Thoughts: 11 Nov 2021--Happy Armistice Day!

 

Shutdown

Adam Tooze

A discussion of the climate crisis—the historical transformation of nature and its implications for our history—written from the safety of an Upper West Side apartment could seem remote. The Anthropocene remained an abstract intellectual proposition. The coronavirus crisis has stripped even the most sheltered of us of that illusion.

The Anthropocene as "polycrisis" (as Tooze describes it elsewhere in his book). Whether as an addendum to the climate crisis or as a manifestation of that crisis, the pandemic revealed how we can't hide from the consequences of our choices (action or inaction).

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Even though economists widely agree on the basic principles behind carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies, for example— and argue forcefully in favor of such policies— and even after decades of academic discussion, countless learned policy briefs, and some half-hearted government moves in Europe, Canada, and China, we’re still not paying anything close to an appropriate price for throwing our carbon junk into our air.

These words were published in 2020. Since then, Europe has moved significantly in this direction (carbon pricing) and Canada & China have made moves. The U.S. has this issue on deck, with perhaps as many as 49 senators and the Biden Admin are getting on board. Time to make this happen!

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

There are many who share responsibility without any visible proof of guilt. There are many more who have become guilty without being in the least responsible. Among the responsible in a broader sense must be included all those who continued to be sympathetic to Hitler as long as it was possible, who aided his rise to power, and who applauded him in Germany and in other European countries.

Arendt here refers to Hitler, Germany, and Europe, to whom else m and where else might her observation apply?

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Arendt began by noting that although the two ideas of “liberation” and “freedom” were often confused and conflated, they were not the same. Liberation consisted of a rebellious breaking of shackles, the dream of political upheavals from the dawn of recorded history, and had always been the focus of historians and other intellectuals because all the drama was contained in the fight against tyranny, or what Arendt called all the good stories.

And so what is "freedom." (Stay tuned!)

A Secret History of Consciousness

Gary Lachman

As [Jean] Gebser knew, images and symbols operate at the level of the magical structure, bypassing the critical, reflective mind. The perpetual “now” of the ever-present Internet does not allow for the deep, meditative time in which the mind can focus on values and understand why it thinks as it does. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but without the words to tell you, you may not even know what you are looking at—something all good advertisers know.

As Collingwood argued, without language we have no thoughts. "Thought" is created by and comprised of language. Images and symbols alone appeal to the soul, not the mind.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

The full and precise articulation of the doctrine of infinitely interpenetrated totality (dharmadha-tu) is one of the notable achievements of Mahayana Buddhist thought. It is also a characteristic theme of Greek thought. In fact, the Greeks seem to have been the first thinkers to formulate the concept of infinity except as an indefinite mass, the first to give it mathematical and logical formulations. The concept of interpenetrated infinities, that is, an infinity of separate entities in which each one contains all the others, was first articulated by Anaxagoras, in his conception of matter. Of infinite entities, each is conceived to have in it tiny parts of every other. Each separate thing contains, in a microcosmic form, everything else. Each apparent unit is in fact infinity squared—which is to say infinity to the infinite power.

The ability of the ancient Greeks and Indians (and some others) to develop such deep insights without the benefit of technological science is astounding.

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

Since its origins, capitalism has been synonymous with Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction.” The gale has now morphed into a hurricane that is genuinely creative but also extremely destructive.

Creativity is a Good (see Whitehead & Charles Hartshorne for details), but so are Conservation & Balance. Contemporary capitalism & its resulting consumerism and their thirst for novelty have become like the mischief of the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

Hayek’s brand of antiauthoritarianism was ambivalent about democracy. “Democracy is a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom,” he wrote. “There has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies.” What mattered to Hayek was liberty, and by liberty he meant the rights of an aristocracy against the central government, whatever form that government took.

The Haves always fear democracy and the Have-Nots. And not without some basis in history, but often to excess and therefore working to kill real democracy.

Last Best Hope

George Packer

To believe that Trump showed us who we really are is no different from believing that Obama showed us who we really are. Narcissism is expressed in extremes of self-contempt as well as self-adoration. Both are paralyzing. They tell us more about the mind of the person in front of the mirror than the objective facts of the image in the glass.

As individuals, we are complex & often self-contradictory in our beliefs & actions. How much more so as a nation of individual, self-contradictory selves all given to some measure of narcissism.

The Beginning of Infinity

David Deutsch

In this book I argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical, has resulted from a single human activity: the quest for what I call good explanations.

An intriguing thought.

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 11 July 2021

 

A Secret History of Consciousness

Gary Lachman

The cliff edge our civilization is moving toward is the end destination of “an increase in technological feasibility inversely proportional to man's sense of responsibility.” [Quoting Jean Gebser.]

New Pathways in Psychology

Colin Wilson

A stimulus is nothing else than a suggestion for a mental act (or any other kind of act), and an enriched consciousness contains its own suggestions within itself.

In Europe's Shadow

Robert D. Kaplan

Byzantine art was monotonously sensuous even as it was austere, and with an irresistible splendor that “dumbfounded,” revealing a civilization that encompassed at once stirring liturgies and fierce doctrinal debates over the nature of Christ and the possession of the True Cross.

The Wedge

Scott Carney

Broadly speaking, working with the immune system and our inner worlds means paying more attention to the bounty of sensations that are available to us. This includes the five main senses—sight, smell, touch, taste and sound—but also the interoceptive sense that we develop when we quiet the outside world and look inward.

The Future of History

John Lukacs

Huizinga: “There is in our historical consciousness an element of great importance that is best defined by the term historical sensation. One might also call it historical contact. … This contact with the past, a contact which it is impossible to determine or analyse completely … is one of the many ways given to man to reach beyond himself, to experience truth. The object of this feeling is not people as individuals. … It is hardly an image which our minds forms. … It if takes on a form at all this remains composite and vague: an Ahnung [sense] of streets, houses, as sounds and colours or people moving or being moved. There is in this manner of contact with the past the absolute conviction of reality. … The historical sensation is not the sensation of living the past again but of understanding the world as one does when listening to music.” (The Task of Cultural History, VII, 71).

Compare and contrast Huizinga's position with Collingwood's injunction for "re-enactment" of the historical past.

The Fifth Discipline

Peter M. Senge

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. As such, it is an essential cornerstone of the learning organization—the learning organization’s spiritual foundation.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Even when he was employed by the Council on Foreign Relations in the 1950s and 1960s, working with some of the finest minds in the foreign policy establishment, Kissinger felt a “European” superiority to the optimistic Americans, who tended to believe that peace was the normal state of affairs in the world, that the United States represented a universal prototype, that every problem had a solution, and that the solution was always the same: democracy, and then more democracy.

This America

Jill Lepore

To be a nationalist at the end of the eighteenth century meant to believe in a slew of revolutionary liberal ideas: that the peoples of the world are naturally divided into nations, that the most rational means of government is national self-rule, that nations are sovereign, and that nations guarantee the rights of citizens.

Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 23 February 2021

  

The Future of History

John Lukacs

Sociology, with all of its limitations, can be serious and valuable: an exhaustive (and sometimes comprehensive) study of a society or of a definite portion of it.

sng: Sociology is anantomy to history's physiology; structure vs. process; narrative vs. analysis. Of course, many of the most important thinkers imcorporate and blend these dichotomies in their work.

Time of the Magicians

Wolfram Eilenberger

THE IDEA THAT our mind does not only depict or reflect reality but also independently lends it a format was of course the central idea of Kant’s critical philosophy and his so-called Copernican revolution.

The Secret Teachers of the Western World

Gary Lachman

In Aion, Jung presented the idea that the archetypes evolve, and that we were currently caught in the shift from one “psychic dominant” to another—rather as Jean Gebser believed that we are moving from one “consciousness structure” to another. The new age, for Jung, would be one that would “constellate the problem of the union of opposites” and this would come about through the “individual human being, via his experience of the living spirit.”

Collingwood's the Idea of History

Peter Johnson

A representation may be a work of art; but what makes it a representation is one thing, what makes it a work of art is another’ (PA 43).

The Fifth Discipline

Peter M. Senge

There are two distinct types of feedback processes:  reinforcing  and balancing.  Reinforcing  (or amplifying) feedback processes are the engines of growth. Whenever you are in a situation where things are growing, you can be sure that  reinforcing  feedback is at work.  Reinforcing  feedback can also generate accelerating decline—a pattern of decline where small drops amplify themselves into larger and larger drops, such as the decline in bank assets when there is a financial panic.

The best response is often "You're probably right."

Nothing is gained by arguing with someone over something that doesn't matter.

--Farnum Street blog

“I come from a family where my grandparents fled anti-Semitism and persecution. The country took us in and protected us. And I feel an obligation to the country to pay back. And this is the highest, best use of my own set of skills to pay back. And so, I want very much to be the kind of attorney general that you’re saying I could become. I’ll do my best to try to be that kind of attorney general.”

--Attorney General nominee Judge Merrick Garland

Thoughts of the Day: Wednesday 27 January 2021

 

Collingwood's The Idea of History

Peter Johnson

History is not just about lists of dates – the Kings and Queens of England, say, or the Reform Acts; nor is it just about events and the causes of events – the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, say, or the assassination of an American President. Nor is history about the treatment of past experience as fact, since facts do not come to historians with their explanations already made.

I have a slight disagreement here: history isn't at all "about a list of dates." History is about "dates" in the same way that receiving a vaccine is "about" the needle and syringe. There's a danger of confusing the ends (purpose) with the means. Dates are tools, not ends--and this illusion about history is something that Collingwood (and any serious student of history) detests.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

“For a world that is always in equilibrium there is no difference between the future and the past,” [Joan] Robinson once said. “There is no history and there is no need for Keynes.”

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

“Unemployment is a problem of wages, not of work,” Keynes’ Austrian contemporary Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1927.

I include this to demonstrate how daft--or downright callous--one of the patron saints of neoliberalism can be.

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

Here's what I think. I think angels make their home in the Self, while Resistance has its seat in the Ego. The fight is between the two. The Self wishes to create, to evolve. The Ego likes things just the way they are. What is the Ego, anyway? Since this is my book, I'll define it my way. The Ego is that part of the psyche that believes in material existence. The Ego's job is to take care of business in the real world. It's an important job. We couldn't last a day without it. But there are worlds other than the real world, and this is where the Ego runs into trouble.

The Secret Teachers of the Western World

Gary Lachman

Gebser speaks of such a consciousness as being “ego-free,” which he insists does not mean “ego-less.” Gebser is not speaking of a return to the whole, a blending of our consciousness with that of the All, as some mystical paths suggest. In “ego-freedom,” as I understand it, we are aware of the whole and our relation to it, while retaining our clear awareness of our independent self. We are “ego-free” insofar as we transcend the limited perspective of the ego, the small self, aware of little more than its appetites and complaints, and gain a “bird’s-eye view” of the larger world beyond ourselves.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt

In Kant judgment emerges as “a peculiar talent which can be practised only and cannot be taught.” Judgment deals with particulars, and when the thinking ego moving among generalities emerges from its withdrawal and returns to the world of particular appearances, it turns out that the mind needs a new “gift” to deal with them.

Revolutionaries of the Soul: Reflections on Magicians, Philosophers, and Occultists by Gary Lachman

A collection of biographical essays

Gary Lachman’s collection of biographical essays, Revolutionaries of the Soul: Reflections on Magicians, Philosophers, and Occultists (2014) gathers together short pieces that he’s written over the course of 20 years of as a professional writer in the field of (for lack of a better term) “alternative thinking.” One might wonder about the connecting thread between the subjects of these essays (and Lachman’s project as a whole), but if you have any doubt, he provides an enlightening self-description in his introduction:

What the reader of this collection, and perhaps of my other books, will discover is that I am in love and obsessed with ideas. I like to think. It is, admittedly, an occupation not as popular as in some earlier times and one that requires the increasingly elusive necessities of peace and quiet, along with the more accessible ingredients of a book, notebook, table, and pen, or, more frequently today, laptop. . .. Thinkers are rather like those people at the head of a jungle expedition, hacking into a thick tangle of roots and vines in order to make a path. It is demanding, unpleasant work, but it needs to be done, and it must be admitted that the people further back on the trail have a relatively easier time of it.

Lachman, Gary. Revolutionaries of the Soul: Reflections on Magicians, Philosophers, and Occultists (Kindle Locations 111-119). Quest Books. Kindle Edition.

Lachman, following the example of his friend and mentor, Colin Wilson (the subject of the first essay in the collection), excels at capturing and relaying the ideas and stories of the varied cast represented here. After introducing us to Wilson’s thought (or at least a slice of it, for Wilson was a prolific writer), Lachman takes us back in time to look at the work of Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg, as I read about him here, reminded me of other multi-talented geniuses of the early modern era, like Leibniz and Newton, to name two the most famous of that era’s genius polymaths. (Although Swedenborg, so far as I know, had no hand in inventing the calculus.) And Newton’s interest in alchemy notwithstanding, Swedenborg had a unique talent: he saw complex visions of heaven and hell. Regardless of what one thinks about the ontological basis of these visions (more on this topic later), his visions and ideas had some far-reaching influence. Included among those affected by his works were Blake, Emerson, and the father of William and Henry James.

Another scientist-turned visionary discussed by Lachman is Rudolf Steiner. To the extent Steiner is known today, it’s probably as the founder of Steiner (a/k/a Waldorf) schools. But before becoming a visionary of other worlds and realms, as well as a practical purveyor of ideas about philosophy, education, and agriculture, Steiner was a biologist and a Goethe scholar. As with Swedenborg, I find the combination of a high degree of scientific training and practice an intriguing and puzzling contrast—or compliment? —to their etheric visions. The same could be said of Carl Jung, another subject here, who was a trained physician as well as one exposed to the occult (spirit world) at a young age and who tried to understand humanity through depth psychology. But he seems to have kept hidden a predilection for the occult for most of his career that affected his beliefs and judgments.

A wide array of figures included here are those who delved into occult visions and magic. From little-known figures (to me anyway) to rather famous ones like Madame Blavatsky and Manly Palmer Hall (American), this group can be seen as a whole to have mined past traditions (e.g., Ancient Egypt, and the “mysterious East”) to shape into ideas and practices that reach far outside everyday reality. Hidden “masters,” incantations, fantastic visions, and ancient doctrines and practices mark this group. Taken as a whole, this group provides the most colorful life stories, some appearing as charlatans and at other times having been duped by charlatans. But in other contexts, they are (literally) revolutionaries (Madame B for example). But whether we consider them simply as a rogue’s gallery or as perhaps a combination of extraordinary talents blessed with a sense of showmanship, many of them were quite personally adventuresome and amazing in the experiences. Whatever we may think of their work as passed down to posterity (all of these figures published works), they provide fascinating lives and works upon which to reflect further. (Lachman has published biographies of several of the individuals that I look forward to reading.)

The last group to cover is one that I label the “philosophers.” None of them are mainstream, but their claims to notoriety come from the ideas that they left us much more than any claim to personal powers or special insights. In this group, I’d include Ouspensky, Julius Evola, Jean Gebser, and Owen Barfield. Evola, dubbed “Mussolini’s Mystic” by Lachman for the chapter devoted to him, is of topical interest now because Steve Bannon, President Trump’s aide, has professed adherence to Evola’s work. It’s worth noting some Italian terrorists in the 1980’s as well as some of Mussolini’s supporters were also admirers. While I reject Evola’s praise of violence (which comes across like that of George Sorel and Frantz Fanon), some have suggested (including Lachman), that Evola nevertheless expresses a serious critique of Modernity. (And Modernity is either the key to our freedom or a hell that we’ve created for ourselves; I’m not sure which—or perhaps both.)  The Russian émigré Ouspensky had many original and challenging ideas published before becoming a student and then master of Gurdjieff’s “Third Way.” Jean Gebser is another fascinating figure with his theory the evolution of consciousness. His work has influenced the likes of William Irwin Thompson, Ken Wilber, and Georg Feuerstein. I’m one of those persons that Lachman refers to that have heard of Gebser but who’ve not plunged into his original work. Reading Lachman’s account reminds me (again) that Gebser's work should be on my list.

The final figure I’ll discuss here is my personal favorite, Owen Barfield. Compared to almost all of the other figures discussed in this book, Barfield’s life might seem the drabbest and his ideas the least spectacular—and perhaps that’s why he’s my favorite among all of these figures. Like me, Barfield was a practicing lawyer most of his adult life, albeit a reluctant one, having been called into the family business by necessity rather than desire. But Barfield’s life, while outwardly prosaic, still was one of extraordinary experiences. After serving in The Great War (WWI), Barfield attended Oxford, where he met C.S. “Jack” Lewis. Lewis credits Barfield for his conversion to Christianity. Through Lewis, Barfield met others at Oxford that would become “The Inklings,” a group that included Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and others. Barfield wrote two books, Poetic Diction and History in English Words before taking up his legal career, and he was a disciple of Steiner’s Anthroposophy from an early age. After about a 30-year hiatus, Barfield returned to full-time writing and thinking with the publication of his Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (1957) and later works. Barfield’s ideas about “original participation” and “final participation” have influenced historian John Lukacs and sparked the admiration of writers such as Saul Bellow, James Hillman, and Harold Bloom, to name but three. It is in this essay that Lachman engages most in his love of ideas and their power.

When we come to the end of this work we are in a better position to reflect upon what Lachman wrote in his introduction about the two predominate themes of his writing career:

One is human consciousness and its evolution, both in the individual and in the culture at large. Another is that mysterious world that seems to strangely parallel our familiar, everyday one, the world of the occult, the magical, the esoteric. As you might suspect, these two themes overlap and are intimately related.

Id. (Kindle Locations 122-124)

The first of his themes is one that I wholeheartedly share. How we have changed as a species and how we change in a lifetime are the two great issues we face in our individual lives and in our collective life as a species. Everything that you and I do is to change our consciousness—from answering a hunger pang with a bite to eat to sleeping to talking to someone—it’s all about changing our state of our consciousness. But over a longer term, it’s about changing what we know explicitly and implicitly—rationally and verbally, intuitively and imaginatively. We all have at some time experienced a metanoia, a change of our heart-mind, as the term is used in the New Testament. My individual path was first laid down through Christianity (Catholic practice and Protestant insights), but then supplemented and surpassed by Buddhism, ancient Western philosophy “as a way of life” (Pierre Hadot), and a variety other sources of wisdom from China and India as well as from more recent thinkers. And how this all plays out collectively is as well as individually is, to me, a fascinating and vital subject.

But I must say that the occult and magic leave me flat. My amalgamation of sources that I listed above tend toward what some might see as the quotidian and cautious, the mainstream. Despite hours of meditation, prayer, and silence, as well as exposure t0 ideas quite beyond the ordinary, I’ve never experienced any bells or whistles. Now I’d be the first to admit that this might be the result of my tone-deafness to such frequencies and that training might make a difference. I’m skeptical and agnostic as to occult realities and practices. I see myself as following the Buddha in taking the position that I don’t have to know who made the arrow or by whom it was shot or from where is was shot in order to act to alleviate the suffering that it causes. I just need to remove the damned arrow.

The other attitude I have I attribute to William James (and thus I demonstrate my American bona fides). I want to know the “cash value” of all of these varieties of seeing and experiencing the world. Of all of these practices and beliefs, which ones have, can, and should change the world? None of these actors (and some of them are quite intriguing actors) can claim to have influenced the world in a significant, continuing way? There is no one here with the stature of Napoleon, Disraeli, Hitler or Stalin, or Roosevelt. No one the stature of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, or Russell. No one the stature of Gandhi, Niebuhr, or Marx. Of course, the deeper question is whether any of the figures considered by Lachman should have the level of influence comparable to the figures I listed above. And, in fairness, while no one of Lachman’s subjects alone had a large effect, as he notes in his Introduction, the occult and esoteric collectively have influenced our culture and the course of history. Even as I write this, a potent mix of politics and esoteric beliefs challenge the status quo.

The explorer-author

Thus, regardless of what skeptics like me might conclude about many of these figures, like human activity as a whole, they and the occult represent a part of who we are. The fact that we believe in all manner of things and act in all manner of ways is a part of why we take an interest in ourselves as a species, or more precisely, as a culture. These lives, these beliefs, whatever their reality (whatever that may mean or entail) is interesting nonetheless because of what it says about us. Is it simply that we humans are dumb and gullible? We have to go beyond that simplistic and unsatisfying conclusion to learn something deeper about ourselves. To this end, Gary Lachman provides us a great service by dedicating himself to exploring the boundaries of human consciousness and beliefs where most thinkers (especially academics) don’t dare go. It’s at the boundaries, the unexplored edges, that we learn something new. I know that I’ll keep following him there. 

Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, by Peter Turchin

In Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth,  Peter Turchin has another book that translates his sophisticated models of historical dynamics into a prose exposition that non-specialists can enjoy. As in his previous work,  War and Peace and War, he has succeeded in his task by mixing accounts of historical (and pre-historical) incidents and epochs with lessons about the science of evolution. Having admired his accomplishment in War and Peace and War, I held high expectations for this book. He has met and exceeded those expectations by addressing a set of topics of even greater and wider import than those of his first (popular) book. He does this by following the course of most academics whom I admire: they transgress departmental boundaries to explore new connections and arrive at new insights. In his case, he moved from an academic specialization in population dynamics to helping found the new science of Cliodynamics, the study of history using large data sets to create mathematical models of historical dynamics. Although already a fan (and thanks to the internet for allowing groupies like me to follow along with new thoughts and trends between books), I almost shouted “Amen!” aloud when I read:

The situation [of competing theories] is made worse by the division of social science into “tribes” of anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and economists. Each discipline tends to emphasize its own set of theories while disagreeing with others (and even among its own adherents). Social scientists are the blind men touching different parts of an elephant and drawing different conclusions about it. -- Peter Turchin, Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, Location 567.

The thesis of Ultrasociety is simple: over the course of human evolution, we humans have become the most cooperative species on the planet, outpacing our nearest rivals,  the more numerous and highly cooperative ants. As Turchin points out, several factors account for this distinction, including two factors that take humans beyond the biological. First, in addition to biological evolution, which is slow and random, humans developed culture, the transmission of information via representation. The transmission of information by culture from generation to generation allows changes in human behavior to occur much more rapidly than any change in the human genome would allow. As a practical matter, the lives of humans, especially in the last 10,000 years (since the advent of agriculture) have changed by orders of magnitude far beyond anything that biological evolution by itself could have allowed.  

Mild-mannered look belies intriguing thoughts: Peter Turchin

Turchin identifies a second crucial spur to changes in human ways of life, and it may come as a shock to readers. It’s war. Especially in the last 10,000 years, war is—for all its horrors—the most potent source of cultural evolution. War compels change and change occurs through cooperation within groups. As humans developed societies beyond those of hunter-gatherers, as they developed civilization (a society based on cities), war became more organized and pronounced, and increasing competition for survival ensued. The seeming paradox is at the heart of Turchin’s analysis.

By the way, Turchin notes that the idea of the "noble savage" leading a bucolic, pastoral life is a fantasy; in fact, hunter-gatherers have shockingly high rates of violent death from warfare and other forms of homicide. Note that Turchin is not a war-monger. He concedes the horror of war and that it entails destruction—often vast destruction. He is not, as some--especially during the period before the First World War--who think war a fine tonic for whatever ails society. Not at all. However, he recognizes war as a competitive environment that spurs intra-group cooperation.

Competition between groups and cooperation within groups, whether hunter-gatherer tribes or highly developed and coordinated nation-states are traits that evolutionary theory explain. The controversial (but increasingly accepted) theory of cultural multilevel selection is a key concept for understanding the dynamics involved in these competitions that require so much cooperation. To explain this, Turchin provides a brief history of evolutionary biology and the controversy about whether groups can evolve and undergo a process of natural selection. As recently as the 1970s, with the publication of Richard Dawkins's book,  The Selfish Gene (and more recently in some of Steven Pinker’s work), mainstream biology believed that evolution occurred only on the level of individual genomes and not among groups. Turchin points out that there was an early, naïve theory of group selection that did not hold up to scrutiny. However, in work conducted by by David Sloan Wilson and colleagues, the theory of multilevel selection became more sophisticated. This theory now provides a persuasive—albeit not universally accepted—theory of how groups compete and evolve.

Part of what makes Turchin's work fascinating is that he translates the highly theoretical and mathematically modeled work of evolutionary biology (his native field) into commonplace examples taken from anthropology and history. For instance, he draws upon his academic home at the University of Connecticut, which has a phenomenally successful women's college basketball program (and a successful men's program as well) to frame the problem of cooperation and competition within a group. He uses examples of sports teams as a microcosm of the problem of cooperation and competition. As a member of numerous sports teams and now as a boys varsity basketball coach, this issue has long intrigued me. How does one promote competition within the team to draw out the best individual performances and determine playing time, while requiring those same individuals to coalesce and cooperate unselfishly at the highest level to defeat an opponent? To the extent the team succeeds in cooperating against an opponent, the team will likely win. Maximum success depends on individuals putting aside their selfish interests (glory, pay) for the benefit of the team. Moreover, what applies to something as inconsequential as sports (at least at bill level of high school sports), applies to the level of intergroup competition in something as deadly serious as war. (Of course, this leads one to speculate on the relationship between war and sports, but that's a subject for another time). Turchin explains the dynamics involved and provides some revealing information about how relationships and status among members of a team affect team performance. Studies have shown that wide disparities in pay between professional players correlates with poorer team performance. Those teams with the greatest equality of pay tend to be the most successful. Although Turchin does not mention this directly, one has to wonder how this applies to society as a whole. With an increasing awareness of a growing inequality in American society since the 1970s, one can't help but notice the increasing social and political polarization that occurred during the same period. We have become an increasingly less cooperative polity and society as inequality has grown. Turchin also notes the triumph of individualist philosophies espoused by Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek (which is a selective reading of his total work by some proponents), and others who emphasize a highly individualistic and laisse-fair ideology. Turchin quotes the "greed is good" speech by the fictional character Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street as an exemplar of the ascendant selfish ideology that began running amok in the 1980s. Turchin makes clear that an undue emphasis on individual accomplishment and selfishness hurts the society as a whole.

Turchin can claim to be the founding father of Cliodynamics, a discipline that works to discern patterns in history and prehistory based on the quantification of data through mathematical modeling. Attempts of this sort in the past have been failures. Through the lens of the philosopher R. G. Collingwood (of whom I've been reading a great deal lately), this endeavor doesn’t qualify as history properly understood. For Collingwood, History is the history of thought and not the history of behavior. But Turchin's work and the work of others in Cliodynamics demonstrates the weakness of Collingwood's position. When Collingwood emphasizes history as the history of thought, including the thoughts behind human actions and choices, he limits history to examining the tip of the iceberg. Just as humans are the result of eons of evolution layered one upon another to arrive at our current state, with most of the functions of our bodies running involuntarily and without our conscious knowledge or decision, so with many of the actions of society. Many actions seen together, aggregated over large groups, display behaviors that are not the result of a conscious decision. Often they are the aggregate of individual decisions that reveal a larger pattern. We deal with this every day when considering market "decisions." (But note our personification of markets often leads to poor analysis. The “market” is not a conscious individual; it’s an abstraction of many individual actions aggregated for the convenience of analysis). Turchin analyzes data from the past to better understand the past. (Note: the only source of knowledge is the past!) To me, Cliodynamics is a welcome addition to the field of history. Although I retain my prejudice for history as the history of thought, with an emphasis on political and intellectual decisions, we simply cannot ignore the fact that human beings are both a part of Nature and apart from Nature. To understand the totality of the human past—the highest intellectual endeavor—we need to take advantage of all the tools available. Looking at history through different lenses provided by of social and natural sciences is a resource that we are foolish to ignore. 

Indeed, in this book, Turchin suggests that perhaps we humans can move another step forward on our evolutionary journey and make war obsolete. The massive improvements in warfare and killing efficiency epitomized by atomic weapons make this more than a utopian dream. It's a practical necessity. The next logical—even necessary—step in cultural evolution must be increased cooperation, or we run the risk of regression to a less cooperative, must more barbaric (in the worst sense of the term) reality. Turchin uses the international space station as an example of the level of cooperation that nations are capable of attaining. He suggests that perhaps economic competition can replace war as a means of spurring cultural innovation without suffering the horrors of war. Paul Krugman, another social scientist inspired by Isaac Asimov’s vision of “psychohistory” outlined in his Foundation books, suggests we need an attack of aliens to foster an economic growth and cooperation, which is much in keeping with Turchin’s direction of thought. I believe that with the imminence of global climate change, we—as a species working through nation-states—will either ratchet-up our levels of peaceful cooperation to combat (by abatement and adaptation) what will become an increasingly alien environment—or we will suffer an increasingly deadly level of social and political conflict.

One mark of a successful book is that it leaves you wanting more. You hear yourself saying, “telling me more about this and that.” So it is with this book. The number of issues that it raises, the number of possible areas of explorations it suggests, are too numerous to list completely. But to name just one area of where I’d like to know more:  Turchin describes the idea of “cultural evolution” as a scientific theory “based on mathematical models [that] are empirically testable.” Id., Location 330. Moreover, there is a tradition within sociology of social evolution and development theory, as well as theories of history (addressed by Turchin in War and Peace and War). However, I’m wondering about connections with theories of cultural evolution (or change) based on language and other symbolic systems, such as the work of Owen Barfield, Walter Ong, Jean Gebser, William Irwin Thompson and Ralph Abraham, and Clare Graves and Don Beck (an eclectic list, I admit). None of these thinkers, I believe, would necessarily disagree with the biologically based theory of cultural evolution espoused by Turchin, but it would be interesting to determine where they mesh and where they conflict.


So, I’ll stop here. With an outstanding book, the temptation is to go on and on about it. I’ll not. Go read it yourself.