“105. The third and
fourth principles result from the complexity of human societies. A change in
human behavior will affect the economy of a society and its physical
environment; the economy will affect the environment and vice versa, and the
changes in the economy and the environment will affect human behavior in
complex, unpredictable ways; and so forth. The network of causes and effects is
far too complex to be untangled and understood.”
Globalization makes
this point even more true. Anthropologists often found themselves in trouble in
the past because of their habit of exclusively concentrating on one aspect of
the society they were studying without considering its connection to everything
else. While on the one hand due to the complexity of human society their study
must be limited to specific areas (otherwise the results of the research wouldn’t
even fit in a book) on the other hand it’s common practice nowadays never to
consider each aspect of a society as separated from the others (not to mention
that politcs, economy, etc. are merely abstractions invented by scientists that
aren’t necessarily disjointed within societies themselves). A similar evolution
concerned the relationship between societies and the outside world: the network
of causes and effects is nowadays considered global whereas in the past each
society was analyzed pretty much on its own.
“ 106. FIFTH
PRINCIPLE. People do not consciously and rationally choose the form of their
society. Societies develop through processes of social evolution that are not
under rational human control.
107. The fifth principle is a consequence of
the other four.
108. To illustrate: By the first principle,
generally speaking an attempt at social reform either acts in the direction in
which the society is developing anyway (so that it merely accelerates a change
that would have occurred in any case) or else it has only a transitory effect,
so that the society soon slips back into its old groove. To make a lasting
change in the direction of development of any important aspect of a society,
reform is insufficient and revolution is required. (A revolution does not
necessarily involve an armed uprising or the overthrow of a government.) By the
second principle, a revolution never changes only one aspect of a society, it
changes the whole society; and by the third principle changes occur that were
never expected or desired by the revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when
revolutionaries or utopians set up a new kind of society, it never works out as
planned.
109. The American Revolution does not provide
a counterexample. The American “Revolution” was not a revolution in our sense
of the word, but a war of independence followed by a rather far-reaching
political reform. The Founding Fathers did not change the direction of
development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They only freed
the development of American society from the retarding effect of British rule.
Their political reform did not change any basic trend, but only pushed American
political culture along its natural direction of development. British society,
of which American society was an offshoot, had been moving for a long time in
the direction of representative democracy. And prior to the War of Independence the
Americans were already practicing a significant degree of representative
democracy in the colonial assemblies. The political system established by the
Constitution was modeled on the British system and on the colonial assemblies.
With major alteration, to be sure—there is no doubt that the Founding Fathers
took a very important step. But it was a step along the road that
English-speaking world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its colonies that were
populated predominantly by people of British descent ended up with systems of
representative democracy essentially similar to that of the United States.
If the Founding Fathers had lost their nerve and declined to sign the Declaration
of Independence,
our way of life today would not have been significantly different. Maybe we
would have had somewhat closer ties to Britain, and would have had a
Parliament and Prime Minister instead of a Congress and President. No big deal.
Thus the American Revolution provides not a counterexample to our principles
but a good illustration of them.
110. Still, one has to use common sense in
applying the principles. They are expressed in imprecise language that allows
latitude for interpretation, and exceptions to them can be found. So we present
these principles not as inviolable laws but as rules of thumb, or guides to
thinking, that may provide a partial antidote to naive ideas about the future
of society. The principles should be borne constantly in mind, and whenever one
reaches a conclusion that conflicts with them one should carefully reexamine
one’s thinking and retain the conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons
for doing so. “
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