Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve

By Ian Morris

Main Points:

The book is based on the Princeton Tanner Lectures, where he tried to explain the wildly different ideas about "fairness". Where do ideas of fairness come from?
Two big theories on fairness

Primatologists have shown that if you give a monkey a small pebble, you can train the monkey to give you back the pebble. You can give them a reward- a green pepper. The primatologists (Dr. Brosnan) said that every so often one monkey will get a cherry tomato as opposed to a small green pepper. Some monkeys look at their pepper and assume that life is unfair and eat the pepper. Some monkeys refuse to play the game. Some monkeys get angry and throw it at the experimentalist.
Evolutionary built-in effect driven by genes: This brings about the concept of "monkey values" and how these values are passed on to the next generation depends on your genetics.

Hadza hunters will tell you that it is perfectly fair that men and women can pursue their lives. But it would be unfair if one person had more property than others.
Nyamezi farmers say that men and women are not completely equal, not fair that men and women can pursue their own sexual partners. But it is fair that some people are richer than others.
Humanists say that values are culturally specific, offering variability.

The book looks at the evolution of human values over 20,000. He focuses on certain values:

Foragers are saying people are the same, you should treat everyone the same.
Farmers are saying people are different, so you should treat people differently.
Fossil fuels have gone back to saying people are sort-of all the same.
Different energy sources reward different kinds of organizations of your society . These different organizations reward different sets of values. Ultimately the way we get energy from the world around us. The Measure of Civilization by Ian Morris

For example, hunter gatherers capture 5-10 kCal of energy per person per day. You need about 2 kCal/person/day at a minimum to keep your body and soul together. How do you get by on such a small amount of energy? They live in small, highly mobile societies with little organization- so violence is an effective way to solve problems. Very difficult to accumulate wealth and difficult to maintain- and cannot maintain hierarchy.
Farmers capture about 10-35 kCal/person/day. They need to build ships to move food around to deal with large populations, need aqueducts (Tunisia) to transport water. This creates coordination problems and farming societies have created every technique: forced labor. Most effective way to create hierarchical advantages. But the societies are much less violent.
Fossil Fuel societies consume 35 to 230 kCal/person/day. Vast amount of energy are used on a daily basis. The main question has been "how do we organize all this production and consumption?" The most effective outcome is to create societies with prosperous consumers that continue to buy goods and services. Have little tolerance for violence.

"While you can have too much inequality in society, you can have too little inequality."

Back in the 1970's when many of the world's countries were pushing down income inequality. Many of the OECD countries had Gini Coefficients below 0.25 - enormous economic failures, unemployment soaring, etc.
What will happen to China in the 21st century? Will China liberalize like the richer countries or will other countries turn more like China?

Listen to Professor Ian Morris' lecture on his book as part of the Stanford Alumni Association series!

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