What accounts for the advances in science and industry that emerged in Europe over the past several centuries? A key has been competition in ideas, facilitated by the multiplicity of city-states and nation-states that ideas banned in one place could grow in another. Trump, too, promised to make American great again. In more recent times, Vladimir Putin purports to restore Russia’s greatness with a blend of Orthodox Christianity and Stalinism. But similar movements have weakened flourishing societies in times past, e.g., the An Lushan Rebellion that undermined Tang China in 755–763 and the restoration of what conservatives thought to be traditional Islam in Baghdad in 1258. These trends are whiplashed by today’s social media. How then does Norberg account for the waves of intolerance that seemed to come out of nowhere in the United States and Europe-especially in formerly Communist counties such as Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria? When the “groupish” person feels that the world is coming apart and new threats arise (e.g., from immigrants), he or she demands enforcement of conformity and obedience. “Once we had food, warmth, and physical safety, the need for self-esteem and self-actualization took up more of our thinking.” Given a sense of security, we tolerate more ambiguity than denizens of a society facing more physical dangers. To do so, he cites Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Ronald Inglehart’s surveys of world values. “If we could only die from sudden accidents and violence, life expectancy in the US-the country of firearms and heavy traffic-would increase from seventy-eight years to an average of 8938 years!” Here Norberg is explaining why libertarian views have caught on. In the United States, most people die from cancer and heart disease. Norberg’s wide reading helps him to provide some shocking numbers.
To appreciate the scope of this book, look at the index entry for “Christianity.” There are 30 entries including Calvinism, clash of civilizations, the Dominican Order, Mongol Empire, orthodox backlash, Rastafarianism, and Thirty Years’ War. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. Chesterton on a world that seems to consist of Conservatives and Progressives. Evolution has trained us to make war and to pillage rather than to cooperate with craftsmen and merchants.Īuthor Johan Norberg seems to have read everything, at least in English and his native Swedish, and is aware of the pros and cons of most issues. Our minds are still adapted to this primitive condition. Life was a zero-sum game for most individuals.
For 99.9% of our species’ existence, individuals did not witness much progress, innovations, or mutual gain with strangers. What happened? “Openness has allowed a different kind of life-one that our old and more tribal selves still have a hard time comprehending. Most of these innovations occurred not in the past 10,000 years but just in the last 200! Technology includes electric and nuclear power PCs, AI, and biotechnology.
Jump another 10,000 years to 2020: Population now exceeds 7 billion social organization includes industrialized economics, trade, and large-scale, democratic governance not just spoken language but near universal literacy and global communication with portable personal devices transportation by auto, train, ship, airplanes, and rockets. Things changed only 10,000 years ago when social organization began to include agriculture and tiny cities. For 290.000 years, every indicator was unchanged: population: 5 million social organization, hunter-gatherer bands means of communication, spoken language transportation, walking and endurance running technology, primitive tools. The puzzle this book seeks to answer is summed up in a table spanning three pages that shows what an ET would find if it visited earth every 10,000 years starting 300,000 years ago.
“Norberg’s ability to distill lessons for today from thousands of years of world history will stimulate and enlighten both general readers and professional scholars.”