Keith Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
snip
I think an argument can be made that - in terms of expansion of genes and memes - war _is_ adaptive when one culture is technologically more advanced than the other; the above is rather like the MAD scenario carried out with spears and clubs instead of nukes.
Correct. But the vast majority of our gene selection when on when there was not much technological difference between the tribes that were duking it out. In fact, most of the time they were related having swapped women for generations.
By our standards today, genocidal warfare is utterly reprehensible, but it _is_ effective, if all you care about is spreading your descendants and culture. :P
True but tricky. Your gene have been selected by this process. The genes build minds that (in the ancestral environment) had psychological traits for going to war when you could see that food was going to get short. Now genocidal warfare is utterly
reprehensible, not to mention politically incorrect. How did that happen? My considered guess is that it is the result of a long period of *not* being short of food that allowed memes that genocide is not good to spread.
Of course, we still have the trait. Consider Kosovo and Rwanda. And you have to wonder close to the surface the trait lies.
Tangentially related are some of the premises of _Guns, Germs and Steel_ by Jared Diamond, which I recently finished reading (maybe there was already a discussion of this on the List, before my time?): that because of the paucity of suitable domesticable animals and plants (related to the extinction/extermination of many large mammals in the Americas, co-incident with the arrival of humans), there was a Spanish invasion of the Incan and Aztec empires, rather than a Mesoamerind invasion of Europe.
In a nutshell, reliable food production and the exchange of plants/animals/techniques/ideas was more easily accomplished in Eurasia - as were diseases derived from domesticated animals - and much earlier, because of both the presence of suitable plants and animals in the ancient Fertile Crescent -> ability to support the rise of non-food-producing individuals/classes of people; the east-west axis orintation of the Eurasian continent (versus the geographical difficulties encountered in going frex from eastern North America to the Peruvian Andes) furthered this exchange.
Later, memes of the fractionated and competing states (Europe) versus unified and monolithic one(s) (China) were permitted more expansion and diversity; frex Columbus was able to ask for backing from several states, whereas the order of one court stopped China's sea exploration. But I don't think that geography per se really explains the difference between mindsets, although I can see how it contributes. Culture, and all that it entails, seems too complex to me to be reduced to a matter of place and time.
There is lots of chaos in the memetic world.
Still, I enjoyed reading the book very much - I found the chapters on the Austronesian Expansion, Africa, and Polynesian cultures especially interesting.
Here is one book review: http://dannyreviews.com/h/Guns_Germs_Steel.html
Much of the same material is covered in Robert Wright's NonZero.
Keith Henson
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