Civilization Has Been as Tormented and Destructive as
it Has Been
What follows here is the first chapter of my book, THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES: THE PROBLEM OF POWER IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. (The first edition of this book was published in 1984 by the University of California Pres, and the second edition --still in print-- was published by SUNY Press in 1995.)This chapter presents the core idea of that book. (Actually, there are two core ideas, the second of which is chapter 4 of that book, entitled "Human Nature and the Evaluation of Civilization.")
This core idea came to me in 1970, and the articulation of it presented here was crafted more than a decade later. The summary with which this entry begins, below, does not appear in the book, but was composed rather for the British journal, THE ENVIRONMENTALIST, which chose --after having reviewed the book--to present this chapter to its readers in its entirety.
If there were only one idea of mine that anyone would ever look at, it would be the one developed in this chapter.
Over the years, I have made the following recommendation to people who wanted to read THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES: that they begin by reading chapter 1 in a single sitting, that to do so they find some quiet time when they feel able to set aside an hour an a half for focused attention, and when they are up for being taken on a journey with some sweeping vistas from a high vantage point. Still seems to me like a good way to proceed.If you're interested in seeing more about THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES (the Table of Contents, some other samples from the book, readers' responses) you might take a look at
The Parable of the Tribes:
The Problem of Power in Social Evolution
(Paperback)
by Andrew Bard Schmookler
Explore: Citations Browse: Front Cover Table of Contents Excerpt Index Back Cover
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Tough Reading, Great Bottom Line, a Classic
January 25, 2004
Reviewer:
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
This is tough reading, in part because the publisher's choice of paper and font are not the best. As one who has previously recommended such books as Lionel Tiger's "The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System", Norman Cousins "The Pathology of Power", and many other books on the pathologies of treating man as a "good", of scientific objectivity as "value neutral" and therefore bad, of secrecy as counter-productive to "precautionary principle" decision-making, I immediately recognized this book as an integrative work, possibly supplanting all those other books by bringing the various arguments together in one place.
This is indeed a brilliant product by a towering intellect, and it has the bibliography and index that one would expect from a world-class endeavor. I recommend it together with Philip Alott's "The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State", Stewart Brand's "Clock of the Long Now", and John Lewis Gaddis "The Landscape of History".
The author's bottom line: not only must we come to grips with how power is managed in every nation and organization, but also we must manage at the *global* level if we are to succeed in optimizing fulfillment at the *individual* level.
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