Definition: a group’s ability to get things done
Levers available
subsistence – extracting energy from the environment
environment: physical
Technological – invention or innovation
organizational – management
environment: social
grounded in information processing
cultural – stability in way of life and thinking
environment: intellectual
Detractors of social development
Bigger cores create bigger problems for themselves
geography’s temporal advantage gets inhibited by the social development it facilitated
Detractors
Famine – population growth not sustained by food supply
Epidemic – plague n diseases killing mass population
mass migration – encroachment of other groups into territory
state failure – mismanagement
climate Change – causing crop failure
Premise of argument
Two groups of sufficiently large people are not very different
The only difference between two groups of people is their geography
East and West are divided by agricultural centers – YangZi basin versus Mesopotamia
Insights
Agriculture lead ability to accumulate wealth inevitably leading to wars
Change is caused by lazy, greedy frighten people looking for easier, more profitable and safer way to do things. And they rarely know what they are doing
Each age gets the though it needs
intellectuals are asked the questions social development forces onto them
Examples
Low end states versus high end states
network of allegiance
maintaining own armies
Axial age came after age of high-end state – Buddhism, Daoism, Confucius
Meaningful quotes
The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see, Winston Churchill
References
The Great Divergence, Pomeranz
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy
1421: The year china discovered America, Gavin Menzies
