[8] Many of our comments about Diamond might also be applied to the kinds of explanations sociobiologists offer (and E.O. Wilson, perhaps the most distinguished of the sociobiologists, writes a most laudatory blurb to Diamond’s book): these are explanations which account for the present and (although sociobiologists often deny this) the future in terms of fixed and still active — ultimate — causes. In effect, sociobiologists argue that it is in the genetic nature of things for human beings (like all other life forms) to maximize their genetic fitness, to prevail by passing on as many of their genes as possible to as many people as possible. To use a particularly egregious example — one which we do not claim Diamond accepts — some sociobiologists account for rape as one of three possible “tactics” available for the passing on of genes, the other two being the cooperative bonding of marriage and the manipulative courtship of seduction. As the biologist Fausto-Sterling elaborates in her criticism of this argument, “Plainly put, all men have the potential to rape, and may be expected to do so if they can get away with it” (1985: 193). She continues with a discussion of the problem of distinguishing between ultimate and proximate causes:

“These authors do not argue that men consciously think through the possible genetic advantages of rape. Rather, they view this non-conscious calculation as an “ultimate cause,” one that originated in our evolutionary history. Rape, they acknowledge quite freely, may have “proximate causes” such as aggression, the desire to humiliate, or sexual gratification — just as many feminists have argued. But those proximate causes, say [certain sociobiologists] represent evolution’s way of carrying out its ultimate desire of maximizing genetic fitness …. The use of the ultimate-proximate distinction is clever, because it is totally unassailable. Any motivation for rape, regardless of how little it has to do with reproduction, can still be explained on an evolutionary basis by arguing that it is the proximate effecter of the ultimate genetic cause!” (1985: 193-194).

Such virtual unassailability makes poor science (as many biologists show [Gould (1980), Bleier (1985), and Fausto-Sterling, (1985)]). However, such science also makes effective ideology by providing readily convincing justifications of the status quo. (This latter point is particularly well articulated by Sahlins [1976].)

It goes something like this: Suppose you have a whole lot of cultures, and geography gives some of them the chance to develop a technology that trumps the rest. Then if there are *enough* cultures in that circumstance, one of them will inevitably stumble onto that technology, and they will dominate everybody else to the point it doesn’t really matter what they were doing before they got dominated. There’s no guarantee which culture does it, but once any of them do it, the old systems are plowed under. It only takes one.

Expanding the point as far as it can possibly go, he then points out that eurasia had the largest number of cultures in a position to do that, and those cultures collectively also had a large stock of biological species they could use (for whatever purposes they found to use them). So it’s plausible that the largest continent might be the first to develop the technology and culture to conquer the rest.

This is preciesly the sociobiology stock argument, with a minor modification. Each culture varies over time. Cultures do not have to reproduce and create new cultures that are mostly similar but have some partly-heritable differences. That’s the first place it veers fro, socilkbiology. Cultures compete for dominance and the more successful dominate the less-successful. Since he’s dealing with cultural domination he doesn’t need evolutionarily stable strategies, it’s enough for a strategy to work when it works. With so few cultures competing he can ignore equilibrium conditions among them. That’s the second difference.

He doesn’t argue that each culture is determined. Just, if there’s a technology and a mind-set available for taking slaves, your culture can develop that technology and take slaves, or it can develop methods to avoid being taken slave, or it can become a culture of slaves. If you don’t modernise you become irrelevant.

The people who want to believe this, also want to believe that they’re hardheaded realists who spit at the argument that we shouldn’t say true things just because they’re morally bad. So arguing that Diamond is evil for making the argument or that his readers are evil for wanting to believe it, will not make any headway with them.

When I think about making an argument they can understand, think of the chaos theory meme. Diamond thinks that it’s determined by geography, because geography makes some cultural choices trump all others. But what if minor details among those choices have giant effects? As I heard it, the mongols were about to conquer all of western europe when they decided to abandon the attack and go home to attend a funeral. If that one death had been put off a couple of years, how different would european history be? How many other minor details have had giant effects? How could we even tell? Diamond’s book is a collection of JustSo stories strung together. He assumes his conclusion.

The very idea that some things trump others, implies that the details matter while the trumping is going on.

So, Cortez lost a big battle to the aztecs in 1520, but at least one of the casualties left behind was dying of smallpox and the resulting smallpox epidemic pretty much negated the defeat. If Cortez himself had died of smallpox…. Could the aztecs have recovered and built a defense? No, not this time, they’d have gotten smallpox a bit later and died off anyway.

So OK, maybe some of the things Diamond thinks are trumps really are trumps. But consider, the smallpox was supposed to come from an african. And it was africans who introduced malaria and yellow fever, neither of which the europeans were much resistant to. I guess it goes every which way.

On my own visits to Africa, I’ve been struck by how harmoniously ethnic groups live together in many countries—far better than they do in many other parts of the globe. Tensions arise in Africa, as they do elsewhere, when people see no other way out of poverty except to fight their neighbors for dwindling resources.

Sheesh, talk about Hobbesian… Or perhaps we should say “Malthusian”…

However, what determines these historically and culturally located ideas? Are they freely chosen? Or determined by the structures of society, as Foucault maintained? Or is there some other cause? This is important, because you don’t like the ideas the world that are running much of the world today, but if you want to replace them, you have to know what is causing them.

Also, you make mercantilism and capitalism the cause of war and imperialism, which seems to imply the solution is socialism. Is this correct? What about the various critiques of socialism as not workable, such as Hayek’s? If you want to persuade people to help to change the world (and I am assuming that is your underlying purpose), you need to explain where you want to go, why you think it is possible to get there, and what makes you think it would actually work well over the long term.

The only thing I’d bracket and put aside is the question of absolution that comes up at the end of this post. That’s where I think we get again into some kind of contention, but I want to think through it a bit. As a tentative stab at the matter, I think the issue may concern the ways in which agency and contingency are associated in this line of argument, and the particular kinds of moral weighting that follows.