The Parable of the Tribes and Climate Change
by John M Repp
The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, 2nd edition (Albany, State University of New York, 1995) is a book written by Andrew Bard Schmookler. Here is the link to Schmookler’s latest website: https://abetterhumanstory.org/ and, in the next paragraph, a summary of his idea. In the book, he lays out a grand theory about human civilizations and how civilizations have been in power struggles since they first existed.
Here is a direct quote from the book which explains his idea in a nutshell: “Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one chooses peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed, and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.” The Parable of the Tribes, p. 21
This is the tragic history of civilization as we have known it for over six thousand years.
I want to put Schmookler’s idea in a longer time frame. Anthropologists and archaeologists have learned that there were many millennia before civilization, and there were different kinds of human societies; one was called a hunter-gather or foraging society.
There are very few, if any, hunter-gather bands left now, but in the 1950’s anthropologists were able to live with and study some bands in Africa. Richard Borshay Lee lived with the !Kung San between 1963 and 1973 in what is now Botswana. These bands lived in the Kalahari dessert and were able to escape subjugation and maintain their more ancient way of life until very recently.
Learning about how egalitarian hunter-gather societies worked was a profound experience for me. It gave me evidence that Homo sapiens can be a very different kind of people living in a different society.
Before the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, when the only kinds of human societies were foraging societies, there was no war. There has been no archaeological evidence of war older than 10,000 years ago. There is archaeological evidence of murder. It is assumed that men fought over women.
In a foraging society, there were usually about 150 people in the group called a band. A tribe was a group of bands who were related. Bands made their living by the men hunting and the women gathering, each group working collectively and distributing the food equally. They had much more leisure time than we have today; spending it sitting around a campfire talking to each other and engaging in dancing and singing. Close to the time civilization began, women started planting gardens as well as gathering, and from that, agriculture began to be practiced.
When they made their living by foraging, they had a very strong egalitarian ethic. For example, if a male wanted to exert power over his fellow tribal members, the other clan members would, step by step, gossip about him, joke about him, talk to him directly, greet him coldly, shun him, banish him, and finally, but rarely, assassinate him collectively with their spears.
The upbringing and education of children was done by the children imitating adults and learning by doing; no physical punishment was used. The only time babies and children were physically restrained was when they were very young and might tumble into the campfire.
The prevalent view or what Schmookler calls “the common-sense view” of the transition from hunter-gather society to civilization is considered progress. The Western Civilization textbooks college students are asked to read reflect that view.
Cut to the present: after World War II, the United Nations was organized to try to allow the “big powers” to meet together to prevent a third world war, after the failure of the League of Nations to stop the second world war. There is also the International Criminal Court (ICC) which recently has issued arrest warrants for two Israeli leaders of the genocide in the Middle East, but there is no world-wide compliance and enforcement. The U.S. has refused to join the ICC because of our own aggressive wars in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere.
So, if we look around today, we can ask: have we really made progress? The history of the twentieth century is not looking like progress. If we compare the fighting legions of the Roman empire to today’s long-range guns with shells, the dropping of two-thousand pound bombs from airplanes, nuclear weapons and now drones, it shows technological progress, but not moral progress.
An important question arises: is this a result of human nature? Schmookler emphatically says no! and I AGREE. It is the result of the parable of the tribes, that is, the struggle for power, between and inside civilizations.
And now today we face climate change. Denial comes in many forms. In the U.S., one of our two political parties and the new president Donald Trump refuses to consider it, even denies it, despite the ongoing massive fires in and near Los Angeles southern California in 2024-2025 and the radically changing weather patterns i.e. massive storms, flooding, and drought on all continents.
Indeed, there was plenty of climate change throughout the long evolution of Homo sapiens. Even since writing was developed about 3400 BC, we have a clear record of climate change. The Bible mentions the flood in Genesis which is a memory of the ice melting after the end of the last ice age and the consequent 400 foot rise of sea level.
What if the “big powers” still engaged in geo-political power struggles i.e. the USA, China and Russia, really started working together to solve the problem of climate change, instead of preparing for war, trying to influence people’s minds in cyberspace, and planting spies in each other’s governments? Indeed there has been a working together to solve the problem of climate change with COP (Council of Parties) meetings from 1995 to 2024, but it has not been able to make sufficient progress because the scale is not as large as the problem.
There is a larger truth that gives us hope. Traditionally hostile groups are able to overcome differences when they must share goals, as the famous social science experiment of 1954 at Robber’s Cave in Oklahoma empirically demonstrated. Mitigating climate change is the larger goal we need to pursue.
Must the world’s people make a peaceful revolution demanding the cooperation of all nations to save our species from the collapse of world civilization? If such cooperation were to really happen, would that derail the dynamic of the parable of the tribes? I think it would.
Scientists have identified so many ways we can mitigate climate change and rejuvenate nature and human society. (Welcome to Regeneration | Project Regeneration) Let the great powers work together using all the methods in https://drawdown.org/drawdown-roadmap. We cannot allow climate change to cause more disasters like wildfires, massive storms, droughts, floods, and unbearable heat.
| THE TWO FUTURES AWAITING US. ON THE LEFT: A WORLD AFTER A GREEN NEW DEAL, ON THE RIGHT: A WORLD AFTER “DRILL, BABY DRILL” & CLIMATE CHANGE |
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Jimi Hendrix
“You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one.” said John Lennon