Let's Find Out - Our Oriental Heritage: Finding Common Ground in History | Will Durant | ASMR

Episode Date: March 14, 2020

Aside from his famous book on the lives and opinions of the greatest philosophers (The Story of Philosophy), the renowned historian, Will Durant, wrote an 11 volume overview of all of human history (The Story of Civilization). In this episode I use vol. 1 (Our Oriental Heritage) as a jumping off point to consider the biological, cultural, and historical common ground we all share and the power of a unified world-view that embraces forward progress into the unknown. Thanks for watching. Check out Will Durant's great books here: Story of Civilization: https://amzn.to/3aSy364 Story of Philosophy: https://amzn.to/3aW8gKa #ASMR #WillDurant #StoryofCivilization

I guess I made it back after all. We had an interview with meme analysis and a live chat in 2020 so far. So I haven't been too active. I've been working on my kitchen if you guys follow me over at IG. And that took a while. It took a lot longer than I expected. It was a nice challenge. to see if I could really succeed at the DIY experiment and it was a nice time off too

for me too so I was like partially celebrating that so let's enjoy a beer what you just heard in the beginning or maybe I'll do it right now deeply instinctually pleasurable experience of listening people sing in harmony which itself is a metaphor for operation and with all disasters and events all the greatest experiences as a culture I'd say is us coming together in cooperation in unison in harmony in sync we we might have great individuals that can pull civilization by their achievements by their inventions their philosophies their their actions into

you know progress or they can pull it down as well but it's in celebrating collectively the leaps of progress that we um bonding over the the tragedies and triumphs of us as a species i think is one of the most powerful experiences you know we can we can have and partaken so in light of the current COVID-19 situation. I don't want to date this episode too much. It really made me think of what it means to feel like you're a part of something bigger, you know, because all of our individual actions

they add up to our character. That famous phrase, is it Emerson, I think, said the... Was it the thought? Sewing a thought reaps a... Soing an action reaps a habit. Sewing a habit reaps a character and sewing a character reaps a destiny. I thought that was a it's a beautiful train of thought. I might have had the details wrong, but it's Reiterating, you know, our individual actions are powerful and I'm a huge proponent of individualism and the individual over the collective, but a collective is nothing but a collective is nothing but a great

group of individuals and the weight the scale the emergent properties of groups are very you know intrinsically related to the character and the merits and achievements and collective psyche and breaking us you know psychoanalytic train of thought um a collective of civilization societies They're all indicative of the group dream, the unified view and paradigm of reality. Like, what is our goal? What do we all define collectively as good and bad? It's a beautiful thing what can happen when a civilization works in unison.

you know wars epidemics plagues many tragedies thrust of progress but you know when we come up against a tragedy and we have to work collectively 9-11 well whatever it might be World War II one any of the great wars

it's droughts and plagues it gives us insight into what we're capable of you know what we're actually the collective can come together and accomplish especially when all our goals are ranged in order.

And the meaning that you get from cooperating and belonging as part of a group reminded me a lot of World Grants, our Oriental Heritage. In the very end of it, I haven't read this. I'm such a pretentious. One of those pretentious idiots that just has a bunch of books that few of which I've actually read, but I have listened to this book. Grover Gardner or Alex Alexander, he goes by two names, is a brilliant narrator, and he really captures the wit and, you know, scholarship of Will and Ariel Durant.

I think this one was Will Durant by himself. He wrote this in the 1930s. It's a gloss on, he has an 11-volume series, which are hiding by him in my books up there. on this it's called the story of civilization and he means the West because he was an American and he wanted to give a overview a synthetic overview meaning a synthesis of art politics religion history science technology you know all all the facets you know the economy finance that in serious scholarship is very delineated into, you know, segregated into very specific subgenres.

And you, it's good and bad because you get a more accurate, you get a more detailed portrayal when you focus on just one thing like art, you know, history, science, whatnot. But you also lose the sense of the whole. And that's what I love about Will Durant. He was a genius. in his own right and he was able to use the thousands of books he's read he took on the gargantuan task of trying to synthesize history and what I'm getting at is it's his thesis of the first volume this is volume one of a story of civilization

unfortunately it's a little I think it got wet actually oriental heritage a thousand page book It glosses through Well here the Subtitle is Being a History of Civilization in Egypt in the Near East To the Death of Alexander

And in India, China In Japan From the beginning To Our Own Day With an introduction On the nature and foundations Of civilization Teen 35

He makes a point that One of the many he makes Is that Greece is like this Nexus point You know, Greece and Turkey, the East Mediterranean, Judea, the Jewish, Egyptian, Syrian, Babylonian, you know, all Mesopotamia are like this nexus between the Far East, China going back thousands of years, maybe being one of the earliest civilizations with writing in high culture in antiquity.

and then the West having the Celts, the Gaelic, Germanic tribes, you know, prehistoric tribes. St. Patty's Day is coming up. I wanted to do a St. Patrick's Day one too as well. I just... This awesome book, that was actually a gift to me last year. I took a while to read it, but it links, and it's the general thesis, the unique and very significant contribution of Ireland in the Irish culture. to the continuity in the religious ideas and the philosophy

generated by the Roman Christian civilization. You know, that came out of Italy and was destroyed in 476 when Olerich, is it Olerick? When Rome was sacked and had its last Roman emperor and descended into chaos, Rome was sacked multiple times in the early 5th. century whatever way you want to view it Rome was lost a lot of its culture it lost a lot of its literature religious traditions of what the specifically the Christian Orthodox Roman Catholic you know seed that had grown in Italy and Rome in the first few hundred years after Christ

and in Ireland was you know in particularly Patrick and Colum Kill one of Patrick's successors was huge in preserving a lot of literature and therefore philosophy and learning from the chaos that developed after the official sack of Roman 476 so Will Durant makes a really really thorough case a thousand pages deep about the huge contribution to civilization and culture, art, learning, philosophy, that the Orient, which like the West used to be called Occidental Culture, Orient was Oriental. West and East was Occidental and Oriental, respectively.

I guess maybe those are becoming antiquated or maybe politically incorrect. I don't know, but the whole title of the book is Our Oriental Heritage. and it's a fascinating journey. It opened my eyes, and I think that's why I'm focused so much on getting this video about the 19th century Japanese artist who painted the Great Wave, the wave of Kanagawa, Hokosai, what's his first name?

Katshika Hokasai? Because I known so little about our... Oriental heritage, whether it's the Middle East, the Near East, India, the East, Asia, Japan, it has such a rich history, and it's so fascinating. And to me, the whole book itself, the reason I'm going on and on, I'm going to read the very end. It's like a three-page synopsis. It's like a what I get out of the, what I got from writing this book type of short essay. that he tacked on to the end of this gargantuan work, which, mind you, is just the first in his 11-volume series.

It gave me so much meaning to... It instilled a hunger to learn more about history, and the root of which is the meaningful connection of all our different cultures around the world. a relation as a species and not just an individual ethnicity. And Will Durant was brilliant at combing through the literature and histories and all the other knowledge of all cultures. And in this book, particularly Eastern cultures, and gleaning out of that, all the important concepts

and, you know, the most amazing contributions to just. just general culture and art and what it means to be a civilization. So it connects us, in other words. And I love the idea of looking at us as a species. You know, Carl Sagan was a... I got it up there, can you guys see? You got Cosmos right there. He is a great modern figure, proponent.

of looking, viewing the earth as this oasis, you know, this immensely improbable oasis. And so anyways, all that's just to say that, you know, these huge threats, global threats, are certainly bringing us together in a very meaningful way and are opening our eyes to what it means to be a part of something. bigger than ourselves and you know having a family which is something I'd like to do very soon start or start to do is a small hint of what it's like to be a part of something bigger and I love this Elon Musk tweet he has such a you know hopeful optimistic real he's very realistic he's not foolishly

he's not quixotic he's not overly idealistic he's just a realist and recognizes that we have to come together we have to look forward we have to plan accordingly but we have a chance at

having a bright Star Trek next generation or Star Trek in general I guess a future a bright you know cooperative future where we all challenge ourselves to the extreme but we all inhibit judgment we suspend assumptions as the great physicist David Bohm and his book on dialogue

often was a huge proponent of you know you suspend your your trivial superficial um emotionally charged assumptions about other people's entire characters based on an appearance or a sound bite that you might have heard from them and it takes a lot takes a lot of restraint because we don't we simply don't have time we don't have the brain capacity to sit and analyze everything to make a more accurate judgment so we we go through life living these using these quick judgments rules of thumb on people's character and it's useful but um i think sometimes it helps to reconsider ourselves as a part of a whole, as part of a species, especially in light of the internet age that we're in right now. We live in this transformational time, this

light speed communication, a deluge of information we're constantly barbed with. And it's up to us to really look back and consider what it is we've merged. out of what we can do with the knowledge of all these ancient civilizations that have contributed to our existence now that we are the that are our ancestors we're the descendants of so anyways uh I wanted to have something a little more well planned but I just really I'm just such I'm so fascinated by the hope that comes out of the perspective of ourselves as a part of a huge project that doesn't end

where our skin stops you know where our family stops even it ourselves as beings that have you know billions of years of instinctual urges the Greeks famously they viewed gods in a very practical way.

God's are, or maybe Carl Jung said this, that Greek gods are the personifications of our natural biological instincts. You know, Venus and Aphrodite and love and Mars and war and Apollo and intellect and reason, rational, and Nietzsche's famous Dionysus, the god of wine and drunken and ecstasy. and it's the revelatory, the bliss, the euphoria that you can get from losing yourself in the crowd

and just becoming one with the rave or concert, whatever, or church, you know, very enlivened church service, if you might lean that way. And so there is a place for our collective identity. I believe our individual identity, as of now in my experience, in the world is paramount is is important to bring individualism and uniqueness to each of us because we all have different experiences and we we got to be treated as individuals but we have to earn the you know our place as as much as we receive from a collective identity and a group identity and in our place as a protected group of civilians you know we are in reality

surrounded by this if you're in a first world country a very complex and powerful military industrial complex it's a precarious situation we're in but we have to utilize the the immense technological and you know, scientific and high culture that we're a part of we've been born into. We've, I'm always in the midst of, you know, I'm always continually trying to learn more about history nowadays because I want to actually have a realistic understanding of where I am and what caused the current situation. What, how many, you know, how many noble deaths, how many, how many, how many, noble deaths, how many

amazing great people men and women have had to you know suffer and have found meaning in knowing that their lives were a sacrifice or they contributed significantly to the culture that we are now the recipients of we can benefit so much i think our lives can be infused with so much more meaning and purpose if we recognize and are grateful and gratitude after learning about all the the really horrific things that it took to really arrive at the place we're at you know for all the tragedies in life we currently are subject to there's many many many things many statistics that show we're in the absolute pinnacle of prosperity right now relative to our past you know not relative to a fictional idealistic future ultimately

the goal is to get there to where we can actually critique something based on an ideal but um realistically it's amazing what we we've accomplished what we've achieved you know we went from developing airplanes the first manned flight in 1905 to to walking the first human being on the moon in 1969. That's, you know, a period of, was it 50? Yeah, 69, of course. So, yeah, a period of 64 years. So a little over half a century,

I think it was like something on the order of half a century from the time we invented manned flight to the time we sent someone in orbit around the earth. And that's not to mention the advancements in computer processing. You know, we're calculating, we've developed computer chips that perform calculations not only in the trillions of bits per second, but also on the magnitude, the order of scale. the most recent number I saw, that's on the scale of atoms. That's to the point where data, we have to start factoring in quantum tunneling and quantum mechanics into the actual computer chips.

Now we have to factor those in because the circuits, the physical medium printed circuit boards, PCBs, the physical conduit along which the electron, travel is so small that they have a potential of jumping across through quantum dynamics so you know over the last few hundred years in particular science has advanced us to an incredible amount an unbelievable level of privilege you know in the first world country especially that you know I think a huge thing that a lot of people overlook when they're talking about the information age, the internet age we live in is the responsibility it puts on us. We have it way easier than any of our ancestors ever had with modern medicine, technology, you know, vaccinations is a huge one. God willing, we'll be able

to develop something very, very rapidly. It's astounding. The you know the amount that we've progressed and the rate at which we're progressing is itself increasing. So before we have the capacity to destroy the planet, we have to have an equivalent responsibility and in order to feel a responsibility and feel great gratitude to our ancestors and a kinship to our current fellow humans it helps so much recognizing the mutual chaotic turmoil of nature of billions of years of evolution that we arose out of in that you know these very intelligent ancestors remember they're your ancestors uh were able to you know conjure up ideas of you know gods and morality to allow civilizations entire civilizations

to prosper and coexist in larger and larger societies is pretty incredible you know the thinking about the the complexity of the human mind and just how unmanageable it would be to to it and think about every little action if we didn't have a pre-existing moral code handed to us through our parents and their parents' parents and this lineage of morality and how to behave amongst families and larger groups is something that's developed over not just hundreds or even thousands but tens maybe hundreds of thousands of years and you know really in reality millions and even billions if you really consider the the most base elements of interaction between two beings and so we have a code you know a hierarchy that exists

that is common I think to all human beings at the most instinctual level we all know when we all have a feeling and understanding what good is and what bad is, what evil is, unnecessary suffering, inflicted on an innocent individual is like the epitome of evil. And we all, you know, many of us, of course, we recognize the existence of evil in the modern world. There's plenty of people with power that have no identity and have no connection with their history. and a sense of unity with a sense of gratitude to their ancestors for arriving, achieving what we've been able to achieve. And they have a pit of nihilism. They have a cowardice in the face of the unknown, which is why, and so then they just squander their resources.

and maybe in a completely innocuous way. Maybe they're just by their own yacht, they buy their own islands, and they just have drunken orgies. And that's their, you know, the innocuous version of that would be with of age consenting other adults. And that's their idea of a life well lived. Well, we have an immense, immense history.

of great individuals who have dedicated their lives to answering these questions of what the actual real best life is and I love the phrase to see infinity in a grain of sand by William Blake. It sheds light on the infinitude of meaning you can find within each moment within each interaction and the more we learn about the incredible unlikelyhood of our existence right now based on all the intensely you know

horrific past our ancestors had to deal with and get through and being able to bear children to continue to bear children themselves down the lineages until our present existence is something we squander

at our peril and once you recognize the place of privilege to me I think it really really gives a deep meaning to our lives it gives a sense of urgency it gives a sense of you know again responsibility to be the best people we can be and it's crazy how you know whether we want to just try to over simplify a knowledge of dopamine serotonin chemical floods when we do something positive. I think it's way more complex than that. You know, it's cool that we can trace

chemical, neurochemical interactions and, you know, develop antidepressants, I guess, accordingly. But it's, there's such a mysterious black box inside our own minds that we've yet to unlock, we've yet to really unravel, and let alone the connection between billions of these complex, three-pound organs that we're all walking around with. And Will Durant has very, very successfully, he's portrayed the credible effort and achievements of our past ancestors. In this book, particularly he's talking about the East

and everything that Greece and Europe, I think he mentions, yeah, Europe and the United States in particular being the spoiled child and grandchildren. child of the East, irrespectively. He just makes you bask in the amazing position that we find ourselves in. And he was writing this in the 30s, after World War I, before World War II. He had no reason. He had very little reason to be optimistic, but yet he's passionately, he's geniusly,

just feverishly reading history and relaying it in his own. way to the next generations I you know I'm reading it listening to it by the way audible if you're listening I'd love to be sponsored it's and it's it's it's meaningful I used to be like really skeptical I didn't understand why anyone would want to I couldn't understand the concept of two deaths we have one in our physical body in the second I forget where I read that but When people forget the last person forgets your memory, you know, or last person to remember you, themselves dies, their first death. And, you know, it's amazing.

We have people like Hamarabi, Alexander the great Socrates Plato, who have never died a second time yet. I hope it stays that way. Because we're all on this trajectory, and we don't really know what it is, but we're all a part of it. you know whether you're an insignificant part that's just a puppet of another more significant player or you're someone who capitalizes on their their time and privilege and opportunity to to really test the limits of their mind and body while we have the ability to it's up to us in a lot of ways you know so it's encouraging um there's plenty to be realistically pessimistic about but there's so much in our history in our past in astronomy the cosmos and philosophy and our inner

or inner minds that um that really points to unwork that needs to be done unsolved mysteries and problems and ones with hope ones with a glimmer of possibility of uh you know whose solutions are on the horizon just beyond it

so anyways I'm a huge proponent of learning history in a pragmatic way a way that helps us understand our current situation I don't like just learning about every little nook and cranny of esoteric

scholarship you know that that won't really uh add much more to to the whole picture i have of humanity but i do love learning about individual lives in particular because those are the most most elevating most uh educational about our own lives in a serious philosophical way that's a seriously skin in the game kind of way so anyways that's what i love about will durance our oriental heritage and why i want to i don't know what i'm going to call this episode yet but um why i seriously believe we would all benefit from a connection to our own to history but another way a more personal way of putting that would be our own lineage our own ancestry so let's take a look at what will Durant has to say after writing a thousand pages on our

oriental heritage oh by the way I want to say a huge thank you I'm using a new phone stand to record the downward angle of books. Really cool. Who gave me that one? I think it was Lindsay. Thanks, Lindsay. Really great card from Jewel in California, I believe. From MC or MGM.

Someone in my backyard in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Gave me a really sweet card. It says, in this busy world, some special people have the heart, Oh, have the art of taking time for others, of giving from the heart. And it says, Rich, thank you for simply being you, enjoying your channel, looking forward to many more. Thanks again, Mark. So, anyways, Mark, that's big.

It's very huge. It's flattering. It's really kind of you. It's getting all that, like, support and comments. you're just it reminds me you know like sometimes i forget like i'm just here talking to my phone right now and recording into a microphone going into my computer so it's uh really cool to remember that there's people some people on the other end of this transmission and in a big way it it uh encourages me it makes me feel connected to relate it to the episode at hand so i appreciate that

you got beach ball mania John Lewis Trevor Lindsay uh yeah this is you guys are always encouraging and I love it it's it's very very uplifting so thanks guys so this this book here I thought I was gonna get to today I ended up talking a lot longer surprise surprise and I thought I would Um, it goes from the 1500s, 1502 to 1969. It's, um, a really, I don't know, it's just a very useful, very illustrated look. It's like a literal timeline of history. It's segregated into world events, literature, religion, philosophy, art and architecture, performing arts, science,

and technology, politics, per section. And to get a really thorough understanding, just add to our understanding of where it is we actually lie in history. The cover, maybe I can watch that. That's Egypt, this fish islands on this. Everybody knows about. We have the less known Mesopotamia.

So let's flip to the end and see what Will Durant has to say about what he might have learned. from our Oriental heritage. This last little section is called Envoy. Envois? Is it a French word? One of you guys will correct me out there, no doubt. Let's get something to prop this up. Again, this is here's maybe 10, 15 years of research

into our Oriental heritage, and that's what he says at the very end of the book. We've passed an unwilling haste through 4,000 years of history and over the richest civilizations of the largest continent. It's impossible that we've understood these civilizations or done them justice for how can one mind in one lifetime comprehend or praise the heritage of a race. The institutions, customs, arts, and morals of a people represent the natural selection of its countless trial and error experiments and the accumulated and unformulable

wisdom of all its generations and neither the intelligence of a philosopher nor intellect of a sophomore can suffice to compass them understandingly much less to judge them with justice Europe and America here we go are the spoiled child and grandchild of Asia

and have never quite realized the wealth of their pre-classical meaning pre-Greek antiquity, inheritance. But if now we sum up those arts in ways in which the West has derived from the East

or which to our current and limited knowledge appear first in the Orient at least, we shall find ourselves drawing up unconsciously an outline of civilization. The first element of civilization and he breaks down here

what he believes civilization is, meaning And in the context of what arose, what he felt were the first signs of it from India and Asia, Japan, and all these characteristics which the West has benefited so much from. The first element is labor, tillage, industry, transport, and trade. In Egypt and Asia, we meet with the oldest known cultivation of the soil. He says in a footnote down here,

it's possible that the agricultural agriculture and the domestication of animals are as ancient in the Neolithic Europe as Neolithic Asia, but it seems more likely that the new stone age cultures of Europe were younger than those of Africa or Asia. So in Egypt and Asia, we meet with the oldest cultivation of the soil, the oldest irrigation system, the first production of those encouraging beverages without which apparently modern civilization

could hardly exist, beer, wine, and of course tea and coffee. Andy graphs. The handicrafts in engineering were as highly developed in Egypt before Moses, as in Europe before Voltaire in the 1700s, building with bricks has a history at least as old as Sargonne of a cod. The potter's wheel and the wagon wheel appear first in Elam, linen and glass in Egypt, silk and gunpowder in China. The horse rides out of Central Asia into Mesopotamia, Egypt, and then Europe.

Phoenician vessels. Volonician vessels circumnavigate Africa before the age of Pericles, which was about 600, you know, 600. BC in Greece, the golden age of Athens. The compass comes from China and produces a commercial revolution in Europe. Sumeria shows us the first business contracts, the first credit system. The first use of gold and silver as standards of value. And China first accomplishes the miracle of having paper accepted in place of silver and gold, which is very huge, a lot easier to carry a bunch of slips of paper to the marketplace.

The second element of civilization is government, the organization and protection of life and society through the clan and the family law and the state. The village community appears in India, and the city-state in Sumeria and Assyria in the Middle East. Egypt takes a census, levies, an income tax and maintains internal peace through many centuries with a model with a model minimum of force. Ur and Gur and Hamarabi formulate great codes of law.

Endarius organizes with Imperial Army and Post, one of the best administered empires in the annals of government. The third element of civilization First two, labor, government The third element of civilization is morality The customs and manners, conscience, and charity A law built into the spirit In generating at last That sense of right and wrong

That order and discipline of desire Without which a society disintegrates into individuals and falls forfeit to some incoherent state, or some coherent state. Courtesy came out of the ancient courts of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Persia. Even today, the Far East might teach manners and dignity to the brusque and impatient West. Monogamy appeared in Egypt and began a long struggle to prove itself and survive in competition with the inequitable but eugenic polygamy of Asia. Out of Egypt came the first cry for social justice, out of Judea, the first plea for

human brotherhood, the first formulation of the moral consciousness of mankind. Now number four. The fourth element of civilization is religion. The use of man's superior of religion. supernatural beliefs for the consolation of suffering, the elevation of character, and the strengthening of social instincts in order. From Sumeria, Babylonia, and Judea,

the most cherished myths and traditions of Europe were derived. In the soil of the Orient grew the stories of the creation and the flood, the fall and redemption of man, and out of many mother goddesses came at last the fairest flower of all posy as Hina called Mary the mother of God out of Palestine came monotheism

in the fairest songs of love and praise in literature and the loneliest lowliest and most impressive figure in history fifth element in civilization is science clear seeing exact recording impartial testing in the slow accumulation of knowledge objective enough to generate prediction and control

Egypt develops arithmetic and geometry establishes the calendar Egyptian priests and physicians praise a practice medicine I'm sure we're praised as well explore diseases and I think that's what that means varieties of surgical operations and anticipate something of the Hippocratic oath the the vow to do good for the patient Babylonia studies at least at least I think let me off the hook for that one Babylonia studies the stars it charts the zodiac the 12 major constellations that we oscillate through over 24,000 year periods and gives us our division of the month into four weeks of the clock and the 12 hours, of the hour and the 60 minutes in the minute into 60 seconds.

India transmits through the Arabs her simple numerals in the magical decimals and teaches Europe the subtleties of hypnotism in the technique of vaccination. The sixth element of civilization is philosophy. The attempt of man to capture something of that total perspective, which in his modest intervals he knows that only infinity can possess, the brave and the hopeless inquiry into the first causes of things, and their final significance, the consideration of truth and beauty, of virtue, and justice,

of ideal men and states. All this appears in the Orient a little sooner than in Europe. The Egyptians and the Babylonians ponder human nature and destiny. The Jews write immortal comments on life and death. While Europe tarries in barbarism, the Hindus play with logic and epistemology, the ways of knowing at least as early as Parmetician. in Zeno of Aaliyah. The Upanishads delve into metaphysics, a major book of Hinduism.

Upanishads. And Buddha propounds a very modern psychology some centuries before Socrates is even born. And if India drowns philosophy and religion and fails to emancipate reason from hope, China resolutely secularizes her thought and produces, again before Socrates, a thinker whose sober wisdom needs hardly any change to be a guide to our contemporary lives, and an inspiration to those who would honorably govern states. The seventh element of civilization is letters, the transmission of language, the education of youth, the development of writing. the creation of poetry and drama, the stimulus of romance, and the written remembrance of things past. The oldest schools known to us are those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Even the oldest schools of government are Egypt, or Egyptian. Out of Asia, apparently, came writing, out of Egypt, the alphabet, paper and ink out of China. oh out of Egypt at the alphabet paper and ink out of China print the Babylonians seem to have compiled the oldest grammars and dictionaries and to have collected the first libraries

and it may well be that the universities of India even precede Plato's Academy the Assyrians in the Middle East Mesopotamia polished chronicles into history the Egyptians puffed up history into the epic. In the Far East gave to the modern world those delicate forms of poetry that the rest all their excellence,

that rest all their excellence, on subtle insights phrased in a moment's imagery. Audenus or Sherbanap... Okay, I'm gonna, I've butchered that. Sherbinapal. A Sherbinapal. Whose relics are exhumans. resumed by archaeologists were themselves archaeologists.

And some of the fables that amuse our children go back to ancient India. And the eighth element of civilization is art. The embellishment of life with pleasing color, rhythm, and form. Its simplest sub-aspect, the adornment of buildings, sorry, the body, I guess that one incorrectly. we find elegant clothing, exquisite jewelry, scandalous cosmetics, in the early ages of Egyptian Sumerian and Indian civilization. Fine furniture, graceful pottery, and excellent carving in ivory and wood fill the Egyptian tombs. Surely the Greeks must have learned something of their skill in sculpture and architecture

and painting in bass relief not only from Asia and Crete but from the masterpieces that in their day still gleamed in the mirror of the Nile. From Egypt and Mesopotamia, Greece took the models for her Doric and ionic columns. From those same lands came to us not merely the column but the arch,

the vault, the clestery, in the dome and the ziggurat of the ancient Near East have had some share in the molding and molding the architecture of America today Chinese painting and Japanese prints changed the tone and current

of the 19th century of 19th century European art specifically from Hokosai Katsushika Hokosai I remembered his first name in the great way That was a huge influence on the French Impressionists, I think. And Chinese porcelain raised a new perfection for Europe to emulate.

The somber splendor of the Gregorian chant actually goes back, age by age, to the plaintiff songs of exiled Jews, gathering timidly and scattered synagogues. These are some of the elements of civil. civilization and a part of the legacy of the east to the west i love that it really puts in the perspective of everything that many of the things at least that that we've were in debt to the east for so he ends nevertheless much was left for the classic world classic again meaning the ancient Greeks and Romans. Nevertheless, much was left for them, the Greeks,

to add to this rich inheritance. Crete, for instance, would build a civilization almost as ancient as Egypt and would serve as a bridge to bind the cultures of Asia, Africa, and Greece. Greece herself would transform and by seeking not size but perfection. It would marry a feminine delicacy of form and finish to the masculine architecture and statuary of Egypt. And would provide the scene for the greatest age in the history of art.

It would apply to all the realms of literature and creative exuberance of the free mind. It would contribute meandering epics, profound tragedies, hilarious comedies, and fascinating histories. to the store of European letters. It would organize universities and establish for a brilliant interlude the secular independence of thought. It would develop beyond any precedent, the mathematics and astronomy, the physics and medicine,

bequeathed it by Egypt in the East. It would originate the sciences of life and the naturalistic view of humans. It would bridge philosophy, bring philosophy to consciousness and order, and would consider with unaided rationality all the problems of our life. It would emancipate the educated classes from ecclesiasticism and superstition. It would attempt a morality independent of supernatural aid. It would conceive of humans as citizens rather than as subjects.

It would give us liberty, political liberties, civil liberties, civil rights, an unparalleled measure of mental and moral freedom. It would create democracy and invent the individual. This was Greece, all what we think of as the crucible of our civilization. In America, we inherited it from Europe, inherited themselves from Rome and then Rome from Greece. Greece itself was highly influenced by the East. It was the crossroads. It was the trade.

Mecca, central, you know, I guess Egypt in a big sense was a central location of all of Africa, Europe, and Asia. But Greece on the Mediterranean was such a nexus of the fluid exchange of culture. I think a lot more on the receiving end than the giving end from its early age of culture from the East. So Rome now would take over this abounding culture and spread it throughout the Mediterranean world and protect it for half a millennium from barbarian, European assault, and then transmit it through Roman literature in the Latin languages, to Northern Europe. It would lift woman to a power and splendor and a mental emancipation which perhaps she had never known before. It would give Europe a new calendar and teach it the

principles of political organization and social security. It would establish the rights of the individual in an orderly system of laws that would help to hold the continent together through centuries of poverty, chaos, and superstition after the fall of the Roman Empire, the disintegration into small little isolated fiefdoms ruled by local, many times petty, king war, very, very disconnected, unlike Rome. so information came the exchange the flow of information after the fall of Rome came to a

extremely slow stagnation meanwhile in the Near East and Egypt would blossom the Near East and Egypt would blossom again under the stimulus of Greek and Roman trade and thought Carthage would revive all the wealth and luxury of South dawn and Tyre, in the Talmud, the Talmud would accumulate in the hands of dispersed but loyal Jews. Science and philosophy would flourish at Alexandria in the Lower Nile, and out of the mixture of European and Oriental cultures would come a religion destined, in part to destroy, in part to preserve and augment the civilization of Greece and Rome. Everything was ready to produce the culminating epics of classical antiquity.

Athens under Pericles, Rome under Augustus, and Jerusalem in the age of King Herod. The stage was set for the three-fold drama of Plato, Caesar, and Christ. Thanks for watching, guys. Stay safe. Have fun. Maybe you show some gratitude for our ancient, our Oriental at times. I luckily will be able to now start getting some more videos out so if you choose to yeah let me remind you to hit that bell if you guys stick around I hope to see you

soon and I really love your comments I thrive I really enjoy them it takes a while to get to sometimes but let me know if you like this and give me feel I love listening to what you guys have to say. I hope you guys enjoyed this. Hope it wasn't too rambly and Thanks for watching.