#134 – Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us

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Jul 22, 2022

In a thought-provoking discussion, Ian Morris, a best-selling historian and Willard Professor of Classics at Stanford, delves into how human values have changed over thousands of years. He argues that societal organization evolves toward energy efficiency, shaping everything from gender roles to governance. Morris also explores the impact of geography on historical narratives, the relationship between war and development, and the tight bonds between energy extraction and moral frameworks. This captivating journey through macrohistory reveals how past trends inform our future.

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INSIGHT

Value of Macro History

Macro-historians study long-term trends to understand human development.
Zooming out reveals insights into war, social structures, and pivotal events like the Industrial Revolution.

ANECDOTE

Brexit and Geography

Ian Morris wrote "Geography is Destiny" after the Brexit vote to explore Britain's place in the world.
He argues that Brexit should have focused on China's rise, not just the EU.

INSIGHT

Why the West Ruled

Western dominance can be explained by geography and its interaction with human development.
The West's early agricultural revolution gave it a head start, but other factors contributed.

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War! What Is It Good For?

Ian Morris

In 'War What Is It Good For?', Ian Morris presents a provocative argument that war, despite its brutality, has been instrumental in the development of civilization. He traces 15,000 years of war, from Stone Age societies to modern times, showing how 'productive war' has led to increased social complexity, safety, and economic growth. Morris draws on examples from ancient Rome, the development of weapons and defenses, and evolutionary biology to support his thesis. The book also explores the future of war, including the potential for technological advancements and global governance to reduce violence.

Why the West Rules - For Now

Ian Morris

In this book, Ian Morris explores 50,000 years of human history to understand why the West has come to dominate the world. He argues that it is not differences in race, culture, or individual achievements that explain Western dominance, but rather the effects of geography on the everyday efforts of ordinary people. Morris uses a four-factor analytical tool—energy capture, urbanization, information technology, and war-making capacity—to measure social development in both the East and West. He concludes that geography explains regional differences and predicts significant changes in global power dynamics in the coming centuries due to ongoing interactions between geography and human ingenuity.

The Measure of Civilization

How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations

Ian Morris

This book presents a new method for investigating the development of civilizations by using a numerical index of social development. The index breaks social development into four traits: energy capture per capita, organization, information technology, and war-making capacity. Ian Morris uses archaeological, historical, and current government data to quantify patterns and offer surprising conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world. The book provides fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century and resolves some of the biggest debates in global history.

Foragers, farmers, and fossil fuels

how human values evolve

Margaret Atwood

Ian Morris

Christine M. Korsgaard

Stephen Macedo

Ian Morris argues that fundamental long-term changes in human values are driven by the most basic force of all: energy. He explains how different energy sources—foraging, farming, and fossil fuels—have set strict limits on what kinds of societies can succeed and which values are rewarded. The book includes responses from various scholars, including Margaret Atwood, Christine Korsgaard, Richard Seaford, and Jonathan Spence, and it has far-reaching implications for understanding the past and the future of human values.

Wind back 1,000 years and the moral landscape looks very different to today. Most farming societies thought slavery was natural and unobjectionable, premarital sex was an abomination, women should obey their husbands, and commoners should obey their monarchs.

Wind back 10,000 years and things look very different again. Most hunter-gatherer groups thought men who got too big for their britches needed to be put in their place rather than obeyed, and lifelong monogamy could hardly be expected of men or women.

Why such big systematic changes — and why these changes specifically?

That's the question best-selling historian Ian Morris takes up in his book, Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve. Ian has spent his academic life studying long-term history, trying to explain the big-picture changes that play out over hundreds or thousands of years.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

There are a number of possible explanations one could offer for the wide-ranging shifts in opinion on the 'right' way to live. Maybe the natural sciences progressed and people realised their previous ideas were mistaken? Perhaps a few persuasive advocates turned the course of history with their revolutionary arguments? Maybe everyone just got nicer?

In Foragers, Farmers and Fossil Fuels Ian presents a provocative alternative: human culture gradually evolves towards whatever system of organisation allows a society to harvest the most energy, and we then conclude that system is the most virtuous one. Egalitarian values helped hunter-gatherers hunt and gather effectively. Once farming was developed, hierarchy proved to be the social structure that produced the most grain (and best repelled nomadic raiders). And in the modern era, democracy and individuality have proven to be more productive ways to collect and exploit fossil fuels.

On this theory, it's technology that drives moral values much more than moral philosophy. Individuals can try to persist with deeply held values that limit economic growth, but they risk being rendered irrelevant as more productive peers in their own society accrue wealth and power. And societies that fail to move with the times risk being conquered by more pragmatic neighbours that adapt to new technologies and grow in population and military strength.

There are many objections one could raise to this theory, many of which we put to Ian in this interview. But the question is a highly consequential one: if we want to guess what goals our descendants will pursue hundreds of years from now, it would be helpful to have a theory for why our ancestors mostly thought one thing, while we mostly think another.

Big though it is, the driver of human values is only one of several major questions Ian has tackled through his career.

In today's episode, we discuss all of Ian's major books, taking on topics such as:
• Why the Industrial Revolution happened in England rather than China
• Whether or not wars can lead to less violence
• Whether the evidence base in history — from document archives to archaeology — is strong enough to persuasively answer any of these questions
• Why Ian thinks the way we live in the 21st century is probably a short-lived aberration • Whether the grand sweep of history is driven more by “very important people” or “vast impersonal forces”
• Why Chinese ships never crossed the Pacific or rounded the southern tip of Africa
• In what sense Ian thinks Brexit was “10,000 years in the making”
• The most common misconceptions about macrohistory

Chapters:

Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
The interview begins (00:01:51)
Geography is Destiny (00:02:59)
Why the West Rules—For Now (00:11:25)
War! What is it Good For? (00:27:40)
Expectations for the future (00:39:43)
Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels (00:53:15)
Historical methodology (01:02:35)
Falsifiable alternative theories (01:15:20)
Archaeology (01:22:18)
Energy extraction technology as a key driver of human values (01:37:04)
Allowing people to debate about values (01:59:38)
Can productive wars still occur? (02:12:49)
Where is history contingent and where isn't it? (02:29:45)
How Ian thinks about the future (03:12:54)
Macrohistory myths (03:29:12)
Ian’s favourite archaeology memory (03:32:40)
The most unfair criticism Ian’s ever received (03:34:39)
Rob’s outro (03:39:16)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio mastering: Ben Cordell
Transcriptions: Katy Moore