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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   31993 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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"Guess which people are more conformist and which are more bold and daring?"

Descendants of serfs who were subjugated to their lords for millenia with little protest, or descendants of peasants who were continuously revolting for all recorded history? Hard guess.

I would have thought that it is visibly the case that both Chinese and Europeans have been extraordinarily restive throughout history?

The generalisation you're responding to is indeed obvious nonsense, but I take a certain baseline level of rebelliousness as a constant. The idea that Chinese people are hereditarily passive, obedient, and conformist, in contrast to wild Westerners, is one that has snuck into some Chinese writing as well, but I think it can only be sustained by an arbitrary cherry-picking of history. The same is true for Europe as well.

I realise you're probably just parodying the claim to show how silly it is, but I sometimes completely miss humour, so...

I think a case can be made that whenever the Chinese state is stable, it is very stable and very good at suppressing peasant rebellions. This is perhaps grounds for an unflattering stereotype about cruelty and power distance, but not so much about obedience of the masses.

Even stronger case could be made that no matter how weak is traditional European feudal system, it is excellent in suppressing peasant rebellions. There is no case in recorded European history of peasant revolt even slightly endangering TPTP (unlike China).

See the ease how even the most extensive revolts were put down. And they were, by Chinese standards, not very revolting at all.

edit: links linked properly

Yeah my ancestors were probably serfs in Old Europe, then they got bored and decided to conquer America. Many such cases- a very classic Indo-European impulse.

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