Pushing it through at
the gym today. Something came on through
the headphones that I couldn’t place. Was
it some old Indian film soundtrack cut with that odd jangly guitar? Getting some water I checked and it was “Max
Frost and the Troopers” on a Nuggets collection. “Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to
Come” was a song in the 1968 movie “Wild in the Streets.” The lyrics are a noteworthy, comical time capsule
and presumably penned in 1967, they unequivocally, unimpeachably, prove the point I was trying to
make yesterday about the pivotal year of 1966:
There's a new sun
Risin' up angry in the sky
And there's a new voice
Sayin': "we're not afraid to die!"
Let the old world make believe
It's blind and deaf and dumb, but
Nothing can change the shape of things to come
Well, tough to argue with that last line. I poked around and apparently the song went
to Number 20 on the Billboard charts that year.
“Max Frost” was a fictitious name from the movie. The gent who apparently sang it was Paul
Wibier, but interestingly, no one knows who the band was that performed
it. http://forgottenhits60s.blogspot.com/2010/12/shape-of-things-to-come-perhaps-closest.html
. I’ll have to stop myself from digging
deeper. The movie, which I wasn’t
familiar with, staring Shelly Winters, Christopher Jones, Hal Holbrook, Richard
Pryor involves the youth taking over, and everyone over thirty in forced
retirement, kept in concentration camps with mandatory LSD dosages. I don’t have time for this, this
morning.
I left off yesterday with fragile world of England in 1516,
the year Thomas More published his work “Utopia.” There was certainly a “new sun” rising up in
the sky. If one considers the brief span
from when Thomas More’s work was published that year till the time Henry VIII
ordered his head removed. An astonishing
amount of global disruption had ensued.
Luther would arise from the can and nailed his 95 Theses to the door on Church at
Wittenberg, Cortes would overthrow the Aztecs, the Turks would establish the
first Caliphate and lead their march all the way to the gates of Vienna. Magellan’s crew would circle the world. Pizarro would overthrow the Incas. And Henry VIII would establish, the Church of
England.
It is within this period as well, sailing under the
Portuguese flag that Europeans make their first oceangoing landfall to trade in
Guangzhou. For the first time they have
the wherewithal to sail in, sail out and return, regularly. Roughly 85 years earlier the eunuch Admiral
Zheng He returned from his last voyage to South East Asia, the Middle East and
East Africa. Within a few years of this
voyage the emperor would order the shipyards at Nanjing destroyed and China
would officially withdraw from any such ocean-going exploration.
Envy is one of the seven deadly sins. Momentary envy may have been behind the
brief, exceptional period of Chinese tribute bearing exploration. The Yongle Emperor, the third Ming Emperor,
was the brother of the founding emperor, who deposed his nephew the Jianwen
Emperor to assume the thrown. This was a
celestial no-no and he wanted legitimacy.
The Ming on the whole, wanted the world to know that Han Chinese were once
again ruling the empire, now that the Mongols had been overthrown. But the Yongle emperor in particular, wanted
to broadcast the legitimacy he felt inadequate about. This infamy of Mongol defeat, coupled with the
infamy of dubious legitimacy, lead him and the empire to behave in a manner rather
distinct in Chinese history. For a
while, China in general and the emperor in particular was envious of acceptance
from afar. The Yongle emperor was 垂涎欲滴[1] for legitimacy and he set out to
secure it.
The Europeans, while brash arrogant, zealous and
technologically empowered, could be under no illusions that they were the
center of civilization at that time. They set out from a place of deficit. There was too much magnificence, elsewhere
that they wanted access to. Envy, in
part, helped to catalyze their activity.
Unlike the Chinese, Thomas More boldly looked outside the realm, outside
the known world, for a new place to start his “Utopia.” Utopia’s in Chinese history, were almost
always found within the realm, historically, back during the Zhou Dynasty.
I think we’re at a point today, where the tides of envy are
about to shift, once again and I’m not sure that neither China nor the West are
especially prepared for this transition.
More on this tomorrow.
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