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Preface, Prologue, and Part One

#4: Sept. - Oct. 2002 (Non-Fiction)
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Preface, Prologue, and Part One

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Diamond's basic point is that nature provides the context for culture.

The example of the Maori conquest of the Chatham Islands serves as a small laboratory to study the universal hypothesis. The Moriori, treating the Chathams as the whole universe, evolved an isolated peaceful culture that was overwhelmed when it came in contact with the Maori, who had competed for power in the much bigger New Zealand. This clash forms the model for how the Maori themselves could not compete against the might of Eurasian technology, represented by Britain.

Marx had a theory of economic base and social superstructure. This means that history is largely determined by material potential, with ideas having a secondary role, emerging only when the economy allows them. This is a highly controversial claim, and one that Robert Wright partly endorses in The Evolution of God. Diamond is also concerned to show that traditional assumptions which give priority to the cultural superstructure neglect the determinative influence of economics.

This debate is far from settled. It seems clear that the progress of ideas is not caused by economics, given the role of individual brilliance in discovering new facts. I doubt that the economics of the twentieth century can be given the primary role as driver for the emergence of nuclear technology, for example. There is an accidental quality to many technological advances. Adoption of new methods requires people with the drive and vision to change existing practices. I don't think we can say that existing practices are set in stone, as it were, as different but similar communities can easily take different paths depending on individual behavior. And yet, existing cultural practices are very much framed by the horizon of natural potential. Cultural evolution is bounded by the limits of physical possibility.
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DWill

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Re: Preface, Prologue, and Part One

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He seems to be telling us that culture is a proximate cause but can't be the ultimate cause, or that culture is necessary, but not sufficient, to explain conflicts such as the Maoris and the Morioris or the Incas and the Spanish. In order for the warrior cultures to emerge in the first place, there had to be an ability of the societies to feed permanent armies. The Morioris didn't live in an environment rich enough in resources to be able to yield the surplus food needed to support specialists; as hunter-gatherers, they also formed a culture that downplayed violence between groups, due to the need for everyone to be involved in providing food. The Incas, on the other hand, did have the surplus food capability to support armies and to overwhelm opposing groups. Yet against a different warrior culture equipped with steel, horses, germs, and writing, they were impotent. Diamond asks how the Spaniards had come to be in the position of conquerors of the Incas, rather that it being the other way around. His answer would come from data such as the head start the Europeans had on the Incas in food production, and the richer package of domesticatable plants and animals that the Europeans had to begin with. It's fairly reductive in its focus on food production and omission of culture as a first driver, but it seems, to me anyway, to have a logical basis.

We might shy away from endorsing Diamond's scheme because it seems value-free. Using Diamond, we don't seem to be able to blame the Spaniards for their cruelty to the Incas, when they were doing something similar to what the Incas had done domestically. We can look at intensely war-like North American Indian cultures and observe that the European genocide was only different in degree from the behavior of the Indians toward each other. It's true, as someone once said, that history is one damn war after another. There can seem to be scant room left for idealism.

The scene from Diamond's chapter where the priest tests the Inca king for his capacity to see the truth of God and the Bible, is dramatic and might seem to demonstrate the primary power of the religion in bringing the Spaniards to America to conquer the less-human inhabitants. The king throws down the book, so the priest gives the signal to kill the depraved SOBs. This is still only a proximate cause, though, which can be traced way back to the creation of a priestly class of specialists supported by food producers. No doubt the Incas also had their priestly class, but the military might that was always a key aspect of state religion was heavily in favor of the Spaniards in this case. They'd been at it much longer and had the benefit of the invention of steel. According to Diamond, that invention, as well as all inventions, presumably, were not a product of the exceptional abilities of any certain group of people. Given time and enough environmental materials, any group of humans would have innovated these advances.

Diamond does have a macro/micro thing going on, though. He does say that we will see exceptions whereby groups may not, for cultural reasons, adopt the advances they've been exposed to. But he says that looking at the big picture, the clear pattern is one in which the new trumps the old, by either peaceful or forceful means.
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Re: Preface, Prologue, and Part One

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DWill wrote: ...were not a product of the exceptional abilities of any certain group of people. Given time and enough environmental materials, any group of humans would have innovated these advances.
I pretty much agree with this statement. Here is the modification I would make - this is without the benefit of having read to the end of this book: An interplay exists between the physical environment, the specific historic conditions at any given moment and the existent culture in question that will impact the innovations made by a culture. I guess what I am saying is that I do think there are times that ideas direct development or at least shape development. Testing this out in my mind I am thinking about the combustion engine, which lead to the car, which lead to suburbia (and WalMart) and commuting, which lead to more and more use of gasoline, and well you all know where all this leads. It is hard to imagine the car not leading to commuting and a great dependence on gasoline. However, there is a group that has opted out for philosophical reasons - the Amish. Diamond would say they are the odd balls and not with the predominate pattern. The odd balls are the ones that really put an idea to the test.
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Re: Preface, Prologue, and Part One

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DWill - can you explain why bison wouldn't have been seen by natives in California? Am I talking about the wrong part of America?
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Re: Preface, Prologue, and Part One

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heledd wrote:DWill - can you explain why bison wouldn't have been seen by natives in California? Am I talking about the wrong part of America?
The only bison that ever lived in California were in the very most north eastern tip of the state. Technically, I guess those few people that lived in that area would have seen bison, but 99% of the area that is now California was never bison habitat.
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Re: Preface, Prologue, and Part One

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Saffron wrote:
DWill wrote: ...were not a product of the exceptional abilities of any certain group of people. Given time and enough environmental materials, any group of humans would have innovated these advances.
I pretty much agree with this statement. Here is the modification I would make - this is without the benefit of having read to the end of this book: An interplay exists between the physical environment, the specific historic conditions at any given moment and the existent culture in question that will impact the innovations made by a culture. I guess what I am saying is that I do think there are times that ideas direct development or at least shape development. Testing this out in my mind I am thinking about the combustion engine, which lead to the car, which lead to suburbia (and WalMart) and commuting, which lead to more and more use of gasoline, and well you all know where all this leads. It is hard to imagine the car not leading to commuting and a great dependence on gasoline. However, there is a group that has opted out for philosophical reasons - the Amish. Diamond would say they are the odd balls and not with the predominate pattern. The odd balls are the ones that really put an idea to the test.
That's true about the Amish. Diamond would say that there will be exceptions or perhaps holdouts like the Amish, but over an entire region we'll see the dominant pattern. I think you're also right about the importance of particular circumstances in shaping societies differently, such as the different effects of the advanced use of steel in the U.S. vs. Europe. The combustion engine has created diverse social effects in the two places--or is it that social differences that already existed determined the effects of the automobile?

It doesn't look as though Diamond claims his theory has much to do with the specifics of historical events or social development. I don't see anything that explains why it was the Spanish, rather than, say, the English, French, or Dutch that invaded South America. Chance ruled all of that, as it does in the finer grain of our daily lives. But he says it had to be people like that, Europeans who were beneficiaries of their head starts with guns, germs, and steel. It couldn't have been the North American Indians invading, because they didn't have the same "advantages" that would give them the leg-up as conquerors. But of course, there has to be more to it than just who had the favorable conditions to begin with. Advantages can be lost and gained. The Fertile Crescent area didn't maintain its supremacy, for reasons that I don't know if Diamond goes into. The world pattern of haves vs. have-nots isn't all that durable, either, with formerly have-not regions such as China, India, and Brazil getting set to catch up and--who knows--perhaps surpass us in the standard-of-living race.

Left unsettled is your point about the climate for innovation. Although we might agree that human intelligence is spread equally across groups we categorize as races, is it possible that it took some ingredient having nothing even indirectly to do with the richness of plants and animals for domestication? Historians always talk about the rise of science making innovation possible, so the question is whether that development was inevitable, regardless of varying cultural ingredients, as long as the material head-start conditions prevailed. Just because something happened as it did, isn't a reason to say it had to happen that way. So we continue to wonder about what Diamond might, so far at least, be leaving out--that certain intangible quality?
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