"Pre-Christian Rome was very much a society concerned with achieving social order. The Roman lack of concern with the monotheist good-versus-evil dichotomy is why this highly ordered society — which created the first great legal order — can seem wildly amoral (or worse) to us."
But weren't the Greeks also concerned with social order, and wasn't the Roman pagan pantheon (largely?) copied from the Greeks? Also, weren't the gods in that pantheon very anthropomorphized, such that they had both beneficent and protective natures, plus self interest as to their relative power and therefore somewhat predatory on both other gods and on mankind? I.e., they had a range of personality quirks that needed careful interpretation by the priests and priestesses guiding the worship of these deities?
Why aren't the Greeks recognized for, or responsible for, a "great" legal order of their own? Did the relative size (and pluralism?) of the Roman empire end up introducing situations with which the Greeks did not need to attend? [The conquests by Alexander did not remain integrated to create a comparable empire?]
The Romans developed a larger and more complex society than the average Greek city state. The Romans developed legal reasoning rather than philosophical reasoning. Greek legal reasoning was much more under-developed than Roman law, so no the Greeks were not noted for their law and legal reasoning. The Persians were, if anything, better at law, hence the Hellenistic kingdoms adopted a lot of local practices.
The Roman and Greek pantheons were both developments of the Indo-European pantheon. The somewhat cavalier nature of the deities reflected this hope of order and fear of chaos. You placated them so they would be ordering.
A remarkable break-down, and build-up of what we have today in our complex systems of freedom and trade in the western tradition.
We, who reside between the edges of our homogeneous continents, indeed take for granted our natural shorelines as defensive walls. We forget our geographic luck to our peril.
Except those (USA) shorelines as defensive walls work for us against foreign intruders (sort of, given modern naval and missile capabilities), but with the Leftism on both coasts, they also present a semi-defined geographic divide on our political (and social) natures that works against us. And with selective fifth columns in some of the major cities within the red states. Our "shoreline defenders" could turn around on us (which seems to be working pretty well for them so far). "Nice protection racket we are providing for you now. Too bad if you force us into a more predatory posture instead!!"
I was trying to think of any other locales and nations that had a similar "defensive shoreline" perspective. Then I realized that perhaps Chile, Argentina, and Brazil(?) have their second "shoreline" in the Andes. India and the Himalayas?
Of course, similarly, size or distance is useful, too. I wonder if the earliest nomadic raiders crossing the Steppes thought that they could ever run out of land to traverse.
Cultural effects can linger well after technology has changed the dynamics. It is also fairly obvious that the “progressive” coasts lack any strong sense of external threat. Indeed, show an attenuated sense of the problems of social order.
"Cultural effects can linger well after technology has changed the dynamics. "
Great observation.
We typically are told politics is downstream from culture. But you or someone else also said sometimes culture is impacted by politics/law/legislation, so it becomes downstream of law (a feedback loop).
That may help explain why I am having so much trouble understanding Joe Costello's substack: Life in the 21st Century https://joecostello.substack.com .
He seems to be seeking an alternative politics that is more "distributive" and democratic, and that is more responsive and sensitive to the impacts to the environment from technology and our information age intensive lives. This is compared to the supposed current controls and directions imposed by Big Tech and related money influencing forces, that should be countered by a wiser and well informed citizenry via democratic (rather than republican?) mechanisms. But if cultural adjustments lag technological impacts, then politics probably will lag as well. It will be difficult for a democratically derived preference, a change in the culture, to impact politics before "suspect" technological impacts have been occurring.
Perhaps the now rapid focus on AI fits this pattern.
"Pre-Christian Rome was very much a society concerned with achieving social order. The Roman lack of concern with the monotheist good-versus-evil dichotomy is why this highly ordered society — which created the first great legal order — can seem wildly amoral (or worse) to us."
But weren't the Greeks also concerned with social order, and wasn't the Roman pagan pantheon (largely?) copied from the Greeks? Also, weren't the gods in that pantheon very anthropomorphized, such that they had both beneficent and protective natures, plus self interest as to their relative power and therefore somewhat predatory on both other gods and on mankind? I.e., they had a range of personality quirks that needed careful interpretation by the priests and priestesses guiding the worship of these deities?
Why aren't the Greeks recognized for, or responsible for, a "great" legal order of their own? Did the relative size (and pluralism?) of the Roman empire end up introducing situations with which the Greeks did not need to attend? [The conquests by Alexander did not remain integrated to create a comparable empire?]
The Romans developed a larger and more complex society than the average Greek city state. The Romans developed legal reasoning rather than philosophical reasoning. Greek legal reasoning was much more under-developed than Roman law, so no the Greeks were not noted for their law and legal reasoning. The Persians were, if anything, better at law, hence the Hellenistic kingdoms adopted a lot of local practices.
The Roman and Greek pantheons were both developments of the Indo-European pantheon. The somewhat cavalier nature of the deities reflected this hope of order and fear of chaos. You placated them so they would be ordering.
A remarkable break-down, and build-up of what we have today in our complex systems of freedom and trade in the western tradition.
We, who reside between the edges of our homogeneous continents, indeed take for granted our natural shorelines as defensive walls. We forget our geographic luck to our peril.
Beautiful work, Lorenzo.
Except those (USA) shorelines as defensive walls work for us against foreign intruders (sort of, given modern naval and missile capabilities), but with the Leftism on both coasts, they also present a semi-defined geographic divide on our political (and social) natures that works against us. And with selective fifth columns in some of the major cities within the red states. Our "shoreline defenders" could turn around on us (which seems to be working pretty well for them so far). "Nice protection racket we are providing for you now. Too bad if you force us into a more predatory posture instead!!"
I was trying to think of any other locales and nations that had a similar "defensive shoreline" perspective. Then I realized that perhaps Chile, Argentina, and Brazil(?) have their second "shoreline" in the Andes. India and the Himalayas?
Of course, similarly, size or distance is useful, too. I wonder if the earliest nomadic raiders crossing the Steppes thought that they could ever run out of land to traverse.
Cultural effects can linger well after technology has changed the dynamics. It is also fairly obvious that the “progressive” coasts lack any strong sense of external threat. Indeed, show an attenuated sense of the problems of social order.
"Cultural effects can linger well after technology has changed the dynamics. "
Great observation.
We typically are told politics is downstream from culture. But you or someone else also said sometimes culture is impacted by politics/law/legislation, so it becomes downstream of law (a feedback loop).
That may help explain why I am having so much trouble understanding Joe Costello's substack: Life in the 21st Century https://joecostello.substack.com .
He seems to be seeking an alternative politics that is more "distributive" and democratic, and that is more responsive and sensitive to the impacts to the environment from technology and our information age intensive lives. This is compared to the supposed current controls and directions imposed by Big Tech and related money influencing forces, that should be countered by a wiser and well informed citizenry via democratic (rather than republican?) mechanisms. But if cultural adjustments lag technological impacts, then politics probably will lag as well. It will be difficult for a democratically derived preference, a change in the culture, to impact politics before "suspect" technological impacts have been occurring.
Perhaps the now rapid focus on AI fits this pattern.
Great work here!