A hugely complicated, centrally plann... - Paul Kriwaczek - Quotes.Pub

A hugely complicated, centrally planned, social and economic system can only be kept on the rails for as long as people believe in it.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes Political stability Quotes

Paul Kriwaczek Quotes

The gakkul vat, the gakkul vat! The gakkul vat, the lamsare vat! The gakkul vat, which puts us in a happy mood! The lamsare vat, which makes the heart rejoice! The ugurbal jar, glory of the house! The caggub jar, filled with beer! The amam jar, which carries the beer from the lamsare vat!… As I spin around the lake of beer, while feeling wonderful, Feeling wonderful, while drinking beer, in a blissful mood, While drinking alcohol and feeling exhilarated, With a joyful heart and a contented liver, My heart is a heart filled with joy!

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

Anyone who has ever watched children amuse themselves will recognize that the scientific and technological face of civilization is precisely the result of play in its purest form. Just as children are constantly exploring, experimenting, testing and trying things out, for no conscious purpose except the sheer enjoyment of the game itself, so pure science and applied technology play with ideas and toy with the principles and substance of the world; all the time wondering ‘just suppose…’ and asking ‘what happens if…?

Civilization Quotes / Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

History may not repeat itself but, as Mark Twain said, it does rhyme.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

And that through all the ups and downs, nothing really worthwhile is ever permanently lost, even though its creators may be long forgotten. When, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, our civilization finally lies dying in the gutter, some of us will still be looking, as the ancient Mesopotamians taught us to do, at the stars.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

But if it were only a matter of attracting success and good fortune to his city and his empire, then being pronounced a god would have meant little more than being appointed a kind of national or city mascot – a role mostly played for us by pet animals these days.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

Without Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest and deportation, Judaism as we know it, and therefore Christianity and Islam in their turn, could never have come to be.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

Highly organized complex societies are delicate machines. It does not take much to bring them to ruin. ‘For want of a nail…the kingdom was lost’, as the old rhyme has it. Civilizations based on ideology are even more fragile than most. As we know from twentieth-century history, once people stop believing in the system, the end is near; no amount of coercion can keep it going indefinitely.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

There is much irony in the fact that Anglo-American Middle East policy, from Operation Ajax, the deposing of democratically elected, socialist, secularist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in Iran in 1953, to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the overthrow of secular nationalist dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, has served in fact, if not intention, to ensure the continuing hold of Islam over nearly all the countries of the region.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people’s understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

Assyria had no more prospect of halting the human flow than can the British government stop illegal entrants to the UK, although an effective natural moat surrounds the British Isles. There is little hope that the US Department of Homeland Security will have greater success with its border fence than did King Shulgi of Ur and his successors, whose ‘wall to keep out the Amorites’ failed to prevent the migrants’ eventual takeover of all lower Mesopotamia and their founding of Old Babylon.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

Such people are not known for their sense of humour and lightness of touch; they rarely break a smile. To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes

For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people.

Change Quotes Leadership Quotes / Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes Political stability Quotes

Those societies in which seriousness, tradition, conformity and adherence to long-established - often god-prescribed - ways of doing things are the strictly enforced rule, have always been the majority across time and throughout the world. Such people are not known for their sense of humour and lightness of touch; they rarely break a smile. To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development. By contrast, social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind.

Change Quotes / Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes Play Quotes Progress Quotes

But belief in a system cannot be sustained for ever. Empires based solely on power and domination, while allowing their subjects to do as they will, can last for centuries. Those that try to control the everyday lives of their people are much harder to sustain.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes Political stability Quotes

Assyria soon discovered a painful truth: empires are like Ponzi schemes: financial frauds in which previous investors are paid returns out of new investors' deposits. The costs of holding imperial territory can only be underwritten by loot and tribute extracted by constant new conquests; empires must continue to expand if they are not to collapse.

Babylon: Mesopotamia And The Birth Of Civilization Quotes Empires Quotes

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