December 27, 1999, Kathmandu, overnight in Eve

Est hostel

Start combing through your feelings along the way.

It is difficult to separate historical feelings from current feelings, because civilization itself has an up-and-down stickiness.

There seems to be no escaping the fact that the cradle of several major human civilizations we have seen this time has all declined, without exception.

In contrast, Greece fared better. Although its national power is currently in decline in the Western world and is no longer an international cultural center, Greek civilization has not declined, not only is it still spreading and expounding around the world, but it is also understood and inherited as a direct descendant of this civilization. Its decline is only manifested in the fact that it has not been able to maintain the momentum of prosperity that it once had, but what civilization has been able to maintain its prosperity for thousands of years? The tragedy of Greece is that others can revive it through its former glory, while it has never been revived itself. As for the direct causes of the decline of Greece, I think there are two reasons, one is the protracted political internal friction between the Athenians and the Spartans, and the other is that they have to meet foreign enemies and constantly go on expeditions, causing fatal strain, but this has little to do with the inherent character of Greek civilization. This background makes today's Greeks idle and indisputable in the cold, fighting only for a little historical honor and relic, such as the Olympics and Barthenon, but in moderation, showing a kind of old health.

Egyptian civilization was different. From the beginning, he lacked clear reason and indulged in the mystery of conceit. When it cuts off the possibility of being fully understood by the outside world with its huge majesty, it actually cuts off its own continuing mission. The creators of the miracle of Thebes (present-day Luxor) only wanted to live forever or be resurrected in the form of mummies, and did not make any real arrangements for the continuation of their heirs. These pharaohs, who had usurped the power of civilization, were war-loving, and had already dominated Western Asia as early as the 15th century BCE, which was detrimental to the structure of their own mysterious civilization. When the center of gravity of Mediterranean trade shifts from south to north, it will no longer be beautiful; However, its proximity made it the target of successive crusades by the Persians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Arabs. The former glory caused every occupier to try to cut off its history, and as a result, no one could read ancient texts, no one could understand ancient documents, and the ontological civilization was almost annihilated, leaving only some descendants of the supposedly purebred "Dharma Elders" on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor who were constantly tinkling to restore their ancestral tombs for outsiders to visit.

The civilization of the Two Rivers, which had fully matured more than 4,000 years ago, was based on commerce, and from the commercial civilization extended the legal civilization marked by the Code of Hammurabi. However, this civilization as a whole tends to be practical, lacks a deep humanistic foundation, is weak in spirit, out of control in morality, and is hedonistic first, and civilization is more manifested in the distribution and contention of property, so it directly induces a large number of wars. There is no room for the destruction of commercial civilization by agricultural civilization and nomadic civilization, and the revenge of each other is even more cruel. For a long time, Babylon, Assyria and other places had no cultural conscience, and they were all inhumane acts, which was really a great mockery of Hammurabi. The civilization of the Two Rivers also left the results of mathematics and astronomy promoted by commerce to the world with twists and turns, but in the local area, as many historians have pointed out in their evaluation of Assyria's militarism, war first destroys all high-level cultures, and then deprives a people of its bravest and healthiest life, with the result that it always leaves a large number of withered bodies that have lost their culture to endure all kinds of absurdities. For this reason, we stand in front of the newly restored ruins of Babylon and feel an indescribable desolation.

The Hebrew civilization, noble and sorrowful, resilient and lacking in space, was in turmoil from the beginning, and thus made religion its territory. However, this kind of civilization, which lacks actual territory, will find it difficult to establish a grand pattern of its own after all, and it can penetrate far and wide but is constrained everywhere, and it will always be in the tension of self-defense and survival. However, it is precisely because of its lack of actual territory that it is not prone to collapse like other civilizations, and is always in a state of flux and unpredictable. That's why Jerusalem has always been a little trap for us to think about on this trip.

The Persian civilization was a different kind of civilization that almost relied on the charisma of two great monarchs, and it might not have been possible to rank among the great civilizations of the past without Cyrus and Darius. I stayed in the ruins of Posepolis for the longest time, thinking about how these two ancient Asian giants had included the worlds they knew one by one in the list of tributaries, but I couldn't help but sigh among the sunset: after all, this is only the private hegemony of geniuses, and it is difficult to inherit and continue. Behind them, there is already a group of incompetence full of fat and powder, not to mention that today it has long been a world of foreign civilizations, and few people remember the majesty of ancient Persia.

As for the decline of the Indus-Ganges civilization, I think that at least half of the internal causes are related to religious error. The contempt for life, the rejection of the world, the irresponsibility, and finally even the tolerance of decay, evil, and slavery greatly reduced the strength of civilization itself, so that when Buddhism, which had the highest degree of wisdom, was finally eroded, it naturally became enslaved. The brutality of foreign forces has made the poverty and ecology of the bottom more and more spread, and even if national self-esteem erupts from time to time, it has lost the dignity of civilization.

Two thousand years ago, several major civilizations, each of which had a difficult scripture to read, declined logically, but after all, it was shocking. I was trying to put it mildly in the southern foothills of the Himalayas, but I couldn't.