Societies seem to want to organize themselves in a few different ways -- the most common is to organize for stability. It's understandable since everything from irregular weather to power struggles in leadership often lead to untimely and unpleasant deaths.
Massive social and technological revolutions were likely to be sources of misery for everybody.
Let's not forget that massive social and technological change was not common in the West either -- despite lots of smart folks, the Classical Greeks of 430BC weren't really all that behind the Romans of 220AD in terms of technology and these are widely considered among the smartest, most vigorous and most impressive of ancient Western Civilizations. The Russ, Germanic Tribes etc. pretty much had lived the same for thousands of years.
Organizing for stability creates stagnation, but in most cases this is perfectly normal. The kinds of fast change we've seen in the West post Middle-ages is pretty bizarre -- and has in many ways conformed to the idea I mentioned above. Some of the bloodiest and deadliest times in known history have all occurred since the start of the Renaissance.
For whatever reason; lots of competing non-unified territories, guns germs and steel, the black death, whatever; the West, starting in the late 15th century has managed to make fast massive social and technical change the norm.
In China, massive upheavals like this were usually a sign the empire was falling apart, or the Mongols were invading, or a dynasty was about to crumble. So every effort was made to stop these things from happening. Like I said, this is totally normal in human history. In fact, there are arguments that one of the reasons democracy is a viable option is that it largely resolves the painful succession problems in totalitarian/authoritarian systems -- it's a kind of social stabilizer. In India it was the caste system, in China it's probably attributable to Confucianism.
When Rome was starting to have ambitions of growing from a bunch of farmers into something larger, Confucius was out teaching rigid social order. But the Confucian revival in the Tang Dynasty during the start of the Dark Ages in the West is where it was really cemented in. It's also often called one of the most stable in Chinese history.
Another thing to note is that it's also very common, after a large social collapse, to look back at a previous golden age and to try and recapture it in some way. In the West this movement was called the Renaissance. You might say the post-Ottoman world is kind of "Dark Ages" for the central Asian Muslim world (you might notice that lots of the focus of groups like Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab is to recapture the former glory of the ancient Golden Age of the caliphates). A post Dark Age Renaissance in the Muslim world would be welcomed by many.
It might be argued that China is just now emerging from a kind of "Dark Age" that could be argued to have started with the end of the Song Dynasties into a Western Style period of rapid continuous revolution.
In the West we had the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, etc. China is going through something right now that's similar, what it'll be called is anybody's guess but history will have to wait for it to play out.
Massive social and technological revolutions were likely to be sources of misery for everybody.
Let's not forget that massive social and technological change was not common in the West either -- despite lots of smart folks, the Classical Greeks of 430BC weren't really all that behind the Romans of 220AD in terms of technology and these are widely considered among the smartest, most vigorous and most impressive of ancient Western Civilizations. The Russ, Germanic Tribes etc. pretty much had lived the same for thousands of years.
Organizing for stability creates stagnation, but in most cases this is perfectly normal. The kinds of fast change we've seen in the West post Middle-ages is pretty bizarre -- and has in many ways conformed to the idea I mentioned above. Some of the bloodiest and deadliest times in known history have all occurred since the start of the Renaissance.
For whatever reason; lots of competing non-unified territories, guns germs and steel, the black death, whatever; the West, starting in the late 15th century has managed to make fast massive social and technical change the norm.
In China, massive upheavals like this were usually a sign the empire was falling apart, or the Mongols were invading, or a dynasty was about to crumble. So every effort was made to stop these things from happening. Like I said, this is totally normal in human history. In fact, there are arguments that one of the reasons democracy is a viable option is that it largely resolves the painful succession problems in totalitarian/authoritarian systems -- it's a kind of social stabilizer. In India it was the caste system, in China it's probably attributable to Confucianism.
When Rome was starting to have ambitions of growing from a bunch of farmers into something larger, Confucius was out teaching rigid social order. But the Confucian revival in the Tang Dynasty during the start of the Dark Ages in the West is where it was really cemented in. It's also often called one of the most stable in Chinese history.
Another thing to note is that it's also very common, after a large social collapse, to look back at a previous golden age and to try and recapture it in some way. In the West this movement was called the Renaissance. You might say the post-Ottoman world is kind of "Dark Ages" for the central Asian Muslim world (you might notice that lots of the focus of groups like Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab is to recapture the former glory of the ancient Golden Age of the caliphates). A post Dark Age Renaissance in the Muslim world would be welcomed by many.
It might be argued that China is just now emerging from a kind of "Dark Age" that could be argued to have started with the end of the Song Dynasties into a Western Style period of rapid continuous revolution.
In the West we had the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, etc. China is going through something right now that's similar, what it'll be called is anybody's guess but history will have to wait for it to play out.