written November 1999
The author, Jared Diamond, worked for many years in Indonesian and Polynesia among the peoples of southeast Asia and Oceania. His insights are based on his personal experiences as a research biologist, and on his unusual linguist abilities which enabled him to better understand the cultures of the very primitive people of New Guinea and Australia. He looks at the last 13,000 years of human development on all the continents and identifies the important things that brought societies to where they are today.
In short these SHAPERS are: geography (east-west or north- south orientation of continents) food production and plant domestication (crops), domestication of animals (herds, cows, horses, goat, camels and other big herd animals), written languages (Chinese, Greek alphabets etc.), germs and diseases (especially those acquired from animals like small pox), and tools and technology (bronze, steel, ships, weapons and armaments). He down-plays the orthodox theories of history which emphasize great leaders, governments, and systems of laws. His arguments and evidence are very convincing.
In many ways Diamond's report on the history of mankind is conventional. He assumes that mankind evolved as a nearly hairless, erect animal from Africa and immigrated to the Eurasian continent. Humans survived in small bands as female-male pairs hunting animals and seafood and gathering fruits, seeds, nuts, and wild grains. Men were the principle hunters and protectors from beasts and other men. Women nursed the babies and cared for them and gathered and prepared food.
The author thinks that in the Fertile Crescent in Asia Minor crucial events and development occurred that shaped early human history. These same developments were repeated later on most all the continents. In Mesopotamia there were wild grains, some wheat-like, that existed and these grains were domesticated and selected for their larger kernels and yields. Herd animals, ancestors to our cows and horses and sheep and goats, were wild in those regions and, because they were instinctively willing to accept orders from masters, they could be domesticated. Herds were a source of milk, meat, wool, and manure. Of great importance was the source of power horses and cows provided for tilling soil and transportation of loads. Pivotal was the powerful role of horses in warfare.
Better local sources of food caused large population growth. Larger numbers of farmers made it possible for them to dominate smaller hunter-gather clans and tribes. Abundance of food and sedentary living made it possible to develop pottery and textiles. Spoken languages were always available to humans but they often differentiated into unintelligible dialects that spoiled communication and relations between tribes. The larger well-fed agricultural settlements had common languages. Cities emerged giving people enough leisure time and motives to develop written languages. These scripts were powerful tools for rulers to organize their societies. Business transactions were recorded. Property documents and royal genealogies could be preserved. Written orders and information were important weapons in war. Tools of bronze and iron were used in agriculture and to great advantage in warfare against tribes lacking steel or metal weapons.
Diamond's book relates how these factors played out across the planet in the last 13,000 years. There are still a few hunter-gather societies today in Africa, Australia, and Indonesia. But history has about finish converting human tribes into domestic crop-fed populations. The author explains how these influences -- domestic plants and animals, better boats and metal tools, and written languages -- shaped the "civilizations" that now people each continent. The main reasons why the Americas, Australia, Africa, and the Pacific islands were much slower than Asia in acquiring the resources need for dominating neighboring hunter-tribes was the natural distribution of domesticable crops and animals. Many regions lacked wild plants that could be bred to produce abundant comestibles. Many large animal can not be made to obey or work. Also climate differences made introduction of domesticated plants of other people harder to import and adopt when continents had a North-South orientation. Parts of Asia including China seemed to be favored in the generation of large well-tooled populations.
It is reasonable, I think, to accept these broad concepts of the forces that forged humans into the societies we find on the earth today. Are these same forces operative in human societies today?
The urban inhabitants of modern nations don't think in terms of cows, diseases, farmers, and cultivated crops as prime factors in our economies or military power. But it is possible to show that these same influences of history are operative and dominant in today's world. Let me try to demonstrate these assertions. The lessons they teach could help us to better steer our course into the next millennium.
I will make a case for seriously regarding Diamond's paradigms as the SHAPERS of the world of tomorrow using these headings:
DISEASES AS SOCIETY SHAPERS
WEAPONS
POWER OF MONEY
MURDER OF ETHNICS
ENGLISH AND COMMUNICATION
LAWS, DEMOCRACY, EDUCATION, RELIGION
THE BEST HOPE
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FOOD
It is the earth that feeds us. Photo synthesis producing hydrocarbons, and nitrogen-fixing by plants and animals, sustain animal and human life. Most animals and fish spend most of their lives collecting and killing edible plants and animals. But in the last two hundred years most city dwelling humans have disengaged from personally finding or cultivating foods. Agriculture in the United States has been made a corporate operation with poor (immigrant) people hired to do the manual labor for wages. Elaborate marketing, transportation, refrigeration, and food processing businesses have developed to deliver foodstuffs to urban supermarkets.
These new systems of food production and distribution are not without perils, that are comparable to the famines of earlier societies. Corporation farming and refrigerator trucks and planes are new methods used by the Western nations. Much of Asia and Africa still depend on local farmers and local droughts or floods have devastating effect. Corporate food marketing often uses irrigated fields and has global transportation resources limiting the dangers from local weather conditions or diseases.
The new dangers are that the profit-propelled agri-industries will seriously damage the ecology of the planet. Chemical fertilizers pollute the rivers and lakes, over irrigation makes lands saline and unproductive. Water reserves (aquifers) are exhausted, wind and water erosion are not controlled. And other exploitations for fast profits, prevent a sustained agriculture such as animal and human manures provide in Asia.
Perhaps more menacing to the urban food supplies are vulnerability of the food production and distribution to military and political turmoil. Will fuel be available for transporting these enormous cargos? Siege of cities using famine is very old in military tactics. And the physically helpless modern city dwellers who can not plow the paved streets and parking lots or raze the urban sprawl and trees to cultivate food production in the local areas.
DISEASES AS SOCIETY SHAPERS
It is clear that these biological determinants of human populations are operating today. Global travel by aircraft and land transportation facilitate the spread of germs to and from all parts of the earth. Today it is not the powerful nations that conquer the weaker peoples with their germs but vice versa. Medical science has erected effective barricades for many deadly diseases. Smallpox, polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and many lethal diseases have been largely controlled by vaccines and medicines. But the battle rages on with AIDS now wiping our millions of lives in Africa and other places. New diseases appear and old bacteria take on new virulent forms that antibiotic medicine can not treat effectively.
Diseases have society molding force depending on the economics of the peoples affected. The gigantic poor populations of the world do not have access to much of modern medicine. Infant mortalities and deaths in childbirth are much more prevalent in Africa and Eastern Asia. Cultures that allow sexual promiscuity have much higher incidence of AIDS Diet habits and lack of physical exercise increase obesity and health hazards from overweight. Cigarette smoking is a factor in lung and heart diseases and it is a cultural artifact. Birth rates and family size often determine the care that children receive and determines their survival probabilities.
What responsible and capable agencies try to alleviate these worldwide killers that shape world populations? The only truly global programs run by knowledgeable people are funded and supervised the United Nations Health Organization. But the US Congress has chosen not to support these efforts.
What lessons are in this history for the military technologists of today? We have added air and space as arenas for weapons and vehicles of war. Science has accelerated the proliferation of more and more deadly weapons. Minority societies need not invent weapons but they can buy or borrow the latest weapons. Dangers from belligerent states and terrorist groups are potentially extreme and menacing.
As the number ONE super power the USA is depending on its aircraft and missiles that can be delivered accurately using the fantastic GPS satellite Geophysical Positioning Systems. But these GPS satellites can be jammed or disabled. New rockets can better target our assault aircraft. The remarkable ability to punish and destroy enemies with very little loss of American lives is nothing that we can hope will prevail for long.
Invading lands and making slaves of people is not the aim of most world powers today. Money can buy what Third World countries have without the trouble of governing the populations. But in the global competition for world oil, ores, foodstuffs, and living space, war is the ultimate weapon, although money is the favorite mechanism for waging modern warfare.
These billionaire companies managed by business school graduates trained in competition and avarice are supported by the best lawyers of Harvard and Yale who can thwart governmental regulations to tax big business or to curtail their mergers. International corporations are largely unregulated and their legal staffs are used to defend their companies from the predations of other giant corporations.
What is the power of money? It buys agricultural land, raw materials like oil and ores, it builds giant office and apartments buildings, it buys newspapers and TV propaganda to gain popular support, it hires the best scientists and technicians from all parts of the world, it builds giant manufacturing factories and refineries in areas of cheap labor, it invests in lucrative stocks and bonds, money buys military weapon and hires soldier; and the list can be continued on and on. But one of the greatest powers of money is for lobbying and bribing of government officials. And the paid publicity in the press and television can be used to influence voters in democratic elections.
A great social evil of the capitalistic system is the very efficient means (the stock market) it has for funneling money to the people who already have money and to super-rich business tycoons. By generating profits with competitive industries by underpaying employees and use of huge consumer marketing enterprises, the inflated public stock prices of corporations invite investors who have money to get richer. The workers are paid just enough to make them consumers and borrowers from credit cards and banks. Competition among various corporations and nations stimulate this world-wide maelstrom of commercial activities. The system accommodates sports and leisure expenditures too. In many ways these activities of our world results form the profitable initiative of corporations. Employment is generated and consumer products are abundant. The negative results are the rapid and unregulated exploitation of the earth's resources and the polarization of societies into haves and have-nots. There is an inhumane lawlessness about the system. The stock market is inherently unstable and crashes with little warning. The abuses of capital invite military retaliation by the under-classes. Corporation leaders do not worry much about the welfare of the world's people. Short-term profits are desired by managers and stock holders; and investments in scientific research are small.
Xenophobic reactions seem to be a universal characteristic of human behavior. In Diamond's discussion of domestication of animals he alleges that herd animals, that are instinctively program to respect the authority of the leader and a "pecking order" or hierarchy of rank in the herd, are the only ones that can be trained to accept humans as authority figures to be obeyed. Those of us who have worked with horses and cattle know that they function well as domestic servants. Humans too can serve well and obey leaders as herd animals. Modern psychologist ridicule such notions that "human nature" is shaped by instinctive proclivities such as are observed in animals.
But xenophobia and willingness to follow leaders have been strong forces in the shaping of human societies. Some animals mate for life instinctively, others are totally promiscuous--what are the human instincts governing sex?
Our era is using English for most of the commercial transactions worldwide and most scientific books are written in English. Newspapers and magazines in English are available everywhere. Certainly rapid air travel is bringing world peoples together, often in English speaking environments. Television is a global communicator and probably uses English more than any other language. Now telephone communications via satellites or cable brings the world closer together and through it much of the business traffic is in English or digital data with English titles. The Internet is now a fantastic international communication media. Communication by radio, both commercial and amateur, have served for several decades as effective international conversation highways. These technologies are and will be in centuries to come bridges for cultural understanding. We could have one-world and one language some day? Foreign languages are fountains of rich and unique culture. Unfortunately most Americans are mono-lingual and often arrogant as tourist speaking the English of the American Empire. These negative social aspects of one-language must be traded off against the benefits of better international intelligibility. Remember history teaches that it is the sword, the battleship, (merchants), and now airplanes that determines the lingua franca. It could be Chinese or maybe Russian before the next century is ended?
English language ascendancy and modern electronic communication are important positive factors in the globalization of our planet and in the facilitation of teaching and commerce. But what impact will the trash programs broadcast by television and radio have on the morals of our world?
We see the food sources and distributions are vital to nations but in jeopardy due to rapid exploitation of the Earth's agricultural resources and the vulnerability of the giant food distribution system--rail, boat, refrigeration, air--to military or natural disasters.
The same ethnic killer-mentality that destroyed many weaker societies, which are discussed in Diamond's book, are endemic in human behavior and operative worldwide today.
Giant capitalistic corporations are bent on amassing super wealth for their companies. They are systematically favoring "capital" and a class of rich business men at the expense of the poor working peoples of the earth. Corporations wage wars by competition and mergers and they generally try to discourage military activities. But guns and bombs still are able to defeat corporations.
I have chosen four topics that promise to be remedies for the dangers identified above. These curatives are LAW, DEMOCRACY, EDUCATION, and RELIGION. Let us consider what help they might have to offer.
Constitutions and laws are the charters of civilization. They reflect the mores and common laws of people and generally protect the weak against the strong and rich. They require governmental authority. The Republican notion that no-government is the best government, and that fiscal and market forces should rule society, is fallacious and not supported by history. Legal systems vary much from culture to culture. They are sometimes corrupt and debased by devious lawyers and venal judges who accept bribes. (And as Shakespeare said there is, "the rich man's contumely and the law's delay.") But laws usually articulate the high ethical standards of the society.
In the United States we witness the travesty of the O. J. Simpson trial and machinations of highly paid lawyers. Congress declines to join the international court system based on our chauvinistic sovereign superiority and religious bigotry. But our constitution, written when our nation had high morals, still survives. Good laws and good governments are among the most beneficial and reliable forces steering our world in the next millennium.
Voters tend to support prevailing ideologies. Americans were so fearful of communism that all forms of socialism is considered perverse. Capitalism has became an American religion and corporations strongly endorse a free-enterprise system extending over all the world to protect corporate interests in factories, mines, lands, and fishing. Capitalistic doctrine maintains that governments should not provide a safety net for impoverished people. Governments should not build hospitals, schools, or provide low-cost health insurance. (But our socialist public school and state universities are tolerated.) Immigrants should work as virtual slaves or be exported. Foreigners are dangerous and inferior. We are the world's superpower and other countries must recognize our role in world affairs.
Realizing that world populations are growing rapidly and that ethnic hatred and violence are real dangers to world peace, we can see how short-sighted the popular opinions of American voters are as listed above (slightly exaggerated!). There is very little appreciation also of the depredations that large national and international corporations are inflicting on the ecology and resources of the planet. Poor people do not realize they are being robbed by the flow of money through the stock market, credit cards, and the reduction of real wages. Voters are placated by the rhetoric of press and television. Is education the answer for more enlighten democracy?
The causes of the dismal failures of our primary and secondary schools lie more in cultural changes adopted by parents, and in the guidance of modern psychology endorsed and taught in colleges, and than in the schools themselves or their teachers. Children are often badly disciplined at home seldom taught to obey authority figures like parents or teachers. Self-pride, pleasures, and wealth are the prime values of American children. It is no longer thought necessary to memorize the multiplication tables or English spelling or grammar. Foreign languages are only half learned making communication with ethnics difficult or impossible. Graduates are helpless to deal with the Shaping Forces of society because they can't or won't do physical work or hard mental work. Their political interest are in topics that will enhance hedonism or sports. Eighteen year olds seldom vote in elections. They worship money and status -- ownership of ostentation homes and automobiles. They all want to go to college because it is the avenue for social status and promises affluent careers. Words and values like humility, confession, repentance, sacrifice, service have disappeared from their vocabularies.
There is public admission that graduates from high schools have poor SAT scores and require remedial courses to function at college levels. But what about the wonderful universities and colleges that are graced by lovely new buildings and attract students from all over the world. Surely these vaunted educational institutions will equip our society to prevail with (or against) the shaping forces that sift out the cultures that will survive.
Our universities and colleges do provide superb and highly disciplined programs in the professional arts and sciences. They turn out engineers and scientists that are first-rate. These men fashion the guns and steel with the best technologies to dominate militarily and commercially other societies lacking new rapidly advancing chemical and electronic techniques. However our lecture halls and laboratories are filled with Chinese, Arab, and Indian students. American students are repelled by the hard discipline and the modest wages of scientific career fields. Much of the faculty of engineering schools are oriental and European professors.
American students are attracted to the legal and medical professions where discipline is also rigorous and pay scales are high (and mathematics is generally avoided.) Medical research is often done in the larger medical schools and that with the good training of doctors helps society against the DISEASE SHAPERS.
The greatest defect in the university training is the lack of any constructive ideological, philosophical or religious principles. On the contrary, college professors have promulgated the notion that children should not be disciplined and that they should have very high self-esteem regardless of achievements or conduct. Nihilism, deconstructionalism and deprecation of older cultural values is the primary curriculum of American philosophy and psychology departments. These teachings undermine the democratic dream that education can produce a responsible electorate. They make our arrogant people unable to socialize or collaborate with other nationalities. Our colleges train our politicians and leaders. Because they do not teach policies appropriate for coping with the ethnic violence, corporate exploitations, and the burgeoning population of our age they are failing in their primary duties.
However there are many intelligent people in our colleges. Leaders might arise in universities that will teach how the United States can function peacefully with other nations in the global society and survive adverse effects of the shaping forces.
But how are these religious forces positioned to favorably deal with the natural shapers that Diamond identifies? Let us consider the dangers from ethnic hatred and national versus global government? What contributions might religions make to alleviate ecological destruction and waste of natural resources? What help can these institutions provide in the control of diseases and poverty? Will they teach our children discipline to learn the new technologies of "steel and guns"?
Religions have the answers for coping with these forces shaping human societies. The right solutions will result from applying teachings proclaimed in all the religions: love and care for neighbors including the poor, friendly social groups, hard work, sharing and saving of food and all of earth's resources, wisdom and study, humility, modesty, and distrust of money. Jesus, Mohammed, Seneca, Buddha, and the Dalai Lama today -- all advocated these form of human behavior and attitudes.
Unless these religious teachings, that can reverse the shaping forces of racial hatred and violence, are effectively taught this planet with its many skin colors, languages and creeds will suffer continuous genocides. Diamond says little about religion or education as means for modifying the ruthless savagery that often has occurred when advantaged societies overrun weaker peoples. He points out however that Christian missionaries taught the hunter- tribes of Indonesian not to murder alien tribes. We see the United Nations and the Bush-Clinton administrations make sometimes successful rescue campaigns in Haiti, Somalia, and Kosovo to save lives threatened by racial violence. These are political initiatives, not religious programs for justice. But many concepts of justice found in religions have been adopted in laws and policies that influence world public opinion.
Jesus pointed out that the widow of Sidon and the leper Naaman the Syrian were blessed rather than Jews with similar problems. Jesus was then "led to the brow of the hill where they might cast him down headlong" because of this teaching. The Good Samaritan of the parable of that name was not a Jewish priest or rabbi. Mohammed treated Jews and Christians with compassion in Islamic scriptures and often his teachings were obeyed. The New Testament is filled with warnings about the deceitfulness of riches. Work is venerated in the Bible and words appear like, "if any would not work neither should he eat." Earth could live in harmony if money was not the primary quest of people and they were willing to work for their living. Religions teach that love and friendship should be practiced starting in childhood--not the smug, derisive silence and disrespect for older people that characterize youth of America today.
However religious practices today are mostly contrary to these teachings.
Religions tend to encourage rather than eradicate ethnic hatreds. Churches and mosques tend to support their nation-states in wars. History is filled with religious wars, usually between ethnic peoples with different languages and religions.
Salvation of souls is the true job of religions, this is the doctrine taught by many fundamentalists. Salvation is only achieved by following the correct Christian dogma as determined by the Church. Other religions are false and should be destroyed. False religions prevent people from being saved. Pagans and heretics should be exterminated so they can not teach unorthodox religious doctrines that will send others to hell.
Worship of money, wealth, "the bottom line", is part of the state religion of the United States and of some churches. Socialism is a crime. All social movements to help the poor and working people are communistic and evil. Poor people are poor because they are too stupid to learn competent capitalistic self- aggrandizement. They deserve their poverty and should not be given governmental support. Churches do have a few soup kitchens for the poor. Sex is a sin and the proper cure for world over-population is celibacy. The world is basically evil, the domain of the Devil. Religions should not attempt to alter the politics or conditions of the secular world.
But there is a hidden movement, like yeast in bread, mostly lay led, that follows the teaching of the great religious teachers. They people infuse justice and purity into human relations. This silent transformation of human ethics was sensed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in FUTURE OF MAN or ACTIVATION OF ENERGY. Today these optimistic opinions are published by Arianna Huffington in THE FOURTH INSTINCT, wherein she posits the human gift of soul that lifts us above the actions prompted by the other instincts we share with animals such as self-preservation and sex. Even Harvard's Harvey Cox book, RELIGION in the Secular City, recognizes that the lay movements in South America are powerful moral forces in world affairs. Hans Kueng has pressured Catholics and Protestants to be reconciled with Buddhist and other Eastern Religions in his books CHRISTIANITY AND CHINESE RELIGIONS or GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY. Many lay movements like the Alpha program are having positive effects. Even the bigoted and orthodox religious leaders must respect the pleading of God's prophets for mercy on the poor and love of all human beings. God's spirit motivates people in "little platoons" often outside of institutions of religion, and it is a SHAPER omitted in Diamond's book.
No matter how auspicious our start in life may be or how magnificent are our attainments, life always ends in death, a tragedy. Nations and societies have the same fate as individuals Religions are the only resources that allow us to accept the harsh boundary conditions of life and give balm for our hurts. Religions teach us discipline and morals that toughen us for the work of life, and for the mastery of the complexities of science, art, and give us strength to garner food and shelter for life on earth.
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