one culture and it's not a culture that i have any ownership of myself

01:02:27.760 so i i think that's really interesting and also the fact that another through line through especially

01:02:33.040 in the iliad this obsession with lineage you know son of so and so son of so and so there is again this

01:02:39.360 focus on long-termism of this interest of anyone in their role in an unbroken chain of history

01:02:46.960 rather than their feelings in the moment which you know looking at a mountain and thinking it's pretty

01:02:51.920 is all about your feelings in the moment or like being caught up in a relationship or romance

01:02:57.600 this is about short-term hindbrain thinking and you see that like when you look at literature

01:03:04.880 of ancient greece ancient rome or the stories and plays it is all about the battle between

01:03:11.760 the prefrontal cortex and the hindbrain which i see to be the height of humanity i agree so well

01:03:17.440 let's go to another one so the another piece of famous japanese literature the pillow book this was

01:03:21.760 written around sounds so japanese the pillow book so dakimakura early a collection of observation

01:03:29.280 essays by cy shagon so this is from thousand years at least they had a thing for pillows for long

01:03:35.440 yeah we may be about a thousand years after rome okay we may be about a thousand years after things

01:03:40.800 like the aneida but but surely this was an incredibly sophisticated book let's go over

01:03:47.520 some of like i asked for one of the most famous ones in it right so it gave me an example or i might

01:03:52.160 have just looked at it and just chosen the first example i found but anyway this is what it

01:03:54.960 a white coat worn over a violet waistcoat duck eggs shaved ice mixed linoleum soup and put in a

01:04:02.560 silver bowl a rosary rock crystal wisteria blossoms plum blossoms covered with snow a pretty child

01:04:08.800 eating strawberries that that's it that's one of their great pieces of literature from that period

01:04:18.080 trying to impress me with the very was that an excerpt or was it trying to summarize interesting

01:04:23.200 visual that's the way it's written it's just interesting things that somebody saw isn't that

01:04:28.720 interesting though how that shows up in anime where like anime just throws in like random moments of

01:04:33.200 like cherry like blossoms falling or like a bowl and beautiful light i'm not gonna say that they

01:04:37.680 didn't capture things it just doesn't know i'm just i find it really interesting that like this still

01:04:41.600 exists is this like element of the japanese people where they like i can't stop obsessing about the

01:04:47.200 beauty that it doesn't have artistic merit what i'm saying no it doesn't i'm just no i'm and i'm not

01:04:52.000 arguing that it's lacking either i'm also not arguing that it's sophisticated i just think it's really

01:04:56.800 interesting that they haven't shaken this like ability to appreciate in some kind of profound way

01:05:02.240 the beauty of a mundane situation yes but it's not sophisticated complex or multi-layered no and again

01:05:08.640 it's not about this it's not long-termist it's not about the interplay between the prefrontal

01:05:14.560 cortex and the hindbrain it is it is a sort of different aesthetic thing but it's not yeah okay

01:05:18.800 so let's look at famous japanese work from around the divine comedy so i can use that as a benchmark

01:05:23.280 of like broadly modern stuff but before they were really interacted with by the west okay so here you

01:05:28.240 have something called teser giga and there's a famous line in it so this is an example of like what

01:05:33.920 we're dealing with in terms of intellectualism in everything no matter what it may be uniformity is

01:05:40.000 undesirable leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one feeling that there is

01:05:45.120 room for growth i'm like okay like middle schooler notebook thoughts and again like it's it's it's

01:05:51.760 competent but you you would have expected something like this from the greeks like thousand years earlier

01:05:58.320 you would have and not only that early invasion something like this i feel like he would have been

01:06:03.280 made fun of by anybody so if you're talking about art like anything written in my people's area all you

01:06:11.040 really have is king alfred's reign where they did some history and this was in 871 to 99 so like

01:06:20.560 basically nothing like one history then everybody seems to have a history down here or there and then

01:06:25.360 you've got like effing beowulf 975 to 1025 so beowulf and again is at a quality of literature level

01:06:35.520 like sophistication level equivalent to gilgamesh which was written 2100 bc to 1200 bc

01:06:46.320 like you cannot say that these two civilizations were anything alike and then if you compare beowulf

01:06:52.800 with contemporary like even like the aeneid it's it's childlike in comparison my ancestors were

01:07:00.000 ungy bugging until the the the one civilization touched them so here is where you get the really

01:07:06.160 interesting side here which is india okay now i've i've read some of these so i'm familiar with their

01:07:12.080 quality i'd say that they are i'd put them in between in terms of sophistication gilgamesh and the

01:07:19.520 odyssey they're not quite at the odyssey level like their stories don't have as strong of narrative

01:07:24.320 through lines or as strong of theming and they're frankly not as entertaining to read but they are

01:07:30.000 definitely slightly more sophisticated than something like gilgamesh so this is when you're going to

01:07:33.760 ancient india specifically you have the vedas 1500 to 500 bce so civilizationally i think above

01:07:41.040 where like gilgamesh was during that time period if you would like an example of text from each that

01:07:45.920 could help you because i think some people could be like well that's like a a judgment right like

01:07:50.480 that's not like an objective fact that this is sort of in between gilgamesh and the iliad and i'm

01:07:54.800 like well you think that maybe because you haven't read it in a while or you are mythologizing what you

01:07:59.120 have read so here's an example of text from the vedas umma appeared to the gods and said it is brahmin

01:08:06.000 who has won this victory and in this victory of brahmin you have become elated idra approached her and

01:08:12.240 asked who are you she replied i am umma the daughter of himavan know that it was brahmin who

01:08:19.040 gave you victory in the battles you have won it is through the power of brahmin that you have become

01:08:24.000 great it was from her that indra learned that the being they had encountered was indeed brahmin then

01:08:30.640 indra approached angie and viru and said you two seem to have known this being closely can you tell

01:08:37.200 me more about it they replied what is there to know we too are puzzled indra then said to them

01:08:43.760 let us all go to brahmin to gain knowledge now the this is just a random i just asked find a section

01:08:50.000 from the vedas to an ai where people are interacting with each other so here's a ask the ai that gave me

01:08:57.360 that one i said find a similar section from the iliad achilles you coward you greedy heart how can

01:09:04.640 arcyon soldier obey you gladly either to go on a mission or to fight in battle with all his

01:09:10.960 strengths i didn't come here to fight because of a quarrel with trojans they've never done me any harm

01:09:15.840 but you mighty shameless man we followed you to please you to win honor from the trojans for you you

01:09:22.160 dog face and for minilus you don't look at that you don't think about it and now you threaten to

01:09:29.280 seize my prize in person something i worked hard for a gift from achian's sons agamemnon by all means

01:09:36.880 flee if that's your heart's desire i'm not begging you to stay on my account i have others here who

01:09:42.240 will respect me especially all wise zeus of all god fostering kings you're the man i hate the most

01:09:50.000 you always love to fight and war so what if you're strong that's just a gift from god you have the

01:09:56.320 apanashads this is 800 to 200 bc you had ramaya which is 500 to 100 bc you have mahabharata this is

01:10:06.720 400 bc to 400 ce and then you've got the bhagavad gita this is 200 bc to 200 ce the problem is we're

01:10:15.840 going to pronunciation hall i think yeah i'm going to pronunciation hell i can't do this the problem is

01:10:20.800 is you just didn't get much after that like like this is all like all this bc stuff like similar to

01:10:25.760 when the greeks were doing all this and then it just disappears and you go further and you're getting

01:10:32.240 stuff so i want to make note here that i'm not saying that in india they stopped producing

01:10:38.080 works of literature during this period what i'm saying is the works of literature stopped advancing

01:10:43.280 in their complexity significantly a multi-layeredness narrative ability to convey characters

01:10:49.360 so as an example here if you're looking as much as i like the iliad the iliad is still fairly

01:10:55.120 primitive if you compare it to something like the aeneid which is just orders of magnitude more

01:11:00.640 sophisticated and interesting and an easier fun read now if we go to india and you look at something

01:11:07.920 like we can go to the swapanashabanada in a dream by basan this is the second to fourth century a.d

01:11:17.680 and i read a quote from that uyadan what will you do bazavada i shall be king varata's chamberman

01:11:25.360 with a skill in hairdressing uyad and what will drapaya do basavada i'll call myself sarahidi and

01:11:32.720 again this is just randomly chosen by an a.i so this isn't me like trying to pick something that's

01:11:36.480 like boring or simplistic okay let's keep going let's look at the slipada kira the story of anklet written

01:11:44.160 in the fifth and sixth century a.d so again i asked ai for a quote from this one who are you noble

01:11:49.760 ones where are you headed on this difficult path kayaniki i am kayaniki and this is my husband kovalon

01:11:57.120 we're traveling to maduria to start anew kovalon respected aesthetic we seek your blessing for our

01:12:04.880 our journey kavadi the pass ahead is treacherous filled with wild beasts and bandits are you prepared

01:12:11.040 for such hardships kayaniki we have each other and our love will give us drinks please guide us

01:12:17.520 wise one kavandi very well i shall accompany you to the outskirts of madara but remember virtue is your

01:12:25.920 true protector in this world so i asked the same ai right after asking you to generate these to pick

01:12:31.200 a line from the aeneid so keep in mind that the aeneid would have been what 500 years before that last

01:12:35.680 one i read and 200 years before the one before that dido distraught at aeneas's imminent departure

01:12:41.280 confronts him dido were you hoping to slip away in secret cruel one did you think you could leave

01:12:47.200 this land and me without a word does our love mean nothing to you nor the pledge we made do you not

01:12:53.680 see my tears aeneas torn between his feelings for dido in his divine mission responds my queen i will

01:13:01.040 never deny what you deserve nor will i ever regret the time we shared i did not mean to leave in secret

01:13:08.640 but the gods command me to go to italy this is not my choice but my duty dido unconvinced and

01:13:15.680 heartbroken replies neither goddess was your mother nor darenas the founder of your line you traitor no

01:13:23.920 you were born of the harsh caucasian rocks and nursed by hurricane tigers so again i just you there's

01:13:32.160 no comparison and it's very interesting to me the level of the level of sophistication of literature

01:13:37.440 was higher in very early india but didn't advance at the same rate that it was within the one culture

01:13:44.880 like it's it's really shocking that you don't get this same development from here and then if we're

01:13:50.240 comparing like just time periods here homer's iliad 8th century bc homer odyssey 8th century bc

01:13:56.720 if you're looking at tragedies here so keep in mind it's not just like the iliad that we're going to

01:14:00.800 here but you got opiates rex 429 bc you got uh effedes media 531 bce you got ashley's australia trilogy

01:14:12.560 458 bce and when i'm talking about like greek tragedy again i don't feel like the indian stuff

01:14:19.520 really compares if you're being honest with yourself and you've read both it just doesn't

01:14:24.000 have the same narrative through lines or multi-layered stories and then okay let's go to

01:14:29.200 philosophy you got plato's republic 380 bce and aristotle's poetics 335 bce now i want you to

01:14:37.840 compare something like aristotle's work or something like that with just to get an idea of like the

01:14:43.840 civilizational distance here in terms of complexity with something like the art of war so these would

01:14:50.240 have been approximate contemporaries if we go for the art of war you would have all warfare is based

01:14:57.280 on deception hence when able to attack we must seem unable when using our forces we must seem inactive

01:15:03.920 when we are near we must make the enemy believe we are far away when far away we must make him believe

01:15:09.120 we are near hold out baits to entice the enemy feign disorder and crush him good advice but also fairly

01:15:16.080 obvious now let's go to aristotle and this is on uh essex virtue then is a state of character concerned

01:15:24.320 with choice lying in a mean i.e the mean relative to us this being determined by a rational principle

01:15:30.400 and by the principle by which man of practical wisdom would determine it now it is mean between two

01:15:36.720 vices that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect and again it is a mean because

01:15:42.880 the vices respectively fall short or of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions while

01:15:50.000 virtue both finds and chooses that which is immediate now again you can't be like oh this is because one's

01:15:55.440 a translation and one's not a translation because they're both translations and both from culture is

01:15:59.680 very different from my own but just the level of sophistication between the two cultures is quite

01:16:04.800 distant contrast something like plato's republic with shinzu's art of war if you're familiar with

01:16:13.440 both of them plato's republic and art of war are also contemporaries if you're wondering how they can

01:16:17.360 be contemporaries yet you know it's because we don't know exactly when the art of war was written it

01:16:21.600 was written between a period and that period covers both when aristotle was writing and when plato was

01:16:26.560 writing anyway so another quote from the art of war therefore just as water retains no constant

01:16:31.520 shape so in warfare there are no constant conditions he who can modify his tactics in relation to his

01:16:36.640 opponent and thereby succeed in winning may be called a heaven-born captain and then here is

01:16:42.800 plato's republic just consider the depth of thought difference between these two and this is a fairly

01:16:48.320 famous one from plato's republic which is i guess why the ai chose it not again not me picking and

01:16:52.640 choosing imagine human beings living in an underground den which has a mouse open towards

01:16:57.920 the light and reaching all along the den here they have been from their childhood and have their legs

01:17:04.000 and necks chained so that they cannot move and can only see before them being prevented by the chains

01:17:10.160 from turning around their heads above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance and between the

01:17:16.160 fire and the prisoners there is a raised way and you will see if you look a low wall built along the

01:17:22.480 way like a screen which marionette players have in front of them over which they showed the puppets

01:17:28.320 and do you see i said men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels and statues and

01:17:33.440 figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials which appear over the wall some of them

01:17:39.280 are talking others are silent you have shown me a strange image and they are strange prisoners

01:17:44.560 like ourselves i replied and they see only their own shadows or the shadows of one another which the fire

01:17:51.760 throws on the opposite wall of the cave true he said how could they see anything but the shadows

01:17:57.440 if they were never allowed to move their heads and of the objects which are being carried in a like

01:18:02.880 manner they would only see the shadows yes he said and if they were able to converse with another

01:18:09.280 would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them very true yeah that's

01:18:14.720 embarrassing yeah the sunset's art of war is genuinely like at a philosophical like vague

01:18:20.480 fairly obvious advice and plato's republic is like how do we build the perfect civilization we could do

01:18:26.960 x but that might not work so what if we did y crazy thing and what if we do like you know z crazy thing

01:18:32.000 like it's just not at the same level and then you're like well you know they must have stopped as well

01:18:36.800 no go to like ancient roman literature as we go to 19 bce it was virgil danaid's you go to horacy's

01:18:43.360 odes 23 bce to 13 bce you go to ovid's metamorphosi that's 8 ce you go to marcus aurelius's meditations

01:18:51.200 170 to 180 ce and again like marcus aurelius's meditations compare that to like art of war compare

01:18:59.600 that to a lot of this stuff that we're seeing come out of japan like 800 years later it just isn't

01:19:05.920 comparable now i want to show you again that this is a specifically this one chain of civilization

01:19:11.520 thing okay this has and i want to be clear here absolutely nothing to do with europe european

01:19:16.880 people or european genetics it is a specific memetic cluster and that is made very clear by this chart

01:19:25.040 so this chart shows notable philosophers and scholars in europe from the 7th century bc to the 14th century

01:19:32.720 ad and you will note rome fell in the 5th century and charlemagne rose in the 9th century and between

01:19:42.240 those two periods they are basically mud hut people producing nothing wow and i think this also shows

01:19:49.680 just the height of ancient greek civilization in terms of the sophistication of that civilization

01:19:54.880 so so i this is this is just what i say here so what do you need for this right and we talked for a

01:20:00.480 lot about this and we came up with some ideas now i think something that tries to look at this from a

01:20:06.000 well the climate was different doesn't really work yes you do not like the guns germs and steel

01:20:12.560 answer to this question yeah because it doesn't explain why everything goes back to mud huts when

01:20:18.080 rome goes away it does it does not explain that well why is it that britain can become a like civilized

01:20:24.960 area when rome is there but when rome goes away they go back to hitting each other with clubs why they

01:20:31.360 go back to murdering children and then burying them under bridges to is like witch spells and stuff like

01:20:37.840 that why why why why why why why this is and and and i also the reason why people are drawn in by these

01:20:46.240 environmental explanations is they remove the need to ask hard questions okay and i don't think that

01:20:55.680 you can get a genetic answer to this like because clearly it worked wherever rome was it worked when

01:21:00.880 rome was in africa it worked when the civilization spread to the mesopotamian river valley it worked

01:21:06.880 in my unga bunga caveman ancestors in britain right like it worked everywhere it was applied

01:21:15.120 that's the thing about this it's not like a oh environmental thing so what we came to

01:21:21.840 is that you need an environment where lazy rich people want to do science and and explore the

01:21:29.760 nature of reality if you look at it's not so you need two things right you need enough

01:21:35.120 civilizational infrastructure like you need a meme culture that can create enough civilizational

01:21:38.640 infrastructure where you have trade and you have people who are like well essentially you need

01:21:42.640 you need enough affluence to create some opportunity for leisure as in that leisure time you have to

01:21:50.000 want to explore the true nature of reality and the way things actually functionally work and we came to the

01:21:57.200 conclusion that to get to that place you need to have a certain element of varied pluralism because if you

01:22:08.400 don't have that there will be not there will be an absence of competitive forces that encourage that

01:22:15.760 enable those who are somehow correct more correct about reality to win so why we think this didn't happen

01:22:23.360 for example in imperial china or feudal japan is because there was too much uniformity meaning that there

01:22:32.000 wasn't like competing and being really really different and and more correct about reality

01:22:38.720 wasn't how you were going to win you would win through brute force by getting enough resources by

01:22:44.320 yeah so i like the way that you when you were explaining it to me i thought you had a slightly

01:22:47.760 more eloquent way of putting it which is you need a pluralistic yet unified people proud of their

01:22:56.720 differences but they see themselves as one unit against some external existential threat that they

01:23:04.480 see as wholly different from them so examples and and it appears that the one civilization does best

01:23:10.720 whenever it's in those environments so for example it did really well in the greek city states where

01:23:15.600 the greek city states all saw each other is like radically different and and it but the outsiders they

01:23:22.640 were something wholly other right but they were also totally separate from each other and competing

01:23:26.400 or it did really well during the period of european city states competing with each other yeah you

01:23:30.880 know after the age of charlemagne it did really well it did but all those groups you know they would

01:23:35.520 fight each other but when a crusade would happen it's like okay everyone come together let's go

01:23:40.160 it did really well in the muslim the islamic empire but the islamic empire was also like that it was

01:23:45.520 very fracturous in the way that its different parts functioned it did very well in the roman empire but

01:23:52.480 again anyone who's actually studied roman history the roman empire was always dividing and then

01:23:57.680 recombining and dividing and recombining with a lot of factions with a lot of factions that had a degree

01:24:04.320 of ideological diversity where you would argue against um someone else i will note that the one

01:24:11.120 civilization appears to be dramatically less intellectually and more broadly i guess i'd say

01:24:17.280 civilizationally productive in terms of its advancement whenever it is being housed within a

01:24:23.440 more homogeneous empire so yes rome was fracturous but it was hardly as ideal a situation as the ancient

01:24:32.080 greek city states or the later competing european countries and i think that that is why in rome you had

01:24:40.720 a slowdown of the advancement which you can see very clearly on this graph yes there was still advancement

01:24:46.160 yes there was still civilization but it was much slower than under the greek city state period

01:24:51.120 or in the later multi-country multi-plural european system and i think that this is also why in the last

01:25:00.160 i'd say 50 years or so we have seen human advancement in terms of artistic production and stuff like that

01:25:07.600 really grind to a halt because of the urban monoculture removing the differences between the

01:25:12.640 groups that had been seated with the one culture so rome can almost be thought of as this weird

01:25:19.360 moment in history where the one culture solidified into a mostly uniform unit which gave it the power

01:25:26.640 it needed to spread out and touch lots of parts of earth and get them ready and seated however it didn't

01:25:34.640 advance within that culture itself that culture was more of a vector for its spread and i think that you

01:25:40.240 could actually see why this leads to better philosophical outcomes and i'll note here right

01:25:45.680 so people are like well japanese people they were interested in like exploring the nature of reality

01:25:50.160 was like a consequentialist like this will work mindset when they got rich i'm like no they weren't

01:25:54.880 like if you study like actual japanese or chinese history uh what the wealthy people with leisure time did

01:26:01.280 is they measured the quality of their work by its aesthetic value over its practical value or or realistic so

01:26:09.840 they would sit around and write stories that were meant to be beautiful but they weren't meant to be

01:26:14.960 functional or convey particularly deeper or more sophisticated meanings often well yeah and an

01:26:20.400 argument that i was also positing when we were talking about this earlier is there seems to be

01:26:25.440 some kind of a benefit that you get from having a complex political system that that is complex enough

01:26:31.920 where there's either a very strong nobility and some form of parliament or some form of representative

01:26:37.920 democracy because in those systems actually being correct and actually being right gives you an edge or

01:26:45.280 a benefit so that i think has a halo effect where then you get people who are also interested in science and

01:26:55.280 physics and a whole bunch of other things as a sort of an emergent property of people who are right

01:27:00.880 from a more like political strategic perspective have an edge and therefore get to rule that society

01:27:08.640 and you get a lot of pushback as well so you get the like you need the gentleman scientist basically i

01:27:13.520 mean in in the victorian period it's called the gentleman scientist in the medieval period it was called

01:27:17.520 like the maybe monk or something or in the you know the the period of the greek city states it was your

01:27:23.120 your random thinker right so like and we're going to talk about like how greeks figured some early stuff

01:27:27.440 like i think that they're the people who really collated this culture for the first thing i think

01:27:31.520 its predecessors existed in the egypt right and then it went to mesopotamia where it continued

01:27:38.160 to grow slightly but i still think it was very nascent and it was supercharged when the greeks got it like

01:27:44.160 they exploded it they were the reactor that made it something and i think that you can see for the

01:27:49.040 exploration of the greeks exploration of the nature of reality sort of how it builds on itself and why

01:27:53.360 this would lead to such civilizational advancement so quickly so you have something like sales sales

01:27:58.160 of myelitis proposing that water was the fundamental substance underlying all reality he sought a single

01:28:02.960 unifying principle to explain the nature of the world so this is around what you get in terms of

01:28:07.680 sophistication of other cultures you get the first guy who asks what's the nature of the world right

01:28:12.960 but in greek society didn't stop first guy to ask what the nature of the world somebody else with

01:28:17.920 access to his work then you get anaxamander who argued for an indefinite boundless substance

01:28:23.920 called apurion as the source of all things this was an early attempt to conceptualize an abstract

01:28:29.600 principle underlying physical reality then heraculatus taught that everything is in constant flux

01:28:35.920 famously stating pants array everything flows he saw reality as a unity of opposites in constant tension

01:28:42.960 and change parademus took the opposite view arguing that change is impossible and that reality is a

01:28:49.120 single eternal and unchanging whole this sparked debates about the nature of being and non-being

01:28:54.880 that influenced later metaphysics then all of those people came down to plato who's now you know going

01:28:59.520 against what all of them are saying and he goes he proposed a series of forms which held that there

01:29:04.000 exists a realm of perfect unchanging forms or ideas separate from the physical world the physical world

01:29:10.480 we perceive is merely an imperfect reflection of these forms true knowledge and reality are found

01:29:16.960 in the realm of forms not in the ever-changing physical world now this is an idea that while i

01:29:22.160 don't agree with it could conceptually make sense to even a modern person today like this is the beginning

01:29:28.480 of what you could call like truly modern physics or philosophy whereas the other people were just giving

01:29:35.360 him enough of a people arguing that he could come in and have i guess i call it like a real and

01:29:40.480 sophisticated idea whereas these other environments just didn't have this debate happening and and

01:29:46.240 wouldn't have a debate like this arise and this spills over then into things like the arts i mean we'll

01:29:51.680 explain why that happens in a second but then you have something like aristotle right so then

01:29:54.880 aristotle he comes in and he rejects plato's separate form series instead arguing that form and matter

01:30:01.600 are united in individual substances aristotle developed the concepts of substance essence and

01:30:08.400 accident to explain the nature of things clearly this is a world he explored causality identifying

01:30:14.800 four types of causes material formal effective and final so like he basically figured out how reality

01:30:22.080 actually works like well this is a world where clearly they were rewarded in some way like socially or

01:30:30.640 even if no one gave them a reward for it they were raised in a culture or society that enabled them to

01:30:36.080 have emotional intrinsic rewards for doing something like this and that i think is created it's just when

01:30:44.320 i think about the unifying elements of the cultures that i'm aware of that first generated this is

01:30:53.040 there are varied sub-tribes that are very they have a lot of internal pride and they like to

01:30:57.840 shit on the outsiders and you even saw this in ancient egypt you know it's like oh those people

01:31:04.160 in alexandria oh those people in cairo like there there were significant cultural differences but there

01:31:09.520 was a lot of trade and interest interchange as well so that there was comparison so i feel that what's

01:31:16.080 the word like a certain amount of xenophobia combined with pluralism and then another sort of big

01:31:22.560 bad on the outside that enables them to all say hey this is us and we are different from those

01:31:27.600 you mean literally like the haven network that i want to recreate for a post-fertility collapse

01:31:32.400 world oddly convenient but i mean it oh i feel like intuitively we see the value i know but that's i

01:31:40.000 think i know and what i'm saying is it it's it seems conveniently flattering that what we're trying to design

01:31:46.800 is oddly reminiscent of a system that seems to have given birth to the organization specifically

01:31:53.280 designed after it yeah well i know but i just i think it's it it's interesting that we intuited

01:31:59.760 something that now when we're looking at this unified civilization well i hadn't looked at how big the

01:32:04.800 differences were when you controlled for time but now i want to get to to make a comparison here so we're

01:32:09.680 going to go to china like what was their understanding of reality right so you get to lao zi and zangzi

01:32:16.240 they were believed to have lived between the 6th century bce although some scholars state them to

01:32:20.720 the 4th century bce so this would be around when all these greek authors were writing they're credited

01:32:25.440 as the authors of the dao de jing the tao teaching the foundational text of taoism it which included

01:32:31.920 concepts of tao the way as the source of all being were way non-action or effortless action the

01:32:37.600 interplay of yin and yang and simplicity and naturalness as ideals that's

01:32:44.880 childlike when contrasted with what was going on in greece at the same time yeah and i think it but

01:32:50.960 but i think shows why greece was able to sort of explore here you have like two guys who sat down

01:32:59.280 and they're like this is the way things are and then you have like one other guy who pushes back like

01:33:04.320 mosey so this is where you get the will of heaven the idea that the universe has a moral structure

01:33:08.880 the heaven's intentions provide a standard for ethics he believed in consequentialism so slightly

01:33:14.640 better right like the judging the morality of actions based on their outcomes he believed in

01:33:18.800 universalism advocating for universal love jai i that does not discriminate uh between people

01:33:25.040 rationalism and a lot of his and moenism and some other things and a lot of his stuff

01:33:29.360 was sort of suppressed as confucianism grew so hold on but the point being is that when

01:33:35.280 you read this stuff or when you read confucianism because i'm sure you guys have read some confucianism

01:33:39.760 you just like anyone who's being honest can tell it's not as intellectually sophisticated as something

01:33:44.960 like aristotle's work or plato's work which was you know it it shows the difference between a culture

01:33:52.480 where you have a bunch of people furiously arguing with each other and who in other areas of their

01:33:57.680 life whether it's economics or war actually have to know how to beat an opponent and actually have

01:34:03.280 to have their ideas work and i think you can see this in terms of like greek warfare for example like

01:34:09.280 alexander the great figures out like a formation that's really good in greek warfare and then he

01:34:13.360 applies it to anyone other than the greek city states that were very hard for him to unify

01:34:18.240 and it's like free money cheat just moving knife through butter all the way to india where his

01:34:24.400 troops are like why are we still fighting anymore this is getting pointless i mean i think what made him

01:34:28.880 really cool was the way that he used geography to his advantage yeah but the point is is that

01:34:38.000 these things all bleed into each other it's not just the philosophy was hundreds of years ahead

01:34:43.920 it's the philosophy and the art yeah the infrastructure and the buildings and the everything

01:34:52.400 everything ahead of my ancestors well what's more interesting to me again is just how the incentives

01:34:58.080 are aligned to do that and you need to have a pluralistic culture you need to have something that

01:35:02.560 forces competition and an ingenuity and i and i think that you can see throughout history too and

01:35:08.400 this would require a whole lot more investigation than we don't have time for right now but

01:35:11.760 i think if we looked at when civilizations collapsed i would imagine that there's a high level of

01:35:19.200 correlation between that competition falling apart and the fall of a civilization that when you no longer

01:35:28.480 have this pluralistic competition but trade and exchange where you're forcing people to sort of

01:35:36.640 steal from each other iterate off each other and compete with each other but also stay united and

01:35:41.680 strong together against a larger exogenous threat or enemy or big bad then that's when civilization

01:35:48.480 starts to decline so maybe we should be concerned that perhaps big bads like russia and china you know

01:35:57.040 sort of like that these these tensions internationally will soon subside due to demographic collapse well i think

01:36:03.040 it's why the urban monoculture has often also stolen so much of the vitality of human civilization

01:36:08.400 because it is homogenized culture yes yeah in a in a more perfect world we would have these cultures

01:36:15.520 riffing and doing their own thing like anime like anime required japan be touched by civilization to create

01:36:21.840 their concepts of like video games like mario and stuff like that that are some of the greatest works of

01:36:25.920 art in our lifetime and i think in the future will be remembered that way are are coming out but it's out of

01:36:32.080 this industrial process that marries some of their ancestral traditions but i think that this is

01:36:36.880 where you get this mistake right the mistake that countries make is we can go back to our old ways

01:36:44.160 and and just update them for modern civilization saying no what we need to do is we need to take

01:36:49.200 this one culture and put little spins on it but not try to go back to the way things used to be so an

01:36:55.440 example of this would be something like even china today so this is not me as an outsider

01:37:00.000 bemercing china when china says we need to go back to like chinese science and chinese medicine like

01:37:05.840 the chinese government will say when we're doing chinese medicine it's like random like herbs and

01:37:12.320 stuff that like everybody knows don't work like like they they functionally don't work because that was

01:37:18.240 the nature of that previous system in in the in the system of the one civilization things actually have to

01:37:24.960 work like if a natural remedy works it will say okay how do i distill the chemical in it oh gnawing

01:37:32.320 on that bark lowers your amount of pain okay what chemical is causing that okay let's mass produce that

01:37:37.440 chemical okay now we have aspirin and we we we run into a risk of doing this in the west as well i mean the

01:37:43.600 urban monoculture because of its love of weakness you can see our video on that particular topic it tries to

01:37:50.560 venerate it their own ancestors the witches the druids the pagans you know you get that i'm queer and i'm

01:37:57.200 a witch you should not venerate that right these people were monstrous they sacrificed children they were

01:38:04.640 not civilized man they they needed to be uplifted thank god that the romans colonized my ancestors

01:38:16.400 and saved them from the depravity that they were living in what makes me special

01:38:27.920 come on come on do you know do you know what makes me special i'm a queer and i'm a

01:38:46.400 mother she looks angry yeah it tastes like that i'd be angry too you shut up and i think that and

01:38:57.920 this is the thing and i think that that the civilized man wherever he is whatever he looks like whatever

01:39:03.600 i said he is the cool thing about this theory is it's kind of unified because the truth is is that

01:39:09.680 the originators of this civilization one they never hold the torch for long they often pass it on you know

01:39:14.400 you know, whether it's Egypt to Mesopotamia, to Greece, to Rome, but they also mostly don't

01:39:21.200 exist anymore as an ethnic group. Like the ancient Greeks, I can look at ancient Greek statues. They

01:39:26.080 don't look like modern Greek people. Like that ethnic group, isn't my ethnic group, but it's

01:39:30.380 also, you know, when you're talking about it, and I think that, that Italians and the Greek people

01:39:34.040 do undersell themselves when they say they're not, they're probably like 80% related to them

01:39:38.640 would be my guess. There's probably like a few immigration waves, but like, I think that they

01:39:42.620 deserve some credit for that. But they're not the groups that are on top of the world right now.

01:39:46.880 You know, so it doesn't argue for this idea of a dominant cultural group. What it argues for

01:39:52.320 is an idea of a global shared cultural history that none of us really own, that we all are

01:40:01.120 beneficiaries of whatever our backgrounds are. And we all deserve, you know, when I look back to my

01:40:08.720 history, when I named my kids, like Octavian, one of the names that we're looking for, for one of our

01:40:12.420 next scenes is going to be Constantine. You know, I am looking to the great figures of Rome. And

01:40:18.200 one show that I would really recommend people watch, if you haven't watched it, you absolutely

01:40:23.980 must watch it. It's called Rome, an unbiased history. I would watch it chronologically. If you

01:40:30.160 like this show, you are going to love Roman unbiased history. It's by Dabahati. He is, I think,

01:40:37.980 like one of the great creators of our age in terms of like a meme-ified content. I don't think he has

01:40:44.520 nearly as many subscribers as he could, but it's just because he hasn't done enough videos.

01:40:48.380 But he does a thorough meme-ified history of Rome from the perspective of being ultra,

01:40:55.300 I'd say like jingoistic about Rome. Like when he's describing my ancestors, he'll always have them

01:41:00.960 come on head with like the, you know, the meme of the guy with the head that's caved in and like

01:41:05.620 the face paint on them and just, you know, unable to do anything or, or they'll have like sharp teeth

01:41:11.340 whenever they're coming on stage. And I just love it.

01:41:14.480 I love it because it's, it's, I think the way that the chads from around the world are able to

01:41:35.500 look at history and not look at the witches and see their ancestors, but all together look to the

01:41:42.280 shared cultural ancestry and say, that's the fire that left human civilization. And I don't need to

01:41:49.480 have an ethnic claim to that, to admire it and to learn from it and to build on it.

01:41:57.680 I think that's really fair. Yeah.

01:41:59.880 And I note that all our cultures had their witches. You know, it's not just the Celts who had

01:42:05.620 witches, who some people today delusionally rise up despite them being child murderers,

01:42:11.780 but you had them in the African cultures. You had them in ancient China. You had them in ancient

01:42:18.040 Scandinavia and the ancient Rus had them all around the world. We had our witches. So the question is,

01:42:25.620 are you able to, with humility, swallow the pride you have in either the culture that is your own

01:42:33.700 genetically or the one that you have drawn some sort of weird wee-boo attachment to, and admit that we all,

01:42:41.060 our greatness all comes from the descendants of one culture and a culture that's not yours.

01:42:48.420 And that is a culture that brought us this Judeo-Christian tree of religions that helped save us from our witches.

01:43:03.700 And I think the difficult thing is that normally when people are advocating for a culture,

01:43:29.400 it's their own. And it helps that this isn't ours. I'm so relieved. I'm so relieved that we do not

01:43:37.240 have Greek or Roman ancestry. Yeah. Because otherwise this would be such a bad look.

01:43:44.100 But I think that, and I also argue that this is what created the modern Jew and Christian in

01:43:50.080 another episode, which is to say when the one true religion crashed with civilization,

01:43:58.180 it like a particle collider exploded and created the civilized religions, whether that's post-Second

01:44:05.940 Temple Judaism. And as we argue in track eight, I do not think pre-Second Temple Judaism was one of

01:44:10.460 the civilized religions. They were ripping apart animals. They were doing blood sacrifices. They were

01:44:14.340 doing blood magic. They were worshiping multiple gods in the temple. I think that it was through the

01:44:19.340 destruction of that, that they were freed from this. And if you look at their art from those previous

01:44:23.340 periods, it's nothing special. Their civilization, nothing particularly special. Even the parts of

01:44:27.600 the Bible that were written before that period, while I think they're divinely inspired, they're

01:44:31.380 certainly not particularly sophisticated when contrasted with like ancient Greek work. And actually

01:44:37.480 some individuals argue that the Bible is particularly the Moses stories are actually downstream of

01:44:42.600 Hellenistic works. And there's some compelling evidence there that we can get to,

01:44:45.940 that they were heavily influenced post-fact by those.

01:44:48.560 Specifically, the argument that I found most compelling is just the theme of the story.

01:44:54.060 A group of people being kicked out of a homeland, then looking for a new homeland, then founding a

01:45:00.760 city, then having that city grow into a great city. It feels very much like, you know, the founding

01:45:05.800 story of Rome or like many ancient Greek myths have this theming, whereas it's basically unheard of

01:45:13.780 in the Mesopotamian region. But we won't get into that too much in this particular episode.

01:45:19.840 Something I'd note about this theory that I want to develop further is the idea that the one civilization,

01:45:26.600 when it blooms within a region, appears to exhaust that region after a golden age, making it hard for

01:45:34.780 civilization to appear there again. And they then fall into what I can only describe as sort of a

01:45:43.780 non-violent slumber that where they don't produce much in terms of artistic output or civilizational

01:45:50.880 advancement was the only counter example to this being the Italian Renaissance after the period of

01:45:56.760 the Roman Empire was over. So what I mean by this is it starts in Egypt, then Egypt never really

01:46:01.920 rises again, then it goes to Mesopotamia, then Mesopotamia sort of becomes irrelevant, then it

01:46:06.060 goes to Greece, and Greece sort of becomes irrelevant, then it goes to Rome, then Rome sort of becomes

01:46:09.820 irrelevant, then it, you know, breathed again in France through the Charlemagnean Empire, and then

01:46:14.900 that sort of becomes irrelevant, and then it goes into England, which has increasingly become irrelevant.

01:46:20.040 And so the question is, how can you create a sustainable version of this culture, and why does it burn

01:46:27.980 these populations and make them effete and bureaucratic after a while? And that is a theory

01:46:33.680 that we will explore later. But it also means, interestingly, that it's especially hard for any

01:46:38.300 group to claim themselves special, because they carried the torch of civilization for a period,

01:46:44.020 because the torch of civilization seems to always burn the group that carries it, and make them

01:46:49.940 lesser than the people around them, rather than more than the people around them.

01:46:53.020 We gotta get the kids now, but...

01:46:55.020 But hold on, the point of all this is, is that we have a shared cultural ancestry that none of us

01:47:03.420 have ownership over, and that cultural ancestry, the height of it, is when you have collaborative

01:47:09.320 pluralism. And that's what we should be fighting for. That's the greatness that was Rome. Oh, and by the

01:47:16.700 way, if you also haven't seen it, and I've recommended it in another show, and you still need to watch it,

01:47:20.000 is the Rome miniseries from HBO. Again, haven't seen that, must watch it. And if you haven't seen

01:47:25.180 the first Gladiator, again, a must watch. Well, and also, I want to emphasize, not just

01:47:30.040 collaborative pluralism, but collaborative competitive pluralism. Exactly.

01:47:36.900 There is a healthy, friendly, trash-talking the other side element of this. And I think a lot of

01:47:43.740 our critics, or people who want to frame us as enemies, misread that, when we're like,

01:47:49.260 yeah, like, you know, we like to talk. Yeah, like, yeah, of course you should be dunking on the other

01:47:55.020 side. But you should also be allying and working with the other side. You should both compete. I

01:47:59.220 mean, that is the beauty of sports teams. Anyone who can understand baseball fans, who can trash-talk

01:48:06.860 each other about their teams, but then, you know, bond over the sport is, like, they get it. This

01:48:13.100 should not be a complex subject, but I do feel that we get heat for this, because people try to make that

01:48:21.420 out about, like, oh, you're about hate. You're about, you know, you trash-talk this other group,

01:48:26.320 therefore, you're a supremacist for your own group. Like, you're totally missing the point,

01:48:32.020 and you are smart enough to know that that is not true. So, cool. All right, let's go get this.

01:48:38.080 Love you. Have a good day, Simone. Bye-bye-bye. Ciao-chau. You're amazing. You know, Maxime Lott,

01:48:44.500 who we are fans of, he, on his sub-stack ran, I think he's running guest's posts, giving a rational

01:48:52.460 argument for why people should vote for Kamala Harris, and there's another one for why people should

01:48:57.580 vote for Donald Trump, and I'm still reading the Kamala Harris one, but there's this one part of it

01:49:03.160 where the person argues that the economy is doing well, and look at GDP, and look at unemployment

01:49:08.960 rates, and how Kamala Harris has a plan to make things even better, but then they write,

01:49:14.700 many Americans have the mistaken perception that the economy is not doing well, in part because

01:49:19.720 of the cost of groceries, housing, consumer goods, and services, and energy are all higher than four

01:49:25.600 years ago, and wage growth has not offset these high costs. Like, I'm sorry. So, you're arguing that

01:49:32.440 the economy is doing well, and that we're just complaining that we're not happy because our

01:49:41.300 lives are materially worse, and economically speaking, but the economy is doing well, so we

01:49:47.800 should vote for a parent. I love that so much. This, like, I mean, so the costs that matter to

01:49:57.300 normal people are up, and I mean, their wages haven't improved in line with that, but I mean,

01:50:04.200 the economy is doing well.

01:50:05.640 You know how you mentioned to me that, like, people will always say the economy is doing well

01:50:10.660 when their party's in office. Yeah. What he's really just saying is, my party's in office.

01:50:15.240 And therefore, I can find some numbers to indicate that things are good.

01:50:17.500 My whole real measure is the economy's in shambles, but my party is in office.

01:50:21.860 And therefore, things are good. Okay? Shut up. I just thought that was very entertaining.

01:50:28.500 There was a dream that was Rome. It shall be realized. These are the wishes of Marcus Aurelius.

01:50:35.640 Go to them.

01:50:54.400 Careful!

01:51:01.560 Torsten, out of the way! Out of the way!

01:51:05.640 What are you doing, you nut-job?

Based Camp - October 29, 2024

The One Civilization Theory： It Was Only Ever Rome (The Misnomer of ＂Western Civilization＂)

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