The History of the Higher Cultures
Needless to be vague, as the principles of cultural development, the four seasons, the transition of destiny to causality and culture to civilisation and the motive forces therein expressed in the arts and sciences, are laid adequately enough to be understood when referenced, the whole of world history can be restructured to factor in the existence of the Higher Cultures: The Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian and Chinese, the Apollinian, the Magian, the Faustian, and the Mexican, which will be discussed in a separate post.
The stages of their becoming are clear as day. The Springs of Sumer and the Old Kingdom started in the 3rd Millennium BC, following a long, Merovingian pre-culture stage. In this time, we witness the construction of the Pyramids and the foundations of the Egyptian monarchy. The act of pyramid building, continued until the 6th Dynasty around 2300BC. The summer of Sumer was marked out by the rise of Sargon of Akkad in 2500; in this Babylonian Baroque, we see Sargon expand outwards and style himself like Justinian I and Charles VI, and suddenly around 2000-1800, both Cultures experienced the first Civilisations, the historic title of the “New Kingdom” for Egypt is considered by academics to start around the 1500s, and in this time the Babylonian Culture saw its cultural elements: artifacts of measurement and number, spread across the world.
But after this, we find that the two empires passed into a state of decay, the locals of Babylon saw numerous groups arrive and seize power and yet put up no fight for their own dignity from the Kassites to the Assyrians, then the Persians and the Macedonians during the Apollinian Summer. They receded in significance as they were surrounded by greater forces.
On that note, between 1500 and 1100, three new cultures, the Indian, Chinese and Apollinian, arrived. What’s notable about the arrival of Apollinian Culture is that the Bronze Age Collapse was at its height throughout its springtime, much like the European Dark Ages before Faustian Culture, whilst to the East the Punjab and Yellow Rivers birthed a pair of cultures isolated enough to be considered enduring in their forms to this day; after the Bronze Age Collapse, a new generation of Higher Cultures were given life.
Napoleon considered himself the beginning of a 4th great French dynasty after the Merovingians, Carolingians and Capetians. Equally, the Chinese speak of the Hsias, Shangs and Chous in the same respect, but whilst in the West Louis Capet was brutally decapitated, power in the abstract was merely removed from the Chous, thus reigning in the period of contending states and the age of Civilisation around 500BC. This period saw great upheaval, much like the social and economic revolutions of the 20th century, and ended with a single order rising above the rest in the form of the Qin state. This resulted in a shift in power from the Hwang-Ho River to the Yangtze and finds analogous moments in other civilizations in the form of the Egyptian Hyksos period, the shift from Attica to Rome, and the 20th Century’s power shift from Europe to America. Each case finds a victor of history, an “End of History”, an Imperium.
It was Ying Zheng who led Qin to its “Pax Serica” status in China, and in turn claimed the throne as the first “emperor” of China and in his stead, they wiped away all traces of the Feudalism that presided before and replaced it with a series of sub-districts that extended down to individual towns and villages in an attempt at modernization. Over the ensuing centuries however the position of Emperor was itself diminished as a range of other characters would elect and remove emperors when needed. The construction of the Great Wall also had the effect of impelling the Hunnic invaders from the North, and so those invaders took to the West and found the respective walls of the Roman Imperium, though unlike the Chinese, they were not so successful in defending themselves.
During the Roman Winter, the Middle East saw a great resurgence in the form of the Magian civilization, so named because despite its later Arab dominance, gathered itself from a wide variety of sources. During and after the time of Christ many local religions had a resurgence be it Judaism in Palestine or Zoroastrianism in Persia. As this occurred a plethora of new faiths gathered traction, namely Christianity which spread across the Roman Empire and then Islam at the beginning of the Magian Summer. As stated early on in this project, the power of the Roman forms suffocated the middle East for centuries before its influence in the area subsided, and when it did Islam exploded out from Mecca and Medina to provide a unifying conscience for the whole world in which it inhabited. In its late period you see the raids of barbarians on many fronts, the most obvious being that of the Mongols from the East, in the 13th century, but before the sacking of Baghdad we also see the scavenging of the corpse by another people: that of our own Springtime Faustian culture.
You could place yourself in the footsteps of an Abbasid Caliph, your civilisation stretches from one end of the earth to the other, encompassing every point of interest in the Abrahamic tradition, and you would see these Christian armies as mere barbarians from far off and uncivilised war-band states from the north, and this temporary siege on the holy land an act of Bolshevik corruption of the will of God. Fundamentally, and truthfully, this epoch of a pocket of your empire would be so beneath you that it would inspire a hubris that would prevent you from foreseeing a greater eastern force, and even the succession of these northern tribes to the new centre of the earth.
Not much needs to be said of the development of Faustian Civilisation, our pre-culture period WAS the Merovingian era before the sudden upthrust of the cathedrals after 900. By the end of the Spring, the whole of Western Europe was dominated by their presences so much that the Renaissance in the 1400s brought ideas from the classical style into our form language to rebel against the presence of the Gothic age. The 1500s align with a golden age of exploration for us where our culture impressed itself on the now empty America, marked by the construction of Cathedrals overtop hills meant to bury old Aztec pyramids and generations of North American pioneers who sought solitude in the infinite wilderness. As the Americas created their own nations, most notably the USA, the newfound wealth of Faustian man financed expansion eastwards. All was now brought under the Faustian intellect, entire continents turned into prisons and factories for the benefit of one’s home nation. Where a Period of Warring states was to begin, no such expression was found, for the nations of Europe exerted their Will outwards to prevent such an event after the fall of Napoleon. This era of European peace would eventually come to an end in the 20th century however when the mounting tension between these closely proximate empires came to a peak. There was no one left to conquer but each other. Consequently, our Rome, the USA, found its way to imperial power with Liberalism as it’s crowning aesthetic and “end of history”. Whether the Caesars arrive or whether they don’t, and whether one subdues the world under their boot or many rule in separated territories, destiny alone cannot tell.