*** Prologue ***

ginof · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:03 pm Post subject: Re: *** Prologue ***

Hey Mr. P.

I'm sticking with it as I definitely find this to be an interesting read. My other postings will describe what I see as the limits (I hope I'm wrong!)

Sorry I've been out of touch. I miss all the chat's because I'm on a plane thursday nights flying home. My schedule has been crazy as I was in the UK for a month in Oct/Nov and became a daddy in early January.

wwdimmitt · Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 12:13 pm Post subject: Re: *** Prologue ***

MadArchitect:

If you look only at the nations that are currently in existence, you might come to the conclusion that they're fairly stable entities. But the current roster of functioning nations makes up only a small percentage of total number of nations that have existed throughout history

It would be easy to fall into a purely semantic argument here, but hopefully we can avoid that dead end.

What is a "nation"? Diamond does not use the term nation in his hierarchy of human societies in GGS. His categories are: Band, Tribe, Chiefdom, and State. The Characteristics that he analyzes for each of these forms are: Number of People; Settlement Pattern; Basis of relationship; Ethnicities and Language; Decision making leadership; Bureaucracy; Monopoly of force and information; Conflict resolution; Hierarchy of settlement; Religion justifies kleptocracy?; Food production; Division of labor; Exchanges; Control of land; Society stratified; slavery; Luxury goods for elite; Public architecture and Indigenous literacy.

His baseline for a "state" is a population of more than 50,000, so by that yardstick, there have indeed been a great many nations in human history. And, of course, all of them are gone except for the 200 plus that exist on the planet today.

Personally, I think that "nation" is considerably more restrictive, and more centralized, than Diamond's definition of a state, and that there were only a handful of nations prior to the 17th Century.

Whereas today, there are only a handful of human societies in existence which are not a nation. There are some aboriginal societies in isolated spots and on islands, and the rest of the planets human population is organized in nations.

And my second point would also disagree completely with your assertion. I think that today's nations are anything but stable. There is a tornado of activity of forming and reforming nations since the beginning of the 19th Century. I believe that the US is the oldest, continuous democratic form of government on the planet, isn't it?? Barely a drop in the bucket, even if we restrict ourselves to recorded history.

I think that Diamond would agree that human centralization has always been by conquest, and will probably continue to be by conquest.

Surely we "conquered" the Soviet Union, even though the tools of conquest were economic, cultural, technological and intellectual, rather than overt militarism.

Although we constantly threatened militarism, and used it whenever we deemed it to be necessary!

This is getting too long. I will break here and start a new post on another portion of your argument.

WW

wwdimmitt · Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 12:53 pm Post subject: Re: *** Prologue ***

MadArchitect:

Quote:
I'm conducting this conversation more or less blind to its instigating source. In other words, I'm not reading "Collapse", and don't plan to until I can clear away a good 20-30 books that have a better claim to my time

It is quite amusing that the most engaged discussion on the current book is being carried on by two people who have not even begun to read it!! LOL

I plan to get it this week and I doubt it will take me very long to read it. In the meantime, I think there is some benefit in discussing some of the issues that Diamond raised in GGS, which has not been very rigorously examined either.

I have read several reviews and a few excerpts, so have some vague idea of what the author is arguing in Collapse.

The discussion is interesting, in any case!

Quote:
Any time you speak of historical progress, it's important to ask, at least implicitly, "progress in reference to what?" If the answer is, "in reference to the state of things as they are right now", then of course a general view of history will reveal that events have tended towards this point. But that's a rather facile, circular view of progress, and it is not sufficient, I think, as a basis for charting a cultural trajectory into the future.

Absolutely correct, and a caveat that every poster should keep in mind at all times.

Nevertheless, if we are to have any conversation of interest and speculation, we must start from this false, and shaky, platform. Plato has a whole discourse on this issue, I believe.

Any other basis for attempting to identify and chart a cultural trajectory is even more speculative. We can only see, and interpret, history from where we are, using what we can glean from the past. We have no input from the future, and little promise of ever having any.

Various religions offer their several alternatives, but I find them to not persuasive.

Quote:
The result would be a tendency towards absolute uniformity, where local governance is determined by decisions made in reference to the superior body rather than to the conditions unique to the smaller geopolitical region.

No, I disagree. I am willing to accept that the result will be a general uniformity, or at the very least, a relative uniformity, but not a universal uniformity.

Once again we wander wander toward semanticism, but it is an important issue.

In my lexicon universal uniformity smacks of totalitarianism, and examples like China's regression technologically, or the Soviet Union's economic stalemate, demonstrate why that choice fails to utilize the creativity and adaptability of our species.

Quote:
The short form answer is: because we feel some incentive to do so. The long form answer will have to be the subject of a longer discussion. But then, I don't think it's patently obvious that a single global government is the ideal scenario, and there are very likely a great number of people who would agree.

Feeling the incentive to do so is only the first step in that process, and it is not sufficient for success.

It is also necessary to create some other structure that solves the perceived problems of humanity more successfully.

Until we are thrown off the top of the heap and some other species becomes dominant.

Quote:
Imagine feudal China running clean out of resources, then setting out across the Gobi to find more resources. It wouldn't have been a very promising venture, to say the least.

An interesting hypothetical, except it isn't what happened. Instead China exported many important agricultural, technological and cultural advances to Western Europe, Pacific Oceana and Japan, and resources have not been exhausted, yet.

I think that the drive to survive will keep us from ever exhausting the resources.

When it doesn't, we will become extinct.

WW

MadArchitect · Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 10:49 pm Post subject: Re: *** Prologue ***

wwdimmitt: What is a "nation"? Diamond does not use the term nation in his hierarchy of human societies in GGS. His categories are: Band, Tribe, Chiefdom, and State.

Again, I can't accurately conjecture what Diamond would have to say about the subject as I haven't read his books, but based on popular usage and other readings (for example, Machiavelli, "The Prince") I'd label the nation a form of state. I don't know that I'd attempt to define it in terms of population alone, though. In particular, I think one of the notable characteristics of the state is that it binds together peoples who might not find commonalities to bind them together otherwise. Americans, for example, seem to be bound by little more than their shared national identity, which is itself characterized by little more than citizenship in a given nation.

Whereas today, there are only a handful of human societies in existence which are not a nation.

I don't think that's the case at all. Rather, there are only a handful of societies which do not exist within a nation, if any. But habitation within a nation's borders does not flatten the social aspect -- to wit, there are a plurality of societies existing within nearly every nation. T.S. Eliot is, again, helpful in this regard. He marks three general levels of culture: individual culture, the culture of the group or society, and the culture of the whole society, of which the individual and group are subsidiaries. Nearly every society, even the conglomerate society of the nation, may said to be contained (more or less) by the whole society of the world, in as much as intercommunication permeates that whole society.

I think that today's nations are anything but stable. There is a tornado of activity of forming and reforming nations since the beginning of the 19th Century.

That doesn't contradict my viewpoint at all, and given that agreement, I find it curious that you'd think a centralized world government of any permanence would be likely to emerge from such a tornado of activity.

Surely we "conquered" the Soviet Union, even though the tools of conquest were economic, cultural, technological and intellectual, rather than overt militarism.

I shouldn't think so. It seems more apt to me to say that the Soviet Union was an empire that collapsed under its own structural instability, as is apt to happen within any large state body.

It is quite amusing that the most engaged discussion on the current book is being carried on by two people who have not even begun to read it!!

Quite likely because we don't feel constrained by the subject matter, since we're not really talking about it. But, until someone runs us out of this thread...

Nevertheless, if we are to have any conversation of interest and speculation, we must start from this false, and shaky, platform.

Well, I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to at least attempt to construct an alternate and equally valid viewpoint. The question it might be worthwhile to ask -- and this is, perhaps, a subject deserving its own thread -- "How can we describe or define historical progress in such a way as to avoid the criticism that our answer is merely a justification of our own ideology?"

Plato has a whole discourse on this issue, I believe.

Which do you have in mind? I've read somewhere around half of all the extant dialogues, and I'd be interested to look up the passage, either to understand your interpretation if it's one I've read, or to start a new one altogether.

In my lexicon universal uniformity smacks of totalitarianism, and examples like China's regression technologically, or the Soviet Union's economic stalemate, demonstrate why that choice fails to utilize the creativity and adaptability of our species.

One of my concerns is that a centralized world government will facilitate totalitarianism. After all, if there are no other governments to oppose systematic state injustice, the only avenue of deliberate change is internal, ie. revolution. But in a body as encompassing as a global government, how could organized resistence in any given locality hope to stand against the army of literally the whole world?

wwdimmitt · Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 9:11 am Post subject: Re: *** Prologue ***

Hey, lets have someone else take part here. Is this stuff so uniteresting that you all have nothing to say, nothing to disagree with, or to add??

Mad:

Quote:
Rather, there are only a handful of societies which do not exist within a nation, if any. But habitation within a nation's borders does not flatten the social aspect -- to wit, there are a plurality of societies existing within nearly every nation.

Well, in my mind that is a difference without a useful distinction. The same was true when family bands joined together in villages, and when villages joined together in a chiefdom, and when chiefdoms were conglomerated into states.

Every modern nation, except China, is a fairly recent conglomeration of smaller social units into more complex ones.

Russia/Soviet Union is a prime example, far more complex than the United States, and still in very active flux. Very different kinds of local societies were joined/forced into the Soviet Union, then it fell apart, and now many of the former Soviet Republics are aggressively seeking membership in the European Union.

It is a necessity that larger social units of the future are made up of a conglomeration of smaller units from the past, if there is to be an increasing conglomeration. And that is exactly the pattern we see, on every continent.

The Dialogue of Plato I had in mind is Book VII of The Republic, the analogy of the prisoners in the cave facing the light outside the cave. I remember it as a discourse about appearance and reality, and the process of learning new and different intellectual material. But I haven't read it for several years.

WW

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Wed May 04, 2005 7:20 pm Post subject: Re: *** Prologue ***

Quote:
Hey, lets have someone else take part here. Is this stuff so uniteresting that you all have nothing to say, nothing to disagree with, or to add??

Hope I do not sound dour here, but I see many good posts in other threads in this forum. I think everyone has done a good job with the contributions.

It is only one month so far...and already 130 posts. If this keeps up, we should break 300 on this book!

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Edited by: misterpessimistic at: 5/4/05 8:29 pm


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