Thus when societies compete, what prevails is not only certain societies over others but certain cultural possibilities over others. The struggle for power therefore generates a selective process that sifts through the myriad apparent possibilities for the civilized creatures.
It has been a process -- not chosen by our species -- that discards those many cultural possibilities that fail to generate sufficient power in the war of all against all, discards them regardless of how humane they may be and how well they may serve the fulfillment of the human beings inhabiting such cultures. And it is a process that has mandated other cultural possibilities that prove conducive to success in that inescapable competitive process.
Over the centuries and millennia, the selection for the ways of power will determine which of the wide range of possibilities for civilized societies will be chosen by the system to shape the human future:
- the war-like may eliminate the peaceful;
- the ambitious overtake the content;
- the iron-makers those with copper or no metallurgy at all;
- the horsemen over the unmounted;
- those with effective central control over those with more casual power structures and local autonomy;
- those driven by a harsh work ethic over those oriented toward the enjoyment of life;
- those able and willing to exploit nature fully over those who treat the wholeness of nature with respect.
The inevitability of civilization being driven in the power-maximizing directions is attested by the fact (mentioned earlier, and observed by the anthropologist Julian Steward) that in all seven places on this planet where humans developed civilization in pristine fashion, the pattern of development was basically the same.
In all seven of those places where domestication began and traced a course to the emergence of full-scale civilization (with cities, states, empires), we see the same frightening emergence of systems of domination and slavery, strife and exploitation.
Moreover, as the possibilities for cultural innovation (and thus also for power-maximizing) are open-ended, there is no stopping point in this ongoing and inevitable selection for the ways of power. The great empires of the ancient world could put their stamp upon the peoples they conquered, but they themselves could have been conquered and transformed by, say, even the second-tier powers of the modern world.
The ways of power get spread inexorably through the human system, so long as anarchy obtains in the system of interacting civilized societies, and thus the play of power remains uncontrolled.
Thus it is the demands of power, not free human choice, that have governed the overall direction of civilization's evolution.
NO REFLECTION OF HUMAN NATURE
From the very beginning of the first installment of this series, I have previewed one essential implication of this analysis: human history should not be seen as human nature writ large; the ugliness we see in history is not evidence of an inherent ugliness in humanity.
All that is required of human nature for this reign of power to dominate how civilization takes shape is that the human creature be a cultural animal.
"Cultural" implies, first of all, a capacity for creativity.
Without some creativity, there can be no culture. In particular, creativity was required for that cultural breakthrough into the domestication of plants and animals. And without such domestication, there would have been no emergence out of the niche in which we evolved.
"Cultural" also implies an important degree of flexibility. Even before civilization, the human infant would be born into some group or other, ready to adapt to a diversity of cultural environments -- ready to speak whatever language, employ whatever technologies, and utilize whatever systems of symbols and meanings characterize its particular group.
As these will vary from culture to culture, that means that more than the young of any other species, the human infant is born to be molded.
Of course, our dogs and cats also have a degree of flexibility, learning very different ways of being depending upon their upbringing. (A kitten that grows up feral will be different from one that grows up in a safe and loving home.)
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
