See "Uneven But Combined Development," here.
Different countries and different planets develop at different rates but then interact either progressively or retrogressively. Thus:
Europeans put rifles directly into the hands of Native Americans;
large factories and industrial cities sprang up in still feudal Russia;
unscrupulous Polesotechnic League traders armed barbarians;
one League cartel, the Seven in Space, secretly armed the Baburites;
David Falkayn had "'...thought civilization had evolved beyond war...'" (p. 131) and maybe he was right about Terrestrial civilization;
however, the Shenna and the barbarians had not evolved beyond war and the Baburites were prepared to learn it.
The Solar Commonwealth must fight the Baburites and Earth is sacked by barbarians. Out of all this comes the Terran Empire, a society born from war, not from peace.
25 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
All societies are going to be born from violence and war. Because that is simply what human beings are like: imperfect, quarrelsome, competitive, aggressive, etc.
It is dangerous and unrealistic to dream of something "better" than that.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It is not.
Human beings are a lot of positives as well as a lot of negatives. We can understand that and do something about it. The word "imperfect" is simply repeated. Surely it has been shown that there is nothing unchanging in us? If fundamental change were impossible, we would not exist.
Paul.
I don't think of it as positive or negative.
Human beings are inherently -political- because we're sapient social animals.
And as the great pioneering sociologist Max Weber observed: "The ultimately decisive means of political action is always violence."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree that the ultimately decisive means of settling political disputes, if all other efforts fail, is violence.
But I regard that with regret. Where I differ from Utopians is that I believe that propensity for violence can only be managed, not eliminated.
Ad astra! Sean
When there is technological production of abundance, there will be no motivation for conflict over resources, trade route, markets or profits.
s
When there is no longer any economic conflict, there will no longer be any perceived need to subordinate, scapegoat, segregate or suppress social groups identified by race or religion. Diversity, no longer perceived as a threat, will instead be accepted and celebrated. We are capable of this even now despite strenuous efforts by governments and some political groups to divide and rule. This week in Britain, a young man born in Wales and not a Muslim, committed three horrific murders with a knife and wounded several other victims. There were instant riots fuelled by social media misinformation that the man who has been arrested was a recent Muslim immigrant. A set of prejudices has been cultivated and is still being encouraged which has this kind of result.
Paul: True, but those are not the actual -cause- of political violence.
They're just symbolic, the things people use to judge who's winning, the way kicking a ball between goalposts is symbolic in soccer.
Politics is a fight for -power-.
Power is inherently limited. It's a 'positional good'.
If you have more, I have less.
The desire for power is as inherent as the desire for food, because it was associated with successful reproduction for a long long time, and hence is coded into our genetic behavioral repertoire.
As for the 'need' to suppress different groups, that's simply because they're perceived as -different-.
"My tribe good, your tribe stinks, kill-kill-kill" is written into our DNA.
Material benefits are just a bonne bouche, a tip.
As I've mentioned, people will do that about anything -- including football teams (or chariot teams) or preferences in music.
Jonathan Swift caught it accurately in "Gulliver's Travels" with the war between the Big-Enders and Little-Enders, who were killing each other over which end of a boiled egg to open first.
Anything will do. Perception is all.
To take a concrete example, nobody in Burma wants to rob the Rohinga.
They don't -have- anything to take, they're utterly impoverished peasants for the most part.
Nobody wants their labor, either.
The Buddhist majority just wants them -gone-. Wants them to cease to exist, at least within Burma's borders, because they have a different religion, which is a classic tribal marker.
Competition for hunting territory is probably the original evolutionary -cause- of this sentiment, but that's irrelevant, because evolution proceeds by making something -instinctual-.
That is to say, written in to the genes.
Short of genetic engineering, there's no way to alter it.
It's a condition that has to be lived with and managed, not a 'problem' that can be 'solved'.
Paul: or to sum up the above, you're mistaking the -symptom- for the -cause-.
This will have to be put to the test. I think that ending economic conflicts will end other social conflicts but, if it doesn't, then we will just have to keep working at it. I think that human cultural behaviour is very plastic and flexible. A lot of changes can be made before resorting to genetic engineering.
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree with you, and agree with Stirling. People don't need rational reasons to fight and quarrel. As a chess player, I've looked into the history of chess, and noticed there times chess players would quarrel and fight each other.
If you want peace you are going to need the State to enforce that peace. And you will need the State for defense against aggressive outsiders. "If you want peace prepare for war," as Flavius Vegetius said in DE RE MILITARI.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But we can have a world where there are no aggressive outsiders. I have outlined conditions in which territorial disputes will have become redundant.
Of course, if you continue to imagine an unchanged world, then it follows that people in that world will remain unchanged.
We will no longer need the state to enforce peace within a country if we have various changes which I have listed several times: "theft" redundant when wealth is abundant and held in common etc.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, because we are all of us potentially capable of being aggressive--and some will be. So I don't believe in your "conditions." Nor do I believe humans will change the way you want them to.
Disagree, mere prosperity will not stop individuals and nations from fighting and quarreling for what they want, such as power.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are all potentially capable of aggression but there are many circumstances in which that potential is not realized. The potential can remain, unrealized, and eventually atrophy.
There will be no "power," control over others, when everyone has what they need.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, because prosperity will actually make the desire some will have for power stronger. Reread what Stirling wrote about "positional goods."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree. There will no power when there is no longer any means of coercing others.
Paul.
be
Paul: the evidence is that one consequence of removing coercion -- government -- is that people kill each other a lot.
Hunter-gatherers fought all the time; the commonest way for an adult male to die was to be killed by another adult male, and women died by violence a lot too.
Except in fights over territory, this wasn't motivated by economics in any sense.
One of the primary ways it operated was abduction of women by men wanting mates.
As a matter of fact, I agree with that. If government coercion were simply removed now without any other changes being made, then there would be a lot of chaos and killing. But that is not going to happen, anyway. I am trying to argue how conditions can and might be different in future. Certain causes of conflict can be identified and eliminated. Major changes to how wealth is produced and distributed will make big differences to society even if there is still a lot of argument about what those further changes would be.
What I think is indefensible is the idea that nothing fundamental is going to change. Whatever else happens, the future is going to be very different - and it might simply involve our extinction, of course.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't believe the changes you hope for will happen. Nor have I seen any evidence at all for those changes.
No, it is not indefensible to believe the kind of "fundamental" changes you hope for will not occur. All the evidence I have seen in real life and real history convinces me of that.
I agree the future will most likely be different technologically, but not that humans will change the way you hope they will.
All you keep offering is merely what you hope will happen. No proof, no evidence. And that is not good enough. I believe in realism and accepting hard facts--about how flawed and imperfect all human beings are, in this case.
Ad astra! Sean
"believe," not "believable," at one pont.
We should acknowledge that this is a religious disagreement: Fall versus Rise. The evidence backs the latter.
Kaor, Paul!
And I believe the evidence supports my contention that mankind is Fallen, on empirical as well as doctrinal grounds.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And I believe that it does not.
I also believe that the precise points that I make are not addressed and that stock responses are repeated.
Paul.
Surely we can somehow meet intellectually instead of just speaking past each other like mobs with megaphones? By "meet," I mean not "agree" but engage more closely with what the other person is in fact saying.
Post a Comment