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.

Recent human history. It's hardly the most distinctive feature of human history before "civilization," or even of the first 9,000 years or so of that phase.

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?

Here begins a confusion between technological progress and economic inequality, which grows more confusing as the essay proceeds.

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.

As you show by finally getting around to Jared Diamond after the essay is 90% over, these are basically straw- and half-straw-men. Serious effort to think about your problem in the contemporary world uses neither 19th century scientific racism nor 20th century post-colonialism as its starting point. Diamond not only presents one form of answer to the precise question he taught you how to frame, he also presents a thorough if informal introduction to the other strands of contemporary thought bearing on it. Rather than treating the matter as though David Hume were a current contributor, you should take the opportunity to see where the discussion went after Diamond, and why. Charles Murray is not the answer.

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.

The next draft should begin where this one ended, with Diamond's answer to Diamond's question, and your assessment of the state of the inquiry now, not as of the death of David Hume, or for that matter Frantz Fanon.

I make of the dialogue between you and Abdallah a need to restate that Diamond thinks he is answering a question, which grew out of a particular conversation Diamond had in New Guinea, with a theory about societies and their interrelationships, not about agents and their role in history.