The Battle for Eden: How Creeds Provide Meaning to the Patterned Chaos of Human Evolution

-- By ShayBanerjee - 13 Mar 2015

Introduction

The most distinctive feature of human history is the great chasm in technological progress that has separated the different peoples of Earth. Some groups have accumulated enormous wealth and power, while others have been oppressed or exterminated. Why has this distributional pattern emerged the way it has? Why, for instance, has power become so concentrated in the hands of Eurasian descendants, while those of Africa, the Americas, and Aboriginal Australia have been subjugated or exterminated?

Rationalist explanations for global inequality occur in the form of two “umbrella” creeds. The first, “Biological Determinism,” treats the distribution as arising from the inherent superiority of certain ethnic or racial groups. Under this view, “winning” societies are more intelligent, more creative, and more innovative. The second creed, “Anti-Imperialism”, treats distributional inequality as the result of gross deviations from fundamental human values. The societies with the most, it is said, were the most chauvinistic, the most genocidal, and the most destructive. Both creeds serve to mask the underlying chaos of human systems.

The Biological Determinist Creed

A powerful rationalist creed originates from the belief that human societies reflect meritocratic ideals. Implicitly or explicitly, it justifies the particular geographic and cultural patterns of distributional inequity as reflecting continuity in the universal biological order of mankind.

Biological determinists have long accepted the simplest explanation for global inequality: innate differences in intelligence, inventiveness, and work ethic provided Eurasians with an advantage over other peoples. The creed arises out of a shared intrinsic belief that societies accumulated power and wealth in accordance with their relative biological superiority. This view is summarized by 18th century British statesman David Hume:

I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men…to be naturally inferior to the whites…Such a natural and constant difference [in civilization] could not happen…if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men.

Biological Determinism underlies contemporary debates about distributional inequity in society. American welfare reform was heavily influenced by the work of Charles Murray, who argued that class structure and racial inequality were dependent on relative intelligence. Indeed, rationalist criticisms of government policies that “punish success” or “degrade personal responsibility” are logically incoherent without an accompanying belief that global inequality exists for meritocratic reasons.

On the opposite end it has now become commonplace for egalitarians to denounce any and all statements about variations in biology across human populations. A common example involves the public ridicule encountered by the neurologist Sir Roger Bannister when he famously “stressed the fact that black sprinters and black athletes in general all seem to have certain natural anatomical advantages.” Many saw the statement as reinforcing the “pernicious stereotype that blacks were closer to animals and therefore less evolved.”

The fear of reanimating dangerous stereotypes is legitimate, but the egalitarian criticism is not fully on point. The real problem is not the incorrect view that blacks are inherently more athletic, but that faulty premise underneath. There are few characteristics more evolutionarily advanced in humans than two-legged proficiency. Our less intelligent, ape-like ancestors were incredibly slow runners and poor leapers. Furthermore, even dark skin itself was an evolutionary adaptation over our primate ancestors, who possessed paler skin underneath their body hair. Biological determinists are not wrong because they acknowledge biological differences, but rather because any differences they find – real or imagined – do not establish genetic superiority, and fall short of explaining why some societies advanced more rapidly than others.

The Anti-Imperialist Creed

An alternative creed focuses on Eurasian societies as more ethno-chauvinistic and genocidal. This creed explains inequality as primarily a function of morally objectionable behavior by Western Europeans. Individuals subscribing to this view emphasize the near eradication of Native Americans, the brutality of slavery, and the evils of the Crusades. Stated Malcolm X,

The collective white man had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world’s collective non-white man.

The Anti-imperialist creed is not incomprehensible one, but it fails because the notorious events of European history are more the result of disparities in technological progress than its cause. Social action is driven by a desire to accumulate resources and territory. Mammals are generally most hostile to other members of the same species, who are their toughest competitors. Similarly, conflict and violence have been conspicuous features across all human societies, not just technologically advanced ones.

The Chaos of Eden

As humans, we are attracted to the belief that we control our destinies and that patterns possess rational explanations. Thus, through creeds, we rationalize inequality as the result of conscious human action. The truth is that the global inequality defies such an explanation. Instead, it resulted from unconscious interactions with the global environment.

Jared Diamond explains cross-regional disparities through biogeography. The layout of Eurasia promoted the evolution of the fiercest and most efficient technologies. The first hunter-gatherer societies began settling down 10,000 years ago. At the time, the Fertile Crescent was in close proximity to nourishing, self-pollinating, and highly productive plants, including wheat, barley, and peas. The Crescent also boasted large populations of sheep, goats, cattle, and horses. Unlike zebras, kangaroo, or buffalo, these animals grew fat easily and possessed gentle dispositions amenable to domestication. The resulting innovations expanded seamlessly across the elongated east-west plane of Eurasia, but not elsewhere. Africa and the Americas are elongated north-south and thereby contained widely variant climatic conditions, while Australia was isolated by the straights of Wallacea. The geography of early human civilization thus forged a massive technological divide.

Diamond’s biogeographical explanation for the difference in technological progress is difficult to deny. Geographic and climactic variation across human society is far more substantial than biological or ethical variation. Yet for society to acknowledge the centrality of global environmental change would not be easy. It would be to no longer rationalize or pretend that humans are in control. We would have to admit that how we live, how we behave, and what we possess are intimately tied with the random chaos of a surrounding world.

I have two questions: (1) Is there any place for human agency, and hence for human responsibility, in Diamond's account (which you seem to endorse) of global inequality? (2) On your view, is the randomness/chaos driving global inequality to be found solely at the starting point of human evolution, or is it a factor at work throughout the course of human societies?

-- AbdallahSalam - 26 Mar 2015

Abdallah: Humans are living natural beings. On the one hand, they are endowed with intrinsic natural powers to influence the objects around them. On the other, like other animals and plants, they are cursed with physical needs vital to their existence. The distinct activity underlying human development is the conscious deployment of the one to reduce the suffering caused by the other. As these activities accumulate over time, we call the result "technology."

You don't have two questions; you have one question posed two different ways. Basically, you are asking if I think humans are determined by the environment, by the entropy, by the chaos. And the answer is "no." Humans are not determined. They are conditioned. The first human builds a house out of the trees in the forest. Her daughter inherits the house and adds a fence to hold the wild animals she captures during her lifetime. Agency is fundamental to these activities, but agency is intimately tied with the surrounding objects, and the surrounding objects are in turn intimately tied with historical process.

-- ShayBanerjee - 29 Mar 2015

Thanks for your clarification. I agree with your last sentence. I think it is interesting to develop an account of how agency is intertwined with the surrounding, and the two-way relationship that exists between ourselves (both conscious and unconscious) and the environment. I only read part of Diamond's book several years ago, but I felt he emphasized the relationship from the environment to human beings more so than the other way around.

-- AbdallahSalam - 01 Apr 2015