More on the same: Matters of Scale -or- Do Ideas Have Consequences
Jordan 179 remarks
What Wright was saying was that the appearance of specific talented men was more important than environment. Wright's objection is even true -- when you look at the smaller scales of space and time. Diamond, IMO, is only correct regarding the millennial scales.
My argument is that expanding the scale from centurion to millennial does not change the basic human dynamic. Environment is one factor. Human action is another factor, and, as far as I can tell, a greater factor. Ideas are the deciding factor, and environment only rarely overwhelms the human factor. If an historian wants to argue that civilization could not develop in the arctic, he will hear no dispute from me: I do not care how smart the Northern Siberians are or the Southern Patagonians, they are not destined to be the cradle of civilization.
But once someone starts telling me that only in the dry land of Egypt can pyramids be built, or the wet jungle of Mexico, or the domestication of the horse was the crucial factor that made the American Indians submit to the Spaniards but not to the Vikings (whose ancestors also, by the way, domesticated the horse), the argument is unconvincing.
The argument does not become more convincing if taken to a larger scale, and talking about
continents and millenniums rather than nations and centuries.Even as one man can influence the men of his city during his life, just so his city, shaped by his ideas, can influence the works of their nation through that city's time of greatness, and just in this same way a nation can influence the fate of countries and continents during that nation's time of greatness, so that, ultimately, it is the words and thoughts of one man who shapes of character of continents and subcontinents.
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