[ExI] dr suess

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Mar 6, 2021, at 12:56 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> I read where someone's opinion was that the Japanese took baseball, our tech, and that's all.  Their ethos did not change a bit.   bill w

Do you believe that? It sounds like a rather shallow view of cultural exchange. Like someone who said it doesn’t know much of how the Meiji Restoration affected Japan. (Or how, even before they, Japan had other outside influences. Read up on how Buddhism and Confucianism spread in Japan and contact with Europeans in 16th century.)

And this isn’t to ignore that the Meiji elites actually sent out people to learn Western methods of agriculture, industry, and warfare. But cultural exchange is never fully under control from the top.

In answer to Spike’s earlier comment, my amateur historian view here is Japan as a nation state got its act together quickly. China had plenty of foreign influence early, but much of it included direct foreign encroachment. China also suffered severe internal disruptions, including the Taiping Rebellion, which might’ve killed as many as 30 million people. (This was orders of magnitude more severe and last years. Meiji Japan has nothing to compare with it. The Satsuma Rebellion, for instance, killed maybe 40 thousand and lasted a few months. And the disruption caused by it didn’t cripple Japan, and there was no large scale foreign intervention.)

Regards,

Dan
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