That's an intriguing suggestion. I certainly agree that organized violence plays a dominant role in the evolution of human societies. I think it's much more granular than the big picture illustrated above. Different eras with different characteristic military technologies invariably adopt different societal forms, with the primary dichotomy between centralization/decentralization or equivalently, liberty/authoritarianism.
In some ages (the Greek iron age, for instance, or the Roman Republican era) weapons were relatively easy to use and cheap to make. The result is a preference for mass armies composed of regulars, typically citizen soldiers who in many cases provide their own equipment (note that the professional armies of the Roman Imperial period were a late development). In other eras - for example, medieval Europe, in which a knight required a large quantity of expensive armour and needed a lifetime of training to use it effectively - it takes a much larger economic effort to support a single warrior, and the result is a more hierarchical society.
Back to the ancient despotisms. I'd argue that the chariot may have been the driving technology. They were invented around the right time, they weren't cheap by the standards of the late neolithic, and armies without them would have stood no chance against armies with them. The result was the development of a specialized warrior caste supported by a peasant caste (sure, the peasants would be conscripted and handed spears when war broke out, but spearmen aren't much of a threat to charioteers).
Before that era, weapons technology was relatively static - flint knives, spears, and arrows, the same as during the hunter-gather period of the neolithic. Since these were available to all, they resulted in an egalitarian society.
After the chariot era, advances in metallurgy lead to wider availability of bronze and then iron weapons. Iron was the real game changer as it's so much easier to mine and make. The result: the hierarchical societies of the chariioteer bronze age gave way to the relatively egalitarian city states of the Hellenic iron age.
The invention of the stirrup then returned the emphasis in warfare to cavalry; thus, the aristocratic warfare of the middle ages, and the hierarchical social structure that accompanied it.
With gunpowder, the musketeer and then the rifleman soon dominated the battlefield. Mass democracies were not far behind, and serfs became free-holding yeoman farmers.
The 20th century saw the development of mechanized warfare and aerial warfare, both extremely expensive weapons technologies that are far beyond the reach of individual households. Democratic republics gave way in function, though not in form, to vertically integrated managerialism ... again the pattern continues.
Extrapolating to the future, it seems the next iteration in mechanical warfare will be the drone. Drones are in principle extremely easy to use, very cheap to manufacture, and when combined with 3D printing it will be possible to make them at home. Military exercises with drone-equipped platoons indicate that they are a ridiculously potent force multiplier, enabling a formation to take a hardened objective in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the number of men. If the pattern holds, that points to a return to a decentralized, egalitarian societal form.
Nice. I think you'll like the book - there's much more detail that gets washed out in my short summary, which only focuses on the broad strokes. If you ever read it, I'd love to read your review! You might like this one too: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258161
Your last quote taken from Turchin ("Long-term social “experiments”—attempts to impose a new morality from above—show that social norms and institutions which go strongly against human nature do not “take,” no matter how hard they are promoted.") -- as well as the preceding Lobaczewski quotation itself -- seems to run counter to what I gather Lobaczewski himself seemed to favor as a 'fix'; i.e., top-down rectification of social disorder by setting up some kind of a formalized system to keep bad characters out of positions providing them power over others. Sounds like the only way in and around established human nature that doesn't involve top-down coercion and management of some kind when that nature is causing problems is to go with our natural human strengths (pissing WITH the wind) and not directly fight our natural human weaknesses (pissing AGAINST the wind). For example, some ground up incremental but tangible and helpful improvement in individual human powers of perception, discretion, and decision-making can take place in response to something as simple and basic as an individual's voluntary, self-interested adoption of that low carb diet Turchin himself has come to favor. And, as you know, that helpful diet's spread wasn't at all imposed from above (it is actually opposed by some of those 'above') -- it basically penetrated the culture by word of mouth after the positive effects achieved by early adopters prompted them to open their mouths and utter enthusiastic words to the others around them. There have got to be other 'ground up' similar avenues of the 'go with human nature' approach to get us eventually where Lobaczewski hoped humanity would go.
He would agree with this - the need for a generalized awareness and practice spread throughout the population. But he wasn't a total bottom-upper, either. Social hierarchy with authority vested in the chief is also human nature. I.e., our piss must go with the wind of human leadership and authority.
His idea for a wise council in this regard is more of a parallel/lateral check rather than a top-down imposition, like a quality tester that looks at a finished product before it is put out for sale.
I guess I'll have to read his book more closely (I've only skimmed the letters to the editor and looked at the pin-ups, so to speak -- this is a reference to what males used to say in America when they were caught leering at Playboy Magazine photos by their wives or girlfriends) and confirm for myself if that's truly Lobaczewski 's ambidextrous view, or whether his viewpoint on the whole matter was perhaps still developing and therefore was naturally a bit messy and inconsistent. My own experience (time bound to a particularly dysfunctional period of human history, admittedly) is that outside of the family (in the best of cases), beneficial human leadership and authority are extremely thin on the ground. If it's been this way all along, I'd be more inclined to think that evolution has instead conditioned humans with their wits about them to be extremely leery of those who seek to direct group matters -- for the mechanistic reasons laid out by Lobaczewski.
He develops his thoughts on this matter more in Logocracy. As for the last sentence, yeah I'd agree. The best leaders don't seek it. It finds them. IMO.
That's an intriguing suggestion. I certainly agree that organized violence plays a dominant role in the evolution of human societies. I think it's much more granular than the big picture illustrated above. Different eras with different characteristic military technologies invariably adopt different societal forms, with the primary dichotomy between centralization/decentralization or equivalently, liberty/authoritarianism.
In some ages (the Greek iron age, for instance, or the Roman Republican era) weapons were relatively easy to use and cheap to make. The result is a preference for mass armies composed of regulars, typically citizen soldiers who in many cases provide their own equipment (note that the professional armies of the Roman Imperial period were a late development). In other eras - for example, medieval Europe, in which a knight required a large quantity of expensive armour and needed a lifetime of training to use it effectively - it takes a much larger economic effort to support a single warrior, and the result is a more hierarchical society.
Back to the ancient despotisms. I'd argue that the chariot may have been the driving technology. They were invented around the right time, they weren't cheap by the standards of the late neolithic, and armies without them would have stood no chance against armies with them. The result was the development of a specialized warrior caste supported by a peasant caste (sure, the peasants would be conscripted and handed spears when war broke out, but spearmen aren't much of a threat to charioteers).
Before that era, weapons technology was relatively static - flint knives, spears, and arrows, the same as during the hunter-gather period of the neolithic. Since these were available to all, they resulted in an egalitarian society.
After the chariot era, advances in metallurgy lead to wider availability of bronze and then iron weapons. Iron was the real game changer as it's so much easier to mine and make. The result: the hierarchical societies of the chariioteer bronze age gave way to the relatively egalitarian city states of the Hellenic iron age.
The invention of the stirrup then returned the emphasis in warfare to cavalry; thus, the aristocratic warfare of the middle ages, and the hierarchical social structure that accompanied it.
With gunpowder, the musketeer and then the rifleman soon dominated the battlefield. Mass democracies were not far behind, and serfs became free-holding yeoman farmers.
The 20th century saw the development of mechanized warfare and aerial warfare, both extremely expensive weapons technologies that are far beyond the reach of individual households. Democratic republics gave way in function, though not in form, to vertically integrated managerialism ... again the pattern continues.
Extrapolating to the future, it seems the next iteration in mechanical warfare will be the drone. Drones are in principle extremely easy to use, very cheap to manufacture, and when combined with 3D printing it will be possible to make them at home. Military exercises with drone-equipped platoons indicate that they are a ridiculously potent force multiplier, enabling a formation to take a hardened objective in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the number of men. If the pattern holds, that points to a return to a decentralized, egalitarian societal form.
Nice. I think you'll like the book - there's much more detail that gets washed out in my short summary, which only focuses on the broad strokes. If you ever read it, I'd love to read your review! You might like this one too: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258161
>Iron law of oligarchy
Good point.
I'd add that only Autocracy can combat Oligarchy.
We only cannot say after Covid-19 and the Sanitary Emergency requiring mass vaccination. "Long-term social “experiments”—attempts to impose a new morality from above—show that social norms and institutions which go strongly against human nature do note “take,” no matter how hard they are promoted. (Turchin, p. 146)" https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220425/COVID-19-vaccine-can-elicit-a-distinct-T-cell-dominant-immune-mediated-hepatititis
Your last quote taken from Turchin ("Long-term social “experiments”—attempts to impose a new morality from above—show that social norms and institutions which go strongly against human nature do not “take,” no matter how hard they are promoted.") -- as well as the preceding Lobaczewski quotation itself -- seems to run counter to what I gather Lobaczewski himself seemed to favor as a 'fix'; i.e., top-down rectification of social disorder by setting up some kind of a formalized system to keep bad characters out of positions providing them power over others. Sounds like the only way in and around established human nature that doesn't involve top-down coercion and management of some kind when that nature is causing problems is to go with our natural human strengths (pissing WITH the wind) and not directly fight our natural human weaknesses (pissing AGAINST the wind). For example, some ground up incremental but tangible and helpful improvement in individual human powers of perception, discretion, and decision-making can take place in response to something as simple and basic as an individual's voluntary, self-interested adoption of that low carb diet Turchin himself has come to favor. And, as you know, that helpful diet's spread wasn't at all imposed from above (it is actually opposed by some of those 'above') -- it basically penetrated the culture by word of mouth after the positive effects achieved by early adopters prompted them to open their mouths and utter enthusiastic words to the others around them. There have got to be other 'ground up' similar avenues of the 'go with human nature' approach to get us eventually where Lobaczewski hoped humanity would go.
He would agree with this - the need for a generalized awareness and practice spread throughout the population. But he wasn't a total bottom-upper, either. Social hierarchy with authority vested in the chief is also human nature. I.e., our piss must go with the wind of human leadership and authority.
His idea for a wise council in this regard is more of a parallel/lateral check rather than a top-down imposition, like a quality tester that looks at a finished product before it is put out for sale.
I guess I'll have to read his book more closely (I've only skimmed the letters to the editor and looked at the pin-ups, so to speak -- this is a reference to what males used to say in America when they were caught leering at Playboy Magazine photos by their wives or girlfriends) and confirm for myself if that's truly Lobaczewski 's ambidextrous view, or whether his viewpoint on the whole matter was perhaps still developing and therefore was naturally a bit messy and inconsistent. My own experience (time bound to a particularly dysfunctional period of human history, admittedly) is that outside of the family (in the best of cases), beneficial human leadership and authority are extremely thin on the ground. If it's been this way all along, I'd be more inclined to think that evolution has instead conditioned humans with their wits about them to be extremely leery of those who seek to direct group matters -- for the mechanistic reasons laid out by Lobaczewski.
He develops his thoughts on this matter more in Logocracy. As for the last sentence, yeah I'd agree. The best leaders don't seek it. It finds them. IMO.
Thanks for that reference, Harrison.
One way that they imposed power over the centuries is the fear of "ghosts" etc, these days viruses...
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/rise-authoritarianism-from-parasite-stress-theory-lockstep/
These were used to impose violence on one's own citizens, like a modern day inquisition.
It's funny that many who push back against this pandemic theater are still believing in the decades long fraud https://drsambailey.com/covid-19/why-nobody-can-find-a-virus/
Modern scientism is the new major religion, carrying on the control of people that used to be from "god"