Economist Writing Every Day

I’m going to explore a passage from The Dawn of Everything about whether humans reject Western civilization.

The introductory chapter of The Dawn of Everything is called “Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood.” The authors are idealists wrestling with big questions.

We can take [Steven] Pinker as our quintessential Hobbesian. (page 13)

For instance, if Pinker is correct, then any sane person who had to choose between (a) the violent chaos and abject poverty of the ‘tribal’ stage in human development and (b) the relative security and prosperity of Western civilization would not hesitate to leap for safety. (page 18)

Over the last several centuries, there have been numerous occasions when individuals found themselves in a position to make precisely this choice – and they almost never go the way Pinker would have predicted.

This book was published in 2021. To not deal with the overwhelming empirical fact of the enormous migration INTO “Western” nations seems like an inexcusable omission. People are risking their children’s lives in dangerous border crossings to try to get into the “the relative security and prosperity.” Some of that prosperity has been documented here at EWED. Jeremy Horpedahl is the first person that I know of who documented the incredible wealth of American Millennials back when it was controversial. Now all the outlets such as The Economist are making cover stories out of that fact.

One argument I can think of is that “Western civilization” has changed. It was less attractive during the time of Benjamin Franklin, but we’ve crossed a threshold. Material wealth has become so great that humans will give up “autonomy” to get it. Another argument is that people fleeing for the West are not running from “tribal” societies. Maybe so. But the authors don’t try very hard to distinguish between the West of Franklin’s time and modern Britain. Maybe they should, considering what they set out to do in the book. Their view of what constitutes “the West” feels static.

The authors state some evidence that young Europeans who integrated into Indian societies were given the choice to return to their families and some preferred to continue living as a native in the Americas. Also, importantly, adult natives who were given the choice to live as Westerns would often go back to the woods and reject “European society.”

A letter by Benjamin Franklin records that, “when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, … [they don’t want to] stay among the English… I remember to have heard, where the person was to be brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother… [and returned] to the Wilderness.”

This cuts against the idea that rich people have everything handed to them. Remaining rich is work. People who want to remain rich will find “some care necessary” to maintain their status and possessions. Who wants it? Have labor saving devices in the year 2024 rendered rich life attractive now in a way that it was not before? That isn’t something the authors address.

The outsiders taken in by Indian families said that they liked a level of freedom and how the natives cared for all members of the tribe (without glossing over the sometimes violent treatment of persons outside the tribe). Some Europeans achieved prominent positions in native society and became “chiefs themselves.” (pg 20).

Europeans left the big bad hierarchy to become *checks notes* chiefs? Chiefs of whom? What happened to the free love in the woods? Are we talking like “assistant to the regional manager” or manager?

What seems like a contradiction to me might have an explanation. If I give this the most generous interpretation that I can, I take this to mean that humans desire respect. Not everyone in Western nations feels respected or feels like they are part of a loving community. Mike and I have spent some of our time writing about the loneliness that plagues the rich world.

I would like an anthropologist to come into this Southern town where I live and figure out how it is that the children are so well-dressed? Why are there so many toddlers that look like Prince George around here? Who is cleaning and organizing their clothes at night? Who is putting their children in clothes that have pure white collars and why do those white clothes always look perfectly clean? I’d like my children to look like Prince George, but there is no one to make that happen. If it were to be… me… who was going to make that happen, then how many hours of toil per week would it take and how much money? Failing in that status race doesn’t particularly bother me, although I have noticed it. If someone told me that I’d have to put my whole family in starched white collars to be treated with respect, then yeah, I might be eyeing the forest tribes, too.