I have been heavily influenced by the principles that history professor Ian Morris describes in his popular monograph Why the West Rules — For Now:
In it he argues that physical geography rather than culture, religion, politics, genetics, or great men explains Western domination of the globe. “Maps not Chaps,” as Morris succinctly phrases his theory.
Morris also quotes scientist, science fiction writer and cat lover Robert Heinlein:
Morris elaborates saying: “Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things. And they rarely know what they are doing.”
Morris also states: “…large groups of humans, as opposed to individual humans, are all much the same. If you pluck two random people from a crowd, they may be as different as can be imagined, but if you round up two complete crowds they will tend to mirror each other rather closely. And if you compare millions…”
Individuals respond variably to similar circumstances, but large groups respond similarly to other large groups under similar circumstances.
Morris also says during a 2013 interview:
““The agency of individuals actually matters much less than historians tend to assume,” Morris tells me. “It’s hard to find any examples of decisions made by single individuals that really changed the big story very much — until you get into the 20th century, when you’ve got nuclear weapons.””
Morris’s theories are controversial and there are dozens of reviews both affirming and refuting them. I, myself, will leave it to each individual reader to judge the merits or lack thereof with regard to the theories. I wonder if Svetlana Voreskova has an opinion on this matter.
“…to imply some inevitability about such matters as if they are wholly beyond all human control.”
I do indeed claim that the course of history and the structure of societies are not the result of human will or intention. They are the emergent result, the unintended consequences, of “lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things.”
Under the Morris paradigm, Feminists’ could not credibly claim that men created society for the purpose of benefitting themselves at women’s expense. “Patriarchy,” under Morris’s paradigm would be the emergent result, the unintended consequence, of individuals in collaboration with other individuals seeking to improve their individual lives.
The Morris paradigm does not exempt individuals from being held accountable for their individual acts. It does suggest that populations are not accountable for the acts of their individual members; the male population is not collectively accountable for the misbehavior of individual men.
If the Enola Gay pilot had turned around and the bomb had not been dropped we may very well not be having this conversation. My father was stationed in the Philippine Islands awaiting orders to invade Japan and I was not yet born.
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Lions, as far as I can tell, do not recognize tokens. Humans may be the only creatures who recognize a complex system of tokenism. Other creatures can be taught by humans to recognize tokens but don’t seem to acquire the concept absent human intervention.
