- 12 Apr 2018 17:46
#14905523
The conditions of their environment may be important also, it seems that advanced civilizations have tended to develop in climates that were either more temperate or arid, the similarities between the two being greater scarcity. Which goes back to the point that necessity due to resource management for long term orientation is due in part to it being unwise and dangerous to gratify immediate desires.
For instance, you are more unlikely to build a complicated defense fortress if you grew up on a peaceful jungle island in the south pacific, there would be just no need to do so.
Likewise, if you live in a communal tribe where the environment is warm, seasonally predictable, generally fertile, and having an abundance of wild game....there is no necessity in getting crazy about storing food long-term and inventing the means to do so.....so on the rare occasion there is a major famine or a warlord that prevents resource-access, these people experience adversity, but this adversity is due to their prior acclimating to environmental conditions that naturally raise time preferences. Which is my point, the adversity that causes people to innovate is scarcity. Central africa does not have natural scarcity like central Iraq does, and it is because of this fact that people in Africa end up suffering famines with more difficultly when they occur, because they are not accustomed to dealing with scarcity on a regular basis.
Indeed, this is the case with island life is it not? When people think of paradise (I am an exception in this), they think of a fruitful island with warm breezes where clothes are optional and you can walk three paces and grab a banana off of a tree for supper, a place where tireless labor and armed self-defense are neither necessary.
Under such conditions, civilizational development is impeded because long-term savings and strategies and scarcity-management are all discouraged not encouraged. There is then also a correlation between such instant-gratification type cultures and both fiscal irresponsibility and sexual immorality.
Another old saying is relevant here: "idleness is the devil's playground."
How true indeed. A people that cannot afford to be idle, are almost always a people that are more morally sound in their lifestyles (from a Christian perspective, of course).
"It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals... is incompatible with freedom."
- Patrick Henry
Albert wrote: As Pant pointed out a tribal African man has much more adversity and necessity, yet he is not as innovative as a civilized white cis man in America or Europe. How come? There must be more to it.
The conditions of their environment may be important also, it seems that advanced civilizations have tended to develop in climates that were either more temperate or arid, the similarities between the two being greater scarcity. Which goes back to the point that necessity due to resource management for long term orientation is due in part to it being unwise and dangerous to gratify immediate desires.
For instance, you are more unlikely to build a complicated defense fortress if you grew up on a peaceful jungle island in the south pacific, there would be just no need to do so.
Likewise, if you live in a communal tribe where the environment is warm, seasonally predictable, generally fertile, and having an abundance of wild game....there is no necessity in getting crazy about storing food long-term and inventing the means to do so.....so on the rare occasion there is a major famine or a warlord that prevents resource-access, these people experience adversity, but this adversity is due to their prior acclimating to environmental conditions that naturally raise time preferences. Which is my point, the adversity that causes people to innovate is scarcity. Central africa does not have natural scarcity like central Iraq does, and it is because of this fact that people in Africa end up suffering famines with more difficultly when they occur, because they are not accustomed to dealing with scarcity on a regular basis.
Indeed, this is the case with island life is it not? When people think of paradise (I am an exception in this), they think of a fruitful island with warm breezes where clothes are optional and you can walk three paces and grab a banana off of a tree for supper, a place where tireless labor and armed self-defense are neither necessary.
Under such conditions, civilizational development is impeded because long-term savings and strategies and scarcity-management are all discouraged not encouraged. There is then also a correlation between such instant-gratification type cultures and both fiscal irresponsibility and sexual immorality.
Another old saying is relevant here: "idleness is the devil's playground."
How true indeed. A people that cannot afford to be idle, are almost always a people that are more morally sound in their lifestyles (from a Christian perspective, of course).
"It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals... is incompatible with freedom."
- Patrick Henry