Work Ethic - wheat vs rice

[Pucksoppet]

Of course, any discussion in this thread will happen as a result of people goofing off of work, which may flavor it some.

Some of us no longer work.

True, in both senses.

[plodder]

I think we're talking more about underlying threads of similarity between the various 'eastern' vs 'western' philosophies and religions (I don't think it's particularly controversial to state that these regional differences in traditions do exist).

So, out of East vs West which philosophy espouses collective responsibility more? Is it the one with the parable about the good samaritan that every school child knows?

Whose philosophy promotes communing and contemplating nature more? Is the the country where 1M people are paid up members of the RSPB?

Which philosophy promotes physical activity as a way to spiritual health and character building? Is it the country that exported the worlds most popular sports across the globe?

etc.

East vs West is about as lazy as sterotyping gets.

[Bird on a Fire]

I think culture is more complicated than that.

As I'm sure you're aware, the practice of a given religions varies massively depending on local interpretations of the same text. Why do Christians in the middle east vs. Germany emphasise different bits of the Bible? Why do Buddhists from Myanmar vs. Japan (vs. California) life such different lifestyles?

There is also an argument to be made about membership of the RSPB not really reflecting how much time people actually spend observing and contemplating nature. In the UK nature is largely restricted to specific reserves to which people have to make specific, occasional trips. Not that many visitors to RSPB reserves actually stand still and watch a bird for, say, 3 minutes.

East vs. West is very simplistic, and an overgeneralisation, but I don't think your objections are very convincing either I'm afraid.

This book is on my reading list.

[dyqik]

I think culture is more complicated than that.

As I'm sure you're aware, the practice of a given religions varies massively depending on local interpretations of the same text. Why do Christians in the middle east vs. Germany emphasise different bits of the Bible? Why do Buddhists from Myanmar vs. Japan (vs. California) life such different lifestyles?

Which bits of the bible do Christians in the rice growing regions of the US emphasize?

[dyqik]

Rice growing is also common in West Africa, and has been for centuries.

[Bird on a Fire]

I think culture is more complicated than that.

As I'm sure you're aware, the practice of a given religions varies massively depending on local interpretations of the same text. Why do Christians in the middle east vs. Germany emphasise different bits of the Bible? Why do Buddhists from Myanmar vs. Japan (vs. California) life such different lifestyles?

Which bits of the bible do Christians in the rice growing regions of the US emphasize?

Leviticus, seemingly

[Bird on a Fire]

Rice growing is also common in West Africa, and has been for centuries.

I'd noticed that the local rice varieties in Guiné-Bissau and Senegal was smaller and more colourful, but hadn't realised it was a totally different species with a different domestication history. Very interesting, thanks.

I'd also noticed that the rice-fields are totally different to those I've seen in Europe, South America and Asia, being basically uncultivated and unwalled, and allowed to become weedy and dry out during the dry season. I'd assumed this was just the local approach to doing things, but from your link the species has different, less finicky, ecological requirements, which is pretty cool. I predict a fair amount of research and patent-shenanigans in the future.

I've not been to any US rice fields, but my old boss at UConn used to work on them.

[dyqik]

I think culture is more complicated than that.

As I'm sure you're aware, the practice of a given religions varies massively depending on local interpretations of the same text. Why do Christians in the middle east vs. Germany emphasise different bits of the Bible? Why do Buddhists from Myanmar vs. Japan (vs. California) life such different lifestyles?

Which bits of the bible do Christians in the rice growing regions of the US emphasize?

Leviticus, seemingly

Don't forget Daniel and the Revelation According To Some Bloke On An Island With Mushrooms

[Bird on a Fire]

The Revelation of Mario?

My Bible is a bit rusty, but I don't remember that book.

[sheldrake]

This is hugely fun, thanks.

I'll add that the decision to grow wheat or rice or herd animals also depends on geology / topography, so there's a thing there too.

I'm surprised the last Labour manifesto didn't include a Maoist call for the unemployed to be drawn into an army to create some mountains in East Anglia in order to improve the national spirit.

You have so much potential

[sheldrake]

The main difference I see between Europe and the rest of the world is that in most of the rest of the world different religions were able to co-exist, including until recently, the middle east.

In Europe, until very recently, once Christianity came it felt it had to literally and violently wipe out all trace of all the other belief systems. That never really happened in China, Korea, Japan or the Levant. In Japan it's perfectly normal for people to pay their respects at Shinto shrines for weddings and Buddhist temples for funerals, for example, and was for centuries.

There are religious communities like the Yazidis that existed for most of the last 2000 years in mountain villages in the middle east amongst Christians and Muslims.. the equivalent in the UK would be if there were still little villages of Druids or Wotan worshippers living in the Yorkshire pennines. For most of the last 2000 years Europe was the most dangerous place to be Jewish too.

Why does that seem to have been possible everywhere else but not here ?

[jimbob]

The main difference I see between Europe and the rest of the world is that in most of the rest of the world different religions were able to co-exist, including until recently, the middle east.

In Europe, until very recently, once Christianity came it felt it had to literally and violently wipe out all trace of all the other belief systems. That never really happened in China, Korea, Japan or the Levant. In Japan it's perfectly normal for people to pay their respects at Shinto shrines for weddings and Buddhist temples for funerals, for example, and was for centuries.

There are religious communities like the Yazidis that existed for most of the last 2000 years in mountain villages in the middle east amongst Christians and Muslims.. the equivalent in the UK would be if there were still little villages of Druids or Wotan worshippers living in the Yorkshire pennines. For most of the last 2000 years Europe was the most dangerous place to be Jewish too.

Why does that seem to have been possible everywhere else but not here ?

This book is interesting on that subject

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/ ... -dalrymple

[sheldrake]

I actually own it but have not yet got around to reading it

[jimbob]

I actually own it but have not yet got around to reading it

I enjoyed it. As you say, there are loads of ancient religions that hung on into the mid 20th century, even if they are now under pressure.

In the 1980's listening to the news about Lebanon - I never realised that the Druze weren't Muslims, for example.

[sheldrake]

In the 1980's listening to the news about Lebanon - I never realised that the Druze weren't Muslims, for example.

It's kind of contentious and depends who you ask. Having a secret holy book that outsiders are not allowed to read is definitely not mainstream Islamic practice though. There are also large numbers them voluntarily serving in the Israeli armed forces, which I think is unusual.

[Boustrophedon]

History is all "Just So" stories that the winners of wars use to justify their naked aggression. And any history that invokes deities, doubly so.

[Bird on a Fire]

In the 1980's listening to the news about Lebanon - I never realised that the Druze weren't Muslims, for example.

It's kind of contentious and depends who you ask. Having a secret holy book that outsiders are not allowed to read is definitely not mainstream Islamic practice though. There are also large numbers them voluntarily serving in the Israeli armed forces, which I think is unusual.

The Druze are also the only people outside South America who consume a lot of yerva mate. Along with the Sufis inventing coffee, it seems that there is something about these Muslim sects that really draws people towards stimulants.

[Bird on a Fire]

History is all "Just So" stories that the winners of wars use to justify their naked aggression. And any history that invokes deities, doubly so.

A lot of mainstream history certainly is that, including a lot of what is taught in schools. I recently read Natives by Akala, which (alongside interesting contemporary social issues about race) redresses a lot of the stories told about the British Empire as a widely-beloved, basically decent civilising force in the wider world.

[dyqik]

In the 1980's listening to the news about Lebanon - I never realised that the Druze weren't Muslims, for example.

It's kind of contentious and depends who you ask. Having a secret holy book that outsiders are not allowed to read is definitely not mainstream Islamic practice though. There are also large numbers them voluntarily serving in the Israeli armed forces, which I think is unusual.

The Druze are also the only people outside South America who consume a lot of yerva mate. Along with the Sufis inventing coffee, it seems that there is something about these Muslim sects that really draws people towards stimulants.

Although maybe that's more to do with living in the middle of the proverbial miles and miles of f.cking desert.

[Bird on a Fire]

Hmmm.

That explanation also covers Albuquerque.

[cvb]

History is all "Just So" stories that the winners of wars use to justify their naked aggression. And any history that invokes deities, doubly so.

A lot of mainstream history certainly is that, including a lot of what is taught in schools. I recently read Natives by Akala, which (alongside interesting contemporary social issues about race) redresses a lot of the stories told about the British Empire as a widely-beloved, basically decent civilising force in the wider world.

Only the British themselves think the empire was widely beloved. The rest of the empire knew they were being f.cked over.

[Bird on a Fire]

History is all "Just So" stories that the winners of wars use to justify their naked aggression. And any history that invokes deities, doubly so.

A lot of mainstream history certainly is that, including a lot of what is taught in schools. I recently read Natives by Akala, which (alongside interesting contemporary social issues about race) redresses a lot of the stories told about the British Empire as a widely-beloved, basically decent civilising force in the wider world.

Only the British themselves think the empire was widely beloved. The rest of the empire knew they were being f.cked over.

Well yes, at least at the time - there is of course a danger that if dominant narratives go unchallenged in the mainstream than revisionist views can spread. For example, the ancestors of most "Bring back the Empire" Brits would probably have been severely exploited during that period.

I was really just trying to address Don's sweeping statement that history is all about winners justifying agression, when there is plenty of history written from other perspectives. It does however seem to be true that within a culture the dominant narrative is generally one of self-justification.

Some interesting counter-histories include Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America, Vijay Prashad's The Darker Nations and Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, alongside for example works written from an explicitly Marxist perspective, like Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution and its sequels.

[Sciolus]

The relevant chapter is the eighth, "Rice Paddies and Math Tests" from Outliers. Quoting a few other details of the argument, for interest:

"The thing about wet-rice farming is, not only do you need phenomenal amounts of labor, but it's very exacting," says the historian Kenneth Pomerantz. "You have to care. It really matters that the field is perfectly leveled before you flood it. Getting it close to level but not quite right makes a big difference in terms of your yield. It really matters that the water is in the fields for just the right amount of time. There's a big difference between lining up the seedlings at exactly the right distance and doing it sloppily. It's not like you put the corn in the ground in mid-March and as long as rain comes by the end of the month, you're okay. You're controlling all the inputs in a very direct way. And when you have something that requires that much care, the overlord has to have a system that gives the actual laborer some set of incentives, where if the harvest comes out well, the farmer gets a bigger share. That's why you get fixed rents, where the landlord says, I get twenty bushels, regardless of the harvest, and if it's really good, you get the extra. It's a crop that doesn't do very well with something like slavery or wage labor. It would just be too easy to leave the gate that controls the irrigation water open a few seconds too long and there goes your field."

The colonies of South Carolina and Georgia prospered and amassed great wealth from rice planting, based on the slave labor obtained from the Senegambia area of West Africa and from coastal Sierra Leone. ... Enslaved Africans cleared the land, diked the marshes and built the irrigation system, skimming the freshwater layer off the high tide, flushing the fields, and adjusting the water level to the development stage of the rice.

So much for that theory then.

[Bird on a Fire]

The relevant chapter is the eighth, "Rice Paddies and Math Tests" from Outliers. Quoting a few other details of the argument, for interest:

"The thing about wet-rice farming is, not only do you need phenomenal amounts of labor, but it's very exacting," says the historian Kenneth Pomerantz. "You have to care. It really matters that the field is perfectly leveled before you flood it. Getting it close to level but not quite right makes a big difference in terms of your yield. It really matters that the water is in the fields for just the right amount of time. There's a big difference between lining up the seedlings at exactly the right distance and doing it sloppily. It's not like you put the corn in the ground in mid-March and as long as rain comes by the end of the month, you're okay. You're controlling all the inputs in a very direct way. And when you have something that requires that much care, the overlord has to have a system that gives the actual laborer some set of incentives, where if the harvest comes out well, the farmer gets a bigger share. That's why you get fixed rents, where the landlord says, I get twenty bushels, regardless of the harvest, and if it's really good, you get the extra. It's a crop that doesn't do very well with something like slavery or wage labor. It would just be too easy to leave the gate that controls the irrigation water open a few seconds too long and there goes your field."

The colonies of South Carolina and Georgia prospered and amassed great wealth from rice planting, based on the slave labor obtained from the Senegambia area of West Africa and from coastal Sierra Leone. ... Enslaved Africans cleared the land, diked the marshes and built the irrigation system, skimming the freshwater layer off the high tide, flushing the fields, and adjusting the water level to the development stage of the rice.

So much for that theory then.

I'm not sure I follow?

Can you explain how the but you've quoted contradicts the bit I quoted?

[Sciolus]

Pomerantz says rice farming doesn't work with slave labour. Wiki says people got rich farming rice with slave labour. There could be ways to square that circle, but if the argument is that rice farming both requires and creates a self-sufficient mind-set -- well, it seems a pretty compelling counterexample.