Some comments about Megan Holstein’s article of January 2020
In this short article, I would like to answer or comment on some of the major questions raised by Megan Holstein, on Jan 1, 2020.
The title of her enlightened reflexion was,“7 Things You Realize When You Read History” I go over several items she listed and add some of my comments.
Men have provoked well over 15000 conflicts in the last 10000 years
Can science help us to figure out this age-old question? Why it is so? Genetics have begun to shed light on some of the darkest aspects of what it is to be human. Is there a DNA based reason for this aggression and violence mostly associated with the male of the species?
Researchers began recently to explore the X chromosome and found a potential ‘culprit’, if we can say. Ironically, the discovery introduced the possibility for criminals to try to exonerate themselves, blaming the ‘gene’ for making them ‘do it’.
The headlines claimed that the “Warrior” gene, or MAOA gene, had been identified.
The scientific definition reads,
“The MAOA gene codes for the enzyme monoamine oxidase-A which plays a key role in the breakdown of neurotransmitters such as serotonin. Individuals with defects in the MAOA gene that are associated with a low dopamine turnover rate have been shown to be more prone to aggressive behavior than their counterparts.”
Aside for the use of scientific jargon, there is little doubt that we are definitely uncovering mysteries in our past and our origins that are extremely unsettling.
Most people who have ever lived had terrible lives
In my view, the statement claiming that “most people who have ever lived had terrible lives” is culturally disputable.
According to the most recent demographic models, there have been around 108 billion who ever lived but only 6.5% of them lived in the past two centuries, which leaves us with 93.5 % who lived before the last two centuries. (A question would be, how many of them lived between 10000 BCE and 1800 AD?)
My objection, I believe, is that we don’t really have a way to know if everyone had such a short, harsh, brutish and miserable existence. Of course, that would not include the periods of mass death, like the Great Plague, or the Antonine and the Justinian Plagues. In that case, it seems we are not faring better, when considering the Pandemic, which did not kill as many, thanks to the progress made by medical science.
From Christ to 1800 AD, the average world population did not exceed 200 to 250 million people.
Due to the population explosion, countless lives were saved and allowed to flourish, maybe 5 to 8 billions of them. The fact that their quality of life has been considerably happier and more successful than that of the previous generations does not necessarily mean that the quality of life was in general unbearable. Were people who lived in the previous seventeen centuries, before 1800 AD, so terrible that one can wonder how they even wanted to survive and ass their experience to the next generations?
Why would Leonardo have created the Mona Lisa? Or Botticelli the Birth of Venus? Or why would the forever forgotten Neolithic artists of the French and Spanish caves in 20000 BCE have printed their palms on the walls? Or why someone may have walked with a copy of the Venus of Willendorf?
If life was so desperate, why we humans created Art as an answer and a form of hope more tenacious, more enduring than the afflictions that were making us miserable? What about Religion?
Who knows, the hunter gatherers assembled at Gobekli Tepe, built concentric temples to communicate a message to their descendants, that is us.
Now it is historically proven that populations of all social conditions, were faced with:
Fatal disease and regular plagues
An extraordinary child mortality rate
(Births equaled deaths and humankind progressed at a very slow pace, (not more than 0.04%) for many centuries.)
Famine was endemic. The Parisian women organized the bread protests that started the French Revolution. The same was seen in Saint-Petersburg in 1917.
All of this was being compounded by an endemic state of war, peace being the exception and war being the rule.
(These things don’t plague the citizens of modern first-world nations, since the end of World War 2, but that does not mean that this condition may not return.)
And coping with the loss of your entire family was a common tragedy in places like Paris and London, not Kabul or Damascus. Can we say something has changed for the best? It is certainly helpful to imagine that, one day, the whole planet may be spared the cost in terms of human lives and destinies the horrors of the Kabuls and Damascuses.
The Kardashev Scale, named after the Soviet scientist who elaborated it, may give us some answers about our future.
According to the scale, there three main levels of civilizations, governed by the amount of energy extracted by each one of them. In the first stage, the one w are in, the resources of the planet are being used by the dominant species. In the second stage, the solar system’s resources are being consumed, and, in the third stage, the galactic resources are being used for our benefit. Sounds like Star Wars?
Although there are many skeptics, it seems that the solar system level or Type 1, could be achievable within a century or two. A lingering question remains: what will happen to the other ones, the Kabuls and the Damascuses?
Everything you think you know about life is wrong
“Having a good career and making money is one of the most important things people can do with their lives.”
This is certainly the most “Protestant” of these statements.
The Catholic Church did not think that becoming successful through business was commendable. Probably the reason why Spain discovered the New World, but Britain actually did turn it into a gigantic gold and silver mine.
murder and war are not desirable and should be avoided
Several excavation sites have revealed that tribal war on a very large scale took place by the Neolithic. For a very long time, from the Assyrians to the Sea People, social organization was only a tool to raise armies of invasion and conquest. Wasn’t that true for Imperial Germany as well? However, I do not think that we have completely escaped from the logic of war first, peace next, if at all desirable.
In the First world, the factor that changed the role of war from a historical necessity, to a democratic activity of our societies, was the survival from World War 2, where we learned what Total War could cost. The Cold War then gave us a complementary demonstration of the cost-ineffectiveness of large scale war. War was now reserved for conventional enemies, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq hegemonistic ambition.
With the USA the post-August 1945 leader for the foreseeable 50 years. The Soviet Union’s defeat brought this rivalry to the foregone conclusion. After, the Soviet Union’s dismantlement, the Russian Federation took over the existing arsenal, which seems to also be a burden for their already depleted resources.
The world can go from peaceful to war-torn overnight
As I just explain, the atomic threat seems to not be usable in today’s world. But a new threat, consisting in the military use of A.I., robots and new technologies, has emerged, as well as the rivalries in space. Obviously the threat level has been considerably elevated for a catastrophe similar to World War 1 could happen again. But in accordance with the Kardashev Scale, we do not know if we could progress or regress in the next decades. I read that a large contingent of scientists think the balance is a mere 50/50. Destruction and obliteration, although not guaranteed, can still happen based on completely improbable black swans.
The way the world works is arbitrary
In 75000 BCE, a volcanic eruption destroyed half of what is today’s Sumatra. Humankind fell to the lowest levels of world population. Some researchers think only 5000 humans were left at some point. This was obviously a major catastrophe.
During the Late Bronze Age crisis, a similar catastrophe happened again. Humankind has experienced a number of these near-extinction events. Each time, the human population did not number more than a few millions. Each time, we survived and replenished after possibly a dozen generations (whose life was probably absolutely terrible).
Parallel to these events, the certainty of the failure of the Empires that were affected was complete. They had outlasted their own life cycles. Around the fifth century, the Roman Empire had reached a level of instability, corruption and moral decay that were insurmountable. The Persian Empire at the time of Alexander was decayed, corrupt and a shadow of its former self. That is why it just crumbled under the Phalanx’s assault, and not just because this military formation was superior to the human waves used by Artaxerxes. Although the theory of birth, accomplishment and ultimate disintegration of Empires is not popular these days with a number of historians, I believe that history has demonstrated more than once that it is the case. Does this mean that this will true of any past, existing and even future empire? I also tend to support this theory. The future will tell us if that was the case.
The logic of escalation remains a grave concern for humankind
In early 1914, Europe had reached a state of nearly unbreakable peace. The truth was that each great power had been preparing for war for at least ten years.
Two months later, the majority of the European nations were involved in World War I, the bloodiest conflict the world had ever seen. A total of twenty million men went to the trenches of Northern France. A deeply traumatized generation emerged from the carnage. They went on to organize another carnage, of even bigger proportions. I remember the history classes in the 1960s showing how the death toll kept climbing steadily, as new information was emerging. From an estimate of 55 million deaths, we now have some historians who are talking of more than a hundred million victims. The reason for that is that so many unreported deaths were counted in the last two or three decades.
In a similar vein, the same madness applied to the Napoleonic Wars, in which more than 2 million soldiers died over the course of twenty years. Prior to Borodino in 1812, no more than a few thousand deaths were the usual toll in any battle of the Ancient Regime. So was it such a good historical change to have deposed Louis XVI, really?
In the recent nuclear age, we reached the point of global conflagration at least a couple of times, in 1962 and in 1980. The leadership of the USA prevented the worst from happening. The unlikely contribution of a good Soviet submarine officer, Captain Arkhipov, stopped the coming strike near Cuba that would have certainly ended up in Mutual Assured Destruction, or M.A.D., as it was known to the strategists on both sides.
Some people reached the pinnacle of power even if they were not meant to do it
The courtesan system was a worldwide system common to many imperial and monarchical societies which allowed certain shrewd individuals to get further power and influence, among a male dominated elite ruling class. The famous courtesans of the French monarchy were notorious and were one element in the unraveling of the court at Versailles.
Another curious example would be that of Hatshepsut, one of the few female pharaohs, the wife of the deceased Pharaoh, who was raised to the highest status, that of a living god.
Finally, another great example from Antiquity, was Antinous, the lover of Emperor Hadrian, a sort of male courtesan, whom Hadrian deified after his untimely death in 130 AD.
References:
Notes on the First Question:
1) SEE “Born to Kill? The Story of ‘Serial Killer’ Genes”
By Anusha Subramanian at https://bsj.berkeley.edu/born-to-kill-the-story-of-serial-killer-genes/
and
2) https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/jax-blog/2015/december/the-genetics-of-violent-behavior
