The following passage concludes a
book on the history of technology that my friend and teacher, David Hays, wrote roughly a decade ago. It embodies one man's take on the long-view.
THE RISE AND FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS
My friend Naroll, whom I have quoted several times, planned to write a book on the evolution of culture under the title
Painful Progress. Humanity has spent blood, sweat, and tears on progress, mostly in vain as it sometimes seems. One after another the civilizations of the past have risen and fallen to
rise no more. In Egypt, at least until quite recently, life in farming villages was the same as it had been thousands of years ago. Of ancient Mesopotamia, only archeologists can find any trace. The Roman Empire that stretched from Spain to Palestine
and beyond is gone, and so are the several Chinese empires of the
past. So are the empires of America, and the kingdoms of Africa.
Spengler wrote on
The Decline of the West in the late 20s, and
we may feel that World War II and the subsequent rise of Japan
only bear out his gloomy views. Each of the Great Powers that
has arisen since the Renaissance has spent its substance on
military establishments and bankrupted itself.
Until 1939, humanity was confined to enclaves. The barriers
of oceans, deserts, high mountains, and thick forests were not
impenetrable, but expansion of empire across them was restricted.
The Romans crossed the Mediterranean, and the British encircled
the globe. Nevertheless, when Japan became strong enough it
easily took the remote British possessions. America sent troops
to Europe for World War I, where the war was fought. World War
II was almost a global war, and if World War III ever comes we
have to suppose that it will be fought on all continents at once.
Within each enclave, the parable of the tribes has been
enacted. Political expansion by force has occurred repeatedly
and, I think, inevitably. The horrors of constant fighting--
worse in [more primitive cultures] than in later ones--have been accompanied by
culture contact, by enlargement of central communities where
specialists can flourish, by increase in the concentration of
wealth that can be tapped for philosophical and scientific study
of the universe and of ourselves.
Technological evolution enlarges the effective size of the
enclave. The higher the technology, the longer the reach of
military power, until it can span the whole earth as it now does.
If the parable of the tribes is still applicable, then all the
earth will be enwrapped by one empire.
For the fall of empires, there have been many explanations,
all too specific for me. Do I care whether it was disease,
depletion of the soil, restlessness of the proletarians, intru-
sion of barbarians, corruption of the elite? Not much. The
level of abstraction appropriate to this question seems to me to
be this: Every empire has grown too large for its cultural [equipment: concepts, institutions, practices].
Specifically, every empire has grown until it created for itself
problems too complex for it to solve with the means of thought
available to it. The substance of the problems may be unique to
each empire, but the increasing complexity of problems with size
of political unit is universal.
The parable of the tribes says that growth is unstoppable;
the increase of complexity says that collapse is inevitable. Does
this argument lead to the conclusion that we live in vain?
No, that is not my conclusion. To begin with, empires span
millions of lifetimes; today, billions. Most of those lives may
be satisfying, and more satisfying when the empire is approaching
the point of collapse. Golden Ages seem to come shortly before
the end.
More importantly, each empire leaves behind a residue of
culture that provides part of the matrix from which the next rank
of thought crystallizes. Has any paideia gone without a contri-
bution? I think not. And we have to think of all these contri-
butions as essential. Western Europe moved from [tribal culture] to [industrial nation states]
in a long rush. . . Without the rediscov-
ery of old ideas, the residue of Greek and Indian cultures, I
think the rush could not have happened. So even in the broadest
perspective, the ancients did not live in vain.
Let me improve on that: The value of each life is in the
living; the material, intellectual, or spiritual legacy of a life
is not the primary measure of its value. The value of each
culture is in the lives it provides its members; progress within
a culture should be valued by enhancement of life chances for
them. Nevertheless, we have a heritage from the past. The
metaphor we need is seedcorn. Even that metaphor is inadequate.
Our culture is not just another generation of Greek culture; we
are a hybrid.
And as for the future, it all depends. We can see evidence
that we are coming to the limit of our way of thinking. Problems
that we may not be able to solve are all around us: Ethnic wars,
drugs, education, employment, pollution, global warming, popula-
tion size. Will we be swept away? Or will [more advanced cultures emerge the future] and go on to ways of life that cope effectively with
all those problems?
Remember, the contagious diseases that were catastrophic in
the past are now trivial problems (AIDS is not quite trivial). We
can live comfortably in ethnically homogeneous cities of a
million, whereas our ancestors could scarcely manage a hundred
thousand. Unfortunately, we are trying to manage ethnically
mixed cities of
ten million. Will our descendants do that
easily?
The theory of cognitive rankshift says that we cannot
predict. However, the theory gives no reason for despair. On
the contrary, it gives the only reasoned basis for hope that has
ever come to my attention. The theory does not set a limit on
rank; it may suggest a minimum of 20 to 50 years between rank-
shifts, but I am not sure of that. By working to increase know-
ledge, to diffuse it, to organize it, we are doing what we can to
improve the matrix in which the next rank can crystallize. We
can hope to get the ability to solve our problems before they
overwhelm us. The hope may fail, but it is not foolish.
I want to end with a look at the past. One strain of
stylish intellectual culture condemns the past and everyone in
it. Look at Thomas Jefferson, who exploited a poor black woman
while teaching democracy (for white males who owned land).
Disgusting! Not a true saint in the whole hagiography.
No, certainly not a single saint. The world is run, and
always has been run, by persons rather like ourselves. They were
imperfect, as we are. Nevertheless some of them deserve respect,
as we may earn respect, because they did the best they knew how
and it was good enough to serve. Not having our rank of thought,
they were incapable of the nicety of moral judgment that we can
and should apply to political decisions. Not having our rank of
thought, they were incapable of extending the protection of
"human like me" as widely as we can and should. Not having our
rank of thought, they could not calculate the long-term conse-
quences of their actions as well as we can and should. They
worked with the terrible restriction of an incapacity to think
that would make them ineligible for any responsible job in an
industrial country today. Hampered and hobbled as they were,
they initiated the trains of events that carried us to our
present condition.
Some of our ancestors, some of us, are evil. Pathological
evil is not the same as cultural error. Evil takes satisfaction
from doing harm; error sees no harm in what it does. Curing the
sick, teaching the ignorant, and occasionally confining those who
accept neither one are such familiar points in our culture's
repertoire that I need not urge them on you.
We can well be aware that we, too, are hampered and
hobbled by inadequate systems of thought. We deserve to be
proud of ourselves if we do what we can to improve our
thinking within the limits of our culture, and if we think
as clearly as circumstances permit about the problems that
we face.