How To Understand the Evolution of Human Societies:

1
How To Understand the Evolution of Human
Societies The Difficult Question of Progress
2

• In the first lecture, the following has been
  said
• Evolution is the accumulation of experience and
  the inscription of this experience into ordered
  systems
• Experience is accumulated through transmission
  and innovation
• Systems that accumulate more experience obtain an
  advantage over those that accumulate less
• Competition among alternative systems helps more
  advantageous systems replace less advantageous
  ones

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Unquestioned Parts of Progress
The latter seems to be true insofar as their can
be no doubt that human societies not only
survived, but have grown and extended their
habitat to almost everywhere. Moreover, in the
course of history human societies definitely made
tremen- dous technological progress, allowing
them an increasing mastery of their environment
and opening up ever new fields of creative,
artistic and intellec- tual human
achievements. In addition, human societies
increased their capacities of knowledge
accu- mulation and transmission, improving their
possibilities of collective learning on a global
scale. In the age of global communication flows,
experiences of one society are no longer
exclusive of this society but shared all over the
globe. This widens the pool of accumulated human
experiences, making it inter-cultural.
4
The Confusing Puzzle
Against this background, it is a puzzling feature
that the evolution of human societies gave only
very recently a selective advantage to more
freely organized societies (i.e., democracies)
while at least until the IR it is impossible to
describe the evolution of societies in terms of
HDif HD is understood as increasing human choice
for the broader masses of ordinary people. This
points to a striking directional change, or
breakthrough, in human history that is linked
with the IR. Until the IR, HD was strictly
limited to the thin privileged classes or elites,
whereas the human condition did not improve for
the bulk of the population. The selective
advantage was on the side of coercive,
hierarchical and anti-democratic systems. But
today the selective advantage seems clearly to be
on the side of the systems that offer their
people more power as voters and consumers
that Is, liberal democracies. Most important
lesson there is no one-to-one relationship
between technological advance and Human
Development!
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Adapted from Nolan Lenski (1998384).
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The Historically Recent Anthropocentric Trend
linked with HD
Although to vastly different degrees, in general
human conditions tend to improve Physical
quality of life and life expectancy have been and
are increasing to unprecedented levels Education
levels, technical household equipment and access
to information are increasing People become
increasingly selective, choosy and volatile in
their partner selection, sexual practices,
religious orientations, professional careers
(cross-careers), consumer patterns and voting
behavior Peoples values become increasingly
anthropocentric insofar as more emphasis is
placed on gender equality, the rights of gays
and lesbians, animal rights, and the rights of
children Similarly, there is increasing
intolerance of technological and environmental
risks that run counter human dignity and personal
integrity Uncritical acceptance of authority
roles is declining in almost all spheres of life,
such as parent-child relations, employer-employee
relations and politicians-citizens
relations Likewise, judicial as well as
linguistic developments underline this
anthropocentric trend - human rights have been
on the rise on a global scale - there is a
proliferation of watchdog and guardianship
institutions monitoring fair elections, human
rights, corruption, public money waste - court
decisions tend to widen the realm of personal
integrity and to increase consumer power against
producers - security regulations against risk
technologies as well as data protection
regulations that protect the individual are
expanding - in the use of language,
discriminating expressions such as cripples or
negroes which have been common in earlier
times are fading, establishing an increasing body
of political correctness language - issue
voting rights and the use of referenda and other
direct democratic procedures are clearly growing
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Dark Sides of Progress in HD
Progress in these aspects of HD is still
extremely unequal. Some parts of the world, in
particular in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central
Asia do hardly profit from these trends and even
experience a degradation of their general human
conditions. Some hope the UNs Millenium Goals
http//www.undp.org/mdg/ The societies that
proceed in HD largely externalise the ecological
costs of this progress. If they proceed as they
do, they will be forced by ecological disasters
to internalise these costs again. This may, once
again in history, impose new constraints on human
choice, such as an ecological dictatorship. The
question is not if ecological costs will be
internalized but how through force or
insight! In order to avoid the coercive way
(which would be a backlash in HD), the
sustainability issue must obtain top priority on
our agenda. Dilemma the only way to reach
sustainable HD is to promote what endangers HD,
namely technological progress such that less
input of depletable resources is needed to
produce a certain output of goods and services.
8
Infant Mortality per 1,000 Life Births, late
1990s (Source IFs)
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
below 33 deaths, 34-62, 63-92, 93-121, 122-150,
above 150.
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Life Expectancy in Years, late 1990s (Source IFs)
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
below 45 years, 46-52, 53-59, 60-66, 67-73, above
73 years
10
Literacy Rate as Per Cent of Adults, late 1990s
(Source IFs)
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
below 28, 29-42, 43-57, 58-71, 72-85, above
86
11
Per Capita GDP in PPP, late 1990s (Source IFs)
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) Total value of
goods and services produced and sold in a
country.
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
from less than 2,350 US- to more than 32,260
US- (p.a.) in intervals of about 2,140.
12
Income Share of Poorest 20 Percent as Per Cent of
GDP, late 1990s (Source IFs)
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
from less than 2.6 to above 11.3.
13
Per Capita GDP in PPP 1960 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
14
Per Capita GDP in PPP 1965 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
15
Per Capita GDP in PPP 1970 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
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Per Capita GDP in PPP 1975 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
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Per Capita GDP in PPP 1980 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
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Per Capita GDP in PPP 1985 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
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Per Capita GDP in PPP 1990 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
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Per Capita GDP in PPP 1995 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
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Per Capita GDP in PPP 1998 in constant 1998 US-
(Source IFs)
22
Tolerance of Homosexuality mid-late 1990s
(Source WVS III)
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
increasing tolerance on a scale from 1
(homosexuality never justifiable) to 10
(homosexuality always justifiable).
23
Emphasis on Emancipative Values mid-late 1990s
(Source WVS III)
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
increasing emphasis on emancipative values.
24
Scope of Freedom Rights late 1990s (Source FH)
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
decreasing scope of freedom rights.
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Scope of Freedom Rights in 1972 (Source FH)
Categories along increasing darkness of colour
decreasing scope of freedom rights.