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Very Good Condition! A little shelf wear. 2 sentences are highlighting in Chapter 1 - otherwise, clean pages. Tight binding. Ships directly from Amazon! Very Good Condition! A little shelf wear. 2 sentences are highlighting in Chapter 1 - otherwise, clean pages. Tight binding. Ships directly from Amazon! See less

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Andrew Bard Schmookler

The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution Paperback – December 23, 1994

by Andrew Bard Schmookler (Author)

4.6 15 ratings

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This is a new view of the role of power in social evolution. It shows how, as human societies evolved, intersocietal conflicts necessarily developed, and how humanity can choose peace over war.

"Goes far beyond our common folk knowledge about power." -- New York Times Book Review

The Parable of the Tribes provides a new way of analyzing the human condition. This panoramic work, which incorporates history, philosophy, anthropology, and psychoanalytic theory within its sweep, is troubling and difficult; nevertheless, it is surprisingly readable and, in the end, hopeful." -- Esquire

"In an age of intellectual timidity, Andrew Bard Schmookler's Parable of the Tribes is a work of immense scope and boldness. It makes a serious contribution to our understanding of war, peace, and civilization in a world spinning out of control." -- Daniel Yankelovitch

"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 choose peace?" From this basic premise, Andrew Bard Schmookler has built a towering work of intellectual and spiritual insight, a book that will shatter many preconceived notions about how civilization has developed and why human history has been so filled with torment. In this new edition, Schmookler shows how, with the end of the Cold War, we now have an unprecedented opportunity to solve the problem of power that has plagued civilization.

The Parable of the Tribes is a new vision of the story of humankind. It presents a radiant new synthesis of history, evolutionary biology, political theory, and psychology.

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Print length

428 pages
Language

English
Publisher

State University of New York Press
Publication date

December 23, 1994
Dimensions

6 x 0.97 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0791424200
ISBN-13

978-0791424209
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Mr. M. Fox
A must read
Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2018
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Everyone should read this book. It will change the way you view the world. I have a library in excess of 1000 volumes. This is one of the twenty most important I have read in my 70+ years

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11 people found this helpful

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Lawrence York
Intriguing Argument on Social Evolution
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2019
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Great book that thoroughly disects all facets of the human dilemma so we may recognize and fix it.

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Jeremy H.
Three Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2017
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Pretty badly damaged.

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tanka web
A long view perspective
Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2014
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This long view look at the past with grave implications for the future is both thorough and thoughtful. This book's conclusions are hard to dismiss. They should challenge us today, even though the book was written a while back.

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5 people found this helpful

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Robert J. Greenwell, Program Director, Ethical Society of St. Louis (bobkatg@prodigy.net)
Powerful analysis of the evolution of human civilization
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 1999
If I were to list the top ten books of the century, this book would be one of them. Why? Because it dares to answer a question that few others have attempted, a question that is fundamental and vital to our future. It is the question: "What determines the direction in which civilization evolves?" Or, "What explains the overall thrust of history?" Or, "Are we shaping our own destiny, and if not, what is?" Not only does Schmookler dare to address the question, but the answer he comes up with is equal to the dimensions of the task.
If you think that the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is adequate for explaining the history of civilization, this book is not for you. If you think that everything is made crystal clear by the Marxian analysis of the "material conditions" of life, this book is not for you. If you believe that spirit-beings elsewhere in the universe are guiding us toward some wonderful end, this book is not for you. But if you think big, and are ready for a magnificent, breathtaking, and sobering view of humanity's course, based on best-science research into prehistory and panoramic interdisciplinary insights, you will come to cherish this book. I, for one, am glad that it has a poetic title, The Parable of the Tribes, and not just an academic title such as its subtitle, The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, because the sweep of the book includes but encompasses more than straight intellectual analysis. It tells the human story, our story, with all the poignant, tragic, and hopeful implications.
The stroke of genius that powers this book is Schmookler's insight into the broader applicability of Darwin's categories of "diversity" and "selection." In effect, Schmookler has shown that these are categories from the discipline of logic. Darwin's genius was to take these purely logical categories and show how they could be applied to, and did apply to, the natural world, resulting in biological evolution. Schmookler's genius is to free these categories from their usual ties with biology, and to show us how they have operated in human history as the fundamental underlying forces shaping our destiny, for good or ill.
Just one of the many themes in this book is that there is a commonsense view that human creativity is what accounts for the diversity in variations of forms of civilization, and that human choice accounts for which of these variations get selected. Hence the idea of simple progress. But we live in a disenchanted era that knows better. Schmookler reminds us that "For a story of improvement, the history of civilization makes rather dismal reading, and as the culmination of ten thousand years of progress the twentieth century is deeply disappointing." (p. 7) Similarly, the "invisible hand" of the free market, where human choice is supposed to reign sovereign, has led to only pockets of prosperity in the world (granted that some are big pockets), and even that prosperity is itself rent with stress. What is it that is systematically distorting our cultures, our civilizations, in directions that we are not deliberately choosing? If we don't gain comprehension of it, how can we ever alter it toward selection of more humane, more intelligent, more loving, more fun variations?
The "parable" is that once some human tribe becomes habitually aggressive toward other tribes, all others are eventually forced to adopt the "ways of power." "Eventually" can mean a long time, but the systematic distortion is there. The ways of power seep into every aspect of human life, from relations between men and women to harsh upbringing of children to weapons development to forms of economic exchange. It is part of the wondrousness of this book to make your way through section after section, discovering how yet another broad area of human life is illuminated by the quiet or not-so-quiet struggle for power.
In the end, it is a noble vision that is offered by The Parable of the Tribes. It simultaneously engenders compassion for the human race (trapped in the struggle for power), and clears away the confusion and the obfuscation that is part of the problem. The ability to see the human race in its last ten-thousand-year development has only recently become possible, and Schmookler has made it actual. His book gives me hope that we humans can understand our own long history and begin to shape our own destiny for good.

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Hugh McTavish
Magnificent Book
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2013
I will not summarize the thesis, as others have done that well here. The Parable of the Tribes, along with Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, are the two books that have had the greatest influence on me. I second Mr. Greenwell's statement that this is one of the ten greatest books of the 20th century. I would put it on my list of one of the ten greatest books ever written by an American. If you have any interest in peace, war, or cultural and societal evolution, this is the first book you should read.

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5 people found this helpful

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Bert
Waiting for delivery of this book.
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2012
Waiting for delivery of this book. Andy, the author is running for the U.S. Senate representing the State of Virginia. Good Luck!
I like the reviews of the book and I met the author and like the man, a lot!

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Richard Reese (author of Understanding Sustainability)
Important book, but rough reading
Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2012
Once upon a time, I was on an internet mailing list that jabbered about "saving the world." Industrial civilization was hammering the planet. What should we do? Some advocated dropping out and creating self-sufficient eco-villages. Others thought that industrial civilization had to be smashed first, because nothing would be safe until then. A philosopher from Florida persistently asked: "How can we expect to stop them by emulating those that have been destroyed?" His question was not easy to dismiss, and it made the pacifists squirm.

Andrew Bard Schmookler's book, The Parable of the Tribes, takes a long hard look at the problem of power and exploitation. Schmookler believed that wild humans enjoyed lives of wholeness and freedom that modern folks can barely imagine. In the good old days, human societies were stable, because our development was guided by genetic evolution, a slow-moving process. Nature provided our sustenance, and we took only what we needed. We were not in control of the world, nature was. Humans were just one member of the great family, and nothing more.

Slowly, very slowly, over the course of many generations, cultures began to emerge. Gradually, cultures passed more and more knowledge from one generation to the next, which improved our skills at exploiting nature. Eventually, our growing cleverness led us to attempt an escape from the control of nature, and its limits -- an impossible goal in the long run, but we tried.

We moved away from the wild buffet, and began producing our own food, in abundant quantities. We cut down forests and replaced wild ecosystems with colonies of domesticated plants and animals. By doing this, we were able to temporarily extract far more energy from nature, and this moved us into the fast lane. The monstrosity that we were creating made us unstable, unpredictable, and dangerous.

Of course, more food always leads to more hungry mouths, and farming societies grew and grew. First, they expanded by swiping the lands of wild humans, and when they ran out of those lands, they had to make a choice. They could either limit their population, or they could conquer other farming societies. Well, the farmers were bloated with overconfidence. If they were powerful enough to escape from the limits of wild nature, then they were certainly powerful enough to swipe the lands of their lazy, stupid, sub-human neighbors. Fetch the war paint, lads!

In the struggle between growing societies, the process selected for power. Aggressive ruthless bullies were the most likely to come out on top. Eventually, this led to hierarchical society and civilization. Most humans were reduced to bondage, and legions of slaves built awesome monuments celebrating the gory glory of notorious bullies. Warfare became a popular pastime. For the first time, domination and control -- power -- was introduced into the world.

"Power" is a keyword in this book. It meant forcing your will against the will of another. Power provided the black magic juju for dancing to the beat of conquest and exploitation. It was a new form of energy on the planet. Wild people had no use for it, because they lived within nature, and all was well. Power was the mother of "civilization," another disgusting profanity.
Schmookler wrote that this struggle between societies was rooted in "anarchy" -- meaning a dangerous, uncontrollable, state of disorder. This confused me at first, because anarchy can also simply mean the absence of government. For almost all of human history, anarchy worked wonderfully well in isolated wild societies that were based on self-control, cooperation, sharing, and freedom. Wild societies were a normal functional component of the natural order; they had no need for rulers. Anarchy is not a four-letter word.

Our school systems teach a "commonsense" version of history that ignores almost everything that preceded civilization. It's a mythical story of progress, in which highly intelligent humans made continuous advancements by deliberate choice, bringing us to the techno-utopia of modern times. Schmookler hates his myth because, in reality, civilization has generally done a poor job of meeting human needs, except for the elites -- and it's been a huge disaster for ecosystems.

Schmookler offered a very different story, which he called the parable of the tribes. He thought that as civilizations grew, they began to bump into each other, leading to conflict. One day, tribe A massacred tribe B and -- shazaam! -- power was introduced into the world, like the rat-infested ship that delivered the Black Death to Europe in 1347. When one society in a region began to utilize power, stability came to an end, replaced by treacherous anarchy. At this point, it became impossible to choose a life of peace. The only way to survive with a bully in the neighborhood was to become a bully too -- only power can stop power.

The bottom line is that Schmookler foresees two possible outcomes for humankind: (1) mutual annihilation or (2) a global civilization that can unify humankind, and put an end to the struggle for power -- a just world order guided by reason and values. To stop the never-ending conflicts between civilizations, the solution is to create the mother of all civilizations. It's a surprising idea in a book that majors in tirelessly criticizing civilization from every conceivable angle.

"How can we expect to stop them by emulating those that have been destroyed?" Who is "them?" Would the mother of all civilizations be emulating Uruk, Babylon, and Timbuktu -- proud civilizations destroyed long ago?

Schmookler does not recommend solving our problems by violent revolution, because revolutions have a reliable habit of replacing old tyrants with new ones -- a bloody waste of energy. We're so far from home that simple strategies are not enough. Utopia is not just a revolution away. Healing will take generations, and the disease will leave permanent scars.

Years ago, before I became politically correct, I used to cite Reese's Law: "The <sphincters> always win." It was so frustrating that the savages with the spears almost never massacred the white dudes with the smallpox, artillery, and machine guns. The beautiful wild folks who lived sustainably, and treated the land with respect and reverence, always got stomped by ecocidal maniacs. Where was the justice? Why did they have to die running?

Well, Schmookler gives us a model that makes our predicament comprehensible, and that's what makes this book important. It delivers pieces missing from the great puzzle. Power just happened, by accident, and once it was born, nothing could stop it. So, humans aren't evil. There's no need to feel guilty about our ancestors' boo-boos. We've inherited problems that have been growing for thousands of years. It feels better to understand this, but it doesn't rinse away the bitter taste of tragedy and injustice.

His solution is a throwaway, because predicaments have no solutions (only problems can be solved). I think that there are many more than two possible outcomes. Mutual annihilation will remain a real risk. A benevolent global civilization is highly dubious on the grounds of human nature alone, but Peak Cheap Energy will render it impossible. Industrial civilization is in the beginning stages of collapse, and we are moving toward a future that is going to be local and muscle-powered. Current patterns of living and thinking will disintegrate. This will open the doors to many new possibilities, one of which is a return to sustainable living. As Schmookler says, "the future remains to be written."

Today's benediction comes from J. C. Smuts: "When I look at history, I am a pessimist... but when I look at prehistory, I am an optimist." Amen!

Richard Adrian Reese
Author of What Is Sustainable

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