The Blip Report for Friday, May 31st 2024

stolen legacy or given legacy

I read a story about Chinese students being kicked out of the United States - ‘Expulsions of Chinese Students Spread Confusion From Yale to UVA’, that claims that it is denying student visas to anyone from China that might have connections to something called the ‘military-civil fusion’ - that simply implies that China is trying to eliminate any barriers between its civilian research and its military research, and that to further this plan, China must also try to steal civilian knowledge from the west in order to advance their military aims. blah, blah, blah.

With the number of new patents coming from Asia increasing, compared to the number of new patents coming out of the United States, it doesn’t seem like anything is being stolen from the United States. I really think that Chinese universities are on the leading edge of most new technologies, and would acquire it, without the help of the universities of the North Atlanteans.

Or maybe, the North Atlanteans aren’t afraid that Chinese students may discover that we have some advanced knowledge, but maybe those Chinese students may discover that there is no knowledge here at all!!!

But it seems to me that what is being implied however, is that some ‘secret’ knowledge exists in the universities of the ‘west’, and the only way that Chinese universities could possibly acquire this ‘secret’ knowledge, is to somehow steal it.

And that reminded me of an argument that I had with a friend a long time ago, concerning a book we read, ‘Stolen Legacy’, that claimed that the knowledge acquired by Greek civilization was stolen from the Egyptian civilization.

While I readily admitted that the Greeks did acquire much of their knowledge and philosophy from the schools of Egypt - as could be seen from the visits to Egypt by Solon and Plato, among many others - I did object to this idea of it being stolen.

From what I had learned, the schools in Egypt were open to one and all - if you could understand what was being taught to you by the Egyptian scholars, then you were welcome to the use of that knowledge. Knowledge wasn’t a commodity to be sold or to be hoarded, or to be shared only with the elite or the elect.

And I thought that it’s something we should do more of - sharing our research and inventions, to further human progress. Isn’t knowledge a legacy to be given to all mankind? Rather, I think that today, too much of our technology is tied up with the military industry, and it’s locked up under national security, and it’s not being shared with the civilian industry.

So maybe we should go back to the legacy of the Egyptians and share our knowledge with everyone, just as the Egyptians helped us, the future inhabitants of the west.

For example, I read somewhere that Moses was educated as a young man in Egypt. And I read somewhere that Jesus was educated in Egypt as a very young man too. And although I haven’t read that Mohammad was educated in Egypt, I did read that some Islamic scholars have said that Muhammad’s ancestors were from Egypt.

And like the Egyptians, maybe the knowledge of others could be given to us too.

Have fun, givingly.