Compare And Contrast Tang And Song Dynasties

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The Tang and Song Dynasties were both very strong and innovative; they helped invent technology that is still used to this day. These innovations along with the five different characeristics of a modern society helped make them what they were. However sometimes the main belief system of Confucianism got in the dynastys way of making it a true modern society. One hallmark of a modern society is being increasingly interested with the “next new thing” and there being new advances in technology. For the Tang and Song dynasties these inovations were things like compasses, paper, and gunpowder. These new inventions helped push the Song and Tang towards a more modern society by letting people live a higher quality of life, easier day to day life, …show more content…
Confucianisms most basic belief is to create social harmony by fixing yourself to work better for the needs of the community. This often meant to make a person conform to traditional ways and not stick out; this lead to the discouragement of new innovations. Confucianism was all about sticking to a particular set of ways for everything: from the way you acted towards those in society all the way down to how to write poetry. Since this was a main ideal they did not encouraged people to go out and make new inventions. The new ideas/innventions that were made were restricted by the government and not accepted within society. As specialization started to occur the middle class did expand, but the government had a way of its own to keep from to much of it happening. The Tang and Song dynasties offered a test known as the Civil Service Exams; anyone was allowed to take these tests and anyone who did well on them was brought up to work in the government no matter the class. However, these tests required a great deal of schooling that was often only available for the upper class. These tests made everyone in the dynasty feel as though they had a chance for greatness even though the odds were slim to none, but everyone trained for the exact same job anyways causing a lack of specialization in labor within the