True Left

A hydraulic empire (also known as a hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water. It arises through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.[1]
...
Most of the first civilizations in history, such as Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Sri Lanka, and Pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru, are believed to have been hydraulic empires.[citation needed] The Indus Valley civilization is often considered a hydraulic empire despite a lack of evidence of irrigation (as this evidence may have been lost in time due to flood damage).

Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power is a book of political theory and comparative history by Karl August Wittfogel (1896–1988) published by Yale University Press in 1957. The book offers an explanation for the despotic governments in "Oriental" societies, where control of water was necessary for irrigation and flood-control. Managing these projects required large-scale bureaucracies, which dominated the economy, society, and religious life. This despotism differed from the Western experience, where power was distributed among contending groups.
...
Lattimore, who shared Wittfogel's interest in ecological structures and material conditions, argued that the history of Inner Asia was dominated by the interaction between settled agricultural societies that flourished in the relatively well-watered rim and the pastoral societies that survived in arid Central Asia.

Western civilization has been the single most war-ridden, war-
dominated, and militaristic civilization in all human history.
Robert Nisbet

horse riding and tribal raiding were indeed key
elements in the migratory movements of Indo-Europeans. The
significance of horse riding was that it "greatly increased the
effectiveness and the scale of herding," which led to the
accumulation of larger herds, which necessitated larger
pastures, which in turn intensified tribal alliances and
conflicts.8 It has been estimated that horse-riding would have
allowed for the use of territories up to five times larger than
otherwise.9

Horse riding increased the efficiency of surprise attacks and
retreats in raiding. Cunliffe notes that horse-riding probably
increased the overall speed of movement by about ten times.
Gimbutas estimates that a horse could carry a rider 20-30 miles
in one day—that is, about 4 to 5 times the distance traveled on
foot. "
In light of these facts, including the points presented in Part
One on the pastoral way of life of the IE migrants, one could
safely say that, starting in the fifth millennium and through the
fourth millennium, the Indo-Europeans initiated a most
dynamic way of life driven by the invention of wheeled
vehicles, the secondary products revolution, horseback riding,
large-scale herding, and aggressive raiding.

There is no denying, however, that Drews puts together a
superb case envisioning the arrival of the Mycenaeans as a
conquest by a class of chariot-warriors ("big men, taller and
broader" than the typical native inhabitants) rather than a
migration of impoverished pastoralists who had been evicted
from their original homeland and were seeking new lands "in
which to make an honest living."13

I think we miss much if we forget the aristocratic context of
these migrations, the constant competition for prestige and
honor among the noble elites, and the fact that the excess of
young men who were pushed or pulled to migrate were finely
built characters eager for adventure and joy within a culture
that afforded them with the opportunity to express themselves
as individuals and expected them to be jealous of their tribe's
dignity, as well as their own.

Let me start addressing this restless ethos by drawing attention
to the fact that the major themes of IE poetry revolved around
the heroic deeds, immortality, and fame of individual men.
Poets were highly respected in IE societies; they were not only
the repositories and transmitters of the overall cultural
knowledge but were also entrusted with singing the praises of
heroes. The preoccupation with going into battle in order to
seek personal recognition found expression in such poetic
phrases as "imperishable fame" and "to overcome death."
Fortson writes that a warrior valued battle above all else
because it afforded the opportunity to attain fame, which
brought immortality, and in this sense fame was a way of
overcoming death. 0

Combined with this heroic poetry was a highly individuated
mode of reckless but "glorious" fighting. Michael Speidel, in a
captivating paper, argues that "an outstanding feature of Indo-
European culture" was a style of "berserk-like" fighting in
which individual warriors would throw off armor or garments
in sight of the enemy, "showing off their utter fearlessness,"
rushing ahead yelling and "raging uncontrollably in a trance of
fury." "Flashing eyes, frenzy, and swirling-storm tactics are
customs natural to berserk-like warriors everywhere."23
...
Speidel cites numerous documentary sources, Roman writers,
mythological stories, and sagas showing that this style of
fighting—"naked, shouting, barefoot, flowing-haired, and often
in single combat"—was "for love of fame and out of daring."
The less protected the body and the greater the capacity to
sustain pain and maintain one's courage and "willfulness"
unbroken, the more heroic and human the fighter was in the
eyes of his peers.

The single and singular warrior in combat was idolized. Having
the opportunity to fight in this way, the "freedom...to outdo
other warriors" was the "highest happiness." A life that lacked
deeds was the "greatest grief."26 The "manhood" of warriors
depended on deeds of berserk daring.

This psychological state
of fighting—the wild, beast-like howling and "stormy
unruliness"—carried to an extreme the individuality and
singularity of the warrior. The etymology of "gone berserk"
stresses the "trance-like state madness" of fighters, their
animalized transfiguration into wild creatures, a bear or a wolf,
separated from social controls of any kind, in an utter state of
fury (furor, menos, or wut).27

Azar Gat, in his
recent book, War in Human Civilization, admits that pastoral
peoples exhibited a higher disposition for warfare than non-
pastoral cultures.

John Keegan, in his
encyclopedic study, A History of Warfare, is quite definitive in
his assessment that the pastoral peoples of the steppes,
Scythians, Huns, Mongols, were a "new sort of people" in
being "warriors for war's sake, for the loot it brought, the risks,
the thrill, the animal satisfactions of triumph."

if we agree that the IE were a people of
the steppes, the first horseback riders and inventors of chariots,
we can make the inference that they were the first peoples from
the steppes to engage in warfare for the sake of the joys, the
risks, and the prestige it brought.

young pastoralists had to "learn to kill, and to
select for killing" their domesticated animals. "It was flock
management, as much as slaughter and butchery, which made
the pastoralists so cold-bloodedly adept at confronting the
sedentary agriculturalists."33

The IE economic lifestyle included fierce competition for
grazing rights for specific areas, constant alertness in the
defense of one's portable wealth, and an expansionist
disposition in a world in which competing herdsmen were
motivated to seek new pastures as well as tempted to take the
movable wealth (cattle) of their neighbors. This life required
not just the skills of a butcher but a life span of horsemanship
and arms which brought to the fore certain mental dispositions
including aggressiveness and individualism, in the sense that
each individual, in this male-oriented atmosphere, needed to
become as much a warrior as a herdsman.

Indo-Europeans were also uniquely ruled by a class of free
aristocrats. In very broad terms, I define as "aristocratic" a state
in which the ruler, the king, or the commander-in-chief is not
an autocrat who treats the upper classes as unequal servants but
is a "peer," who exists in a spirit of equality as one more
warrior of noble birth.

Let me pull together a number of traits I have found in the
literature which, in their combination, point to a life of
aristocratic equality and, in Nietzsche's words, of "vigorous,
free, joyful activity." First, all IE cultures from the "earliest"
times in the fifth millennium—when ranking was just
emerging—have seen the presence of warriors who sought to
demonstrate their standing and wealth, by dressing in
"ostentatious" ways; for example, with long or multiple belts
and necklaces of copper beads, copper rings, copper spiral
bracelets, gold fittings in their spears and javelins—with
variations of styles depending on place and time but all
demonstrative of an "individualizing ideology."
...
Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the first century
BC, had this to say of the Celts: "The clothing they wear is striking:
tunics and breeches dyed and embroidered in various colours....
They wear bracelets on their wrists and arms, and heavy necklaces of
solid gold, rings of great value and even corselets."

Second, the IE warriors "were interred as personalities
showing off the equipment of life and their personal position in
a final coup de theatre, rather than joining a more anonymous
community of ancestors."35 Kurgan burials commemorated the
deaths of special males; the stone circles and mounds, and the
emphasis on "prestige weapons and insignia," were intended to
isolate and self-aggrandize the achievements of warriors.

Third, IE aristocrats developed a distinctive tradition of
feasting and drinking, in which "individual hospitality rather
than great communal ceremonies" dominated the occasions.
These feasts—backed by a "prestige goods economy"—were
"cheerful" events of gift-giving and gift-taking, performance of
praise poetry, and animal sacrifices.3

They were also an opportunity for the less
powerful or younger warriors to attach themselves to patrons
who offered opportunities for loot and glory. The more
followers the patron could recruit, the greater the expectation
of success and loot to be gained by all.

Fourth, as Gimbutas has clearly articulated, and as Anthony
has further noted, this was a culture in which "all [the] most
important deities lived in the sky." While Gimbutas described
these sky gods in negative terms as the gods of a belligerent
people, one may see them as the gods of an energetic, life-
affirming people whose gods were personified as celestial
heroes and chieftains.
The sky-gods of the Indo-Europeans reflected—to use the
words of Christopher Dawson—their "intensely masculine and
warlike ethics, their mobility."

The relationship between the chief and his followers was
personal and contractual: the followers would volunteer to be
bound to the leader by oaths of loyalty wherein they would
promise to assist him while the leader would promise to reward
them from successful raids. The sovereignty of each member
was thus recognized even though there was a recognized
leader, "the first among equals." These "groups of comrades,"
to use IE vocabulary, were singularly dedicated to predatory
behavior and to "wolf-like" living by hunting and raiding, and
to the performance of superior, even superhuman deeds.4

In contrast to the
radical transformations we saw in Europe, the IE invaders who
came into Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia were eventually
assimilated to the far more advanced civilizations of this
region.
...
It is noteworthy that they borrowed Hattic words for "throne,"
"king," "heir apparent," and for a wide variety of bureaucratic
positions or functions—which are indicative of IE
acculturation to non-aristocratic forms of government.

The Vedas pictured a people of enormous pride
with a fondness for feasting, dancing, and for making war.

But while the Rig-Veda was "decidedly pastoral" in its values
and practices, the number of non-Indo-European words
contained in the 1,028 hymns of this classic text suggest "a
close cultural relationship" between Indo-Iranian speakers and
4 8 the old native folk. The Indie speakers who moved into the
Indus valley came into an area already inhabited by a civilized
culture known as "Harappan," and as the Indo-Europeans
penetrated deeper through the Ganges south to Banaras, in the
course of centuries, "they gradually gave up their pastoral
habits and settled into agricultural life." 9

This settled agriculture involved the cultivation of semi-arid
areas by means of river irrigation. As the Rig-Veda reported,
"They made fair fertile fields, they brought the rivers. Plants
spread everywhere over the desert, waters filled the hollows."50
Now, the importance of this point, which I can only outline
here, is that this river-based agriculture took on an "agro-
bureaucratic" character; centralized patterns of irrigation and
social control became the order of the day in the effective
handling of water supplies (canals, aqueducts, reservoirs and
dikes).

Similarly, the pastoralists who moved into the land of Iran
came to fall within the orbit of a hydraulic system of
agriculture and a form of "despotic" rule

we
should not underestimate the oppressive character of the
Achaemenid monarchy as symbolized in the uniquely Eastern
practice of prostration.5 4

He
reports a speech made by Callisthenes, a pupil of Aristotle, to
Alexander and his elite companions, in which he derided the homage
of prostration as a "humiliating custom,"

The humanistic idea underlying this
transformation was the assumption that, if culture be
conceived as a 'privilege' due to 'noble birth,' there can
be no higher claim to such a privilege than that inherent
in the nature of man as a rational being. Thus instead of
vulgarizing that which was noble, the cultural
development of Greece ennobled the whole human race
by offering it a programme for a higher form of life, the
life of reason.68

There were no
Possessors of the Way in aristocratic Greece; no Chinese Sages
decorously deferential to their superiors and expecting
appropriate deference from their inferiors. The search for the
truth was a free-for-all, each philosopher competing for
intellectual prestige, in a polemical tone that sought to discredit
the theories of others and to promote one's own.6

Far more that their counterparts in most other ancient
civilizations, Greek doctors, philosophers, sophists,
even mathematicians, were alike faced with an openly
competitive situation of great intensity. While the
modalities of their rivalries varied, in each the
premium, to a greater or less degree, was on skills of
self-justification and self-advertisement, and this had
far-reaching consequences for the way they practiced
their investigations as well as on how they presented
their results.

the roots of the West are to be found in a profoundly
different aristocratic character that first came into the light of
history in the Pontic steppes.

Of particular interest to us are the common features of archaic Indo-European peoples, which continue to shape modern Indo-European-derived beliefs and institutions. As the French folklorist Georges Dumézil has pointed out, one of the principal characteristics of early Indo-European societies is a hierarchical, three-tiered or “tripartite” class structure of priests, warriors, and herder-cultivators. This structure appears to be racially rooted and prefigures many of the societal characteristics we now think of as typically Western or European.

The Indo-Europeanist J.P. Mallory has pointed out one of the central elements of this Indo-European three-class society:

• ne of the more obvious symbols of social tripartition is colour, emphasized by the fact that both ancient India and Iran expressed the concept of caste with the word for colour (varna). A survey of the social significance of different colours is fairly clear cut, at least for the first two functions. Indo-Iranian, Hittite, Celtic and Latin ritual all assign white to priests and red to the warrior. The third would appear to have been marked by a darker colour such as black or blue.1
  
  The racial symbolism of such caste colors is obvious, with the higher ranks of society being symbolized by the color associated with the lighter-skinned Aryans and the lower ranks symbolized by the darker hues of the conquered non-Aryan races.
  
  Indeed, racial consciousness among the early Aryans was commonplace. Romila Thapar, a modern Indian scholar, writes:
  
  The first step in the direction of caste (as distinct from class) was taken when the Aryans treated the Dasas [non-Aryans] as beyond the social pale, probably owing to a fear of the Dasas and the even greater fear that assimilation with them would lead to a loss of Aryan identity. Ostensibly the distinction was largely that of colour, the Dasas being darker and of an alien culture . . . The colour-element of caste was emphasized, throughout this period, and was eventually to become deep-rooted in north-Indian Aryan culture. Initially, therefore, the division was between the Aryans and the non-Aryans.2
  
  The Laws of Manu, the ancient Sanskrit code of social obligations for Hinduism, is very explicit about the consequences of interracial marriage:
  
  An unknown man, of no (visible) class but born of a defiled womb and no Aryan, may seem to have the form of an Aryan, but he can be discovered by his own innate activities. Un-Aryan behaviour, harshness, cruelty, and habitual failure to perform the rituals are the manifestations in this world indicating that a man is born of a defiled womb . . . But the kingdom in which these degraded bastards are born, defiling the classes, quickly perishes, together with the people who live there.3
  
  
  ...
  
  Moreover, the separation of the military and religious functions into distinct classes points to an early Indo-European tendency toward a distinction between the sacred and the secular that seems to be entirely unique to the Indo-European peoples and which may be the foundation of the later differentiation of science and philosophy from religion in European society, as well as the source of the conflict between secular and ecclesiastical authority in European history.
  
  Finally, this ordering of society and social function was conceived as having supernatural or cosmic sanction and was held to be in accord with the order of nature. Some scholars believe that the tripartite structure of Indo-European society survived into medieval Europe with the division of society into “those who work, those who fight, and those who pray,” and it may also be reflected in the division of political functions into executive, judicial, and legislative in the U.S. Constitution, and even in the Christian idea of the Trinity.
  
  ...
  
  Of particular interest to us are the common features of archaic Indo-European peoples, which continue to shape modern Indo-European-derived beliefs and institutions. As the French folklorist Georges Dumézil has pointed out, one of the principal characteristics of early Indo-European societies is a hierarchical, three-tiered or “tripartite” class structure of priests, warriors, and herder-cultivators. This structure appears to be racially rooted and prefigures many of the societal characteristics we now think of as typically Western or European.
  
  The Indo-Europeanist J.P. Mallory has pointed out one of the central elements of this Indo-European three-class society:
  
  
• ne of the more obvious symbols of social tripartition is colour, emphasized by the fact that both ancient India and Iran expressed the concept of caste with the word for colour (varna). A survey of the social significance of different colours is fairly clear cut, at least for the first two functions. Indo-Iranian, Hittite, Celtic and Latin ritual all assign white to priests and red to the warrior. The third would appear to have been marked by a darker colour such as black or blue.1
  
  ...
  
  (2) Faustian dynamism: This is the quality that Oswald Spengler described as the unique trait of what he called the “Western Culture,” characterized by the “Faustian soul, whose prime-symbol is pure and limitless space, and whose ‘body’ is the Western Culture.”8 In a general sense, Spengler is referring to the innovative, aggressive, creative, mobile, aspiring, inventive, and daring qualities that have always characterized Indo-Europeans.
  
  ...
  
  The dynamism of the early Aryans is also clear in their interest in travel, maritime exploration, colonization, and discovery. The Semitic Phoenicians also displayed great skill in this regard, but the Greeks equalled or excelled them in establishing colonies throughout the Mediterranean, exploring the Atlantic and African coasts, and penetrating as far as the Indian Ocean and the Far East, perhaps even circumnavigating Africa. The most famous traveler of antiquity was the historian Herodotus, who traveled all over the Near East and Egypt and invented the very concept of history in his account of his travels and the conflict between Greece and Persia.
  
  ...
  
  But Aryan dynamism is not confined to military conquest and geographical exploration. It is also clear in the Faustian demand to understand nature. Just as Aryan warrior nomads overturned whatever cities and peoples stood in their path, so Aryan scholars and scientists, beginning with the Ionian philosophers of early Greece, have conquered nature and its mysteries, discarding myths, religions, and superstitions when they presented obstacles to their knowledge, and systematizing their discoveries and thought according to the Cosmic Order. Alexander the Great’s solution of the Gordian Knot by simply slashing it to pieces with his sword is no less a racial trait of Aryans than the scientific achievements of Plato and Aristotle, Galileo and Newton, and hundreds of other scientists who were heirs of the ancient Aryans and who slashed through obscurantism and mythologies with their minds. Their descendants have cured diseases, shrunk distances, raised cities out of jungles and deserts, constructed technologies that replace and transcend human strength, restored lost languages, recovered forgotten histories, stared into the hearts of distant galaxies, and reached into the recesses of the atom. No other people has ever even dreamed of these achievements, and in so far as other peoples even know such things are possible, it is because they have learned about them from European Man.
  
  Afrocentrists, in their resentful and pathetic bitterness against whites, today pretend that it was their ancestors who created European civilization. The irony of their pretense is that their claims inadvertently acknowledge the superiority of the very civilization they hate, even as they try to claim it as their own. As for other civilized peoples, the Faustian dynamism of the Aryan race and civilization stand in stark contrast to the static primitivism and never-changing dullness that characterize the “fellahin” peoples of Asia, immersed in the fatalism and world-denying religions of the East. In travelogues and National Geographic, we are treated to picturesque accounts of the almost animal existences of these peoples, whose lives, work, and minds are often described as being “just what their ancestors were a thousand years ago.” No phrase more accurately describes the differences between the perpetual passivity of the non-Aryan and the world-conquering activism and dynamism of the Aryans.

Over the course of the past week I’ve eaten clams, eggs, lobster, butter, cheese and steak, among other things (I’m in America). I love nothing more than an animal product. But even I am sometimes lured, out of pervasive social conditioning, by the promise of a vegan brownie, or some such. I find myself thinking: it must be healthy and good for everyone, because it’s vegan.

The delusion doesn’t last long: the first bite, and the slight bloating that follows, is a swift reminder that often the vegan sell is pure rubbish: instead of wholesome things like cream and butter, there’s just more sugar and chemicals. Ditto other vegan recipes, which include non-nutritious, fattening things like pasta and chips.
...
Earlier this year, the Cambridge student union, responding to the “climate and biodiversity crises”, voted to rid all its canteens and cafés of animal products. Lovely buttery scones and cheese and ham paninis out: lentil gruel, sugary, greasy brownies, and chemical-rich tofu in.
...
As a result, they end up tired, anaemic and underperforming. Is this the outcome we want at one of the world’s best universities?

Zoe Strimpel

55% of your DNA is European Abbo, people who were themselves a mix of Middle Eastern Anatolians and local Hunter Gatherers. Either way, a completely unimpressive race that never built civilization and then got conquered by the swarthy Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Native races of Egypt, India, Mesopotamia & China built civilization.

Your homeland figures nowhere.

Vegetarianism was supposed to be an ascetic ideal for philosopher-rishis and priests, not a mandatory dietary prescription for kids.

Anyway, vegetarians can get enough protein if they use whey isolate powder and drink a lot of milk.

i’m not a vegetarian but I can fully admit that vegetarianism is the moral, spiritual & environmentally superior choice. No arguments needed. Period