Qin Shi Huang (Chinese: 秦始皇; 18 February 259 – 12 July 210 BC) was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China.[9] Rather than maintain the title of "king" (王, wáng) borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled China from 221 to 210 BC as the first "emperor" (皇帝, huáng dì) of the Qin dynasty. This title, which he invented for himself, would see continuous use by Chinese monarchs for the next two millennia.
He was born Ying Zheng of the State of Qin to a dancing girl named Zhao Ji and King Zhuangxiang of Qin. According to the historian Szuma Chien (Sima Qian, 145/35-86 BCE) he was not actually Zhuangxiang' s son as his mother was already pregnant by Lu Buwei, the wealthy merchant who brought Zhao Ji to the king. As Szuma Chien was hostile to Shi Huangdi this claim has been often disputed. Shi Huangdi is best remembered as the emperor who initiated the building of the Great Wall of China and an early version of the Grand Canal.
Rise to Power
The young prince grew up at the Qin court and assumed the throne at age 12 or 13 following his father's death. Lu Buwei had risen in the court to become a minister and was made regent until Ying Zheng came of age. Again according to Szuma Chien, Lu Buwei became concerned that his son would recognize him as father and so lose the throne and he therefore distanced himself from Zhao Ji and encouraged another of the court, Lao Ai, to keep her company in his place.
Lao Ai disguised himself as a palace eunuch and so came and went from the queen's chamber without suspicion. They had two sons together who were kept a secret from everyone at court except Lu Buwei. It occurred to Lu that one of these secret sons could better serve as King of Qin as he would then no longer have to worry about being exposed as the boy's father and so organized a coup.
In 238 BCE, when the young king was away from court on travels, Lao Ai used the signet ring of Zhao Ji to mobilize a segment of the army in revolt. The king sent his army against Lao Ai's forces, defeated them, and had Lao executed by being torn apart. He then had Lao's entire family executed and placed Zhao Ji in seclusion under virtual house arrest. Lu Buwei committed suicide by poison. King Ying Zheng then named his close associate Li Siu as Prime Minister and ruled fully over the state of Qin.
Victory over the Warring States
The Warring States Period in China (c. 481-221 BCE) was a time when the central government of the Zhou Dynasty, located at Luoyang, was no longer able to administrate effectively. The country had broken into seven separate states, Chu, Han, Qi, Qin, Wei, Yan, and Zhao who continuously fought each other for supremacy. None of these states felt confident enough to wrest the Mandate of Heaven (the principle by which a ruler was legitimized) from the Zhou Dynasty as none were able to gain advantage over any other.
Every state fought using the same tactics and strategies as the others and their aims were further hampered by the efforts of the pacifist philosopher Mo Ti, an able engineer, who seems to have provided each state with the same types of technology in order to neutralize any advantage. Although the state of Qin had a formidable army, iron weapons, and war chariots, King Zheng was unable to make any significant headway in victory over the other states.
At the Battle of Changping (260 BCE), the Qin employed Shang's ideology to defeat the state of Zhao but, afterwards, made little further progress. King Zheng, making full use of Shang Yang's philosophies, and leading an army of considerable size, swiftly defeated the six other states. Han fell in 230 BCE, Zhao in 228, Wei in 225, Chu, in 223, Yan in 222, and Qi in 221BCE. Zheng then united the states under his single rule, claimed the Mandate of Heaven from the Zhou Dynasty, and proclaimed himself First Emperor of China – `Shi Huangdi', founder of the Qin Dynasty.
The Qin Empire
Having consolidated his empire, he turned his attention to administration and, with the help of Li Siu, “resolved to base Chinese society not, as heretofore, upon custom and local autonomy, but upon explicit law and a powerful central government” (Durant, 695). Initially, this government served the people in that Shi Huangdi's policies allowed for substantial building projects and prosperity.
In all ways, the early Qin Dynasty worked to improve the lives of the people. The walls and fortifications which once enclosed the borders of the separate warring states were destroyed and the Great Wall was begun from their ruins, marking the northern boundary of the empire and protecting the land from marauding nomad tribes. In the south, the Lingqu Canal was built to aid in transport and in trade. Weapons of the defeated states were melted down and made into works of art.
This time of peace and prosperity, however, was short-lived. In 213 BCE Li Siu, having grown tired of hearing Confucian scholars criticize the regime by comparing it to the past dynasties of a `golden age', Although life during The Warring States Period had been difficult, it had given rise to The Hundred Schools of Thought which comprised writings such as those of Confucius, Mo Ti, Mencius, Teng Shih, and Yang Zhu, among many, many others.
Maintaining Shang Yang's strict philosophy of Legalism as the official policy of the government (which he had instituted at the start of his reign) Shi Huangti re-wrote the legal codes, suppressed writers, burned the books, and put to death all that refused to comply. This period of his reign is known as the `Burning of the Books and the Burying of Philosophers'.
Shi Huangti's Death & the Fall of the Qin
Shi Huangdi had been subject to assassination attempts in the past but now they increased. “He sat on his throne with a sword across his knees and let no man know in what room of his many palaces he would sleep” (Durant, 697). He became obsessed with death and sought elixirs of immortality. Failing in that, he set about to provide himself with as comfortable and secure an afterlife as the present one he was living.
In 210 BCE, Shi Huangdi died on a trip to find the elixir of life which would grant him immortality. Some sources indicate that he died by poisoning after drinking what he thought was the elixir. (probably mercury) Li Siu kept his death a secret until he could change the emperor's will to name his young, pliable son as heir, whom Li Siu thought he could manipulate. He had Shi Huangdi's body brought back to the capital concealed in a merchant caravan of dead fish in order to hide the smell of the decomposing corpse, changed the will, and then announced the passing of the First Emperor and the accession of his son, Hu-Hai, who took the name Qin Er Shi.
The new king reigned poorly for three years and was famous for killing messengers who brought him bad news (marking his only legacy, the origin of the saying, `Don't kill the messenger'). During this time Li Siu was executed and his co-conspirator in raising Qin Er Shi to power, Zhao Gao, forced the young emperor to commit suicide.
Following this coup, Qin Er Shi's nephew took the throne and had Zhao Gao executed. At this point, with the government in complete disarray and no competent heir to the throne, the country rose in rebellion and the Qin Dynasty collapsed.
The Complete Story Of Qin Shi Huang: China's First Emperor :some-controversy:
Qin Shi Huang - The Rise and Fall of the First Emperor of China :china-stars:
The First Emperor of China's Ridiculously Dramatic Life :china:
Quin Shi Huang vs Hades :lea-bounce:
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Responding to the philosophical idea of Functionalism.
Should higher education be paid for more by students or by society?
Society that is functioning well should have a funded public education system that allows all members of society to participate in head start/pre-k, primary, secondary, and higher education. I do not think we should stop there. Since education is a life-long process, and we use education and training programs to meet the challenges that a society faces through its historical conditions; one would also need to also include certifications, training programs, advocacy campaigns, and job retraining, as things that can/should be funded in whole, or in-part, by public funds. Considering the analogy of educational institutions as an “organ” of a society, and society as a “organism” that is seeking to grow; what would be the purpose of “starving” said organ of human capital and sources of capital (money). Poor analogy though it is, since one can argue we don’t want to “overload” or “overfeed” a system, in reality, the unequal access to resources throughout the system causes unequal development. Imagine going to the gym and only working out the left side of your body, the imbalance that it would produce would be catastrophic; but as of right now, we do not see much issue with land trusts, and endowment funds in the billions for certain higher education institutions, while other universities have to rely on precarious distribution of public funds, and forceful and aggressive recruitment year over year, in order to make ends meet; this is not touching upon the synergistic and cumulative effect of an institution starting off with more wealth, prestige, research divisions, connections, and recruitment power. I don’t want to get ahead of the Marxist discussion – but Marx identifies cooperation and social labor as an aspect of value creation for the capitalist, especially during the early hyper-specialization of factory floors. Capitalists obtain surplus-value from the intensification of labor from the individual worker when they become more productive, and from the collective employment of laboring workers at scales previously unseen. Therefore, whether society were to remain capitalist or not – the ultimate beneficiary of a system of public funding is the ruling class; though internal ideological divisions, greed, and egotism, does make them incredibly shortsighted, but I digress. A system where higher education students must engage in private lending, is therefore “double dipping” of profits, when the capitalist extracts principal and interest through money lending, and also extracts surplus value from the laborer during their 8-12 hours of working time, and the rent-seeking behavior of landlords, and the funding of private industry with public wealth, and the privatization of previously public commodities, and the atomization, and commoditization of all aspects of social life, etc.
Is it desirable for education to develop increasingly closer ties with business and industry?
No. While I think that you can have a “revolving door” of technicians that come up through industry and move to academia and vice versa. I think universities often commit to a “faustian bargain” when working with specific businesses or industries. Industry partnerships are often interested in speeding up the training of specialized labor, rather than identifying innovation; next, there is the unethical pressure that industry might place on an institution if they do not agree with a particular line of research; and lastly, the ideological framing and censoring of student’s free expression that might be enforced by industry pressure.
First off, the training of technicians is not the same as training innovators. Industry partnerships seek to reify the approach to, and intensify, a mode of production through increased access to specialized labor. Creative destruction often takes place when specific businesses try to muscle in and gain ground. For example, the rise of Silicon Valley, quant finance, and biomedical industry intensified calls for STEM education, the calls-to-arms was sounded, given that industry had trouble, allegedly, filling jobs. Science programs got more funds. High schools invested in computer labs. Every college has a computer science program and higher ed, and coding bootcamps, have been steadily pumping out more computer science majors and programmers . Then the Fed raised interest rates, and the free money spigot went dry, and now startups are collapsing, and large multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley companies are letting go of thousands of employees, as they “grew too fast” during COVID. Companies are making obscene amounts of money left and right, and the need for their services has intensified, but somehow entire divisions are being cut. In addition, despite all the work that companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta/Facebook had done on LLMs, it took OpenAI’s ChatGPT release in 2022, for companies to shift their strategy. As for the unethical pressure placed by industry. Recently a disinformation researcher at Harvard got pushed out while trying to research and publish Meta/Facebook’s leaked documents. The pressure started soon after the Chan-Zuckerberg foundation donated $500 million dollars for a new state of the art center for Artificial Intelligence. Lastly, the ideological framing and censoring of student’s free expression. You can find no better example than the current pressure to tamp down on pro-palestinian protests by Zionists business leaders and politicians. See for example Harvard’s Gift Office being worried by the school’s Israel-Hamas stance, and the Harvard’s Law Review voting to kill an article about genocide in Gaza. You can see this case repeated all over the country; specially given how certain university presidents were dragged in front of congress in a mockery of what you’d call a public hearing.
Week 6
Who should be empowered to redesign American education?
I certainly know who shouldn’t be empowered to redesign (read: maintain control of) American education, racists conservative functionalists, who think IQ is not just genetically inherited but the sole measure of worth for a human being. And before, you go “Jeez MH, that’s a little extreme, not every person that believes in hereditary IQ is a racist”, while not every person that believes in hereditary IQ is a racist, every racist does believe in hereditary IQ – unfortunately. If you are reading this, and you do too, stop carrying water for embarrassingly bad science. There is no conclusive proof of a “g factor” gene for general intelligence. While there is some heritable connection to IQ, so does just about everything that makes us…us. But IQ is not static and it is strongly linked to environmental factors, “the most decisive and permanent environmental intervention that an individual can experience, [adoption from a poor family into a better-off one, is associated with IQ gains of 12 to 18 points” . Regardless of IQ, we are also a product of our environment and any “thinker” willing to handwave away centuries of unequal access, systemic discrimination, environmental racism, and trauma, is dubious at best. Unfortunately, Charles Murray and his ilk continue to be extremely influential on is on American social policy .
“Murray’s biography page at All-American Speakers boasts that Murray provided “the intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996… Altering the old, and genuinely very flawed, welfare system in Murray’s preferred direction rather than moving toward a universal child allowance meant that not only did the United States maintain its abnormally high level of child poverty, but it witnessed a substantial increase in deep poverty.”2
It's easy to point fingers at who is doing the actual harm in our society. It’s a lot more difficult to resolve these problems. I do think that Marxist theorists have a better grasp on the problems and solutions to said problems – even if it might require certain compromises in the process. In this, I am most definitely an idealist – as I don’t foresee anyone remotely left of Reagan ever taking control of the federal of state government within our lifetimes (though how badly, I’d love to be proven wrong, you have no idea).
1- https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech / Research paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289963618_Adoption_and_Cognitive_Development_A_Meta-Analytic_Comparison_of_Adopted_and_Nonadopted_Children%27s_IQ_and_School_Performance 2- https://www.vox.com/2018/4/10/17182692/bell-curve-charles-murray-policy-wrong
Stupid fucking typos.