Thus Spake Zargrabowski/QinShihuangdi

On the movie Hero

g_c_grabowski - 03/22/2004 21:15:30 - raindog@white-wolf.com

I thought it was clearly done to get Jet Li's granny a little dacha in the country or whatever that Red Chinese equivalent is, and I shamelessly admit I flipped off everyone involved when I saw it. It's so obviously a rank apologia for the Cultural Revolution. Maybe you just need to know about the Wolf of Qin and the shit he did to appreciate how stank the moral of this story is. The guy is up there with Ghenghis Khan and Hitler in the rolls of history's vilest dictators.

That said, it's incredibly well-done movie with beautiful visual effects and awesome fight sequences. The part where she's holding off the entire imperial guard is awesome, and perfect Exalted fodder. The use of color is incredible, as is pretty much everything else about it. It puts Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to shame, IMO. If you haven't seen it, you should see it. Even the morally repugnant parts are good for Exalted players, as the Emperor is directly comparable to people like Lyta and shows a very real side of Solarness that might otherwise be missed. A superb film, the only movie I've ever seen that even comes close is Alexsandr Nevsky. The director is clearly Chinese wuxia cinema's answer to Leni Riefenstahl; magnificent talent, soul of a boll weevil.

Many thanks to the fan who passed me a copy a while ago if they're reading this. =)

Geoffrey C. Grabowski Exalted Developer, WWGS raindog@white-wolf.com

On the not-quite-villain of the movie

g_c_grabowski - 03/22/2004 21:38:10 - raindog@white-wolf.com

>>>Personally, I don't find it "glorifying" dictatorship(is this the new catch-all deregatory phrase for everything non-democratic? It used to be known as feudalism) in any more of an offensive way than Independence Day glorifies democracy...<<<<

No, he was like Harald Fairhair on PCP. Same terror in the name of law, but magnified significantly by the size of the kingdom. It's really an ends-justify-the-means sort of problem. Yeah, it's great he unified China and established a law, but what else did he do to the place, and to the people, and what did the actions he took to achieve his ends provide justification for later in Chinese history? Seen in the context of ending the Warring States period, he's a genius. Seen as a historical figure, he doesn't seem to have really done a lot of good stuff for his nation, other than let another of history great murderers, Mao, harken back to him as a leigitimizing figure. What does it do to your culture to have a Stalinesque butcher as a founder? Nothng too good, apparently.

Geoffrey C. Grabowski Exalted Developer, WWGS raindog@white-wolf.com

On his staunch disapproval of the film, despite above-mentioned admirable qualities

g_c_grabowski - 03/22/2004 22:09:54 - raindog@white-wolf.com

Leni Riefenstahl made some cool picture books about tropical fish too. That doesn't make her any less the person who directed Triumph of the Will. As a creator, you are what you depict. It might not be fair, but it's a standard I'm willing to hold myself to as well, so, like the First Sovereign Emperor, if I'm not just, I'm at least arbitrary, and I've never written anything I wouldn't be proud to answer to Uncle Bill and Solzhenitsyn for.

G.

On the source of this disapproval

g_c_grabowski - 03/22/2004 23:31:24 - raindog@white-wolf.com

Hsm. See, now here is where I wish I was Rebecca and could just drop some mad parable on you all that makes no sense until you get to the end and then explains everything. But I'm not.

When we think about conquerers, especially the ruthless ones, we often say, "well, they were bad, but they brought law, administration and improved commerce."

But what else do they bring? What indirect effects were enabled as precedential developments of their methodologies? Easy one -- how much is Lenin to blame for Putin? Harder -- what did Lincoln have to do with the internment of the Nissei? How did Nobunaga enable the philosophy of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere? To bring this more back to the topic -- how much did Qin Shihuangdi and his embrace of legalism enable the stifling conformity of idea that left China an intellectually impoverished medieval state that couldn't even draw up its agricultural calendar without Jesuits?

Great leaders cast long shadows. Few rulers cast a shadow as long as the First Sovreign Emperor. Qin Shihuangdi crushed the Confucianists between the stones of the Great Wall and kindled their books into pyres in order to stabilize his reign. He provided an answer for future rulers, and the answer was "ruthlessness, expediency and iron law" The question is, as always, for future rulers to formulate as they will, and formulate it they have.

G.

On Max_Raven's Questions

g_c_grabowski - 03/23/2004 11:56:22 - raindog@white-wolf.com

>>>Geoff allow me one question, is there a way that ruler with vast amounts of power is able to foresee that he is going to influence the land he rules or has recently conquered for centuries and millennia to come?<<<

If you drop a rock, does it fall? If you put spark to tinder, does it kindle? Can you seriously ask me if the First Sovereign Emperor could have known (as he brought all of China beneath his rule, crushed all those who opposed him and founded / reformed a central state bureaucracy) that he would have an effect on China for ages to come? It seems unlikely to me he had any other goal in mind.

>>>And where do you draw the line when you assess the success of a culture. China for example has survived its cultural revolution more or less and is the oldest living high-civilisation around at the moment. They survived millennia in their state of ?stifling conformity of idea that left China an intellectually impoverished [and]medieval?. Is that really a bad thing if yes, why do you think that way?<<<

Are two thousand years of Confucian conservativism, Malthusian population collapses and Draconian law punctuated by periodic ages of central government colapse and protracted civil war successful? Do we judge a society based on the longevity of its writing system and the continuity of its local adminstrative boundaries, or does it actually have to /do/ something?

I think the challenges of the Just Ruler are twofold -- first to meet the challenges of the day in a way that brings peace and prosperity to his people, and at the same time to meet those challenges in a way that ensures that peace and prosperity in ages to come.

Brutal rulers, where everyone walks in terror of slight infractions or fears ruin through slanderous false accusations, are the worst sort of ruler, because thoughthey may use the justiication of making a society where you can "leave a bag of gold in the street and having it be there when you come back for it next year", they are really just propping up their throne with skulls. Anyone who so cows their populace that men will pass up stealing unattended cash surely has no reason to fear for a coup attempt and *that* I think you will find, is what really motivates them. Any such system of "justice" is unlikely to retain functionality for much beyond the end of the ruler's personal reign, but the brutality they embrace will live on for long ages.

>>>When does the conviction to do the right thing become wrong?<<<

Watch me deftly sidestep Godwin's Law here.

When determining the destiny of a state an hundreds of thousands or millions of people? I would say that the conviction to do the right thing becomes wrong the first time it leads to something other than the good outcome you intended. History is full of failures with good intentions (read up on the history of price controls some time) but the failures are no less failures because you were sincere in the attempt amd just shortsighted, dumb, misinformed or whatever. Ruling states well is hard. Ruining them is easy.

G.

On the applicability to the Game (you still remember the game, right?)

g_c_grabowski - 03/23/2004 13:16:17 - raindog@white-wolf.com

>>>P.S. One of the fascinating points of this thread is that it is quite relevant for Exalted as the players might become one day the equivalents of Quin or rebels able to stop him and live to see the consequences.<<<

I agree wholly with this, btw. One of the reasons that I don't really flich from including people like Lyta and the Bull of the North is that they bring these morally indifferent questions to the setting and can serve as foils or counterparties or whatever for PC groups.

Geoffrey C. Grabowski Exalted Developer, WWGS raindog@white-wolf.com

On SunJumper's questions

g_c_grabowski - 03/23/2004 23:20:03 - raindog@white-wolf.com

>>>Geoff I thank you very much for your answers they have been very interesting and enlightening. I think I will sit down in my comfortable chair and consider your points for some time, there are still some things that I am not sure if I agree with them. At least you made me think.<<<

I'll do a bit of thinking myself because of this, so it's definitely not time wasted.

>>>First of all I was not trying to pull a ?Goodwin?, a ?law? which I find in some respects somewhat silly. I am a German so the example of the Nazis is for me easier to follow through as I know that special part of history quite well.<<<

Okay, then let me throw out I thought was a good early example (better than Lenin and Putin, which I think replaced it) -- to what degree did Bismarck's vision enable the sacrifice of two generations of slaughtered German youth under Wilhelm and Hitler?

>>>If I understand you correctly then you think that Quin was a tyrant and a horrible ruler because he should have known better than introduce an iron rule of terror. This would at best have led to a country where life is safe because all are terrified of the consequences that might arise of even the smallest misdeed, right?<<<

Largely. I generally have a problem with solving philosophical disputes by using the losing disputants as slave labor to build fortifications in remote regions. It's bad for your society on several levels, both on an immediate level (way to waste the educated / mask the symptoms of the problems causing the dissent) and in the long term (loss of societal knowledge base, growth of intellectual orthodoxy as a survival trait). Order has no particular value as an end in and of itself, unless you happen to be the dude on top of the heap and the order is your order (of dancing girls and jumbo shrimp).

>>>Another thing I seem to have stumbled across is that freedom is often paid for by a lack of security. Also prosperity more often than not comes from strife in a form of another. But where do you draw the line.<<<<

In my opinion? Rather substantially more toward disorder and strife than the peoples of our era think is desirable, but that's a lesson I think they'll have to learn for themselves.

>>>Can you name one?<<<

Where has the responsible woodsman hiked? Has the good chef been in his kitchen?

Obviously a copout, but there's my general response -- it's easier to find history's fuckups than the decent leaders, because the decent ones don't make spectacles of themselves. I'll resist my urge as a member of the Imperial Cult to blurt out "The Founding Fathers!" and dig around a bit.

>>>On a side note I don?t believe that you can foresee the future. You might make some educated guesses (stones fall for example) but there are many, many unforeseen things that might happen that will completely derail your vision.<<<

Yeah, but I don't think it takes a mystic with a crystal ball to predict the obvious, either. The Nazis may or may not have known the fate of the Thousand Year Reich, but the Japanese surely did know that attacking Pearl Harbor would get their clock cleaned.

Admiral Yamamoto said, "we can run wild for six months or a year, but after that I have utterly no confidence. I hope you will try to avoid war with America".

But they went to war anyway. Just because it's gonna happen in the future doesn't make it mysterious. Drop a rock, it's gonna hit the ground sometime.

G.

On Chinese Culture

g_c_grabowski - 03/25/2004 01:08:34 - raindog@white-wolf.com

I laughed my ass off at Wookie's post. =) Context: A humorous rewriting of the essential dialogue of the movie, displaying plainly apparent praise for China, Communism, Fearless Leaders, etc

Here's my thoughts, in response to Jason;

I think the Partition is just one bit of the issue. The Chinese state had every appurtenance of organized modernity -- an organized bureaucracy, complex financial instruments, formal education. Yet they also had a totally centralized executive with no functional mechanism of non-hereditary succession. This cursed the state to endless cycles of dynastic warfare and left the entire nation open to manipulation by whoever could get their hand up the butt of the Man Standing Alone, which historically was something of a national sport.

Obviously it's not the only issue -- the anti-military and inward/backward-looking sentiments of Confucianism didn't help. However.... I don't have a problem seeing the endless cycle of the emperor's advisors overpowering him and ruining the state for their own profit until there's an unmet crisis of empire that the decayed imperial structure can't meet as a direct legacy of the First Emperor. He consolidated power in China and ended the Age of War by creating a state with a single point of failure and an ethic that favored the state (in the person of the emperor) over the individual, and thus made it nearly impossible to protect the /office/ of the emperor because so much of the office was concentrated in the Son of Heaven, and no safer than that one person.

The Chinese did lots of brilliant things. It's an awesome culture, and I have a whole shelf full of books about it. I just think that the concentration of the state authority on the semi-divine personage of the emperor and the consequent demeaning of the individual can be laid largely at his feet. He could just as easily have used the abdication of the Sage Kings to justify some sort of functional succession mechanism. The great thing about democracy it that distributes the mechanism of succession in such a fashion that it's difficult to hijack.

It's obvious the Emperor confronted this issue, he just chose to provide for it by eating mercury rather than establishing something that could genuinely sustain the nation, and I do think the consequences were long-ranging. You can say it?s not his fault by framing the situation as one where the long-term negative consequences are external and unknowable but they aren?t, or if they were, then it's really his fault for doing things without knowing what the true consequences are.

I mean, it's not like he was the world's greatest primitive agronomist, working all along in good faith, never knowing that the perfect tomato would serve as the catalyst for an age of war by enabling massive armies and extended campaigns. The guy made himself sole, uncontested, brutal, totalitarian ruler of his vast and populous nation. Inasmuch as there was a place for the buck to stop, he moved that place to his throne room. I don?t really feel bad blaming him for anything that sprang from that because he methodically made himself the only person /to/ blame.

G.

On whether Exalted is good party thinking (?!)

g_c_grabowski - 03/25/2004 01:23:30 - raindog@white-wolf.com

>>>If you think about it the Chinese prime minister could one day jump out of his office dice-bag in hand praising the virtues of Exalted. How it shows the decadence of empires and how a gifted as well as Exalted individual can go forth destroy the ruling class weed out the decadence thus founding a new better state, which in turn makes it able to resist the lure of the amoral capitalists and other nepharious forces that would like to subjugate the common man.<<<

Only if substantially rewritten. I think it's far too individualistic as-is, and the Immaculate Philosophy is a pretty harsh and direct critique of Legalism. They might allow publication, but I doubt it'd receive any sort of Party favor.

G.

Comments

Does anybody know what GCG is referring to with his line about the "world's greatest primitive agronomist, working all along in good faith, never knowing that the perfect tomato would serve as the catalyst for an age of war by enabling massive armies and extended campaigns"? Any historians out there? - DigitalSentience

Although I have no way to be certain, I am pretty sure that it is simply a point establishing that the First Emperor's actions were not of the sort which would not be expected to cause the results they did. The hypothetical world's greatest primitive agronomist could make a case for not knowing that his supertomato would usher in an age of war, but a military dictator can be reasonably expected to usher in an age of military dictatorship. - Ben-San

I myself tend to think the Immaculate Philosophy is perfectly compatible with legalism, given that it has backed the Empress for centuries, and she certainly follows the Legalist principles. It does have some different principles (like the idea of harmonious hierarchy), but in practice, the Immaculate Order reinforces the Empress' rule, no matter how many people she murders or how much she encourages her subjects to plot against each other. - JohnBiles

Well, right, that's what he means. The Immaculate Philosophy is Legalist. It's also portrayed negatively, generally speaking. Hence GCG's feeling that the Philosophy is a critique, an example of legalism gone wrong. - DigitalSentience

Doooooh. Color me King of Bad Parsing . Right. -- JohnBiles

DigitialSentience, It is unfortunately the nature of Science to create things that can be used in war. The Atom Bomb is one of the greatest examples of this - and our greatest triumph in our control of it's power. But there are a million other things that war and horror enables. The space program and telecommunications. Canned food, stone tools... while I don't know who made the perfect tomato, I don't think it's necessary for someone to realize the harm a thing causes when the same thing leads to their own benefit - GoldenH