Re: [HIST??] Culture shock

--- Allan Goodall <agoodall@att.net> wrote:

> As mentioned, the "religious hangup" was a way of
> controlling other political
> forces within the country, in order to maintain
> control of an island nation
> that was almost constantly in civil war.

Wonderful.  But stasis in this case was not healthy. 
That's why Europeans and the North American
descendants thereof are so overwhelmingly
sucessful--the geography of Europe was a good
compromise between being too easy to invade and too
easy to defend.  You had to push technological
development because otherwise your neighbors would
overrun your happy butt.  A homogenous static society
is one solution, but ultimately self-defeating.
 
> You've got the cause and effect backwards. The
> Japanese permanent warrior
> aristocracy and mystical reverence for their way of
> life predates the
> introduction, and later abolition, of guns by
> several centuries. It was well
> entrenched by the end of the Hiean period.

And would have been pretty well unentrenched had large
armies of peasants with firearms been allowed to
attain battlefield effectiveness and stay that way. 
Once peasants could stand against a charge by the
aristocracy without the benefit of terrain and
obstacles (ie, by the introduction of flintlock
muskets with socket bayonets) the aristocracy either
starts sharing power (see: England) or gets stood
against a wall (see: France).  The Japanese didn't get
effective democracy until we nuked them flat.

John

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