The polymath and Pulitzer Prizewinning author Jared Diamond has produced an enticing tome: “The World Until Yesterday.” He explains that “before 3400 BC there were no states anywhere, and in recent times there have still been areas beyond state control, operating under simpler traditional systems. The differences between those traditional societies and the state societies familiar to us are the subject of this book.” As a physiologist, ornithologist and ecologist, Diamond is at home in an impressive mix of scientific fields. Currently a professor of geography at UCLA, he ranges effortlessly through manifold topics that touch upon the question of human diversity, as well as what we hold in common.
What of traditional societies that still retain habits, mores, languages, skills and ways of being that have roots in the primal past? What of behaviors and attitudes that are culturally distinct from consumerist and materialistic culture? Diamond refers to modern societies as WEIRD: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratized. Do traditional peoples have important insights to convey to us, whose frenetic lives are awash in a flood of distractions and an overabundance of processed foods?
He has spent much time in the rugged terrain of New Guinea, where he has made the acquaintance of numerous tribal people. He states “in many basic ways we are not all the same: many of my New Guinea friends count differently (by visual mapping rather than by abstract numbers), select their wives or husbands differently, treat their parents and their children differently, view danger differently, and have a different concept of friendship. This confusing mixture of similarities and differences is part of what makes traditional societies fascinating to an outsider.”
Human existence is a blink in the measure of the cosmos. The industrial age and the contemporary phenomenon of rapidly evolving technologies are a blip in the spectrum of planetary time. Throughout prehistory and recorded history, most people have experienced life as hard and brutal. Tools were simple, social arrangements could be crude, hunting and gathering precarious. Little buffered a person from the raw ravages of nature. Food scarcity, ferocious animals or murderous threats from alien tribes made for challenges daily. Diamond offers many examples of these perils.
Today the destitution of billions of human beings residing in the undeveloped or Third World — and increasingly in the developed First World — cannot be denied. Many parts of the globe have witnessed the alarming rise of homeless and indigent citizens whom economies cannot accommodate. These penurious masses live in the shadows of a global economy powered by money and the kaleidoscopic pulse of high-tech communications. However peripheral, they are an integral part of modern society.
One photograph accompanying Diamond’s text is particularly striking. It shows a New Guinea Highlander taken in 1933. The sparsely clad man is weeping in sheer terror. For the first time, he has seen a European. It is a shattering experience. At that time few tribal people ventured far from their designated lands. They knew of other neighboring groups, but the sight of a white man was a horrific shock. It is a stark portrait of how stunning first contact between completely different cultures can be. According to Diamond: “The last people remaining ‘uncontacted’ today are a few remote groups in New Guinea and tropical South America, but by now those remaining groups at least know of the outside world’s existence, because they have seen airplanes flying overhead and have heard of outsiders from neighboring ‘contacted’ New Guinea groups.”
The traditional groups discussed in this book have varied approaches to child rearing, treatment of the elderly and conflict resolution. Some practices could edify the developed world while others would not. Diamond’s discussion of pervasive health disasters in modern societies due to the dietary profusion of salt and sugar is a strong argument for the salubrious effect of a more traditional cuisine. “Cocacolonization,” or the spread of cola, is global.
One result is the proliferation of diabetes and obesity: “The current explosion in diabetes’ prevalence is occurring especially in the Third World, where the epidemic is still in its early stages in India and China, the world’s two most populous countries. Formerly considered a disease of rich Europeans and North Americans, diabetes passed two milestones by the year 2010: more than half of the world’s diabetics are now Asians, and the two countries with the largest number of diabetics are now India and China.”
Diamond’s book is sprawling and compelling but not without its critics. While Diamond maintains that human beings are neither “intrinsically violent” nor “intrinsically cooperative,” he has come under withering critique for his depiction of traditional societies as being in a “virtually continuous” state of tribal warfare. He says the imposition of state societies on tribal peoples has been a good thing because this new arrangement allows tribal peoples to abandon habitual bellicosity.
Stephen Corry is the president of Survival International, an organization advocating the rights of indigenous people around the globe. Corry argues, “the Indonesian invasion and occupation [of West Papua New Guinea] has been responsible for a guessed 100,000 killings at least (no one will ever know the actual number), and where state sponsored torture can now be viewed on YouTube. … Diamond comes out unequivocally in favor of the same ‘pacification of the natives’ which was the cornerstone of European colonialism and world domination. Furthermore he echoes imperial propaganda by claiming tribes welcome it, according to him, ‘willingly abandoning their jungle lifestyle.’”
Diamond has countered this critique, arguing “tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace.” Survival International’s Corry is adamant: “The principal cause of the destruction of tribal peoples is the imposition of nation states. This does not save them, it kills them.” Read Diamond’s massive multifaceted book to make your own determination.