I heard someone say that China’s ascent as the first real Eastern power in modernity is just the Eastern hemisphere of the global brain coming online, the analytical & hierarchical left to match the West’s bottoms-up & divergent right, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

For the record I don’t think this is the kind of belief that is either right or wrong. It’s a lens that perhaps has some kernel of insight or perhaps not, but like wow what an image.

@relletreknit No, I’ve reclaimed it.

@albustime It is only post-WWII that you really have a true global order IMO. You could argue that there is a sense in which the british empire is the first global empire ("the sun never sets") and I think that's a valid way to see it, but that's continuous w the American.