The Selection for Power: The Parable of the Tribes
The new human freedom made striving for expansion and power possible. Such freedom, when multiplied, creates anarchy. The anarchy among civilized societies meant that the play of power in the system was uncontrollable. In an anarchic situation like that, no one can choose that the struggle for power shall cease.
But there is one more element in the picture: no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes.
Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.
I have just outlined four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes: destruction, absorption and trans
formation, withdrawal, and imitation. In everyone of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes.
The parable of the tribes is a theory of social evolution which shows that power is like a contaminant, a disease, which once introduced will gradually yet inexorably become universal in the system of competing societies. More important than the inevitability of the struggle for power is the profound social evolutionary consequence of that struggle once it begins. A selection for power among civilized societies is inevitable. If anarchy assured that power among civilized societies could not be governed, the selection for power signified that increasingly the ways of power would govern the destiny of mankind. This is the new evolutionary principle that came into the world with civilization. Here is the social evolutionary black hole that we have sought as an explanation of the harmful warp in the course of civilization's development.
The idea is simple; its logic, I believe, compelling. In scant and partial form, this idea appears in a variety of places. (See, Bagehot, 1956, p. 32; Keller, 1916, pp. 62-63; Mosca, 1939, p. 29; McNeill, 1963, p. 806; Carneiro, 1972; Lenski, 1970, p. 91). Nowhere, however, has it been developed beyond the most germinal stage. And nowhere has it been shown to provide an essential key to the strange destiny of our species, as I intend to do in this work.
The Reign of Power
The rise of civilization enormously escalated conflict among human societies. This escalation alone would have magnified the importance of power in human life. But the reign of power derives far less from the struggle for power in itself than from the selective process that struggle generates. Even if intersocietal competition had always been as intense as it became with the rise of civilization, it could not have had an equally dramatic and swift social evolutionary impact. For selection can only operate to the extent that there is a diversity of types among which to choose. Even though primitive societies are surely not absolutely identical to one another, their differences can exist only within fairly narrow limits. The potential importance of selection among them is correspondingly limited. With the emergence of civilization, however, these limits fell away and considerable diversity became possible. The greater the diversity among societies, the more important selection among them becomes, for the civilized societies that survive or die can represent very different approaches to human social life. The social evolutionary trap that snared mankind thus had two jaws - the new open-ended cultural possibilities and the escalating struggle for power. The first made significant selection possible, and the second determined that adequate competitive power would be a primary criterion for social survival. Selection sorts through the wide variety of cultural possibilities, inexorably spreading the ways of power.
The competitive power of a society is a function of many components of its culture. The way it is organized - politically, socially, and economically - is important. Vital, too, is its technology. Ideology and the psychological structure of the people are also essential determinants of a society's power. The consistent selection for power, therefore, can shape the whole cultural life of civilized peoples in its many dimensions.
Among all the cultural possibilities, only some will be viable. The selection for power can discard those who revere nature in favor of those willing and able to exploit it. The warlike may eliminate the pacifistic; the ambitious, the content. Civilized socieities will displace the remaining primitives, modern industrial powers will sweep away archaic cultures. The iron makers will be favored over those with copper or no metallurgy at all, and the horsemen will have sway over the unmounted. Societies that are coherently organized and have strong leadership will make unviable others with more casual power structures and more local autonomy. As the parable of the tribes spreads the ways of power, what looked like openended cultural possibilities are channeled in a particular, unchosen direction.
What is viable in a world beset by the struggle for power is what can prevail. What prevails may not be what best meets the needs of mankind. The continuous selection for power has thus continually closed off many humane cultural options that people might otherwise have preferred. Power therefore rules human destiny.
If the ambition of societies for power grew originally out of Malthusian necessities, it did not need to remain so. As the selection for power continued, it ultimately would favor those whose hunger for power exceeded their material need. In the beginning, people struggled because they truly needed room to live. As civilization developed, the struggle became more one for the kind of Lebensraum that represents a love of power for its own sake. The struggle for power developed a life of its own that would feed an unnatural growth in the 'necessities' imposed by power upon humankind. The selective process insured that it would most definitely not be the meek who inherited the earth.
Just as the freedom from the regime of nature brought upon mankind a new bondage to power, so also did the open-endedness of possibilities prove not a release from but a part of the trap. Because the process of cultural innovation is open-ended, there can be no end point in the maximization of power. (The awesome power of ancient Rome could not survive today even in weaker regions of the world.) The evolution of civilization is therefore marked by a perpetual (though sometimes interrupted) escalation in the level of power a society must possess to survive intersocietal competition. The reign of power thus has no limit.
Yet this reign - and this point must be stressed - is a subtle one. When the determining force is a selective process, the force can have an overwhelming impact without being blatant in operation.
First, a selective process gains its potency from being cumulative over time. It is a mill that grinds slowly but exceedingly fine. At any given time, the ways of comparative weakness may coexist with those of power, surviving for generations and even centuries. The relations among societies are not like an ongoing tournament programmed to eliminate the losers as efficiently as possible. Eventually, however, the bill from the parable of the tribes becomes due; the deficit in power leads to social evolutionary default. Perhaps the powerful nation finally turns and swallows its weaker neighbors, like the Romans in Italy, the Soviets in Lithuania, the Chinese in Tibet. Or perhaps, the more powerful culture extends its reach to threaten more distant peoples, like the projection of Roman power into ancient Britain or the coming of the Europeans to North America. Selection is a patient process. Sifting gradually, almost casually, through the cultural possibilities over many millennia, it can exert a decisive influence over the emerging shape of civilization without having to be central to the drama at any given time. Given enough time, a force that is consistent and enduring becomes decisive. The selection for power is such a force.
This leads to a second point about a theory of social evolution like the parable of the tribes: it is not reductionistic. To claim that power has had primacy in shaping the destiny of civilization does not imply that the striving for power is at the heart of human social existence and that everything else is merely a function of power. In this respect, the parable of the tribes is wholly different structurally from a theory like Marx's. Marx asserted that certain aspects of a society's economic life were most fundamental and that the rest of the culture (e.g., politics and ideology) was essentially 'superstructure' determined by the economic substructure. It was, he said, in the economic dimension of social life that the real engine of historical change was to be found, leading civilization from one stage to another. The parable of the tribes proposes no such causal relationships among the aspects of culture. The reign of power does not mean that power determines what social life is about.
The selective process stands outside the immediate arena of human existence. An analogy may be drawn from biological selection. When coal began to coat everything in Britain with dust, a species of moth that had been white began over the generations to darken. The light-colored individuals were too easily spotted by predators against the coal dust and were selected against. Yet, that selection directed a change toward darkness in no way implies that darkness became central to the butterfly's life processes, determining how it flew, what it ate, how it reproduced, and so on. By the same token, the parable of the tribes can claim that the selection for the ways of power has dominated the profound transformations of the evolution of civilization without claiming that power has been the central preoccupation of civilized peoples or that power maximization has been their principal goal.
The new human freedom made striving for expansion and power possible. Such freedom, when multiplied, creates anarchy. The anarchy among civilized societies meant that the play of power in the system was uncontrollable. In an anarchic situation like that, no one can choose that the struggle for power shall cease.
But there is one more element in the picture: no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes.
Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.
formation, withdrawal, and imitation. In everyone of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes.
The parable of the tribes is a theory of social evolution which shows that power is like a contaminant, a disease, which once introduced will gradually yet inexorably become universal in the system of competing societies. More important than the inevitability of the struggle for power is the profound social evolutionary consequence of that struggle once it begins. A selection for power among civilized societies is inevitable. If anarchy assured that power among civilized societies could not be governed, the selection for power signified that increasingly the ways of power would govern the destiny of mankind. This is the new evolutionary principle that came into the world with civilization. Here is the social evolutionary black hole that we have sought as an explanation of the harmful warp in the course of civilization's development.
The idea is simple; its logic, I believe, compelling. In scant and partial form, this idea appears in a variety of places. (See, Bagehot, 1956, p. 32; Keller, 1916, pp. 62-63; Mosca, 1939, p. 29; McNeill, 1963, p. 806; Carneiro, 1972; Lenski, 1970, p. 91). Nowhere, however, has it been developed beyond the most germinal stage. And nowhere has it been shown to provide an essential key to the strange destiny of our species, as I intend to do in this work.
The Reign of Power
The rise of civilization enormously escalated conflict among human societies. This escalation alone would have magnified the importance of power in human life. But the reign of power derives far less from the struggle for power in itself than from the selective process that struggle generates. Even if intersocietal competition had always been as intense as it became with the rise of civilization, it could not have had an equally dramatic and swift social evolutionary impact. For selection can only operate to the extent that there is a diversity of types among which to choose. Even though primitive societies are surely not absolutely identical to one another, their differences can exist only within fairly narrow limits. The potential importance of selection among them is correspondingly limited. With the emergence of civilization, however, these limits fell away and considerable diversity became possible. The greater the diversity among societies, the more important selection among them becomes, for the civilized societies that survive or die can represent very different approaches to human social life. The social evolutionary trap that snared mankind thus had two jaws - the new open-ended cultural possibilities and the escalating struggle for power. The first made significant selection possible, and the second determined that adequate competitive power would be a primary criterion for social survival. Selection sorts through the wide variety of cultural possibilities, inexorably spreading the ways of power.
The competitive power of a society is a function of many components of its culture. The way it is organized - politically, socially, and economically - is important. Vital, too, is its technology. Ideology and the psychological structure of the people are also essential determinants of a society's power. The consistent selection for power, therefore, can shape the whole cultural life of civilized peoples in its many dimensions.
Among all the cultural possibilities, only some will be viable. The selection for power can discard those who revere nature in favor of those willing and able to exploit it. The warlike may eliminate the pacifistic; the ambitious, the content. Civilized socieities will displace the remaining primitives, modern industrial powers will sweep away archaic cultures. The iron makers will be favored over those with copper or no metallurgy at all, and the horsemen will have sway over the unmounted. Societies that are coherently organized and have strong leadership will make unviable others with more casual power structures and more local autonomy. As the parable of the tribes spreads the ways of power, what looked like openended cultural possibilities are channeled in a particular, unchosen direction.
What is viable in a world beset by the struggle for power is what can prevail. What prevails may not be what best meets the needs of mankind. The continuous selection for power has thus continually closed off many humane cultural options that people might otherwise have preferred. Power therefore rules human destiny.
If the ambition of societies for power grew originally out of Malthusian necessities, it did not need to remain so. As the selection for power continued, it ultimately would favor those whose hunger for power exceeded their material need. In the beginning, people struggled because they truly needed room to live. As civilization developed, the struggle became more one for the kind of Lebensraum that represents a love of power for its own sake. The struggle for power developed a life of its own that would feed an unnatural growth in the 'necessities' imposed by power upon humankind. The selective process insured that it would most definitely not be the meek who inherited the earth.
Just as the freedom from the regime of nature brought upon mankind a new bondage to power, so also did the open-endedness of possibilities prove not a release from but a part of the trap. Because the process of cultural innovation is open-ended, there can be no end point in the maximization of power. (The awesome power of ancient Rome could not survive today even in weaker regions of the world.) The evolution of civilization is therefore marked by a perpetual (though sometimes interrupted) escalation in the level of power a society must possess to survive intersocietal competition. The reign of power thus has no limit.
Yet this reign - and this point must be stressed - is a subtle one. When the determining force is a selective process, the force can have an overwhelming impact without being blatant in operation.
First, a selective process gains its potency from being cumulative over time. It is a mill that grinds slowly but exceedingly fine. At any given time, the ways of comparative weakness may coexist with those of power, surviving for generations and even centuries. The relations among societies are not like an ongoing tournament programmed to eliminate the losers as efficiently as possible. Eventually, however, the bill from the parable of the tribes becomes due; the deficit in power leads to social evolutionary default. Perhaps the powerful nation finally turns and swallows its weaker neighbors, like the Romans in Italy, the Soviets in Lithuania, the Chinese in Tibet. Or perhaps, the more powerful culture extends its reach to threaten more distant peoples, like the projection of Roman power into ancient Britain or the coming of the Europeans to North America. Selection is a patient process. Sifting gradually, almost casually, through the cultural possibilities over many millennia, it can exert a decisive influence over the emerging shape of civilization without having to be central to the drama at any given time. Given enough time, a force that is consistent and enduring becomes decisive. The selection for power is such a force.
This leads to a second point about a theory of social evolution like the parable of the tribes: it is not reductionistic. To claim that power has had primacy in shaping the destiny of civilization does not imply that the striving for power is at the heart of human social existence and that everything else is merely a function of power. In this respect, the parable of the tribes is wholly different structurally from a theory like Marx's. Marx asserted that certain aspects of a society's economic life were most fundamental and that the rest of the culture (e.g., politics and ideology) was essentially 'superstructure' determined by the economic substructure. It was, he said, in the economic dimension of social life that the real engine of historical change was to be found, leading civilization from one stage to another. The parable of the tribes proposes no such causal relationships among the aspects of culture. The reign of power does not mean that power determines what social life is about.
The selective process stands outside the immediate arena of human existence. An analogy may be drawn from biological selection. When coal began to coat everything in Britain with dust, a species of moth that had been white began over the generations to darken. The light-colored individuals were too easily spotted by predators against the coal dust and were selected against. Yet, that selection directed a change toward darkness in no way implies that darkness became central to the butterfly's life processes, determining how it flew, what it ate, how it reproduced, and so on. By the same token, the parable of the tribes can claim that the selection for the ways of power has dominated the profound transformations of the evolution of civilization without claiming that power has been the central preoccupation of civilized peoples or that power maximization has been their principal goal.
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