The Evolution of Civilizations

Recently I finished The Evolution of Civilizations, by the late Carroll Quigley, having labored away at it for an embarrassingly long time (it's only 422 pages). Somebody sent me an email or wrote an article about it a few months ago, and I was instantly intrigued. 

I liked the book, it just wasn't as gripping as I'd hoped. I also didn't agree with some of Quigley's conclusions. Others I didn't completely understand. But it was a very interesting read nonetheless. 

Quigley taught the history of civilization for three decades, and developed the theory that, generally speaking, the rise and fall of civilizations can be charted in seven steps: Mixture, Gestation, Expansion, Age of Conflict, Universal Empire, Decay, and Invasion. His theory was presented in The Evolution of Civilizations, first published in 1961.

Quigley took a very scientific approach to history, believing "those who claim that no analytical tools are needed in order to write history are naive." History isn't just a small collection of facts waiting to be put in order, he said. Facts are infinite, and principles must be applied to their selection and arrangement.

The book is true to its author's ideals, and as persuasive as it is informative. I especially liked his description of how the Sumerian priesthood may have developed, and how it might have been responsible for a leap in scientific thought that was immensely important to the establishment of that civilization. 

Among his conclusions, Quigley wrote about the importance of social instruments, which he defined as organizations that are effectively serving the end for which they were established. When an instrument stops serving that goal it has become an institution, requiring a response — reform or circumvention, or reaction — which leads to either a new or reformed instrument, or decay. 

An instrument of expansion, Quigley proposed, is a society that is organized in such a way that three very important goals are achieved: there is in the society "an incentive to invent new ways of doing things"; there is "somewhere in the society" an "accumulation of surplus — that is, some persons in the society control more wealth than they wish to consume immediately"; and finally, wealth is employed for technological advancement. "All three of these things are essential to any civilization," he wrote. [Emphases in original]

Besides agonizing over which stage our own civilization currently occupies (having ruled out those that clearly don't apply), and what responses we can and will have to our own institutions over time...I began to wonder that we now count the speed at which information spreads around the globe in seconds rather than weeks or months or years, or centuries.

I found myself thinking about the Internet as a revolutionary new tool — an instrument — that is serving an important human need like nothing since the printing press: the spread of information.

With a worldwide audience, the incentive to create new technologies — "new ways of doing things" — is tremendous. We also have, not just "somewhere in society", but spread more then ever throughout society, an "accumulation of surplus" that can and is regularly employed to further technological advances, that in turn bring us more and better information.

Is the Internet a worldwide society — an instrument of expansion that serves not one nation or people or class or race or religion, but more and more of the planet's seven billion inhabitants every day, ignoring borders and edicts and bureaucrats and traditions?

In the Forward to the 35th anniversary edition of Kon-Tiki, the Norwegian explorer and scientist Thor Heyerdahl wrote that "dissidence and controversy are what bring science forward" — a sentiment I believe Carroll Quigley would have embraced. Just as he viewed the evolution and history of our world through the scientist's lens, he too would have wondered, I believe, if the World Wide Web is not the ideal means for both dissidence and controversy — and the evolution of our civilization.

In earlier times, one group might wish to hoard information for its own gain. It's hard to imagine such a thing today.

Think about it: twenty years ago the Internet was a word people were just beginning to say, but outside of a tiny minority it was not experienced or even understood by the general population. In a remarkably short amount of time there has grown up an entire cyber world, where commerce, romance, revolution, art, crime, and every other aspect of human relationships exists, and with which we must increasingly contend. 

The New York Times may claim that it has "all the news that's fit to print", but more and more people can and do circumvent the traditional gatekeepers of truth. Radio, newspapers, and television aren't dying in the sense that they're going away, but they have been forced to change the way they do business. They are instruments that became institutions, and those that hope to stay afloat will reform or perish.

Netflix and Amazon are the future, not NBC. 

The human desire to know is insatiable, and with every person having access to the Web being a potential conduit, information and knowledge easily outpace authority — official or otherwise. We can better circumvent those who would withhold or manipulate the truth. The State may not wither away, but it will become less visible — less important — allowing us a more unobstructed view of the road ahead.

In his analysis of Western Civilization, toward the end of the book, Quigley made a very interesting observation. He wrote that until recently, "weapons were available only to a small minority of the population and that the majority must expect, as a general rule, to yield to the authority of the minority that controlled these weapons. Thus is followed, almost as a matter of course, that the political level had to be authoritarian." 

But then "the arrival of the Industrial Revolution and of mass-produced firearms based on interchangeable parts lowered the cost of weapons at the same time that the general economic expansion was raising standards of living." The common man became an armed citizen, and "the authoritarian structure of political life began to crumble."

This has certainly made a noticeable difference in the world's power structures. Quigley hoped for "the invention of new weapons that will increase the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare so greatly that the employment of our present weapons of mass destruction will become futile" — leaving less political control in the hands of the Super Powers, and a more decentralized, libertarian world. "Power," wrote Louis L'amour, "is a breath on the wind and soon lost." Watching the Middle East unravel despite the US's awesome military might, it's fair to suggest that Quigley was somewhat prescient on that point.

Quigley saw a liberal civilization — one that cherished science, commerce, industry, and political freedom — as providing the best chance for human advancement.

Thanks to the Internet, exposure to liberal ideas is just a click away. Twenty years ago someone proposing a freer world could be shouted down. That's not so easy anymore. Of equal importance, the horrible nightmare created by authoritarian policies is laid bare for all to see. Perhaps that's why libertarianism is only growing in popularity.