Why is India and the middle east so good at creating religions?
They had complex societies and soul.Contemporary Europeans and East Asians lack one or both.
Remove India from that sentence and you're right.
>>17085841something in the water.
>>17085907The Indian Ocean?
>>17085869India is the Holy Land of East Asia
The Near East and South Asia are the earliest cradles of civilization. At least in the post-Ice Age era.
>>17085935Unfortunately. Ideally everyone in the Republic of India is exterminated and replaced by Tibeto-Burmese and Sinic Buddhists
>>17085944East Asia is another cradle and created nothing of value
>>17085954The people that originated in Manchuria ended up being very influential. The people that originated around the Yellow and Yangtze rivers seem to be a waste of space.Han Chinese did create and innovate many things but at what cost? If that dominion over that span of time had belonged to ANY other group it would have been far more productive. Their culture is a clusterfuck and their language is the biggest clusterfuck. Han and Sincism arguably held back human development and quality of life. It's unforgiveable.
>>17085995Imagine if the Japanese had controlled that area for the same amount of time and Han Chinese were a rare ethnicity of ooga boogas between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Humans would be living on Mars and Venus right now.
>>17085954They created Han Chinese pussy which White men fuck by the billions. Tribute for BWC.
>>17085841Indian and Magian (MENA + Iran) Civilizations are heavily oriented around metaphysics and getting in touch with the Absolute and Traditional world, while other civilizations are more oriented around living in the world as we see it, with religions being more of a civic and practical affair - see Confucianism or Shintoism, which are mostly about setting up and maintaining a social order, and require Taoism or Buddhism to fill in for the metaphysical element, or Graeco-Roman paganism, which was displaced by Christianity because the metaphysical elements of paganism had been hollowed out by the pre and post Socratics and Stoicism. That's the long and short of it.>>17085869>>17085953Jai Hind, now and forever
>>17086256>while other civilizations are more oriented around living in the world as we see it,That's Hinduism too. Many Hindus are deist, agnostic or atheist. Pantheism can also be have a pro-worldly bent.
>>17085841For India, it's unironically the warm climate that always made it possible for people to just lollygag outside and meditate, without spending too much time to feed and clothe yourself (in tropical countries you can easily feed edible plants)
>>17086286Some Hindus, but most are believers in divinity in some sort, and even the atheistic are practical theists in their behaviour. The monistic attitude of Indian civilization doesn't posit an absolute separation and opposition of the phenomenal and nominal world, so the pantheists are hardly irreligious.The actually atheistic side of India was expressed in early Buddhism, and it died out precisely because it's sidestepping of metaphysics made it insufficiently spiritual for Indians long term.
>>17086256>Indian and Magian (MENA + Iran) CivilizationsYou mean Iran_N civilization.
>>17086301I'm using Spengler's classification.Spengler classified Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism, Early and Orthodox Christianity as Magian on the basis of their metaphysical and moralistic dualism, the welding together of temporal power and spiritual authority (Caliphate, caesaropapism), the belief in a metaphysical battle between good and evil that ends with the arrival of a messianic figure and a day of judgement, and the use of faith to demarcate the believer from the unbeliever, faith being what constitutes a "nation" from a Magian perspective (Christendom, ummah, etc).So the areas of the Byzantine empire, the Ummayad and Abbasid Caliphate, and the various Iranian and Jewish Kingdoms and empires are Magian.
>>17086339>Early and Orthodox Christianity as Magian on the basis of their metaphysical and moralistic dualismWhat does this mean? Why them and not say Latin Catholicism or Nestorianism?Oriental and Eastern Orthodox are two distinct sects that are not in communion.
>>17086339Spengler was wrong. It's now known all those civilizations you mentioned are part of Iran_N civilization.
>>17086380Catholicism effectively became the religion of Western civilization (really Germanic if we're being accurate) especially after the East West schism of 1054. Spengler viewed Western culture as starting around the 9th century, and the 1054 split as confirmation of the split between Western and Magian civilization.The chief differences he saw between the two were the centralised nature of Catholicism in the hierarchy helmed by the Papacy, the temporal-spiritual split between Pope and Emperor, the highly rational and doctrinal nature of Catholicism, versus the mystical, communal and decentralised nature of Orthodoxy, which brought it much more in line with the Middle East and Iran instead of Western Europe.>>17086405Civilizations are spiritual entities. Reducing them to a mere quirky of genetics is silly, and the Iran_N proves nothing.
>>17086461And you choose to be Hindu why, or are you?Where do you expect to be in the aftermath?
>>17086497* afterlife
>>17086497>>17086565Either overcoming samsara and reunifying with Brahman or returning back to earth for another round of life
>>17086256But why are they more metaphysically oriented?>>17086339>>17086461Why use Spengler's definitions?>Civilizations are spiritual entitiesWhy?
>>17085841Early adoption of writing helped to codify and spread religion.
>>17086621And do you expect to be reborn intoA) India?B) a Hindu family?
>>17086744>But why are they more metaphysically oriented?Historical civilizations, like the West and China, view the phenomenal world that we live in as a place where things have reality and purpose, and are driven to make things in the real world that have duration. They're focussed heavily on recording history and dating events, tracking ancestry and lineage, particularly of the noble houses. In terms of philosophy, ethics - what is the right action, what is the wrong action, and why - is the chief focus, because it has practical impacts on how society and people conduct themselves.Ahistorical civilizations like Greece and India, and Magian civilization to a lesser extent, view the world of Becoming as something unreal, something like a riddle to be worked out so as to get to realm of Being. Metaphysics take priority before ethics because they view reality as an illusion>Why use Spengler's definitions?Why not?>Why?What part of your biology teaches you to speak Latin or Sanskrit? If the rise of the West, Rome and China is simply a factor of genetic, why did these happen at different time periods - in the case of the West, there's roughly 1000 years between Rome reaching it's cultural peak in the Punic wars and Germanic civilization beginning with the crowning of the Carolingians. What section of your genome makes you inclined to atheism, pantheism, or monotheism? Is there a chromosome that can explain how the Mongols burst out onto the world scene, formed one of the largest land empires the world had ever seen, and cause nightmares for the Slavs, the Chinese and the Muslims for centuries, only to disappear into an irrelevant land locked state in the present?A purely materialist, biological worldview is insufficient to explain the grand tapestry of human history and civilization.Reducing language, culture, belief, ideology, social structures and philosophy to a function of your cells is farcical.>>17086791No clue. It's be nice if I did though.
>>17086951What I originally wanted to hear was some kind of causal explanation for why some civilizations might be focused on metaphysics and others not. But you have now said many things to which I take exception. I cannot make myself believe that any of those civilizations you named are "ahistorical", and I do not see why they would be, or how their relationship to the past, or to the future, was substantially different from those of other premodern cultures: it seems that history, for the Indian, the Greek, the Magian, and the Chinese performed the same series of functions: to safeguard the achievements of past generations; to provide ethical and religious precepts; and to display general patterns which would be applicable in the future, etc.. As regards the validity of Spengler's definitions, or the existence of cultures as spiritual entities. I do not wish in any sense deny the spiritual aspect of life, but I rather quarrel with the idea that civilizations are entities in any real sense. Rather, what we call cultures or civilizations seem to be assemblages, both of material and spiritual things, on which people retroactively attempt to impose a sense of unity, whether mentally or materially. But any attempt to identify a given culture or civilization with a definite idea is bound to fail: reality is always too multifarious to be pent under our concepts..
>>17086951>No clue. It's be nice if I did though.Have you considered that Hinduism and reincarnation aren't actually true?
>>17087110I've considered it. After a long period of philosophical speculation and religious experience, I've concluded they are true.
>>17087144The fact that Hinduism is a somewhat geographically contained religion, and the fact that it has a caste system that most people consider unjust, doesn't make you think otherwise?Even before industrialization and modernization, there have been Hindus fleeing their own religion en masse to other religions for thousands of years, especially those from disenfranchised castes and tribes.
>>17086951>Is there a chromosome that can explain how the Mongols burst out onto the world scene, formed one of the largest land empires the world had ever seen, and cause nightmares for the Slavs, the Chinese and the Muslims for centuries, only to disappear into an irrelevant land locked state in the present?Says who? Mongols emigrated across Eurasia. There's ethnic Mongols in China, southern Siberia, Southern Russia and in the form of Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan.Several Turkic dynasties descended from the Mongol dynasty, and many lasted into the 1700s to 1900s. Within half a century the Mongol Empire stopped wielding power from Mongolia. It wielded it from Central Asia, China, the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, and West Asia.
>>17087309>The fact that Hinduism is a somewhat geographically contained religion1 in 6 people worldwide are Hindus. I don't think you understand how absolutely massive India is, not just in size, but sheer human density. You've also got the Balinese, Vietnamese, Surinamese, Guyanese and Carribbean Hindus, as well as african and European Hindus through ISKCON and other proselytising organisations, so it's hardly geographically restricted. More than that, Buddhism outside India effectively became the means by which the rest of Asia became Indianised, as Mahayana and Vajrayana is basically Hinduism for non-Indians.>the fact that it has a caste system that most people consider unjustPeople are fundamentally unequal, that's a fact, and no amount of resentment about that fact will change that. The caste system was a consequence of having so many psychologically and physically different people inhabit the same space. It's not perfect, but the alternatives are forcibly intermix everyone into mystery meat i.e. globohomo, or mass genocide. The caste system's actually very good at preserving a diversity of races and cultures.>Even before industrialization and modernization, there have been Hindus fleeing their own religion en masse to other religions for thousands of years, especially those from disenfranchised castes and tribes.India has been subject to various Islamic invasions for over a millennia, and several centuries of Christian rule. Even with that, the vast majority of the subcontinent, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, is majority Hindu and the percentage of Christians across the subcontinent is less than 2% given the total population, and this is largely restricted to Pakistan, and the North East of India which was largely inhabited by tribals who were never substantially influenced by Hinduism to begin.Most Hindus who experienced Islam or Christianity rejected them, and those who did go over ended up forming new castes anyway. It's s built into India
>>17085841Crossroads of civilizations where ideas and religions have converged for thousands of years leading to spiritual creativity and creation of new pantheons in response to ever changing societal structure brought on by things like agriculture, coinage, invasions and globalism.
>>17087438>1 in 6 people worldwide are Hindus. I don't think you understand how absolutely massive India is, not just in size, but sheer human density.That's literally what I said. Hinduism is "somewhat geographically contained". Hindus inside South Asia have been leaving it en masse for thousands of years. Most Hindus in Southeast Asia already left. Only some communities continue to practice a form of it. East Asia never really practiced it. Most Hindus elsewhere are from South Asia who emigrated elsewhere.Hinduism never took hold in any part of Africa or Europe or West Asia during the Middle Ages or Early Modern Age. The true religion of God or the universe needs to be widespread across the Old World. Otherwise, it's merely the creation of man in one part of the world.>The caste system was a consequence of having so many psychologically and physically different people inhabit the same space. It's not perfect, but the alternatives are forcibly intermix everyone into mystery meatThe different peoples of South Asia did mix, and even Hindu nationalists claim that Aryans and Dravidians share the same ancestries and therefore shouldn't be held separately. So what you're asserting in favor of casteism failed a long time ago.>Most Hindus who experienced Islam or Christianity rejected them, and those who did go over ended up forming new castes anyway. It's s built into IndiaEven before Islam and Christianity, Indian Hindus had been leaving the religion for Buddhism. Saying that most Hindus rejected them is false. Most Hindus in Southeast Asia left a long time ago to embrace Islam and Buddhism and later Christianity.
