zazen

But the thing is they do own it. Private ownership is one of the capitalist mechanisms they've introduced. How can we explain that there are 400 billionaires in China, most of whom have accumulated that wealth through private enterprises with companies in their own names. It's just that the state has a lot of oversight and regulation. Again, lets say there was a commie aspiring country that had accumulated wealth, the wealthy elite got blissed out on meditation, became compassionately selfless and said to the state its time to bring this utopian communist dream into reality, then gave up their wealth.Or lets just say the state took it as their own and said it wasn't theirs any way lol. The problem of maintaining that wealth to be re-distributed and circulate is the problem communism runs into. As stated in my message:

In non-communist cases, sanctions are clearly weaponized against countries to maintain US hegemony or undermine those countries. It's usually the US that imposes the sanctions which then pressures others to follow suit via penalties on third parties who continue doing business with the sanctioned country. Many non-Western countries still trade with sanctioned countries through various means although it is difficult to do. Sanctions are basically economic warfare and can result in chaos, instability and deaths indirectly via poverty. But in the case of communist countries it's clearly a response to seizing foreign assets without compensation. @Bobby_2021 Leo's reasoning is sound in that if a country expropriates foreign assets this can expect a response as it violates property rights and global norms. Whats understandable is that countries want to achieve economic sovereignty and weaken imperialistic chains, but how they do so can back fire. If done so in a revolutionary way rather than a gradual way through buy outs, partnership etc this causes back lash and capital flight - because why would anyone want to invest in a country that could just seize your investment (to nationalize it) without compensation. Related to above, the issue is that the process involves theft when it wants to transition to communism - which is un-ethical and assumes that the elites who got rich through capitalist elements will voluntarily give up their wealth for a communist utopia. But lets say they do. The problem then is that communism assumes the wealth it takes which was built off of capitalist mechanisms can then be sustained without those mechanisms. In simple terms, if capitalism is good at growing the pie, and communism divides the pie - how does it replenish the pie? Wealth isn't static, once the pie is eaten its eaten. Communism fails at making pies and growing them due to lack of innovation and incentives. Where Marx is right is that capitalism comes before communism, because Communism first needs something to re-distribute in the first place. But he shouldn't stop there - how does it then maintain there's something to be continuously re-distributed when you get rid of the mechanism that creates things to re-distribute. Once the pie runs out, another revolution will occur, capitalism will come back, and communists will say lets try again because the last time we didn't implement it properly. Communism can work in a tribal settings but is much harder at scale where communal ties barely exist. But technological advancements could help resolve a lot of the issues. If work can be automated with AI and robots then we don't have to worry about incentives to motivate people to produce. Big data can be analyzed with AI to not mis-allocate resources and plug inefficiencies caused by central planning trying to manage such complexities. Blockchain and decentralization can help things not be authoritarian.

From Balaji: “VOTE BLUE, NO MATTER WHO The last objection is around motive: ok, but why would Democrats destroy democracy? It’s simple: once blues gain total control, they begin funneling tax dollars to Democrat affiliates. This is how you get a $100B train in California where no train is built but Democrat unions get paid. And this is how the homeless industrial complex makes money, by getting people addicted to drugs and then getting paid by the size of the problem: This is also how BLM burned down black businesses while lining blue pockets, and why student loan relief goes to Democrat voters and in general why so much public money produces so little today in the way of public goods. This, in short, is the blue business model. The purpose of the blue political machine is to fleece Americans while enriching Democrat loyalists. However, they can only pull off this scam with total one-party control. Outside eyes would stop the gravy train. And that's how you get “vote blue, no matter who.” Is the above a valid example of corruption from the left?

Its valid to not dismiss ideas simply for not working in the past except that certain aspects of Marxist theory, like the idea of a centrally planned economy - are inherently problematic and can lead to the kind of authoritarianism which you say is the reason for it failing in the first place. The question is whether “True Communism” much like “True Capitalism” can ever be implemented in their purest forms by a human nature that isn’t 100% pure. Communism demands we not be greedy for the sake of community and assumes others will fend for us - capitalism demands we be greedy enough to fend for ourselves and assumes doing so will have a trickle down effect on those less able to compete with us.

Two things can be true at the same time. That economically carpet bombing countries with sanctions holds them back immensely and is anti-democratic and anti-capitalist - ironically perpetrated by the West who claim democracy and capitalism as what exemplifies them. That life is too complex to fit into ideologies such as capitalism and communism in their purest forms. China doesn’t fall into the trap of aligning itself purely ideologically but see’s them as utilities/tools/mechanisms. It’s done extremely well with its hybrid system and the world should learn from it. If the core tenant of communism is that the means of production are owned collectively, in order for their profits to be redistributed equally, in order to make a society classless and stateless - China has deviated from this a long time ago. They have political authority with control of strategic industries, whilst providing social safety nets, whilst using the market forces of capitalism to generate wealth - which create classes that are evident in the disparity between rural and urban China (similar to Americas coastal elites vs rural working class) Whilst the state owns land, this doesn’t exclude people from owning the means of production to accumulate wealth through business, factories and leased property. These create inequalities (which is opposed to Communism) but that China handles the excesses of very well. Land can be leased through a leasehold system, which also occurs in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and UK (especially London which is owned by the Crown and aristocratic families) - yet these aren’t communist countries but in fact often hailed as the successful fruits of capitalism.

@Raze Connected to what you just shared By Jonathan Cook: ''More than 20 years ago, a group of extreme ideologues known as the neoconservatives seized the foreign policy initiative during the presidency of George W Bush. They have since become a permanent foreign policy elite in Washington, whichever administration is in power. What is distinctive about the neoconservatives is the centrality of Israel to their worldview. They regard Israel’s unapologetic Jewish supremacism and militarism as a model for the West - one in which it returns to an unashamed white supremacism and militarism in a revived spirit of colonialism. Like Israel, the neoconservatives see the world in terms of a never-ending clash of civilisations against the so-called Muslim world. In this context, international law becomes an obstacle to the West’s victory, rather than a guarantee of global order. In addition, the neoconservatives view Israel as the battering ram to keep the US in charge of international affairs in the world’s main oil spigot, the Middle East. Israel lies at the heart of Washington’s policy of full-spectrum global dominance. The neoconservatives have long been sold on Israel’s strategy for achieving such dominance in the Middle East: by Balkanising it. The aim has been to demand utter subservience to Israel, with any source of dissent not only punished, but the social structures that support it crushed into ruins. As I documented in my 2008 book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, Israel was supposed to carry out a central chunk of Washington’s post-Iraq plan, starting with its war on Lebanon in 2006. Israel’s attack there was supposed to drag in Syria and Iran, giving the US a pretext to expand the war. The plan went awry largely because Israel got bogged down in phase one, in Lebanon. It blitzed cities like Beirut with US-supplied bombs, but its soldiers struggled against Hezbollah in a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. The West subsequently found other ways to deal with Syria and Libya. Now we are back where we started, nearly 20 years later. Israel, Hezbollah and Iran have all been preparing for this second round. The western-Israeli goal, as before, is to destroy Lebanon and Iran, just as Gaza has been destroyed. The aim is to smash the infrastructure of Lebanon and Iran, their governing institutions, and their social structures. It is to plunge the Lebanese and Iranian people into a primaeval state, where they can cohere only into simple, tribal units and fight among themselves for the bare essentials.''

Zionist imperialists love to talk of human rights and “Western civilisation” when they excel at human wrongs. Political suppressions exists but your exaggerating with burning alive lol. Israel literally burned alive a young man in a hospital bed on a IV drip.

https://x.com/suppressednws/status/1847351166231072889?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ So this is what’s going on in Northern Gaza as it’s now designated a terrorist zone. Israel and the US are terrorist states.

This is the conflation that takes place with people: they think because a country is democratic, it means people have choice - but they only have a choice in certain things and not others. Mostly social / cultural issues but never security / corporatist issues. Though even social and cultural causes get co-opted by security and corporate interest for their own ends. The majority of people only have access to periphery democracy, not core democracy, or in other words fringe politics (socio-cultural) that doesn't involve core power structures (national security, corporate dominance). The democratic majority manage the margins while the minority manage the direction of the entire system at its core. This is why a lot of non Westerners perceive Western democracy as fake - because for them they've only ever seen one style of foreign policy play out for decades on end (sanctions, meddling, coups, bombs and drones). So when Westerners drop the D word of democracy as if it automatically means something good, non-Westerners recoil and respond - well not for me lol.

Quotes from Jabotinsky (ideological forefather of the Likud party): https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf ''My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent. The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage'' ''Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised' ''Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.'' ''Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach. That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not. What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate? Their value to us is that outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible.'' Quote from the Oded Yinon plan which seem to be how history has unfolded till today https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/A_strategy_for_Israel_in_the_Nineteen_Eighties.pdf ''Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.'' ''Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The subsequent dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas, as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run. The dissolution of the military power of these states serves as the primary short-term target'' ''Dispersal of the population is therefore a domestic strategic aim of the highest order; otherwise, we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with. Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today.'' Great video:

From “Mowing the lawn” in West Bank, to settlements over the bones of Palestinians in Gaza, to declaring Lebanon non sovereign and in need of a coup or else… Israel has no shame.

I read and watched a lot of Osho before and became very anti-religion myself. But then I started to look into things deeper and actually through learning about non-duality via Osho, Alan Watts etc it helped me realise the validity in religion. The issue I think everyone has when it comes to religion is in the literalism and absolutist attitude when approaching it. But that literalist and absolutist attitude can be applied to secular ideologies too. A cartoon villain version of Islam has been propped up via the petro dollar and arming of jihadis which means unfortunately a particular strand of Islam (Wahhabism) has been exported across the region. When we think of Islam thats the face of Islam we picture now, as if its a monolith. The prophets were definitely onto something, they had a glimpse of the eternal. Religion was a attempt to organise around that glimpse, in a lot of cases completely missing it and suffocating it with dogma, and weaponising the nuggets of wisdom that resonated with people but which were then co-opted for other means. But to think we can entirely dismiss the prophets of the eternal and elevate the prophets of empiricism is faulty. As you say, theres nothing that can prove the claims made in those books - but how can you prove love, dignity, the feeling of honour? Thats what science and empiricism misses because it looks at the surface of life, the material, and misses the depth. The deepest truths of life can't be reduced to numbers in a spreadsheet to be proven. As for other practices within religion, those aren't so much about spirituality and more so about the functioning of society that often get conflated with the spiritual. No ones supposed to be the best, but people try their best.

This is the perfect video for you, namely because I've seen your other posts where you seem to have a negative bias towards religion, especially of Islam - yet, this video seems to answer your question pretty well. Paraphrasing from the video: You can repel greater evil with lesser evils. The goodness is in discerning and making the right choice. It doesn’t have to result in a utopian outcome of an absolute good, but these ideals of absolute good paralyze us in our actions. The practical application of morality is towards better outcomes, not perfect outcomes. Address reality realistically, not idealistically. Move towards the should be, through means of the can be.

Plot twist: Kamala wins, and the moment she steps into office, the house of cards starts to fall. The inflated economic bubble bursts on her watch, the Ukraine war winds down without the West getting its “victory,” and Israels itching for a war with Iran that would light the whole region on fire. Not to mention ethnic cleansing of their closest ally. Who has to take the blame for this, or mismanaging it? This enrages the far right further. They fester in their resentment, feeding on the narrative that they were robbed, that this chaos is divine retribution. They come back even harder in the next cycle - angrier, more extreme, more organized. Maybe Kamala is the catalyst for an even darker wave of reactionary fury.

I”m still perplexed after a year of this, of seeing the double standards of Western media clearly on display and the recent example of Germany’s foreign minister justifying the targeting of civilian centres in order to get Hamas - after seeing a young man burn alive with IV drip cords still attached. Mind boggling. I asked Chat GPT what attitude most represents the West: “The attitude that most represents the West, in broad terms, is one of individualism intertwined with entitlement. This manifests as a belief in the primacy of personal freedom, autonomy, and self-expression, often elevated above collective responsibility or moral constraints. It is an attitude rooted in the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and self-determination but has, in many ways, been twisted into a form of exceptionalism—both for individuals and for Western nations as a whole. This entitlement can be seen in the West’s approach to both domestic and global issues: a sense that its way of life, its values, and its systems are superior, and therefore, must be upheld at all costs. Whether it’s consumer culture that demands unlimited choice and comfort, or the geopolitical stance that assumes the West has a unique mandate to impose its will—economically, culturally, and militarily—on the rest of the world, the same core attitude remains. This outlook often allows for justifying contradictions: speaking of freedom while supporting oppressive regimes abroad, or upholding democracy while suppressing dissent at home. There’s a tendency to turn a blind eye to the moral costs of maintaining this way of life, whether it’s exploitation, environmental degradation, or war, as long as it preserves a particular sense of security and superiority. In this sense, the West’s prevailing attitude is one of self-serving idealism—clinging to the image of moral righteousness and progress while frequently acting in ways that serve only its own interests, often at the expense of others.”

Trying to get over the election line.

Conquest was normal but not all conquests were the same. Conquest has been the norm up until sovereign states and international law came into place. Before the pre-modern world - tribes, kingdoms and empires expanded as borders were fluid and determined by the strength to take and hold territory (which in todays world and by todays standards is completely wrong - no one should take what isn't theres). The difference is in how that power and strength was used - how expansion was conducted, the conquered were treated and the new territory was administered. Of course the very nature of conquest means violent clashes are inevitable. With Spain, theres no dominant narrative of brutal conquest as compared to other empires. There was elements of pragmatism and diplomacy. Beyond the the initial conquest and violent battles further expansion took place by making agreements with local rulers and even allowing local elites and nobility to keep their lands and status in exchange for loyalty and protection. Contrast this to Western colonialism which had genocide, plunder, exploitation and practiced a racially based form of the most degrading slavery. Viking raids were known for plundering and leaving, the Franks force converted the Saxons or they faced execution, the Byzantines expelled Orthodox Christians and Jews - I haven't even got into detailing colonial times but I won't go there. Meanwhile, Islamic expansion allowed for diversity of faiths, they didn't raid places into destruction, and they allowed a degree of autonomy to local cultures without expelling or erasing them from existence. Expanding to Sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel which were huge regions was done largely through merchants trading and sufis spreading Islam. The point is they operated differently and not everyone acts the same way when in the same position.

Tech is the only sector that can be double downed on to come out of the economic bind the global economy is in. Three main ways economic growth happens is: - Pumping out babies ie Demographics (bigger population means larger production/consumer pools) this is as most know in rapid decline. - Pumping cash into the system ie Debt (which is becoming too unsustainable) excessively inflationary and volatile amongst other things. - Pumping up productivity ie having a larger output for a smaller input. The first two are no longer viable options. Technology and cheap energy are the modalities we have access to that can increase productivity. The economic can just keeps getting kicked down the road until some breakthrough happens in tech and energy. They can't let the world financial system go bust so they'll keep printing and injecting to keep it afloat. It's a bumpy ride.

Yeah theres definitely differences within Israeli society. Like you said, their seems to be agreement on who the enemies are. I think this is the problem, Israel dooms itself by who it defines as their enemy, and how much of a threat that enemy really is. For example Iran isn't a actual threat or enemy to Israel but they are a threat to Israel's domination and occupation. The IDF were treating Syrian Jihadi fighters in hospitals because they were being used to overthrow the Syrian government along with the US - yet these same sharia loving jihadis are also the enemy of Israel and the West. Netanyahu funnels money via Qatar to Hamas and Hezbollah's existence came out of Israel going into Lebanon. Israel literally creates its ''enemies'' (even treats and funnels them money lol) by the way it exists - as a occupation and dominating force in the region, and then propagandises its own population of a ever lasting threat from these same enemies. Bibi calling for the Lebanese to kick out Hezbollah from power is literally a declaration of war against Lebanon. The problem is Israel can't view who their enemies are with any clarity - Hezbollah is portrayed as just some rogue militant group in Lebanon rather than a deeply embedded political player who along with its allies won 70 out of 128 seats in the Lebanese parliament in 2018. Forget Muslims solidarity with Hezbollah (many Sunnis are angry for them killing Sunnis in Syria in fact) even Christian leaders within Lebanon offered condolences after Nusrallahs death by saying - ''The symbol is gone, the legend is born, and the resistance continues''. Ex Mossad head talking about treating Syrian jihadi rebels: Like Leo says below, the paranoia of Jews in part due to their history plays a big part in amplifying threats and dictating how they act, but this backfires and only puts them more at risk. True.

The issue clearly isn't just extremist politicians or Bibi, Gvir and Smotrich who are used as scapegoats. The IDF display that a systemic issue of dehumanisation is prevalent in the society - its just hard to pin point to what degree, but its enough to be a issue. The excuse that these people flaunting their war crimes are just extremist settlers serving in the IDF doesn't even hold as settlers only make up 5% of the population. Not to mention genocidal music tops the music charts of Israel:

That’s the problem. Threats to survival empower warrior archetypes to secure the peoples safety. Outsiders see these types in the spotlight of politics and leadership then equate the society as such. When people’s safety is at risk they’re going to select for leaders that exude strength regardless of them having other extreme views they may oppose. But the problem with Israel is that the way its set up assures continuous threats in the form of resistance to occupation. This continuously tilts politics into a politics of fear that calls for the strong man types ie to the right. Also, to maintain the occupation and domination of the Palestinian people with a clear conscience, many Israelis are driven to dehumanize them as a coping mechanism. But the more you dehumanize a people, the easier it becomes to justify oppression. That escalates the violence and further entrenches the need to see the oppressed as less than human, creating a vicious spiral of dehumanization and brutality. This is why blaming Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir or Bezalel Smotrich is like scapegoating and skirting away from the major issue. The root of the problem is deeper - it’s embedded in the structure of permanent occupation where survival politics reinforce extremism and further dehumanization, locking both Israelis and Palestinians into an endless conflict.

Amazing work by Elon. A hopeful comment by Devon Erikson: This is what will matter 1000 years from now. Not your politics. Not your stupid tantrums about who platformed who on some website. Not your incomprehensible desire to send NASA's entire budget to the third world. This guy reignited the Space Age. He spent his own money, hired a bunch of dudes, and reignited the Space Age. And together, they underbid and outdid NASA and its pet dinosaur corporations on every conceivable level. This is history happening before you. If you are a puddlefish, if you think this is a wasteful showpiece or science project, then you don't understand physics, economics, astronomy, or in fact the basic layout of the universe you live in. We live in a tiny puddle at the bottom of a well. Out there is an entire universe, full not only of stuff to explore, but full of stuff to build things out of. Big things. Wonderful things. Things that are going to make all of the cool stuff you have today, all of human civilization to date look like early Assyrians writing stuff down on wet clay with a reed. Infinite resources. Infinite energy. Infinite space. Instead of fighting over little patches of land, we will have an infinite 3d volume. Enclose it in steel, pump it full of air, spin it, and it's a habitat. Instead of scratching tiny scraps of metal out of the crust of one planet, we will break down entire asteroids and smelt them. Instead of drilling for hydrocarbons and turning water wheels, we will harness entire suns, split the atom, and eventually draw our fuel from the substance that makes up 99% of the entire universe. None of your local, temporal Earth politics matter compared to this. This is more important than pride parades and abortions, more important than tribal conflicts in eastern Europe and southwest Asia, more important than tensions with Russia and China. More important, in the long run, than the United States of America. America's most important function, its one most vital purpose, is to serve as an incubator for this. Because this changes everything. All of our arguments about conditions on this planet become obsolete, because the whole planet becomes just one suburban neighborhood. All of our wars over resources and territory become obsolete, because no one has time to brawl when we're all sitting on top of a dragon horde with sacks and shovels. Everyone who was alive at the time remembers where they were when Kennedy died in Dallas. When the towers fell. When the Eagle landed. When the Wall came down. But this... this is the real moment, one of the first of many. They are what every child will know about a thousand years from now, even if they have four arms and are genetically engineered for zero-g, or are sentient blocks of code running on a sphere of computronium enclosing an entire star. You may not live to see that, depending on what we do or don't invent, and when. But it will happen, and you will live to see wonderful things. If the puddlefish don't get in the way. Don't be a puddlefish.

Netenyahu and Ben Shapiro used this to influence Jordan Peterson lol. I kind of get it at a glance but we have to zoom out whilst not missing depth and distinction. This is propaganda at play which can easily deceive us, including me when I first saw it. Imagine suggesting that a European country should cede land or sovereignty for the benefit of another group based solely on shared European identity. It’s illogical and un-ethical particularly to the people who have deep rooted historical ties to that land. This conflation is used to dilute distinct identities into one big grouping of “Arabs” to then make it look like they’re unreasonable in not just giving a slither of their “collective” land. Imagine Portugal had to give up land to a persecuted group and they were told it’s fine because they’re European and there’s plenty of European states.

Homogeneity is sameness, but theres plenty of diversity within eastern cultures. When speaking of civilizations we're talking broad strokes to make general observations on a macro, geopolitical level. Not all non-westerners or westerners are intelligent loving actors. We're referring to the state level (you could say deep state), not necessarily the societal level. But there are many misconceptions about non-Western countries that could be dispelled. There's an argument that goes, "If you or any other society were in our position, you'd act the same," but that's simply not true. I've seen many right wingers use this case of projection and universalizing of bad behavior as a way to excuse it because it's just a ''inevitability'' of human nature - an ''externality'' of a ''system of perverse incentives'' (moloch) that absolves any one party of blame. Many civilizations throughout history, despite possessing the military and economic means to engage in aggressive territorial conquest, chose other pathways to spread their influence. Through religion, culture, trade, or diplomacy. Theirs a distinction to be made between colonialism, settler colonialism, imperialism and influence. The Islamic Golden Age, the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka, and the Tang Dynasty are just a few examples of civilizations (on different continents) that exercised restraint or focused on cultural diffusion rather than outright domination. They demonstrate that violent conquest is not an inevitable result of power. It's a choice that's been resisted by some of the greatest empires in history. These civilizations recognized that expansion and influence don’t need to be built on the corpses of their enemies. The imperial mindset - that to be powerful means to dominate, is used by imperial apologists in the West to excuse the blood soaked history of their own empires. They conflate wealth with worth - any means that helps them to obtain and accumulate wealth/resources is glorified and justified. This is where the 'might makes right' mentality stems from. Watch the following and let me know what you think:

There's an argument that goes, "If you or any other society were in our position, you'd act the same," but that's simply not true. In the other thread about Western imperialism, a similar claim is made: "If another country or civilization had the wealth, power, and tools that the West has, they'd also exploit it through global conquest and domination the way the US does today." I've seen many right wingers use this case of projection and universalizing of bad behavior as a way to excuse it because it's just a ''inevitability'' of human nature - an ''externality'' of a ''system of perverse incentives'' (moloch) that absolves any one party of blame. Many civilizations throughout history, despite possessing the military and economic means to engage in aggressive territorial conquest, chose other pathways to spread their influence. Through religion, culture, trade, or diplomacy. The Islamic Golden Age, the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka, and the Tang Dynasty are just a few examples of civilizations (on different continents) that exercised restraint or focused on cultural diffusion rather than outright domination. They demonstrate that violent conquest is not an inevitable result of power. It's a choice that's been resisted by some of the greatest empires in history. These civilizations recognized that expansion and influence don’t need to be built on the corpses of your enemies. The imperial mindset - that to be powerful means to dominate is retroactively used by imperial apologists in the West to excuse the blood soaked history of their own empires. They conflate wealth with worth, and so any means that helps them to obtain and accumulate wealth/resources is glorified and justified. This is where the 'might makes right' mentality stems from.