The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution

Why has civilization developed the way it has? Many of us have assumed that human beings have freely chosen the way that civilization will evolve and that social evolution has consequently been a story of improvement and progress. But if that is so, why has the course of human history been so tormented? Why have the enormous changes that civilization has wrought in human life over the last ten millenia not been better designed to meet human needs? And why is the world so beset by alienation, tyranny, and destruction? The parable of the tribes is a theory of social evolution that offers answers in these and myriad related questions. By looking at human destiny within the broader contest of the story of life on earth, Andrew Bard Schmookler provides a unique, often unsettling perspective on the dilemma of the civilized animal. The parable of the tribes explains that as people stepped across the threshold of civilization, they stumbled into a chaos that had never existed before. When human beings became the first creatures to invent their own way of life, their societies appeared to became the first creatures to invent their own way of life, their societies appeared to become free to develop as people might wish. But what may be freedom for any single society adds up to anarchy in the interacting system of societies. In this anarchy - unprecedented in the evolution of living systems - civilized societies were condemned to engage in a struggle for power. Among the cultural possibilities human creation developed, only the ways of power could survive and spread. and the earth became a place where no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. Schmookler's theory about the role of the selection for power in social evolution is compelling in its logic and far reaching in its ramifications, By diagnosing the ills of civilization, the parable of the tribes clarifies the challenges that civilized people face.

Andrew Bard Schmookler is the author of a number of books, including Out of Weakness: Healing the Wounds That Drive Us to War; Sowings and Reapings: The Cycling of Good and Evil in the Human System; Fool's Gold: The Fate of Values in a World of Goods; and The Illusion of Choice: How the Market Economy Shapes Our Destiny. His cultural and political commentaries appear frequently in newspapers, magazines, and journals and on the radio. The original edition of The Parable of the Tribes was winner of the 1984 Erik Erikson Prize.