Why the West Rules - For Now | Ian Morris

A Malaysian lawyer told a British journalist: "I am wearing your clothes, I speak your language, I watch your films, and today is whatever date it is because you say so."
Do chaps or maps drive history? Human brilliance and folly, or geography? Or maybe genes, or culture? Ian Morris goes a level deeper than Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" to determine why the standards of Europe and North America now prevail in the world when it was the East that dominated for the 1,200 years between 550 and 1750 CE. Why did that happen, and what will happen next?
Ian Morris is an archaeologist and professor of classics and history at Stanford. His splendid book is "Why the West Rules - For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future."
"Why the West Rules - For Now" was given on April 13, 02011 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:
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[@mikhailfranco]

Long Now needs to get the word out there. These talks are excellent and more people need to hear them.

[@ReturnOfTheJ.D.]

Tens of millions of Asians moving into Russia - I doubt that's a problem for anyone. But it's hard to live there - much colder than South Asia.

[@ten_tego_teges]

59:53 Well, it's 2022 and we aren't even close to mimicking human brains in silico. We don't even have AI with comparable competency to humans outside of fairly narrow tasks...

[@TacticusPrime]

The only theories that actual historians recognize are short term theories. When you are an actual historian, not an archaeologist out of his depth, you understand how contingent all events really are. There are no answers to "great why" questions, despite how unhappy that makes our monkey brains. His book does a decent job describing "development" in different regions of the world and over the centuries but is totally unable to answer the "great why" question as well. All of history is an accident, so it's no surprise that Western development of the industry and subsequent 2 centuries of dominance was also an accident.

[@rayraygoreng6264]

If Genghis Khan's son Ogodie didn't die in 1241, the Mongols would have swept through Europe.

[@ten_tego_teges]

That's a pretty weak ending to an otherwise fascinating talk. Mr Morris basically says it'll be different in ways we cannot imagine, which is honestly a cop out. In a bid not to become the next Fukuyama he forfeits any attempt at narrowing the future besides pointing out the, rather obvious by now, "east will overtake the west".

[@ballerbalgruuf]

Not even 4 minutes in and I have one major issue with something this second speaker says: People will kill one another over anything, doesn't make historical materialism any less true. Besides, saying everything is dependent on geography is basically just historical materialism rephrased and from a slightly different PoV. Our conditions shape our consciousness. This was true when Marx said it, and it's true now that Morris is saying it. Morris may not be discussing Class, but it doesn't really seem like he's disagreeing with Marx; It's on top of our geography that class conflict occurs. These do not seem mutually exclusive to me. Honestly! 'Marx was bad because people died' is such a fucking shitty take. No actual debunking of his ideas, just throwing it away because people were killed. So we should throw away all religions, probably all of science, and whatever else? JFC I would expect better.

[@daviddean707]

Doesn't putting words into the mouths of speakers sidestep the issue that he was paid to say it for the reason that he is really an expert and that because of his expertise people want his input?

[@chiefrabbi6735]

Allah hu Akbar

[@autodidact537]

Just another self-hating western intellectual. Ho-hum.

[@babyfactory587]

Ignorance is bliss is it not?

[@babyfactory587]

His whole lecture is against exactly this..