Secret History #13: Mandate of Heaven

Today we discuss the idea of

civilization

and um first I want to present to you

the general understanding of how we get

civilization

and then I will present to you an

alternative. Okay. So the traditional

understanding is the Marxist

understanding. This is idea proposed by

Carl Marx and it's the dominant idea. So

in the beginning we were hunter

gatherers and it sucked to be hunter

gatherer because you could not find food

and then we discovered agriculture

farming that allowed for

surplus

food.

Surplus just means that you have more

food than you can eat. And so now you

have people who don't have to work.

Okay? An elite.

And as such, they can engage in

activities that improve the well-being

of everyone and which create the basis

for civilization. These things include

religion, okay, which is just myths and

stories,

but also arts,

dance, music, song, songs,

um, paintings, and then of course you

have science and technology.

And with these three things in place,

now you can grow as a society. Okay? You

can now build cities. Why? Because now

you can have irrigation

and farming.

Okay? You can now direct the river the

river flow. So you can use more

farmland.

Okay? [snorts] you can now have a

heredit her hereditary elite

and so that these people can focus their

entire time on innovation on science on

progress.

Okay?

And then you have writing

because only a herited elite has the

time and the resources to learn how to

write because remember back then writing

is a very difficult activity. You have

to spend your entire life learning it

and practicing it. And then you have the

idea of money and property.

Okay. And together these four things are

what we refer to as

civilization.

Okay. Now there are good things that

come from civilization, religion, arts

and science. But there are also bad

things as well which include war,

slavery

and debt.

Okay. And

that is a story civilization that you

are taught in school and that most

mainstream academics understand.

Today I wanted to propose an alternative

and I think this is a much more

compelling alternative than this one.

And the idea is this

very from the very beginning we were

religious, artistic and capable of

science. Okay?

We do not need

an elite to do this for us. We are all

capable of doing this by ourselves. And

the examples of course are the cave

paintings that we discussed as well as

these religious settlements. Go play

temple koak.

Okay. And as we discussed before people

come together to practice their religion

building temples, building monuments.

And then slowly around these temples you

have development of farming in order to

sustain these temples in order to

practice the religion. But over time

what happens is that the temple people

become corrupt rather than be being

elected by the people rather than serve

the people they become hereditary. Okay?

They be they engage in rent seeking and

so what people do is they just leave

and build a temple somewhere else. Okay.

And throughout this time all these

temples are being built. But in certain

locations

the temples can also engage in trade.

Why? Because they're the meeting place

of many many other communities. And as

such, their real estate is the most

valuable in the world. And so it's hard

for people to leave. And the place just

grows and grows and grows.

And as this civilization grows, the

people in charge create something called

a temple economy.

[snorts] Okay? And this is just a primal

form of of taxation. Basically what

happens is that everyone brings food to

the temple and the priest then

redistribute

the food amongst everyone else. Okay.

That allows for public works projects

like irrigation mainly irrigation but

also more temples. Okay. And because of

this economy now you need writing.

You need to record how much food you

have. You have to record who gets what

food, the rations. You also need to

record trade, right? How much

um grain you're getting from here, how

much cows you're going giving to over

there. Okay, they have a running system.

Then you have money

and but as this civilization develops a

strict hierarchy emerges

and the hierarchy goes against the

natural order. Also remember that people

at any time can just choose to leave. So

how do you make people stay where they

are and just follow the natural order?

Well now you have to create mythology.

Okay?

[snorts] Which then you encode or write

down. So that seems as though it's

coming from the gods themselves.

Okay? Does that make sense? In other

words,

civilization did not give us religion,

arts, and science. We already had these

things. We could at any time in our

history do all these things.

Civilization is a device meant to

gaslight or fool people into believing

that a hierarchy is legitimate when it

is not legitimate. It is meant to fool

people into thinking of a that this

hierarchal system is divinely ordained.

Okay. So that's the argument I will make

to you today. Before I continue, are you

clear about this framework? This is this

is traditional framework. This is this

is what you've been taught in school.

The problem with this framework is that

it assumes that we're all stupid.

And if we're all stupid, it's hard to

explain how we did the cave paintings,

how we built kabe,

okay? How we did ko. It assumes all

these things. This this new

understanding is that we're all capable

of creativity

but eventually because of

um social development we have these

large cities and now the people in

charge need to create civilization in

order to justify the hierarchy.

Okay. All right. So having said that,

let's look at the four earliest major

civilizations

in our history and they are of course

Egypt,

Mesopotamia which is modern day Iraq,

the Indis Valley civilization.

This is al also referred to as the

Harapen. Okay, Harapen civilization

because their capital is Harapa. And

then the last one of course is China.

Right?

Now the question then is why is that

these four

are the early civilizations and they

have three unique characteristics. Okay.

The first is their latitude. They're

actually in the same latitude. They're

not too hot and they're not too cold

which makes them perfect for

agriculture. Okay. That's the first

characteristic. Second characteristic is

that they are by major rivers. Right. So

Egypt is of course by the Nile. Uh

Mesopenia has been called the Tigris and

the Euphrates.

Um Indis Valley of course has the Indis

River and China has of course the Yellow

River. Okay,

that's the second major characteristic.

This allows for you to build a fairly

large city. Okay, because now you can