Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Culture is King regardless of what the Marxists say.

Book Review: Jared Diamond’s ‘Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed’

by StFerdIII

Bookstores are full of Marxist, politically correct foolishness. Forests are cleared to promulgate inaccurate, anti-historical views. Many receive high rankings and ratings and some are taught in high school and college. Very depressing. An example is Jared Diamond’s ‘Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed’, who exports the ridiculous view that geography shapes all of history. The book is simply awful.

He also now proposes the end of the world thanks to environmental destruction. The Clintons loved the book. So did the New York Times. This sums up the gravitas and accuracy of the man’s ribald thesis. Diamond and those who believe in some sort of fate driven ‘dialectical’ while insipid, are now mainstream. Their effect on culture, society, and our civilization is vast.

Diamond’s books are terrible. Like all works of the politically-correct genre, emotional theories replace facts. Diamond is part of an entire industry which seeks to de-legitimize Western history and culture. The crux of Diamond and other merchants of Marxist dialecticism is basically this: the West was lucky, it collectively had some iron, copper, silver and large animals and a temperate climate. Ergo its place at the head of civilizations was assured. His bestselling book, ‘Guns Germs and Steel’ advocated this, and ‘Collapse’, reinforces and extends the theme. To call this theory moronic is to be diplomatic.

What determines the success or failure of a society are institutions; a culture of trust, morality, work and honesty; political processes; a certain faith; adherence to market discipline in economics; laws and contracts; a strong military; and an attitude of innovation. Do you really believe that an Aztec ‘civilization’ resident in Europe would have gone on to dominate the world? Would the Chinese if they had had more large animals, silver mines and grass plants have supplanted London as the financial center of the world in the 19th century? Would the Sudanese culture transplanted to Rome circa 230 B.C. have conquered the Italian peninsula and challenged Carthage for Mediterranean domination?

Please.

The history of empires and their development is a complicated tale that is founded upon culture and mores. It is not about luck. Many tribes and states existed circa 2500 BC in the garden of Eden or Mesopotamian river valley basin in modern day Iraq. Yet it was one tribe under Sargon the Great which conquered the rest, and which established the first near eastern empire. It was the innovation of trade, finance, division of labor and the concomitant rise of wealth which allowed Sargon to build his army, create his institutions and overpower his neighbors.

Having access to oats, barley, oxen and domesticated animals whilst important did not differentiate his kingdom from his neighbors. His empire and its culture were radically different than that of the contemporary old Egyptian Pharaonic dynasties – irregardless of the differences in geography. Sargon’s grouping had nothing in common with the culturally backward tribes of Greece. It was remarkably dissimilar to the copper based societies of northern Wales. Likewise it would be hard to argue that if Bushmen had inhabited the same area they would have created, extended and developed a similar society with a similar ethos.

Similar patterns emerge throughout history. The near eastern world was the center of wealth creation for millennia yet it now sits throttled and stunned by Islamic and Arabic paganism and destruction. The most prosperous period in modern Egyptian history was under British tutelage. The modern Muslim Lebanese state is a pale shadow of its pre 1970 Christian-run self. From the apogee of wealth and power the near east has declined over 2000 years to sadistic and barbarous irrelevance – natural wealth; domesticated animals; grasses; horses; and huge mineral deposits notwithstanding.

Diamond and his friends could never explain the difference in wealth and power between say a still immature Rome of 700 BC and its richer Etruscan neighbor. Why did Rome dominate the world in place of Tuscany? Why was a poor island called Britannia ruling the world by 1850 A.D. when in 100 A.D. it was a reasonably poor Roman outpost? Why was Hong Kong so rich and wealthy in 1999 whilst Communist China was mired in poverty and repression? Did Hong Kong possess special animals, ores or grasses?

Are we to believe that societies which produce Churchill, Edison, Watt, Pericles, Alexander, Hiero, Archimedes, Thales, Pythagoras, Da Vinci, Cervantes, Virgil, Tchaikovksy, Einstein, Pasteur, Diderot, Shakespeare, Carnegie, Gates and the myriad lights of mind, science, literature and artistic greatness come from geographical determinants? Is such an argument even credible to make? Why did the ancient Greeks know of medicine and the circulation of the blood while the Muslims of 1000 A.D. even after transcribing ancient Greek texts never built on such knowledge? Was it because the ancient Greeks had larger cows or less swamps?

Was the collapse of Soviet Russia due to geographical features of a forbidding EurAsian landscape or more to do with the immorality, economic devastation and bureaucratic viciousness of a failed idea? Are we to understand that the collapse of the great Egyptian empire post Ramses the Great circa 1200 BC was due to a lack of large domesticated animal help; grasses; ores or just bad luck? The descent into chaos of Egypt and countless other ancient empires squatting on rich land and sea areas had to do with culture; economics and the stultification of their political and societal processes through bad governance, corruption and repression.

But for Diamond and his friends none of this matters. Societies collapse according to Diamond because they destroy the environment. He can’t explain the recrudescence of the American landscape in which more trees now exist than 200 years ago; nor why areas like Iceland, southern Britain, Ireland, ancient Italy, and the old Hittite empire, barren and over worked, were likewise recreated due to technology, better agricultural methods and less noxious fertilizers. Why is Israel awash in industry and technology and Haiti is not? Why did Germany rise from the rubble of 1945?

For Marxist reductionists like Diamond the message is clear. The West was lucky. The West stumbled onto and stole its riches. The West will fall since it is raping the environment. Such absurd stupidity receives rapturous applause and approbation from those who hate civilization. Culture, institutions, virtues and mores define the rise and fall of civilization to a far greater degree than luck or geography. Or do you really believe that the Aztecs resident in Holland would have created the modern world?