I've been thinking a bit about the idea of how Nations fit into the ecosystem. Our ego's kind of prevent us from thinking of ourselves as part of nature, we prefer to think of ourselves as better than or above nature. We are part of nature, we make our livings with in a global ecosystem. Our conceit tends to push us to think that the physical laws that govern ecosystems don't apply to us. We seem to behave as though if there were a global ecosystem collapse millions to billions wouldn't likely die. Those of us that acknowledge this possibility also seem to behave as though our descendants will be among the survivors, despite the fact we haven't done anything to make that more likely. In reality we probably subscribe to an ideology which sabotages this out come. They may likely think my views on the matter are "Darwinist". If by "Darwinist" they mean that I don't believe that humanity is immune from the law of natural selection, then they are right. The law of natural selection is based on physical laws. If their is differential reproduction then their is natural selection, period.
Wolves organize themselves in to packs which usually consists of a alpha pair who are the parents of the other wolves. Together they cooperate with each other on hunts and defend their territory against neighboring wolves. Territorialism is a biological imperative. All living things have a territory. This is self evident due to the fact that all living things take up space. Every living thing from bacteria, to coral reefs, to trees to doves and even pandas. Within that space that territory they extract the energy they need to sustain there lives and reproduce. We measure this energy in calories. For example it takes 50,000 calories to make a human and 2000 calories a day to sustain it, and these calories are produced by the ecosystem and harvested by us. Farms are part of the ecosystem too. So back to wolves, wolves defend there territory organized as a "wolf pack" because with their unique set of skill and abilities from there particular body form this is the most efficient way of extracting energy from the ecosystem to sustain there lives and reproduce. It is also the most efficient way to defend their territory from neighboring wolf packs wishing to expand and replace them. All living things are in a competition for energy. With out energy no living thing can sustain its life and reproduce. Even with a supply of energy if a living thing does not use its energy to reproduce as efficiently as its contemporaries its contemporaries will eventually will replace them. The energy available in a ecosystem does not expand and supports a fixed amount of biomass so any population growth has to come at the expense of an others biomass in the ecosystem. For example the wolf biomass is calculated by taking the population and multiplying by the average weight of an individual wolf. In Canada with a population 60,000 wolves and an average weight of 75 lbs gives them a biomass of 4.2 million pounds. That's 4.2 million pounds of deer, mice, and hares converted into the form of a wolf through digestion and metabolism. Life is at war with entropy, life is negative entropy. Its all physics and the laws of physics trump religions, ideologies, preferences, and any other utopian schemes of wishful thinking.
Humans are quite similar to wolves. At the basic level of we organize ourselves in a similar fashion. The human nuclear family also consists of a alpha pair the husband and wife who are parents to the other members. The human family work together to defend and maintain a territory which we call a household or a camp during the stone age. This system of organization first emerge with our Homo Erectus ancestors 100,000 generations ago. We may not defend it the same wolves do through their scent marking, howling vocalizations, aggressive displays and attacks. Our ancestors defended their territory by going on patrol using boundary markers and threats and violence. We defend our territory now a days using physical barriers like fences, locking doors, security systems, and police and military services.
Nations owe their origins to the territorialism of human beings, the territorialism that human beings owe their very existence too. When we look back at the original human beings 10,000 generations ago they organized themselves into families, but because humans are more social than wolves they also allied themselves with other families whom they shared ancestors with to form bands. Bands have a loose organization, and consist of 30 to 50 individuals. If we were wolves we would think of a band as a super pack. A large pack made up of smaller nuclear packs. A bands power structure is often egalitarian where decision making was by consensus. As a band they can maintain sovereignty over a larger territory than they could have as a household. For many generations band societies were the most efficient way humans were able to use energy from the ecosystem for their survival and reproduction.
2,500 generations ago according to genetic bottleneck theory the human population had been reduced to 10,000 individuals. This was caused by a super volcano eruption at the present day site of lake Toba in Indonesia. This eruption caused a volcanic winter for 10 years and possibly a 1000 year long cooling period. At 10,000 individuals with an average weight of 65kg means that the human biomass had been reduced to 650 tonnes. Amazingly the descendants of these super survivors migrated out of Africa to colonize Eurasia, Australia and North and South America. When our ancestors had left Africa the territory of Eurasia had been occupied by the other human species known as Neanderthals and Denisovans. The Neanderthals and Denisovans have since become extinct while the human population had grown. Some possible reasons for humans being able to out reproduce them is:
- a military advantage.
- a trade advantage.
- a parental/familial/organizational advantage.
- a immunity advantage.
- a communication/information advantage.
- a food production advantage.
Recent DNA research has discovered that in some way not all Neanderthal and Denisovians are extinct. It turns out that up to 4% of non African DNA is Neanderthal and Denisovian. If you think about it since the population estimates of the Neanderthal and Denisovians was no more than a million, and that at 4% share of the human biomass, the Neanderthals and Denisovians is larger today than it was prior to humanities emigration from Africa.
By about 1000 generations ago human beings had completely replaced Neanderthal and Denisovians in Eurasia. They had also colonized North/South America and Australia. Recent population estimates place the population of the Earth at this time at 1 million with 90% of those living outside of Africa. That is a lot of people who would not have otherwise existed if our ancestors had never had left Africa to displace the other Homo species, and to eventually colonize the uninhabited continents.
As the ice age came to an end new territories were now available to in the North. Populations expanded and grew. Competition for territory was increasing, since the continents were now completely inhabited except Antarctica. This is the beginning of what I call the " The Great Game". A term used to describe the territorial conflicts between the Russian and British empire, but I think it can be used to describe most territorial conflicts. It is this point in history where for all intents and purposes there were no more uninhabited frontiers to settle and any new land must be taken from another population. Partly due to this bands began to form alliances with other bands who they shared a common language with. These alliances are called tribes. Tribes consist of 150 to 300 people. For my purposes I am referring to a tribe in the terms of a face-to-face community, relatively bound by kinship relations, reciprocal exchange, and strong ties to their ancestral territory. Tribes were able to defend a territory more efficiently than a band. If a population remained a band they would likley be invaded and taken over by a neighboring tribe. The reality is that ecosystems can be harvested to a finite level. To avoid over harvesting all species including humans either have to find new frontiers, expand into a neighboring territory, limit the amount of children they have (abortion/infanticide), or find a more efficient way of harvesting the ecosystem.
Where I grew up in Campbell River their is the First Nations tribe called the Kwakuitl. Whats interesting is that they had not always lived in that area, but had invaded and conquered it from the
Komox tribe who had lived their before them. The Kwakuitl were an advanced tribe maybe closer to being a Chiefdom. They had a stratified society with a nobles class, a religious class, a commoner class and a slave class.
A trade and barter subsistence economy formed the early stages of the Kwakuitl economy. Trade was carried out between internal Kwakuitl nations, as well as surrounding First nations.
Over time, the potlatch tradition created a demand for stored surpluses, as such a display of wealth had social implications. By the time of European colonialism, it was noted that wool blankets had become a form of common currency. In the potlatch tradition, hosts of the potlatch were expected to provide enough gifts for all the guests invited. This practice created a system of loan and interest, using wool blankets as currency.
The Kwakuitl highly valued copper in their economy and used it for ornament and precious goods. Scholars have proposed that prior to trade with Europeans, the people acquired copper from natural copper veins along riverbeds, but this has not been proven. Contact with European settlers, particularly through the Hudson's Bay Company, brought an influx of copper to their territories. The Kwakuitl nations also were aware of silver and gold, and crafted intricate bracelets and jewelry from hammered coins traded from European settlers. Copper was given a special value amongst the Kwakuitl, most likely for its ceremonial purposes. This copper was beaten into sheets or plates, and then painted with mythological figures. The sheets were used for decorating wooden carvings or kept for the sake of prestige.
Individual pieces of copper were sometimes given names based on their value. The value of any given piece was defined by the number of wool blankets last traded for them. In this system, it was considered prestigious for a buyer to purchase the same piece of copper at a higher price than it was previously sold, in their version of an art market. During potlatch, copper pieces would be brought out, and bids were placed on them by rival chiefs. The highest bidder would have the honour of buying said copper piece. If a host still held a surplus of copper after throwing an expensive potlatch, he was considered a wealthy and important man. Highly ranked members of the communities often have the Kwak'wala word for "copper" as part of their names.
Competition among populations for resources as the generations passed for most people became more intense. Competition with in populations has also increased intensity. In face to face societies like the Kwakiutl had become stratified from the mostly egalitarian band societies of our more distant ancestors. Stratification of societies emerge because skills are not equally distributed. They may in fact represent a bell curve. The noble class would be the descendants of those who at the time of a societies establishment were the most strategically skilled. They are the descendants of the political and military leaders of the social establishment. This does not mean to say that the descendants of the original nobles remain the strategic elite since strategic skill may not heritable while class status often is. The religious class are those of the persuasive elite. Members of this class are able to persuade the others that they represent the wishes and will of the supernatural world. They often use this status to their benefit. In some cases where possible this status is also established as being heritable. The slave class are those whos ancestors were captured during raids while a minority may have entered into it voluntarily when impoverished worse than slavery. The common class is everyone else.
As the Great Game progressed over the generations balances of power were established among populations when the costs of expansion into another's territory became to large. Occasionally however a people would acquire a means of extracting more calories and population growth from their ecosystem through the adoption of agriculture. With greater numbers and other technologies like iron weapons would upset the balance of power and fuel a renewed expansion into their neighbors territory. This led to societies that were no longer face to face societies and increased social stratification. A military class would emerge fed by the surplus in calories who specialized in spreading there sovereignty over greater amounts of territory and maintaining sovereignty within the society. This new military class allowed the emergence of kingdoms. An example of this would be the Bantu people of Africa who with agriculture and iron weapons had established kingdoms through out Africa. They overran their neighbors establishing themselves as the new elites, this is how the bantu languages spread from their original homeland of what is now Cameroon. For example prior to the arrival of Bantu speakers in present-day Zimbabwe the region was populated by ancestors of the San people who were present in the region when the first Bantu-speaking farmers arrived during the Bantu expansion around 2000 years ago. The Great Game was played in every continent with very little exceptions. With the winner being those who could effectively and efficiently use the local calories to control more calorie sources to fuel their population growth. All people have as ancestors that were sufficiently competitive in the Great Game. All of humanity are the descendants of those who would or could not limit their population growth, the breeders. The breeders (above average family sizes) will always replace those with average or below family sizes eventually.
Societies organized as kingdoms were so competitive over tribal societies, that over the generations from the earliest kingdoms, kingdoms would become the most common form of societal organization. New balances of power would become established and would then again become upset. With competition for more calories sources either through territorial acquisitions and in addition through commercial acquisitions. Commerce allows one to produce goods and sell them in markets at a profit to purchase ones calories. Commerce is probably as old or older than humanity, but as the great game unfolded and the costs of territorial acquisition became higher, the role of commerce would play an ever increasing role. The combination of commerce and conquest would allow empires to emerge. Commercial competition allows for increased efficiency in production and for people to sell their skills. Increases in production would finance larger armies which in turn would allow them to conquer neighboring kingdoms. The commerce/conquest combination is most obvious in the role and effects of a mercenary industry. An example of this would be the founding of the Aztec empire. Nahua peoples migrated to central Mexico from the north in the early 13th century. According to the pictographic codices in which the Aztecs recorded their history, the place of origin was called Aztlán. Early migrants settled the Basin of Mexico and surrounding lands by establishing a series of independent city-states. These early Nahua cities were ruled by petty kings. Most of the existing settlements, which had been established by other indigenous peoples before the Nahua migration, were assimilated into Nahua culture. These early city-states fought various small-scale wars with each other, but due to shifting alliances, no individual city gained dominance. The Mexica were the last of Aztlan migrants to arrive in Central Mexico. They entered the Basin of Mexico around the year 1250 AD, and by then most of the good agricultural land had already been claimed. The Mexica persuaded the king of Culhuacan to allow them to settle in a relatively infertile patch of land called Chapultepec (Chapoltepēc, "in the hill of grasshoppers"). The Mexica served as hired mercenaries for Culhuacan. After they served Culhuacan in battle, the king appointed one of his daughters to rule over the Mexica. According to mythological native accounts, the Mexica instead sacrificed her by flaying her skin, on the command of their god Xipe Totec. When the king of Culhuacan learned of this, he attacked and used his army to drive the Mexica from Tizaapan by force. The Mexica moved to an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco, where an eagle nested on a nopal cactus. The Mexica interpreted this as a sign from their god and founded their new city, Tenochtitlan, on this island in the year ōme calli, or "Two House" (1325 AD).
The new Mexica city allied with the city of Azcapotzalco and paid tribute to its king, Tezozomoc. With Mexica assistance, Azcopotzalco began to expand into a small tributary empire. Until this point, the Mexica ruler was not recognized as a legitimate king. Mexica leaders successfully petitioned one of the kings of Culhuacan to provide a daughter to marry into the Mexica line. Their son, Acamapichtli, was enthroned as the first tlatoani of Tenochtitlan in the year 1372. While the Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco expanded their kingdom with help from the Mexica, the Acolhua city of Texcoco grew in power in the eastern portion of the lake basin. Eventually, war erupted between the two states, and the Mexica played a vital role in the conquest of Texcoco. By then, Tenochtitlan had grown into a major city and was rewarded for its loyalty to the Tepanecs by receiving Texcoco as a tributary province. This process of territorial consolidation would continue by the Aztecs for a large area for what is now known as Mexico and become the Aztec empire.
One limitation to the growth of empires is the growing diversity of preferences and agendas of there populations. Societies lacking a unified goal and world view would become increasing polarized while each group pursues its own agendas. An empires expansion creates a population where people do not share the same ancestry, language or religion. The harmony and cooperation of the face to face society is lost. Governance with out laws is impossible. Biological imperatives which drive internal societal competition predispose the legislating class to make laws that benefit their agenda and hold on status. Languages and religions are mostly heritable. They are passed down from one generation to another most easily, it is more difficult to pass it on horizontally with in a generation. As for religions most at this time applied only to its adherents and had no incentive to recruit members from outside their groups. This lack of cohesion resulting from the diversity of agendas of different groups within a empire was a competitive disadvantage to those empire which had adopted one of the universal religions. Universal religions have no restrictions based on ancestry and can be spread to more people with in a generation. This can unite a people which would increase cohesion and create a competitive advantage. The evangelical nature of these religions also provide an incentive for its adherents to conquer and spread their religion. Christianity and Islam are the most obvious examples of a universal religion. Islam for example with the early Muslim conquests in the years following the Prophet Muhammad's death led to the creation of the caliphates, occupying a vast geographical area and conversion to Islam was boosted by missionary activities particularly those of Imams, who easily intermingled with local populace to propagate the religious teachings. These early caliphates, coupled with Muslim economics and trading and the later expansion of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in Islam's spread outwards from Mecca towards both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the creation of the Muslim world. Trading played an important role in the spread of Islam in several parts of the world, notably southeast Asia.
Muslim dynasties were soon established and subsequent empires such as those of the Abbasids, Fatimids, Almoravids, Seljukids, Ajuran, Adal and Warsangali in Somalia, Mughals in India and Safavids in Persia and Ottomans in Anatolia were among the largest and most powerful in the world. The people of the Islamic world created numerous sophisticated centers of culture and science with far-reaching mercantile networks, travelers, scientists, hunters, mathematicians, doctors and philosophers, all contributing to the Golden Age of Islam. Islamic expansion in South and East Asia fostered cosmopolitan and eclectic Muslim cultures in the Indian subcontinent, Malaysia, Indonesia and China.
To be successful in the Great Game a population has to remain competitive. Complacency will not lead to success and could result in a loss of sovereignty. To be competitive a society requires cohesion, commerce and a military to defend it. To avoid complacency a society requires innovation and efficient use of their resources. Money is the medium of exchange of territory or more commonly called property. Property rights provide the security that the ruling class doesn't confiscate it and provides the incentive to innovate and increase economic efficacy. For the most part the to main universal religions support property rights to a degree. Curiosity and knowledge seeking nature of people is what leads to innovation and ever increasing economic efficacy. The best tool of acquiring applicable and reliable knowledge is the scientific method. The problem is that since the universal religions are based on faith, science has an undermining effect on them. The ruling class who rely on religion to legitimize their rule try to direct inquiry towards areas of knowledge that benefit them and away from areas of knowledge that undermine them. Despite the ruling elites attempts to suppress inquiries in areas of knowledge that undermine them systems of thought had begun to emerge that were justified on more secular rationales opposed to the more superstitious rationales of the universal religions. World views that rely on secular rationales are called ideologies. One of the most popular ideologies is Marxism. I am going to define Marxism as the preference to have a society distribute resources equally regardless of who produced them. The individual is a illegitimate political unit and cannot be judged the individual basis of their competencies and character, they can only be judged by their group membership, it is a system of competing identity groups and they view the world through the lens of their identity groups. In addition the current holders of wealth and power have acquired them through oppression. This means that the current holders of wealth and power are illegitimate and corrupt, and those with out wealth and power are there victims. Finally Marxists also prefer to believe wealth and power can only be acquired through oppression or revolution. This ideology had such a psychological appeal that Marxist revolutions were occurring all over the world from Asia to South America. Their is not a nation on Earth that has not been influenced by it to a degree. Marxism was successful because since wealth and power are very rarely evenly distributed the poorer often out number the wealthier by a large degree. I should mention that Marxist ideologies need not exclusively identify with lower economic classes it can also identify with any less dominate group including race, ethnic group, language or lifestyle. In nations where the lower classes are actually economically secure and relatively free and unoppressed, Marxists intellectuals will often invent grievances to sow discontent, so they in turn can advocate for them and increase their influence and status to improve their condition. A Marxist status is legitimized by their victimhood so their is little incentive to see themselves as anything else. They maintain their victim status even when institutions and laws are skewed in their favor. Remember that.
Leaders of these Marxist revolutions the Marxist intellectuals will form a new government with themselves as the new ruling elite "usually called the party" who would use their new powers to nationalize all commerce and use that to reinforce those areas that support their status and undermine those that don't. This political system is referred to as communism. Popularity of the Marxist ideology is due to the psychological appeal of attributing your lower relative status not to a lack of competence, but to being a victim of oppression. Many of the highest status individuals of the previous regime quite likely acquired there wealth through the suppression and oppression of potential competitors, but once their wealth had been redistributed they would turn their envious focus on the merchant class. The merchant class in the most part most of the time, but not always had acquired their wealth through economic competence not oppression. Marxists prefer to believe that all wealth is acquired through oppression, so much so that having wealth is evidence of oppression.
This Marxist ideology first took hold in Russia. The resulting Russian revolution eventually led to the Soviet party to take over the country and formed a communist government. They seized the resources of first the monarchy and then the merchant class. Eventually they would control nearly all of the production of Russia. The new nation was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. After emerging as one of the victors of the second world war they gained control of the neighboring countries as well. They controlled most of the economy and used it to suppress those that undermined their power and actively sought to spread their ideology globally. Industrial military power made direct conquests of other territories very costly. A balance of power had emerged between the communists known as the Warsaw pact and the Western powers known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The invention of nuclear weapons had made direct conflicts between the two untenable which was known as the system of mutually assured destruction. Conflicts were smaller scale, where like minded factions within other nations were supported over their rivals. When I say small scale conflicts I mean in scale relative to the second world war. The causalities of these conflicts were numerous and large scale. This conflict was known as the cold war. Areas of the world which had strategic resources like oil and metals were the most contested. Military technology had made wars less predictable and reliable means of playing the Great Game. The most efficient way of playing the Great Game was through attrition. By denying your rivals access to strategic resources and markets. This is done by supporting foreign Governments that are friendly (meaning supporting your agenda) over their internal rivals. To be competitive in this iteration of the Great Game one has to actively maintain access to strategic resources and markets. Economic growth and efficiency along with an effective military deterrent is the best strategy to hold your standing in the Great Game. This new level of competiveness makes access to foreign markets essential in maintain and improving a nations standard of living. Indifference to playing the Great Game results in the erosion of a nations access to foreign markets and risks economic collapse. An economic collapse results in a take over of a nations sovereignty over economic decisions to those nations with more purchasing power and market access. Those nations with more purchasing power can influence interactions between nations to favor their interests over the nation with the collapsed economy. You do not want to have your economy collapse, now initiative is worth that short of an invasion. If you think your nation is immune to an economic collapse you are being naïve. Economic collapses are often impossible to predict and have occurred in a matter of weeks in the middle of what seemed to be a period of prosperity. Economies often collapse when Government spending growth out paces their revenue growth. Government spending is usually prioritized to support the ruling party not the country. Over taxation disincentives innovation, investment and hiring by companies. Over taxation of individuals impairs their ability to have emergency savings to help them weather economic downturns.
This emerging paradigm of the Great Game as more of an economic game, forces nations to trade with one another and seek economic efficiency with in the nation. The USSR eventually collapsed because it could not keep up economically to the NATO alliance nations. The USSR influence over global trade eroded and the most dominate member of the NATO alliance the USA became the worlds only Super Power. As the worlds only Super Power they can unilaterally act in their interest in interactions in the world. The USA has the greatest access to world markets and is the leader in global consumption. This iteration of the Great Game known as globalization has a lot of potential for peace and prosperity for the globe. In previous iterations of the Great Game success was measured by conquest and square kilometers of territory. Competitions for resources was a military game. In the global economy trade is a more peaceful alternative to acquire resources. Success is measured in purchasing power and investment capital. Even former communist governments have abandoned their redistribution schemes out of a necessity to increase their purchasing power to remain globally competitive. The Marxist redistribution schemes disincentivised the economically competent members of their society from innovating and finding more efficient ways of producing. There is a growing merchant class in former communist countries again, because with property rights they benefit and invest the products of their efforts into improving their lives. The Marxist ideology is still alive and well however looking for some perceived victim group to advocate for. With oppression in most places on the decline and standards of living are increasing they have to invent and convince people they are oppressed, fortunately people aren't buying it as easily.
The Great Game is no longer about global domination, but about growing the economic where with all to invest in our own futures. To have the available capital to ease the slings and arrows of life that eventually must come our way.
Complacency eventually erodes our societies into poverty, and competiveness drives us to improve and innovate. Competiveness drives us to become more competent to cope with the challenges of life.
Our descendants are going to need that extra capital. Our species has doubled its biomass a few times in recent centuries. Biological imperatives prevents us from limiting our growth. Taking up such a large percentage of the global biomass must come at the expense of the global ecosystem. We have nearly a million times the biomass we had when our ancestors left Africa. The global ecosystem I believe will eventually correct this, but it will do it at our expense. The global ecosystem must inevitably collapse and restructure making our future in it uncertain. We are in a Malthusian trap. The only viable solution is the High Frontier. The Great Game must expand into the solar system.
