The Mandate of Heaven Is Written Propaganda

The school model says hunter-gatherers are miserable until farming creates surplus and lets an elite do the higher work. Religion, art, science, technology, writing, money, property, cities, irrigation, and hereditary elites all arrive as civilization's gifts. Jiang names that model before attacking it because it is the story that makes hierarchy look like payment for progress Source trail 0:001:38 today we discuss the idea of civilization and first I want to present to you the general understanding of how we get civilization then I will present to you an alternative okay so the traditional understanding is the Ma...and technology and with these three things in place now you can grow as a society okay you can now build cities why because now you can have irrigation and farming okay you can now direct the river the river flow so you... .

The alternative starts from the cave painters and early religious settlements: people were already capable of sacred art, science, and collective construction. Temples form around religious practice. Farming grows to sustain the temples. Then temple people become corrupt. If a temple is just one shrine among many, people can leave. But once a temple becomes the meeting point for trade, its land becomes the most valuable real estate in the world Source trail 4:39 Rather than being elected by the people, rather than serve the people, they become hereditary, okay? They engage in rent -seeking. And so what people do is they just leave and build a temple somewhere else, okay? And fo... , and leaving becomes harder.

The temple economy records food, rations, trade, cows, grain, and public works. Writing begins as accounting, but it does not stay accounting. When hierarchy violates the older natural order, mythology has to be written down so the hierarchy looks as if it came from the gods. This is the lecture's first hard sentence: civilization is a device meant to gaslight Source trail 7:13 We could at any time in our history do all these things. Civilization is a device meant to gaslight or fool people into believing that a hierarchy is legitimate when it is not legitimate. It is meant to fool people into... people into believing an illegitimate hierarchy is legitimate.

The four earliest civilizations share latitude, rivers, and sea access. Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus are not separate sealed units; they are a connected trade world Source trail 11:1012:15 So they will build more colonies, and this is how you get civilization, okay? You always have a major city, and as it becomes too big, you have other places in order to expand your trade reach, okay? So the priority is...So you may have thought that Western civilization is just Europe and America, that's not true. Okay, if you just look at the history, these places have always been in contact with each other, and collectively, they've b... . China is treated as a special case because the Himalayas limit its contact. Western civilization, in this older frame, is not Europe plus America. It begins in the contact zone among Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Central Asia, the Levant, and the Indus.

Sumer matters because it connects everyone to everyone else. The strangeness of its language and the speed of its development do not require aliens or Anunnaki internet myths. Put different people in a trade bottleneck and make them coordinate, Jiang says, and they will invent language, writing, and civilization fast. Necessity is the mother of creativity. Source trail 14:27 I don't know why, but there are some people on the internet who believe that aliens came to Samaria and created humans. Okay? These aliens are called the Anunnaki. And it's a really stupid idea. And what you learn in th...

That creativity does not mean moral progress. The key pattern is inversion. Animistic egalitarianism gives way to mother-goddess agriculture; mother-goddess balance gives way to male sky gods; kingly authority gives way to princely rebellion; kings give way to bureaucrats. The old order is not simply replaced. It is dethroned, flipped, and retold as if the new order had always been sacred. Source trail 15:2116:3617:3318:28 Okay, good, all right. So let's do the PPT. All right, so in this class, I want to talk about how, because of civilization development, they start to promote writing and promote mythology. Okay? And what I will show you...And then with agriculture, you had the mother goddess civilization, because you needed fertility, right? The mother goddess, is able to give you more children, as well as help you grow crops. But over time, as civilizat...

Mesopotamia is legible because clay lasts. Cuneiform tablets survive where papyrus decays. That permanence matters politically. Jiang says people did not need writing because they could not memorize sacred stories; they wrote them in stone for propaganda. Written sacred spectacle works like film. You are mesmerized by the image and stop asking how it was made. Source trail 23:53 Enuma Elesh means, fall up high. So it's a Bible, basically. It's like what God told us. And this is a story of the creation of the world. Okay. So what's really important to understand is that all the stories are writt...

Enuma Elish is read as a violent reversal of mother-goddess religion. Apsu and Tiamat, fresh water and salt water, generate life. The younger gods rebel. Marduk becomes the champion and kills Tiamat. Then he splits her like a dried fish Source trail 26:56 Now what happens afterwards is really interesting because after he kills Tiamat, the mother goddess, he takes her body, and then from her body, he builds the entire world. He builds both the sky and the planet Earth. Ok... , stretches one half into heaven, and builds the ordered world from the mother's corpse. The values change with the body: harmony gives way to struggle, toil, exploitation, irrigation, calendar, and control Source trail 27:5328:55 Okay? So what's important to understand is this. He's doing this to the mother goddess. Okay? So not only is Marduk proclaiming a new order, but he's also proclaiming new values. New values of struggle, exploitation, to...He appointed the year, marked off divisions and set up three stars each for the 12 months. Okay? So he's basically building a calendar. The idea here is that all these were bureaucratic inventions in Samaria in order to... .

The most brutal line is not only that Marduk conquers. It is that humans are made to serve. From an enemy's blood, mankind is created and the service of the gods is imposed. The gods are set free because humans become slaves. Source trail 30:49 Okay? They bound him, holding him before Eo. They inflicted the penalty on him and severed his blood vessels. From his blood, he created mankind on whom he imposed the service of the gods and set the gods free. Okay? No... Babylon then becomes the divine city: built by the gods, for the gods, with humans inside it as servants. This is the mandate of heaven in its raw form. The city is holy, and holiness makes captivity feel like home Source trail 31:4332:37 Okay? So now, he's gonna create this hierarchy. So yes, all humans are slaves but there's some humans who are better slaves than other humans. Okay? And that's what explains the hierarchy. So as you can see, in the Midd...shrine to house a pedestal wherein we may repose when we finish the work. When Marduk heard this, he beamed as brightly as the light of day. Build Babylon the task you have sought. Let bricks for it be molded and raise... .

Gilgamesh is not only a story about a giant king and his dead friend. It is a theory of kingship. The tyrant loses Enkidu, fears death, fails to become immortal, and returns to the city. The moral Jiang draws is that immortality means serving the people so they remember you forever. Gilgamesh fails the literal quest and succeeds through the story itself. Source trail 35:07 So they kill Enkidu. When Enkidu dies Gilgamesh is heartbroken and he's scared because he's afraid that he will die as well. So he sets on a quest for immortality. Okay? He goes and tries to figure out how to live forev...

The deeper lesson is how stories are built. Local legends begin as memorable acts. A drunk student passes the exam. A player scores a winning touchdown. A student drives to Canada for no reason. Oral tradition exaggerates because exaggeration keeps memory alive Source trail 38:1339:0640:04 The king must learn humility. So, this is a hard thing to understand but it's really important for us to understand otherwise you cannot understand the Bible and other literary creations. So, what I'm going to do is I'm...And over time people add color to it to make it even more memorable. If you don't do that the story becomes forgotten. Okay? So, the only way to keep the story alive is by constantly exaggerating it and bringing color t... . Then the legends consolidate into one impossible hero. Only after that do the people in charge add the controlling line Source trail 40:5041:48 Okay? And then over time what happens is that these stories become consolidated combined together to form a new story okay? Harvard's most legendary student was Pitbull James. He once rolled an exam that no professor co...say you know what we don't care what you do as long as you give us money. Okay? That's the first version. Second version is when he wrote he found his true love he settled down in the woods to write full time. Okay? So,... : give the money to Harvard, choose writing over athletics, do not be stupid like the bear-puncher.

That is why Jiang can call school classics boring on purpose. Bureaucrats make stories less alive so they can be taught as discipline. Source trail 41:4842:48 say you know what we don't care what you do as long as you give us money. Okay? That's the first version. Second version is when he wrote he found his true love he settled down in the woods to write full time. Okay? So,...But before you can imagine that they were interesting. But the bureaucrats took them and changed them into boring stories that they can now teach school children to read and brainwash them. Okay? Does that make sense? O... Greek mythology is read the same way. Gaea, Uranus, Cronus, Rhea, Zeus, Sargon, Romulus and Remus, David, and Genghis Khan all become layered political memory. Myths are house renovations. Source trail 47:00 I'm going to become a warlord. I'm going to overthrow the queen and the king. Okay? And so he slays the consort and marries the high priestess. Okay? Which is following the pattern of the mythology. Right? Then what hap... Each regime adds a floor, paints over the old room, and leaves enough structure underneath for the history to be decoded.

The final text makes the political economy explicit. Agriculture is sedentary; pastoralism moves with sheep and goats. A king or priest prefers the people who stay put. Source trail 47:5948:56 Remember they invent writing in order to basically gaslight the people. So even though Samaria Mesopotamia is developing really quickly as you can see from this map it's still a very diverse place. Okay? They have diffe...now is they're going to create these mythologies to convince people to give up the free happy lifestyle of pastoralists and become an enslaved farmer. Okay? Alright? And the question is how? Well this is how. This is ca... The Debate Between Sheep and Grain stages this preference as divine judgment. Sheep boasts of wool, clothing, offerings, and service to soldiers and priests. Grain answers with stability, productivity, and safety. The gods pick grain.

Jiang's interpretation is not subtle because the social mechanism is not subtle. Sheep and goat people are stronger, freer, and more independent Source trail 52:27 that grain is better even though people who raise sheep and goats they're stronger they're more free they're more independent but kings don't want that so they create these stories these mythologies in order to brainwas... . Kings do not want that. So myth teaches people to prefer the crop that makes them countable. Writing exists to brainwash people out of freedom and independence. The mandate of heaven descends all the way into the field: the right food is the food that makes rule easier Source trail 52:27 that grain is better even though people who raise sheep and goats they're stronger they're more free they're more independent but kings don't want that so they create these stories these mythologies in order to brainwas... .

The first student question asks whether neighboring civilizations shared myth-making because they were close to one another. Jiang refuses a simple diffusion answer. Influence probably happened, and scholars can spend decades trying to measure it, but myth-making also arises naturally wherever elites need hierarchy justified. Neighboring elites borrow, compete, differentiate, and adapt. Source trail 53:2654:29 that's a really good question so it's almost impossible for us to answer how much they influence each other okay because even if they were not in contact with each other they would still come up in order to justify thei...influenced by American popular culture probably a lot but how much okay also whatever influence that you have you still also have your own personal needs as well okay so that's a great question and you know scholars spe... Egypt builds pyramids; Mesopotamia builds ziggurats and epics. Each culture wants to prove its own superiority.

The second student question pushes the model into Chinese mythology: why is Pangu male and self-sacrificing when other creator figures are female? Jiang does not claim certainty. He says the original god should be imagined as nonsexual, asexual, or both male and female, because creation requires a balance of forces Source trail 56:06 so it's hard for us to say what the original myth was okay the process is this in the very beginning all myths all gods should be asexual okay so they are almost they are either non -sexual like it's not male or female... . Yin and yang names the principle. Later societies change the gendered traits of the god to reflect the hierarchy they need.

The close points forward. This lecture has been about settled agricultural civilization: temples, cities, grain, writing, hierarchy. Next comes the steppe, the world outside the field Source trail 57:07 sense and next class what we're going to do is we will talk about the steps people okay the people in the steps this is civilization so people who do agriculture but remember that throughout most of human history the ma... . Jiang ends by reminding the room that many major conquerors, including Genghis Khan, come from the steppes. Civilization has written its mandate; the next question is what happens when mobile people who are harder to count ride into it.