my fatigue with palace intrigue

[amw]

After threatening to dive into the Confucius wiki hole a couple entries ago, i decided i'd do just that. But rather than going straight to the man himself, i figured it'd make more sense to get a broader overview of Chinese history before deep-diving on philosophy that i've previously barely shallow-dived on. Also i figured it'd help so next time i

Comments

[amw]

For sure the Chinese don't have a monopoly on this sort of history. Whenever i try to follow western ancient history i hit the same roadblock. I love the mythological stories of heroes exploring distant lands, defeating mysterious monsters, taking on the gods and winning... that stuff is great. But at a certain point - perhaps aligning with the rise of the Roman Empire? - the written record seems to become disproportionately about fabulously wealthy and all-powerful rulers being terrible to everyone.

All these stories of kings and queens and the nobility, i find it hard to feel a connection to the characters because they're all so out of touch. It feels like we're missing the other half of the story. And that, perhaps, is the new development, because i am sure as a kid it didn't bother me as much. But same time... as a kid we still had some legends of rogueish everyman characters like Robin Hood. So far i am missing those sorts of figures in Chinese history, although i know they're a staple of contemporary wuxia set in historical eras. I kind of want to go back and look at some Greek legend i grew up with and see how many of those guys were sent on a mission by the emperor or on a quest to regain the throne. Maybe it's more than i remember and i just blacked out those parts of the story because the adventure part was more interesting than the politics part.

Maybe that's why some of these objectively shitty people ended up getting deified in Chinese history too, not so much because of the tens or hundreds of thousands of people they killed in their wars for power, but just because they became an abstract archetype of bravery or loyalty or cunning or whatever.

[geminiwench]

I became obsessed with Solon once upon a time, and was upset that I wasn't taught about him at all even though we "learned" about "Greek Democracy". Before Athens really committed to democracy in about 500BC, it spent about 200 years flirting with democracy. That is.. there was voting (by the landowning freemen) but most people didn't want to abdicate power and/or run for election again, so mostly Athenians were voting for their next dictator or "Tyrant" which was the actual title of the 10 year position as supreme comptroller of the city, and only gained its more infamous meaning due to the corruption that was connected to the role and the fact they never seemed to want to leave when their term was over, since Tyrants were also not re-electable.

However, it was "better" than whole lineages of families just hoarding power from generation to generation... so.. it was a cycle of election/refusal to leave office/civil war/election/refusal to leave office/civil war, etc.

Anyways, Solon was a seaman/military captain/merchant over his life and became famous during a few battles and rich during a few trading trips. He was elected tyrant despite not running for the position. After election, he wrote a handful of new laws which freed most human property (slaves), released all private debt, cut up and redistributed the largest land parcels to give personal farming land to all citizens, ended Draconian (Draco's laws) criminal laws enacted prior, put a halt to empire expansion, raised the salary of the military, and created a food welfare program... it seems.
He also set up a new way of doing elections that were more fair and codified that since every adult male could vote now that everyone was free, debt free, and had guaranteed land he hoped the new landowners would seek election now that they were qualified to vote AND be elected.

Then he told the senate and the citizens needed to run the city/state and they should figure it out without relying on war and greed to run politics anymore,... that they can just run themselves without a leader and he was going to prove it by leaving them to it.

As soon as he left, his closest friends seized power and made use of the throne of Tyrant just like usual and reversed all of Solon's laws. Solon returned and protested the new tyrant and best friend publicly in front of his house, and asked citizens to disobey but no change was effected. He was highly respected and so was allowed to protest without consequence or interference since his friends had seized power so totally and he had taken an oath against war during his travel and was treated as powerless and talked about like a once-respected uncle who has become a doddering fool.

And oddly enough,
that's how democracy still sorta works.

It works mostly for the rich and powerful just like every other economic and political system we've imagined implemented,
and when some hiccup brings in an actual benevolent peaceful human into a major leadership role who does not PLAY politics, they destroy politics... this is actually a call for war according to the rich/powerful.