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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8339848" data-attributes="member: 82106">My point was that if one society is 99.9% of the way to industrialization, it will still look like what you choose to label as 'primitive' compared to one which crossed over that line, even a mere century earlier, which is nothing in the timescale of pre-industrial change, but is an eon to an industrial society. That is on top of the &quot;no single path&quot; aspect, in which you simply cannot put everyone on a line and say one is behind or ahead of the other.I mean, AT NO TIME, have the Chinese EVER considered themselves 'behind' Europe or the West generally. Yet, even today, that charge is leveled against them, and they were practically universally reviled and labeled as a sort of human plague only 100 years ago. Yet they have one of the most advanced cultures on Earth, and have had for THREE THOUSAND YEARS continuously! So, at one time, from about 1700 to the mid 20th Century, China was in a politically disunified state, and Europe briefly surpassed them in arms manufacturing, which allowed the colonial powers to militarily dominate China. How does that fit in your model of 'advanced' and 'primitive'? Europe called the Chinese 'primitive', yet had nothing like their ceramics industry, or numerous other industries, not to even mention that China was still far ahead in finance, and actually pretty close to Europe's equal in manufacturing for most of those 350 years. These labels were simply invented so that Europeans could pretend that their exploitation of the world had some good will motive. We really don't need to perpetuate those lies, do we?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8339848, member: 82106"] My point was that if one society is 99.9% of the way to industrialization, it will still look like what you choose to label as 'primitive' compared to one which crossed over that line, even a mere century earlier, which is nothing in the timescale of pre-industrial change, but is an eon to an industrial society. That is on top of the "no single path" aspect, in which you simply cannot put everyone on a line and say one is behind or ahead of the other. I mean, AT NO TIME, have the Chinese EVER considered themselves 'behind' Europe or the West generally. Yet, even today, that charge is leveled against them, and they were practically universally reviled and labeled as a sort of human plague only 100 years ago. Yet they have one of the most advanced cultures on Earth, and have had for THREE THOUSAND YEARS continuously! So, at one time, from about 1700 to the mid 20th Century, China was in a politically disunified state, and Europe briefly surpassed them in arms manufacturing, which allowed the colonial powers to militarily dominate China. How does that fit in your model of 'advanced' and 'primitive'? Europe called the Chinese 'primitive', yet had nothing like their ceramics industry, or numerous other industries, not to even mention that China was still far ahead in finance, and actually pretty close to Europe's equal in manufacturing for most of those 350 years. These labels were simply invented so that Europeans could pretend that their exploitation of the world had some good will motive. We really don't need to perpetuate those lies, do we? [/QUOTE]

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