There's an interesting viewpoint about war and the agricultural revolution,
each of which came up in this thread. It's from the book, "The Sovereign
Individual." The notion is that the agricultural revolution increased the
marginal return on violence, and so did the industrial revolution -- the
more stuff people have, the more can be gained by violence. Looking at this
the other way around, there wasn't much profit in violence against
hunter-gatherers because they didn't have many possessions to take. The
authors argue that the ability to wage war is the fundamental reason for the
existence of nations.
More interesting, they suggest that we are living in a time when the
marginal return on violence is starting to decrease because so much value is
increasingly in information, rather than physical objects. While I agree
with this, it also suggests that "virtual violence" will increase as the
marginal return on digital "war" rises. Couple this with the inability of
current government structures to levy taxes or defend borders in cyberspace
and one can see that perhaps current political structures will not survive
much longer.
The authors also suggest that the Biblical fall from grace -- getting kicked
out of the garden -- is a metaphor for the agricultural revolution. This
suggests that pre-agricultural humanity's was qualitatively different, truly
innocent in some deep way, from those of us who have existed since then.
Seems a bit extreme to me, but I do believe that the most meaningful stories
communicate truth at many levels... and I personally count the Bible as the
most meaning-laden book in our world. In other words, while the Genesis
story may indeed express a truth about the agricultural revolution, I doubt
that's all it was talking about.
As for the book, it's provocative, but wanders off into rhetoric that I
don't think its own arguments support. It seems to forecast much greater
changes in politics and economics than the conservative policies they
espouse.
Nick
