![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupThis is taken pretty much wholesale from some Malcolm Gladwell book, possibly The Tipping Point. Like all things in Malcolm Gladwell books, it's interesting and makes intuitive sense, but isn't backed up with a lot of data or exhaustively tested. I'm okay with this because I always leave Malcolm Gladwell books thinking interesting thoughts. But this hypothesis has no where near the weight of the exhaustively researched Farewell to Alms.
Wheat farming, as practiced in Europe, is pretty easy. Oh, it's labor intensive during planting and harvest, but it's pretty much "drop seeds in ground, wait, collect." You *can* make it more complicated than that, and you might benefit, but so much of your return is determined by rainfall that it's hard to get good data. And while you need other people during harvest time, it's still a solo activity, in the sense that you are minimal affected by other farmers' choices.
Wet rice farming is hard. First you have to build a paddy out of clay, to hold in the water you will extract from the communally built irrigation system. This doesn't seem too hard, except that it's important it be flat and even (so the rice you plant gets equal amounts of water regardless of placement). And those walls had better be absolutely water proof. Then you have to add soil on top. Really this should be "create soil", because you're mixing things like dung in to add to the nutritional value. And unlike in Europe, rice farmers are using many different strains of rice and attempting to optimize soil for each of them while not wasting resources (human feces, aka "night soil" was valuable enough that you could pay your rent with it*). Time to maturity is extremely important because you want to get in two harvests/season. You need to have a sophisticated irrigation system to allow water in, stop at the right time, and then let it out. The right amount of water varies by strain. Then you have to spend a lot of time wading through the paddies, pulling out weeds and parasites. Scientific experimentation (requiring mathematical skill) and extreme diligence are both highly rewarded.
The end result is that Asian farming aphorisms run along the lines of "work hard and be intelligent and you will make your family rich", while European farming aphorisms trend towards "fuck, I hope it rains." Gladwell thinks that this exerted tiny amounts of evolutionary pressure (be it cultural or genetic) that accumulated over thousands of years to end up with Asian cultures that produce more mathematically talented and community-oriented individuals.
Now, there's a lot of other possible explanations here. But it's worth noting that near-eastern cultures, which used a collective irrigation system but otherwise resembled European farming, have the collectivist aspects of Asian cultures but not the same work ethic or math talent.
*Fun fact I learned researching this on wikipedia: the waste of rich people was worth more in Japan because they ate better and thus had more nutritious feces. I simultaneously admire whoever figured this out for their capitalist genius and and feel that it is vaguely unfair.
Wheat farming, as practiced in Europe, is pretty easy. Oh, it's labor intensive during planting and harvest, but it's pretty much "drop seeds in ground, wait, collect." You *can* make it more complicated than that, and you might benefit, but so much of your return is determined by rainfall that it's hard to get good data. And while you need other people during harvest time, it's still a solo activity, in the sense that you are minimal affected by other farmers' choices.
Wet rice farming is hard. First you have to build a paddy out of clay, to hold in the water you will extract from the communally built irrigation system. This doesn't seem too hard, except that it's important it be flat and even (so the rice you plant gets equal amounts of water regardless of placement). And those walls had better be absolutely water proof. Then you have to add soil on top. Really this should be "create soil", because you're mixing things like dung in to add to the nutritional value. And unlike in Europe, rice farmers are using many different strains of rice and attempting to optimize soil for each of them while not wasting resources (human feces, aka "night soil" was valuable enough that you could pay your rent with it*). Time to maturity is extremely important because you want to get in two harvests/season. You need to have a sophisticated irrigation system to allow water in, stop at the right time, and then let it out. The right amount of water varies by strain. Then you have to spend a lot of time wading through the paddies, pulling out weeds and parasites. Scientific experimentation (requiring mathematical skill) and extreme diligence are both highly rewarded.
The end result is that Asian farming aphorisms run along the lines of "work hard and be intelligent and you will make your family rich", while European farming aphorisms trend towards "fuck, I hope it rains." Gladwell thinks that this exerted tiny amounts of evolutionary pressure (be it cultural or genetic) that accumulated over thousands of years to end up with Asian cultures that produce more mathematically talented and community-oriented individuals.
Now, there's a lot of other possible explanations here. But it's worth noting that near-eastern cultures, which used a collective irrigation system but otherwise resembled European farming, have the collectivist aspects of Asian cultures but not the same work ethic or math talent.
*Fun fact I learned researching this on wikipedia: the waste of rich people was worth more in Japan because they ate better and thus had more nutritious feces. I simultaneously admire whoever figured this out for their capitalist genius and and feel that it is vaguely unfair.
