How does civilization begin? It begins with agriculture. Prior to the
development of agriculture all we have is hunter gatherers in small bands
living from moment to moment intent only on the bare necessities of life such
as obtaining food and shelter. What enabled the transition to agriculture? It
was the division of labour.
In order for people to settle down and grow crops like wheat and raise
domestic animals it was necessary that someone would provide them with food
while these crops grew and the animals became large enough to provide meat. So,
some people continued to hunt while others began agriculture and still others
built houses, made tools and other implements. Those who continued to hunt
would bargain with those who grew crops. If I give you meat you will give me
grain. This principle of division of labour was the key to enabling society and
civilisation to develop.
How did people determine the price of their labour? Did Government
introduce price controls so that one person’s fish catch was worth two bags of
wheat? No. They determined the price either in terms of barter or in terms of
money by the laws of supply and demand. The price you got was the price you
could get.
The market is the foundation of civilisation. Indeed, civilisation was
only possible because of these two principles one that people would work at
different things and two they would be able to sell the fruits of their labour
to others for things that they needed at a price that each could agree and
accept as being mutually beneficial.
With agriculture and the division of labour for the first time there
came a surplus of food. It was this surplus which enabled some people to be
engaged in work that was unconnected with the need to provide food and shelter.
For the first time people were able to think.
Furthermore, in order for this primitive economy to work there needed to
be a way for people to communicate with each other about complex issues in
order that one person could record the bargain he had made with another. It was
this that made complex language necessary and also the ability to record
language in writing.
Once there was an abundance of food and not everyone needed to work to
gather or produce it, some people could work at developing thought, ideas,
writing, literature and religion. All of the things that we associate with
civilisation came from the free market, the need to exchange goods and develop
ways of recording this trade and interaction with ourselves and other
societies.
When one civilisation began to produce a surplus of food and shelter it
was able to attract other people to join it and to share its methods of
agriculture with other people who had previously been only hunter gatherers.
Likewise, by developing abundance a small civilisation was needed to
think about security. How could it defend itself from other people who wanted
to take this surplus and how could it expand to incorporate other people who
were at present outside its control and in need of its wisdom.
Only with the develop of agriculture did people develop into proto
countries. People who were similar, who developed the same language and culture
began to think of themselves as a people. The surplus of their goods enabled
them to appoint a ruler, who did not himself contribute to the surplus, but
ruled over it in order to protect it.
With the development of peoples and rulers it became possible for small
tribes to band together in order to become powerful enough to take over the
land of other tribes and to migrate.
The history of the world is the development of these tribes into peoples
who spoke a similar language and developed a similar culture. These
developments happened at different stages.
In India, Babylonia and China sophisticated civilisations developed
while people in what is now Europe could record nothing about themselves. It is
for this reason that we know nothing about these European people apart from
what we can discover through archaeology, while we know about the civilisations
in India, Babylonia and China through what they were able to write.
Why did civilisations develop at different stages? Why was it that
Babylonia was so much more advanced than Britain in the centuries before
Christianity? Why was most of Europe primitive compared to India in these
ancient times, but later developed to be more powerful than anywhere else?
This was due to geography, resources and chance. In Mesopotamia climate,
soil, two rivers and population made it possible for Babylonians to develop
surpluses prior to Europeans. Someone was able to discover technological
advantages such as an alphabet and the wheel prior to people in Ancient
Britain, but a feature of ancient civilisations is that they all everywhere
eventually stagnated.
In each of the ancient civilisations at some point the ruling classes
decided they had reached perfection either for religious, social or political
reasons. Thus, development in India, Babylonia, China and also Japan ceased.
Having reached a stage of development that was deemed to be religiously, or
societally perfect, no further development was possible. The task was to
imitate the past rather than create a new future, for which reason rules of
what was acceptable in art and culture were codified to prevent novelty.
Europe was the exception. Because of Europe’s geography and owing to a
large number of countries struggling over limited resources, Europeans
continued to compete against each other to develop technological advances that
would enable one country to take over parts of another.
Neither religion nor rulers in Europe arrived at a stage that they
considered to be perfection where no further development was possible, because
anyone who stood still would soon find themselves threatened by a country that
had not stood still. The powers in Europe ebbed and flowed. At one point Poland
and Lithuania dominated central Europe only to be dominated in turn by Russia,
Prussia and Austria.
While there were attempts to limit knowledge and to stop inquiry, these
failed. Europe alone in the world was able to develop technologies which
enabled Europeans to travel everywhere and to conquer everyone they came into
contact with.
It is for this reason that Europeans were able to at one point or
another to conquer and settle everywhere in the world including in places that
were once much more advanced than Europe.
The world today is almost exclusively the result of European technology
and culture. Almost every invention and every scientific and cultural
development came out of Europe or places that were settled by Europeans. Which
important innovation came from somewhere else in the past thousand years?
It is this that led Europeans to conclude that their civilisation was
superior to everyone else’s. The reason they concluded this was because
European ideas and European countries conquered everywhere. Europe cried,
because there were no more worlds to conquer.
Europeans arrived in Babylonia, India and China and met people who were
no match for their ideas, their technologies or their military. They saw these
ancient societies who had once been so superior to Europe as decadent and
decaying.
China for this reason was divided between the Great Powers, because
China which had developed gunpowder first, was unable to develop it further.
Japan thought itself perfect, but discovered in the late 19th century
that a few American gunboats could force it out of isolation and into
modernity, because while the Japanese were still fighting with swords, (because
Japanese culture had decided that swords were the pinnacle of perfection), the
Americans had weapons with which they could easily subdue these Japanese swords.
Any idiot American could shoot a samurai.
In the eighteenth-century European enlightenment figures like David Hume
looked around the world and concluded that the people that Europeans had discovered
and conquered were inferior to Europeans. The reasons they thought this were
because these peoples were not remotely as technologically advanced as
Europeans.
It was Hume’s empiricism that led him to conclude that Europeans with
rifled muskets were superior to Africans with spears and animal hide shields or
to aboriginals in Australia who had not even reached the technological stage of
the Ancient Britons prior to the Roman invasion.
Hume observed as his empirical method taught him to observe and based on
these observations made the conclusion that some civilisations and peoples were
naturally more advanced than others.
Sometime in the twentieth century we decided that Hume’s views were
forbidden. This was not because we empirically proved that all people were
equal, but rather because we assumed it a priori.
Having assumed that all people were equal, it became necessary to
explain away all human difference as not being real. Again, we did not explain
away this difference by refuting Hume’s views using experiments. Rather we
asserted that despite appearances and evidence to the contrary all human beings
were essentially equal.
We assumed that the differences within societies and the difference with
which civilisations developed must demonstrate their equality rather than their
inequality even when we could in no way prove this to be true.
The problem of world civilisation is that we have never been able to
come up with an explanation that is compatible with this assumption of equality
to explain why some civilisations even today are more advanced than others.
We have the experimental observation of difference and the mere
assertion that this difference masks essential sameness. Of course, we are right,
and Hume is wrong. He used mere observation, while we have the benefit of being
awake while he was merely sleeping. We are correct, he had mere prejudice.
The problem with this is that we could use the same argument about the
essential equality of humanity to show that David Hume who went to university
at the age of 10 was really the same in terms of civilisation, learning and
intelligence as an illiterate farmhand in 18th century Scotland. This assertion
of sameness would fail the empirical test. David Hume would be able to perform
better at all intellectual tasks than the farmhand. But we must nevertheless a priori
define and assert their equality in every respect.
So too today we must assert that a newly discovered tribe in the Amazon
jungle has as developed a civilisation as that of the United States or any
European country. We must assert their sameness and equality despite their
having no writing, no scientific discoveries and no technologies beyond blow
pipes. We must assert this not for experimental reasons but because of our
assumptions about equality. Failure to do so would mean that our ideas failed
the modern Inquisition and would be condemned, not because of what we failed to
prove, but because of what we failed to assume.
This assumption would of course fail Hume’s celebrated test:
If we take in our hand any volume; of
divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any
abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any
experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it
then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
But now it is not sophistry and illusion that must be cast into the flames, but rather Hume and anyone else who uses reason and experience to reason about civilisation. It is this casting into flames, after all, that makes us civilised.