躲猫猫社社长
躲猫猫社社长

哈利波特.eth

一些无关紧要的对话【插件0.1】

— Did you read The Art of Being Governed? How is that book?

— Yea, man. So, there is The Art of Not Being Governed by James Scott, which is great. But it doesn’t work for China. It works for some areas of the world but China is actually the best case study for arguing against James Scott. Michael Szonyi wrote The Art of Being Governed arguing how Scott’s theory doesn’t work for China at all. So it’s a big debate. A great discussion for a class. It would be to read those two books together. 

Szony’s point is that all the institutions of 里甲保甲军户 in the Ming are all designed so that local elites want to participate in state institutions. Of course 科举 is obvious as well. Scott’s work is more applicable for 高山地区, places where a state has little control and people want to avoid the state. Scott focuses on 东南亚, because Southeast Asia, particularly the Thai highlands, has a lot of peasants who totally wanted to avoid the state. 

It’s like, take the US, a huge difference between the east coast and the western frontier, but Szonyi would argue that even on the frontier, Scott is still wrong, because cowboys still need to at least symbolically appeal to the American government to claim Indian lands. It is not completely devoid of state power. Rather, it has elites who are distant from the state but who symbolically appeal to parts of the state. A lot of scholars today might say that Scott is too romantic of anarchy. But at the same time, Scott would argue that China is the wrong model, because China has a uniquely unified state in the premodern world. Scotland is a place where Scott would point to and say look yea this is resistance. 1000 year resistance against England and the south. So what’s more typical? England? China? Southeast Asia? None of the above? Is every place unique? And we also have a different problem today, where states actively try to avoid other states. It’s like Canada plays “the art of not being governed” with the US. Because it’s a weaker power. 

It’s great to read his book next to Scott’s. The problem with Szonyi I think is, are there any other examples besides China that confirm his argument. It’s hard to think of one. Remember Mark Elvins famous quote, “China would seem to be the great exception to the general rule that large states with comparable territories are unstable over time.” So it’s always dangerous to base a model or a theory on China. Because China seems to do something that no one else does. 

Look at the UK. On the one hand, the UK uniting a territory, but it took like 1000 years before the act of union. And even today there are Scots, Irish, welsh who all say we aren’t English. Did the English fail? Not exactly. It’s just the English didn’t try to convince the others they were English. But why didn’t they? Isn’t that unstable? It’s rather that the English thought their institutions were particular to them. They told the Scots “go start your own universities” rather than saying “come to our universities.” How can 1.3 billion people in China today seriously call themselves “Han”? How were so many people convinced of that? 

And Look at the Ottomans. They failed. Yes. The ottomans had the highest highs and the lowest lows. They managed to unite parts of Christian Europe and the Islamic Middle East for centuries. They managed to get all those really different people together. That’s unbelievable. The weakness of the ottomans were the Greeks, exacerbated by the rise of Russia. Russia ultimately brought it down. Because the Russians who were orthodox convinced the Greeks they shouldn’t be ruled by Muslims. Once the Greeks broke away in the early 19th century, the game was up. The ottomans were going to fragment. Ultimately, the ottomans couldn’t keep europe because of religion, and they couldn’t keep the Middle East because of ethnicity and language (Turk vs Arab). There wasn’t a coherent cosmology throughout the empire that could hold it firmly together once pressures were applied. There was no equivalent for 阴阳五行、科举、天下. China just has so many tricks up its sleeve, man.

All of those Chinese concepts I just mentioned are brilliant for empowering local elites within the frame of the ruling elites. China could convince local actors to care about central institutions. Not even be part of them per se, but just to pay lip service to them and draw legitimacy from them. 

When did the Ottomans start seriously talking about 伊斯兰天下? When they lose Greece. It’s only when they lose the Christian lands that they have to try to really play up Islam. It’s like the Ottomans could have put their capital in Mecca, but they didn’t want to. They wanted Istanbul, they wanted Rome. They wanted that ancient lineage. The ottomans are interesting because they’re Muslims who recognized the power of a non Muslim “古代.” The ottomans could say look we conquered the eastern Rome and now we are the central rulers.

But also after the fall of Constantinople, Russia forms and says Moscow is the new Rome. We are protecting the orthodox Christianity. And that’s how Russia is able to chip away at the Ottomans.

I think this is also why China is so unique. China did not offer alternative centers of power besides the state. It’s a take it or leave it thing. The Ottomans had contested religion, contested history, contested capital. So it was a matter of time before powerful neighbors could rise up and say, “You can’t rule orthodox Christians. We can.” “You can’t rule Arabs. We are Arab.” The tragedy of all that is of course the Arabs fought against the ottomans for independence, only to lose Jerusalem to the Christians and ultimately the Jews. The Arabs lost more than they gained. Had the ottomans persisted, it’s unlikely Britain would have been able to just give Palestine away like a loaf of bread for sale. 

So that’s the irony. We urban moderns love cosmopolitanism. The ottomans were super cosmopolitan. But were they too cosmopolitan? The problem with 世界主义 is that cosmopolitan people don’t have strong allegiance to a central state. 

Look at New York look at Shanghai. If New Yorkers could, they would vote for independence or to be part of Canada. Because it’s like what the fuck is this country. That happens all over the world. That’s why cosmopolitans are struggling now. Cosmopolitan elites don’t have allegiances. And hence the state is skeptical to us, and tried to occasionally keep us out of power. But if they keep us out of power too long, politics starts to suck because the 内地 (Oklahoma) doesn’t have 人才 and the state suffers. They don’t have talent. The talent is with the cosmopolitans. So what happens is that, the system periodically rejects the cosmopolitans (trump), then things go to hell. (Likely to happen) Then the cosmopolitans have to come back in and save the system (Obama). The problem is, sometimes things get to a point where one side just says fuck it, and we get a system reset or collapse. 

So one challenge for instance now is, how can the cosmopolitans try to appeal to the 内地 to go with them? But it’s really really hard. Because the 内地 people think the cosmopolitans look down on them and hence they don’t trust them. They would rather trust Trump than trust a skilled person. 

The only time we will break the pattern is when the system starts to really fail. And the cosmopolitans can rise up and say to the 内地 you either go with us or you’re going to lose everything. But man, the cosmopolitans are themselves not united.

I do suspect a big change in American politics in the next 10-15 years. Over half of Americans under 40 man say they don’t believe in capitalism. What does that mean? It’s not that they want communism, it’s that they’re saying the system is totally broken. Eventually, those people will get power. And it’s going to be fascinating to see what happens. It won’t be Soviet or China per se but I think it’ll be different for sure. 

I think the big money in America has made some very very stupid errors. Charging 60k for college, super expensive healthcare, no safety net. People under 40 are in debt they can’t buy a house and they see a small elite group of their friends doing extremely well. That’s not stable. We are on the path to Hong Kong. 

Let me give you an example. Trump the other week says, let’s cut food stamps to save money. Let’s think about that for a second. WTF? Does that really sound like a good idea? Do they know where this leads? They’re going going an idiotic path that defeats their own stated goals. 

The older generations in the Uk and Us are still kind of brainwashed. Look at the recent election in the UK. Everyone under 39 voted labour everyone over 40 voted conservative. The conservatives think “oh yea but when they grow up they’ll get more conservative, they’ll buy houses, etc.” Except that’s not going to happen this time. They can’t buy houses. They can’t get in the system. So if it’s Sanders vs Trump, Trump will still win because the older people still outnumber the young. But ten years from now? We are in totally uncharted territories. If I were the big money, I would see the writing on the wall and adjust now. So I feel like I’m watching a slow motion train crash. 

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 版权声明

喜欢我的文章吗?
别忘了给点支持与赞赏,让我知道创作的路上有你陪伴。

加载中…

发布评论