In "Why the West Rules ~ For Now, The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future", Ian Morris weaves together the entire history of human civilisation into a coherent and interesting story. To do this, he creates his own social development index to allow comparison of societies separated by both space and time. This is similar in concept to the UN human development index, but simplified to account for the difficulties in obtaining historical information. The index is based on four separate measures (p 148)- total per capita energy use (including food, fossil fuels, etc), urbanism (maximum city population - a proxy measure for organisational capability), information processing and military capacity. These four measures tend to tell the same story.

Although a rough measure, the index highlights some interesting trends - see attached (figure 3.7, p 166). The east lead for a long period - between roughly 540 and 1770. For the entire history of human civilisation prior to 540 CE, the west lead, and has lead since 1770, although the east is now catching up again. In my opinion more interesting: a high level of development was reached in the Roman Empire during the first century CE. The same level was reached by Song dynasty China around 1100, followed by a similar lengthy decline. Both east and west broke through this level arounbd 1700. That is, European civilisation did not reach the same level as during the Roman Empire until 300 years ago.

Morris uses the index to introduce his thoery of a "hard ceiling" that limited development to the same level in the Roman Empire and Song Dynasty. The inability to break through this barrier lead to the eventual collapse of the civilisation and a long period of decline. He credits the recent breaching of this barrier to the heavy use of fossil fuels and industrialisation, which enabled the nomadic culture on the central asian steppes to finally be squeezed out. It was only around this time that a border was established between Russia and China. Prior to this, the nomadic peoples generally had the upper hand in conflict and they played a role in the collapse of just about every major empire. Genghis Khan was one of many.

Morris actually begins the story before 14000 BC, going through pre-modern human species and technology, with a focus on climate change as a key driver. He presents some interesting new evidence of interbreeding between modern humans and neanderthals, whose DNA can be found in Europeans and Asians (but not Africans).

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1399971565

Morris presents the 7 key regions around the globe where agriculture developed independently, with the east and the west centred on two of these cores. Morris argues that settlement (permanent villages) came prior to agriculture, with the initiation and rate of development largely determined by the natural suitability of an area. His argument is a subtle form of geographic determinism, including some of the ideas presented by Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs and Steel". He shows how the western core has gradually moved north and west, while the eastern core has moved east, and at a critical time, south. A key theme is the "changing meaning of geography", which caused the core of each civilisation to move as different geographies were favoured at different stages of social development. For example, the second key stage (cities) arose with agriculture in land that was less suited to the simpler style of agriculture that initially spawned each core. A very similar concept is the "advantage of backwardness", where challenges faced on the 'backward' periphery of civilisation caused new adaptations that improved civilisation and often moved the core, usually creating a massive upheaval in the process (the most direct form being a new empire over-running the old one). Yet another similar concept is that "you cannot cross the same river twice". Literally, this is a reference to the fact that the water you crossed over last time has moved on. This is used as an analogy for the changing meaning of geography, and that an idea or strategy that worked once is not going to work a second time. Civilisation itself canges the context that created civilisation in the first place.

Morris spends considerable time discussing the process by which the cores expanded and moved, settling on an obvious combination of the spread of ideeas and technology and the movement of people, particularly in the early agricultural phases.

Another common theme Morris uses is the five horsemen of the apocalypse - migration, state failure, famine, disease and climate change. The linking of the eastern and western cores by trade sparked a major round of disease that drove down development in both cores (the black plague). However it also eventually lead to the killing of the fifth horseman of the apocalypse (migration) when the two corse expanded to squeeze out the nomadic step

freediver wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2014 at 7:20am:



Oh no ?


Is this an analogy of the sociological challenges we have 'overcome', to be able to form functional - and large - human communities ?

Does Morris believe that because someone once invented an effective mousetrap, that no-one will every try to build a 'better' mousetrap ?

I don't think his argument has legs.




And we humans [i.e. i mean we accomplished 'Western' man      ] tend to believe that what was [in our distant past], can never come again.

e.g.
Oppression, famine, wars - coz we have so 'moved on' from the structures [or is it the lack of structures ?] that enabled those circumstances.

LOL.

Yeah, right!



"an idea or strategy that worked once is not going to work a second time"....

Because we believe that we are free now - we and our children can never become slaves ?

Because we are wealthy now - we and our children can never suffer hunger ?

Because we have enjoyed relative peaceful societies for decades - we and our children can never suffer the violence of war ?

Presumptuous.




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Our ability to face future challenges.




Just deny members of a LARGE [i.e. numerous] society like ours, comfort and food, and watch and see what the result what the consequence to the 'harmony' in our society will be - especially, wherever that society is not predicated on justice and fairness in law!

And that is the type of society that Western societies have morphed into, imo.

The 'Me!' generation.



The society which has predicated its societal mores on justice and fairness in law [for all], and which also has a deep respect for truth, is the more robust and resilient society.

And that is why the future of 'Western' civilisation is not secure today.

'Western' civilisation is sick and vulnerable to external 'cultural' and existential threats, upon its societal structures and institutions - because those structures and institutions have corrupted themselves and become self-serving!

We are more adaptive.

freediver wrote on Jul 5^th, 2014 at 10:26pm:




It would only take one or two generations        of an effective and sustained oppression - e.g. in a post holocaust, or in a post worldwide cataclysm world - to destroy to lose - THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE KNOWLEDGE - that we have today.
[

"...there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."

]

e.g.
SCENARIO;
Would a generation of present-day farm labourers in North Korea 'innately' have the wherewithal [and ability and knowledge] to quickly build a functioning and productive - modern - society - if they do not have access to knowledge bases which we posses [i.e. knowledge bases which would be, in a future 'present' time, both unknown and incomprehensible [incomprehensible, because of lack of their familiarity with them] ?] ?

e.g.
If it were possible to 'plant' several families from present-day farm labourers from North Korea, on a deserted island, or as a colony on a new habitable planet, BUT, with them having no access to our knowledge bases, how quickly would such a society of people progress, over time ?



It is said that we [ourselves] came to knowledge [developed structures of learning], when individual collective communities of men and women became wealthy - because of their collective efforts.

And that this [personal wealth] allowed wealthy individuals to pursue intellectual paths ['structures' of learning] towards knowledge and 'modern' scientific knowledge.

But in post holocaust, or post worldwide cataclysm societies, where every individual [as in our past] would be forced to exert almost all of their energies to just providing their communities/families with food - there would be little time for 'contemplation' and enquiry.




Do you believe the repressive societal structure that the regime in North Korea has built - and which the regime in North Korea is able to maintain today - can never take hold in a society like our own ?

All that it would take, imo, for widespread societal oppression, is for a circumstance of 'opportunity' to present itself.

Post some worldwide affecting cataclysm ?

"The germ is nothing; the terrain is everything."

IMAGE...

many blessings ,

well to be quite frank

the whole premise is a freemasonic hypothesis

grounded in separation and neo fuedalistic ideals

and as such

any can participate within this paradigm yes

other use freewill and observe the ruse

for what that is with so very much love

and compassion

namaste

- : ) =

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It is not so much the question of whether knowledge can somehow survive or thrive within a damaged world/society of men.

Knowledge, truth, exists - separate from man.

For me, it is more interesting relevant to know whether men will/would choose to use repression, as a path towards 'human progress' - as is so widespread in the world today.

Because, for example, repression, as a path towards 'progress', is an idea, a concept, which the regime leaders in North Korean [and to a lesser extent, the leaders of ALL other nations] have successfully 'promoted' for decades.



Knowledge is 'transmitted' [among men] as an idea, or as a concept.

From one individual, to another individual.

Repression too is [itself] another idea, another 'concept'.

Some men among us would promote the idea that 'repression' [their control] of the human psyche is somehow 'expansive' [i.e. what they really believe, is that the 'expression' of repression [among men] can be 'profitable' and 'productive' - to their own interests.     see, Matthew 20:25 and Romans 6:16 ].

But when repression is transmitted within the world of mankind it is destructive of knowledge/innovation - and, human prosperity.




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Innovation is 'healthy', to the controlling influence, exercised by a tyrant ?

Only so long as the power of the new innovation is totally within the control of the tyrant.


Repression engenders a cancer which tends to limit knowledge and innovation.

Tyrants and dictators want freedom [of action] for themselves - alone.


QUESTIONS FOR OURSELVES;

Can we trust ourselves [and those around us] with freedom [of action] ?

How can we do that, allow that - on a practical level [without exposing ourselves to the criminality of some] ?

Do you trust those that you love ?

Why so ?

Why is such a trust, worthy ?

And why is it, that a [naive] trust, in a deceiver, potentially, so destructive ?






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But would the people in that [or this!] age/world have the - freedom - to retrieve and to have access to that potentially 'dangerous' knowledge ?

e.g.
If the human governments of the 1950's thru 1990's could have somehow foreseen the consequences, that a rampant, worldwide modern internet [enabling instant, personal worldwide communication] would have on personal [and political] freedoms, and on the widespread ability of individuals to disseminate controversial information, would those governing authorities have allowed the technology that spawned the worldwide web, to have been developed ?

Genie, and bottle ?





- Edmund Burke

freediver wrote on Jul 8^th, 2014 at 5:01am:


But men do [usually] choose freedom for their own children.




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No argument.



Quote:


No argument.





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But Rome did use oppression and violence to exert its own version of 'freedom' its own self interest over other peoples.

As did the the British Empire!

Because every emerging empire has always tended to try to impose its own value system [which it always portrays as 'more virtuous'] upon others ?

Where does virtue [as a destination for the human psyche] lie ?

Pursuing what is true and open, and learning from [recognising] the mistakes we make along that path ?








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No argument.

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Freedom and democracy are more virtuous. They were barely emerging in Britain as it established it's empire, yet they ended up exporting it to much of the world.

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I meant to say oppression, not freedom.