the sword and the lie

Again, I am writing a series of posts called “A History of Truth and Prosperity”.  What do I mean my “truth” and “prosperity”?

Truth

By “truth” I mean the history of mankind’s search for knowledge. My theory is that human learning thrives in a condition of linguistic unity and  jurisdictional disunity.

Linguistic Unity

It’s obvious how a common language would help human learning.  If thinkers can collaborate, debate, discuss, and share freely with each other, they can together get at the truth much more quickly than a solitary sage might all by himself.

Jurisdictional Disunity

But for learning to truly thrive amongst a people of a common language, there must also be a fragmentation of power.  The temple and the state always tries to control thought and discourse in order to consolidate their power.  And controlled thought and discourse will always be slower than free thought and discourse at getting at the truth.  With fragmentation of power within a linguistic whole, unsanctioned thinkers can preserve their intellectual honesty by hopping from rival state to rival state.

Prosperity

Most historians are obsessed with rulers and those rulers’ wars.  As I’ve written before, What is more important to the mass of humanity is not so much which cast of thugs has managed to put them under a yoke in any given period: but what they themselves have managed to achieve in spite of them.  In my discussion of history you will still find the same cast of characters you might find in a history textbook: Alexander, Louis IV, Elizabeth I.  But rather than fixate on their characters or marvel at their personal success as they would have had us do (and as most historians faithfully do), I am going to discuss how their policies and actions have affected the livelihood of the people: which will be a mostly negative assessment.  And most importantly, I am going to explore how the people have contributed to their own prosperity: through innovation and hard work.Human prosperity is also dependent on linguistic unity and jurisdictional disunity.  But the latter seems much more important than the former.  Jurisdictional disunity is important because it leads to a larger number of economic actors freely competing and innovating: that is it permits markets. In my next post, I shall give an outline of the biggest economic and intellectual epochs in western history, and discuss how the developments that characterize each period seems to support my theory.

As announced in my last post, I am going to write a series of posts entitled “A History of Truth and Prosperity.”  I shall argue that the determining factors of human progress are power and language.  And the key aspect of both power and language is its level of unity.  The optimal condition for human progress, I shall argue, is disunity in power, and unity in language. 

My thinking regarding all things human is rooted in my understanding of history.  So to let my readers know where I’m coming from, I shall describe the major developments of western history as I understand it, with a focus on truth and prosperity: that is, the progress of human knowledge and human well-being. In my next post, I shall explain why I focus on those two particular threads of history.