Setting the Record Straight: White Europeans Were Captured and Traded as Slaves for Centuries

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[–]Alienhunter 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

I think the climate has a lot to do with that. It's no coincidence that warmer climes developed more laid back lazy cultures and colder climes produced more industrious cultures.

If you're a lazy culture in a cold climate you'll freeze to death and die in the winter. If you're an industrious culture in a hot tropical climate you'll die from heat exhaustion if you try to work during the head of the day instead of napping in the shade.

Granted the climate is far from the only factor.

Africa has a lot of geographic issues that prevent the formation of the large sophisticated cultures we see in Europe and Asia. Namely large navigable rivers and ports that don't open directly into the open ocean. The Nile is an exception to this and it's no surprise there that a large sophisticated cultures of the Egyptians formed there.

I think given enough time, Africa likely would have developed more complex civilizations, same as the west as technological progress moved forward. But on any planet the most favorably placed cultures will grow first and dominate the weaker cultures via colonisation and mercantile economic systems.

Humans are resilient and can live in practically any environment but the level of civil progress doesn't have much to do with their industrious nature. Assume dolphins more intelligent and industrious than humans, they'll never develop into a complex civilization because they live in the ocean. Lack materials needed to make complex tools and societies. And as such will never evolve into a form that allows for complex civilization and will forever be confined to a featureless realm of water in the open sea living only to eat what food they can catch.

Similar patterns of life would probably develop on the gas giants.

It seems reasonable to assume that terrestrial planets with relatively mild climates are necessary for the development of civilization. The Inuit are no less human than the Romans and spread over an extremely large area let never developed a civilization as such because all their energies needed to be devoted to survival in the harsh climate they lived in until very recently. They can't be considered to lack industrious spirits since they managed to survive in that frozen hellscape for millenia, but you can't expect such a culture to adapt to the complexities of urbanized civilization within a short period of time.

[–]Gaslov 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

This is a very strong argument. It follows as a civilization becomes advanced and generally easy, it collapses. Do we artificially make everyone miserable to obtain the best of humanity? Is engineered scarcity a necessary evil? Is this the real reason communism ultimately fails because, ironically, it truly does achieve its stated goals?

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think simply as society becomes more complex there's more ways to engage in "profiteering" not the pursuit of profit as such, there's nothing wrong with setting out to make money, but the pursuit of profit in a way that doesn't create any real value towards society.

In a very small community you can't do this, you need to be engaged in a business that helps your survival be that what it may. In a very large civilization there's any number of pursuits that can support you and give you a lot of money but don't necessarily produce anything of value for society.

DEI programs are a good example of that sort of thing now, grifting in essence is this, a parasitic business that seeks to get into the process of production and skim off it's share of the profits while providing nothing of value itself.

Landlords are the classical Marxist example of profiteering but it's a bit more complex then simply collecting rent. There's nothing wrong with renting out rooms and collecting rent on them. The issue comes when people are otherwise unable to purchase their own land for habitation due to high prices and the land ownership end up consolidated in the control of a small few who simply collect rent by virtue of owning the land but don't necessarily need to provide any service that is equivalent to the price they are receiving, if they form a kind of oligarchy or cartel they can collude amongst themselves and raise the prices artificial of any real market forces which trends towards inflationary pressures.

Thing is complex societies can produce far more wealth and are better for even the poorest residents of them, but they're also susceptible to corruption. And the bigger the society and the more complex the more avenues of corruption form and the harder it is for any one person to understand what is going on, identify, and stop the corruption.

Look at the art world for a fairly obvious example. We laugh and jeer and the rediculous nonsense people spend obscene amounts of money on. Digital tokens of poorly drawn monkey's? And overripe banana glued to a wall. A bunch of used tampons? Million dollar works of art. Or not, art is purely subjective, we like to jeer at this and use it as a claim that society has declined, and that's true in a way, but the joke is that we accept these things as "art" in the first place, and not the obvious money laundering that it is, because society has essentially given us this complex ideal that "art, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder" true to some extent, but obviously not applicable to spending millions on a pile of trash.

[–]Gaslov 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

One problem with the theory of climate and discomfort driving industry and advanced society is that the Americas had similar climates but those people didn't develop much further than the Africas. China, on the other hand, has a lot of tropics, yet developed comparably, if not better, than Europeans for most of history, such as reaching the crossbow and gunpowder use long ahead of Europeans.

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

China is a very huge country and has any number of different climates. But it also has the geography and climate for large scale agriculture which is what drove civilization there. Most of China is subtropical and has fairly strong seasonal changes and doesn't really classify as a tropical climate. The main difference between China and Europe I think is that in China they largely developed inland due to their trading routes being primarily overland and never developed the naval traditions of Europe due to the lack of a Mediterranean equivalent which caused their society to begin to lag behind the west when mercantilism was adopted.

The Americans had several well developed civilizations including the development of writing with the Maya which is a very significant step in the formation of an advanced civilization. But they didn't develop technologically equivalent to Europe for a number of reasons. One is simply time. American civilization was far younger because it took far longer for people to get there, and then since it was a relatively few people who crossed the land bridge before it sank, it took a considerable amount of time to build a population necessary for the creation of large complex civilizations.

They were well on their way at the time of European colonization however. There were some truly impressive architectural feats as well as irrigation and land reclamation projects. But they had several disadvantages compared to Europe as well. One being the total lack of large domestic animals for labor. There was the Llama in south America but they aren't very strong. And I believe dogs were domesticated, but that's it. No oxen or horses. Buffalo were never domesticated.

Then there was also the lack of the wheel which is a truly bizzare case of technological divergence. And there was the lack of genetic diversity that made the American aboriginals somewhat susceptible to plagues which further hindered societal development. It's theorized that even before the smallpox epidemic a different plague had decimated the North American population.

It's interesting to think about how North American society would have developed if there had never been European contact. I suspect they'd have a largely medieval level of technology at the present day and you'd see the Maya be the dominant cultural force likely colonizing and subduing the planes indians.

Though it's worth noting that there were some relatively sophisticated cultures in North America as well. Whomever built the Mesa Verde and other indian "castles" in the south west for example. Though these people had vanished by the time Europeans arrived and they left nothing of their culture behind since they never developed writing besides their domiciles and pottery. I suspect plague or climate shift making their agriculture fail.