Would reverting back to tribes or city-states not be sufficient to save us from ourselves?
I was having this conversation with a friend. Albert Einstein was known for saying the following…
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
By that, he was referring to the idea that atomic and nuclear power would complicate human development so much we would have it thrust back at us, unless we reached a point we could manifest a cycle. And frankly, especially with current events, I’d believe him over Oppenheimer, that movie was just modern political fuel (people might also argue that the constant act of trying to make war obsolete through more powerful weapons ignores the fact that our very goal is to learn from history).
I get a few takeaways from this, one of these being that progress, people foresee (or think they foresee), will turn out to be a merely forward thing, where we can only get better at inventing, which means better tech, which means the ability to improve how we destroy, and another being that nation states, themselves having been a can of worms on their own when tribes contemplated no longer being tribes, will be targeting other nation-states, but that tribes, being nomadic and not as technologically in-tune, would have less incentive to be struck down by a nuke, as would city-states to a lesser degree due to the second thing and/or the fact that everyone existing in the form of city-states might make people more careful. I personally am intrigued by both ideas albeit particularly the city-state one, as it would allow for a larger pool of identity.
My friend, however, says that people who hold this view are assuming all the factors they see are all the factors that exist, and that there are factors unforeseen (by adherents) that would have no reason to be seen by most people talking about this that would amount to unexpected developments that would render a return to tribalism (or city-states) to be in vain. Bringing the matter here as it comes to a draw, being someone who questions whether they’re assuming all the natural factors can be inferred, I’d like to ask you, would you say yay or nay to the idea of reverting to tribes, and/or yay or nay to the idea of reverting to city-states (if we consider them separate ideas)?
Add comment