Smile and optimism gone bill11/21/2023 ![]() Examples of discrete dynamical systems include populations of bacteria or human beings that evolve constrained by things such as food supply or susceptibility to disease. “I was an unusual economist in the sense that I always had sort of a deep interest in the mathematics of discrete dynamical systems,” he tells me. ![]() What sets him apart, perhaps, is a grounding in numbers. Surprisingly, given the circumstances we find ourselves in, the book is highly persuasive: Galor builds his case meticulously, always testing his assumptions against the evidence, and without the sense of agenda-pushing that accompanies other boosterish thinkers – the Steven Pinkers or Francis Fukuyamas of this world. Even pandemics and wars, horrific as they are for the millions caught up in them, “cannot divert the journey of humanity from its long-term path”. The extraordinary increases in standards of living, huge falls in child mortality, incredible gains in knowledge and technology – these are the products of inexorable forces that are not going anywhere, Galor argues, and will only augment as time goes on. If you need an evidence-based antidote to doomscrolling, here it is. The Journey of Humanity is the culmination of Galor’s career, the recasting of an earlier work, a maths-and-data-heavy book called Unified Growth Theory, in digestible form.Īnd while Sapiens ends on an equivocal note, warning that present-day civilisation teeters between the singularity and armageddon, the signal characteristic of The Journey of Humanity is its optimism. Sapiens was first published when Harari was a young professor, based on a series of lectures to undergraduates. But the similarities may be quite superficial. So the link to earlier stages of development is very much part of my upbringing in Jerusalem.” The Journey of Humanity is certainly being pitched, at least in terms of impact, as another Sapiens – translation rights have already been sold in 27 languages. You see the Temple Mount that was there 3,000 years earlier. “If you’re born in a place that is incredibly rich in history, you understand that you’re part of a long, long lineage. There will be inevitable comparisons with Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, not least because this too is a work of “macrohistory” and Galor is also from Israel, though he has taught at Brown University in the US for the past 30 years. The Journey of Humanity is being pitched as another Sapiens – but its similarities to Harari’s book may be superficial It takes in population change, the climate crisis and global inequality. In just over 240 pages it covers our migration out of Africa, the development of agriculture, the Industrial Revolution and the phenomenal growth of the past two centuries. Galor has been interested in a lot more besides his book, The Journey of Humanity, stretches from the emergence of Homo sapiens to the present day, and has a lot to say about the future, too. This fosters a longer-term outlook.) Differences in gender equality around the world have their roots in whether land required a plough to cultivate – needing male strength, and relegating women to domestic tasks – or hoes and rakes, which could be used by both sexes. (Where high-yield species such as barley and rice thrive, it pays to sacrifice the immediate gains of hunting by giving over some of your territory to farming. Whether or not you have a “future-oriented mindset” – in other words, how much money you save and how likely you are to invest in your education – can, he argues, be partly traced to what kinds of crops grew well in your ancestral homelands. ![]() He believes they reverberate across millennia and even seep into what we might think of as our personalities. The influence of the “initial conditions” that shape societies’ development is what Oded Galor has been interested in for the past 40 years. A place where wheat grows favours the entrepreneur a place where rice grows favours the bureaucrat. Rice is a different affair: it requires extensive irrigation, which means cooperation across parcels of land, even centralised planning. You see, it’s fairly straightforward for a lone farmer to sow wheat in soil and live off the harvest. Why is the Anglo-Saxon world so individualistic, and why has China leaned towards collectivism? Was it Adam Smith, or the Bill of Rights communism and Mao? According to at least one economist, there might be an altogether more surprising explanation: the difference between wheat and rice.
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