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December 30, 2007
Bill Mollison's famous insight into biological production was that it was the edges of any system where the greatest dynamicism occurred. Permaculture is a biological design mechanism that maximised edges to increase production. We see the same patterns in culture. It is the edges where the greatest dynamicism occurs. Peter Turchin has hypothosised that it is the cultural, ethnic and violent border areas where new Empires coalesce and fan out from. We also know from the Tasmanian Aboriginies that the absence of a cultural border will cause social regression where technologies are quite simply lost and forgotten. Without a a cultural boundary they are never recovered.
One of the popular grand narratives at the moment is the monolithic view of the epic culture war between East and West. A gigantic showdown, fought across the globe, where the only means of survival is cultural exclusion and a steadfast resistence of any cultural osmosis. Liberal democracy, with its typically open systems of liberty is having trouble dealing with this narrative from either side. As is humanity's will the tension is often viewed openly as violence.
The origins of the West vs East is often traced back to the Battle of Thermopylae where a small group of Spartans, Thebians, Thracians and Helots stalled the invading Persian King, Xerxes, long enough that the Athenian Navy could make the conquering of the Greek city-states impossible. But the Persian-Hellenic divide was not so absolute. In the later Peloponnesian War against Athens Sparta used Persian gold to continue their fight against Athens and maintain their league of allies.
Another example of the cultural divide being fluid is when Alexander conquered the Persian Empire. The Greeks and Macedonians had no administrative technologies to manage such a large domain. Consequently Alexander used the Persian satrap system to manage his new empire including in Macedonia. Additionally the Persians were trained in the latest Macedonian fighting techniques and added to the Macedon forces. One of Alexander's successes included convincing the Greek mercenaries fighting for the Persians to join the Macedon forces.
The cultural, political and martial borders between the Hellenic city-states and the Persians led to an osmosis of technology; both organisational and physical. This was not good news for the Roman Consul Crassus who embarked on a campaign to conquer the Parthians, one of the left over Empires from Alexander's realm. The Parthians not only beat the Roman decisively, they captured Crassus and his standard. In Roman terms this was the ultimate insult and failure.
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Cam
I am a bit wary of the popular grand narrative of the epic culture war between East and West in which there is a gigantic showdown, fought across the globe, where the only means of survival is cultural exclusion and a steadfast resistence of any cultural osmosis.
It's more a construction of the neo-con Republican Whitehouse than reality---for instance, there is no grand conflict between the liberal democratic West and Japan, India or China. Or are these to be included as honorary Western nation states in the West's heroic crusading battles with Islam and Muslim nations.