Patterns in History with References

 

Tell me what are the major patterns in human history. Also, tell me what references you are using to determine these patterns.

There are several major patterns in human history that scholars have identified. These patterns often emerge from the study of social, economic, political, and technological factors over time. Some of the key patterns include:

1. Agricultural Revolution: The shift from hunter-gatherer societies to settled agricultural communities (around 10,000 BCE) was a turning point in human history. This led to the growth of permanent settlements, social stratification, and the development of early civilizations.

2. Rise and Fall of Empires: Throughout history, empires have risen to power, dominated regions, and eventually declined or collapsed. Examples include the Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, and the British Empire. These cycles can be attributed to various factors such as military conquest, internal strife, or economic decline.

3. Technological Revolutions: Innovations in technology have spurred major changes in human history. Key examples include the invention of the wheel, the development of writing, the printing press, the Industrial Revolution, and the Digital Revolution. These advances have shaped the way societies function, allowing for increased productivity, communication, and interconnectedness.

4. Globalization and Trade: Human history has seen an increasing trend of interconnectedness, through trade networks and cultural exchange. From ancient trade routes like the Silk Road to modern global trade networks, this pattern has played a crucial role in shaping the world economy and cultural diffusion.

5. Conflict and War: Throughout history, conflict and war have been persistent patterns, driven by competition for resources, power, territory, or ideological differences. Major conflicts like the World Wars, the Cold War, and ongoing regional conflicts reflect this pattern.

6. Social and Cultural Change: Human societies have undergone significant social and cultural changes over time, including the rise and fall of religions, artistic movements, and philosophies. These changes have shaped the course of human history, often in response to shifting political and economic contexts.

For determining these patterns, I draw from a vast array of historical sources, including but not limited to:

1. Books on world history, such as "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond, "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari, and "A World History" by William H. McNeill.
2. Academic research articles and historical journals that focus on specific periods, regions, or themes in human history.
3. Publicly available primary sources, such as historical texts, documents, and artifacts that provide direct evidence of past events and trends.
4. Online databases, like JSTOR and Project MUSE, which aggregate scholarly research in the fields of history, anthropology, and archaeology.

Please note that my knowledge is based on the information available up until September 2021, and there may be newer research and developments that I am not aware of.

Human Chemistry

 Each of us has traits / features / behaviors as individuals. However, those characteristics change when we are members of a group of any size. One can liken this to hydrogen and oxygen combining. Each has different characteristics alone versus in combination.

Another chemical reaction is the binding of a human to a belief system. The strength of that binding determines the "chemical" properties of the combination as different from the individual properties. One can see how often "believers" are actually behaving in contradiction to their faith.

Scapegoats, Girard, and structural frames

 Girard's notion of the origins of scapegoating:

Whereas the philosophers of the 18th century would have agreed that communal violence comes to an end due to a social contract, Girard believes that, paradoxically, the problem of violence is frequently solved with a lesser dose of violence. When mimetic rivalries accumulate, tensions grow ever greater. But, that tension eventually reaches a paroxysm. When violence is at the point of threatening the existence of the community, very frequently a bizarre psychosocial mechanism arises: communal violence is all of the sudden projected upon a single individual. Thus, people that were formerly struggling, now unite efforts against someone chosen as a scapegoat. Former enemies now become friends, as they communally participate in the execution of violence against a specified enemy.

One of the questions that arises is what are possible underlying structures of this phenomenon. One possibility is that mammalian predator neurologies generate  waste products that build up over time. There is a need to release these wastes. When a group has accumulated enough waste, it seeks a receptacle for that energy or a release mechanism. Scapegoat(s) are found as ways to release this energy.

One can also think of this process as a way to maintain stability and avoid change. If something external is the "cause" of the energy build up, then one doesn't have to deal with one's own part in the build up of this "waste product' / energy.

An example of this structure in the alpha and omega of the wolf pack. Human societies / civilizations also create their own omegas in terms of  a servant class, an ethnic group, an easily differentiated sub-group, ...

Reasoning Frames

 Watching a dialogue between Professor Gilbert Morris and Daniel Schmactenberger on "A History of Racial Conflict", came across the notion of "motivated reasoning". The question arises when is there not motivated reasoning? We have the illusion of being "objective". Since the majority of our thinking is unconscious, and we are biological beings who don't really understand their neurology, reasoning structures, motivations, limitations, ...., we categorically can not be objective in any reasonable sense. Hence, all our reasoning is motivated reasoning based on reasons we may or may not be aware of.

Next, there is the issue of the frame used for reasoning. The frame used in this dialogue was basically a "moral frame", e.g., how could persons like Jefferson, Washington profess such high morals, write the Bill of Rights and yet participate in slavery and oppress other human beings. One can tie oneself in knots trying to answer this dilemma. A more useful frame for these kinds of issues in particular, and other issues in general, is to use a "structural frame", i.e., what kinds of underlying structures create these phenomena. Part of our biology is to utilize and maximize asymmetry in our favor. And to feel special as primates or perhaps even more generally, as living beings with a perspective. We also have a reptilian heritage of identifying "blemishes" in others as a way to identify them and then use that rationalization to increase our asymmetry with them. The asymmetry is what allows us to create hierarchies - servants, slaves, worker bees, bosses, .... This creation and utilization of asymmetry is part of our biological heritage. All human societies do this, continue to do it, we are surrounded by this phenomena in all societies, past and present. It is also the basis of this existence, particles -> atoms -> molecules -> cells -> ..... Each aggregation increasing the asymmetry between itself and its components or "siblings".

The structural frame, imho, gives more of a chance of being intentional and have choice over this basic biological impulse that we have. The universe cares little, if at all, for our moral frames. It does respond to the congruency of our structural understanding to the actual causal structures of the phenomena in question.

Asymmetry as an Explanatory Structure

 We see many social phenomena that we have names for - mentorship, bias, parenting, corruption, leadership, racism, teaching, oppression, benevolence, bullying, nurturing, ... One can think of asymmetry as a basic underlying structure that allows / facilitates these social behaviors / phenomena. Then, we can model asymmetry and realize that each of these phenomena, rather being binary (present or not), is on a spectrum with more or less asymmetry. And how much does asymmetry contribute to the spectrum of behaviors? Experience with other models indicates that what looks like a very simple underlying structure can generate complex behaviors.

I recently finished a Digital Humanities online course through the Santa Fe Institute. One of the patterns that was mentioned was that parsing the digital corpora for insights led to rather binary analyses of the presence or absence of some attribute, e.g., bias.

My sense is that the field of digital humanities could benefit greatly by starting with a structural hypothesis and then searching the corpora to validate / invalidate that hypothesis. And my sense is that could lead to a much more nuanced, balanced, and causal understanding of the phenomena in question.

Take for example the phenomena of bullying. An hypothesis one could use was that there is an asymmetry between the two (or more) parties involved. This asymmetry could be physical size, social status, follower group size, psycho-social energy, ....  One can then model this asymmetry and see that there is a spectrum to the level of bullying. It is not just a binary yes / no situation. This could then lead to better remediation strategies on a case by case basis.

Note that is approach is based on a systems thinking model that notes the following structure of systems, and of social systems in particular. Events can be part of a pattern which is generated from a systemic structure which in terms of human systems is based on mental models which themselves are generated from a vision / perspective of who / what / where / how / when we are and are part of.

Below the meta crisis

 I have been listening to various conversations about the meta crises we are in. An interesting metaphor I heard from Jordan Hall was that we are on a train on tracks that are leading us straight for a waterfall / cliff. The tracks / train being our biologies, our cultures, and our environment. Other conversations have talked about the meta crises issue from an energy perspective, multi polar traps, biological / evolutionary drivers. What I have not yet heard about is a perspective from a basic time / space perspective.

• Time - each one of us has a certain tempo to our being. As a species, we operate in a certain range of frequencies as far as information processing, sense making, .... go. Our neo paleolithic time frequencies have not kept up with the pace of development of our technologies. In particular, our modern industrial and digital environment.
• Space - we are being of a certain size. We operate, sense reality at that scale. We are mostly sensorily unaware of the micro, meso scopic structures that make our reality possible. Similarly, we are most unaware of the large scale patterns that guide our existence - solar weather, galactic orbit, climate patterns, ...

Some simple thoughts on the weighty matter.

Non-linguistic thinking

 Noticed a pattern in the social sciences. The toolset of the humanities is language and the vocabulary that is available in language. However, reality is far more complex than any language can capture. So, there may be phenomena that are there but they are "invisible" because our languages do not have a word for them. A possible example are Lagrange points. We discovered this phenomenon through mathematics and physics. We have no direct experience of these points. So, if we think of a complex mathematics describing social phenomena, there may be all sorts of phenomena that these maths "show" that we may have no language vocabulary for. However, just as we have not name these points, new names will arise for these patterns.

So, can we begin to be more intentional in thinking beyond a language framework. Perhaps thinking in terms of forces at play, grouping of things, and emergence of features from those forces and groupings. And how scaling modifies the forces and characteristics of a system?