Fleecing the Human Herd

Inbox

Thu, Oct 1, 1:07 PM (3 days ago)

I listened to Dan Carlin's "Wrath of the khans" a while back, and he made brief mention of the following quote, which took me some digging to find. I thought you'd enjoy it, never have I seen it stated so explicitly civilization is just a big fleecing operation of its human herd.

“Thereupon the generals in the provinces that had already been conquered declared that these could by no means be regarded as bases of supply, since the storehouses were empty, the peasants had neither cattle nor other food, and the towns had been denuded of silk and other textiles. Annoyed by these unexpected difficulties, someone recommended that this useless people should be exterminated and their towns razed to the ground. Then, within a few years, the land would at any rate provide admirable pasture. The proposal gained adherents, and the kuriltai was about to decide upon the complete extermination of the Chinese, when Yeliu-Ch'uts'ai begged leave to speak. He did not waste time talking about such things as morality or humanity. He contented himself with a seemingly cold calculation (going into every detail) of what was taxable in Kin. Assessing the taxes in accordance with what he conceived possible, he came to the conclusion that the Chinese would be able to pay annually soo,ooo ounces of silver, 8o,ooo pieces of silk, and 400,000 sacks of grain. These could be handed over to the State treasury. He went on to say: "How could you describe as useless persons who can make such large contributions to the State" "Why, then, did they not deliver these goods" asked Ogatai, impressed by the figures. "Why are the fields bare and the barns empty? '' "Because, although a kingdom can be conquered from horseback, it cannot be ruled from the saddle." Yeliu- Ch'uts'ai went on to repeat the words he had said to Jenghiz Khan before the expedition to Khwarizm: "One who wishes to make bows needs a handicraftsman who understands this art; and one who sets out to conquer realms cannot dispense with the handicraftsman who understands the art of government."

- Michael Prawdin, The mongol empire, p.238-239

It is such an elegant thing to behold when the pastoralist conquers the agrarian and has the choice of turning civilized lands into pastures for his stock or adopting the human survivors as a many-purposed herd. If the Comanche could derive all of his needs from the horse and bison, the Conqueror derives an infinity of sorrow-spiced power from the human herd.

Interestingly, the great world religions of Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, as well as the Arуan mythos' that were eradicated by these, had their roots in the conquest of civilized agrarians by nomadic herders. Up to the brink of the Modern Age, the Mongols, still animists, proved the absolute superiority of predatory nomadic warfare over confrontational agrarian warfare. I know very little about ancient China and it's religions and ideologies. I wonder if these were rooted in the conquests of nomads, and the Mongol and Manchu conquests were repetitions of some ancient, foundational subjugation of the world's largest agrarian society.

From 2,000 B.C. the technology of the steppes nomad, chariot and then composite bow, were actually creations of civilization, technologies that required settled artisans to create, just as the criminal biker of modernity depends upon the technology created by the civilization upon which he feeds for his operating system and even his menacing status.

It fascinates that the Mongols adopted the systems of control of those they conquered and were ultimately assimilated by these. Theses systems included the social mechanics of taxation and terror rather than pillage and slaughter, as well as the subtext of servitude, principally those two great conquest Faith's, Christianity and Islam, which enchained the human soul to his earthly masters with promises of a Hereafter.

Was this because these faiths were rooted in ancient nomadic conquests of civilizations and therefore compatibly seduced the animistic nomad mind when he was ruling outside of his native land?

Interestingly, the animist Mongols of the homeland adopted Buddhism, a severe distillation of slave ethics that was something of a rejection of Hinduism, and became the weakest society, while those Mongol-Turkic folks who adopted the Faiths of Christianity, Islam and Judaism continued to impose their will upon civilizations.

I think that the best example in cinema of first stage governance of the agrarian slave by rampaging horsemen out of the hinterlands is The Magnificent Seven starring Eli Wallach as the only true-speaker in the movie, the only soul that knows that most humans are only worthy as a harvest.

Ultimately, the ideal slave is he who fancies that he is free, which makes the modern democratic surveillance state the tax rancher's Utopia.

We have, apparently, achieved a close to ultimate state of enslavement, based chiefly on the delusional fantasy of rights.

Thanks for the pleasantly sober quote, Devil Dick.