People, of course, have an awareness that moths do not. So while the moths may have unwittingly been transformed by the power of their predators, people have known that power is a problem in human affairs. If those moths had human intelligence, they would have sought ways of darkening themselves without waiting for accident to do the job. And, in fact, civilized peoples, seeing themselves caught up in a struggle they could not avoid, have sought to cloak themselves in the protective covering of adequate power. (No one should know this better than we who for more than a generation have been engaged, with horrified self-awareness, in an ever-escalating arms race.) Therefore, power has played a role, and an important one, in the very arena of human affairs even as it played a cumulatively decisive one through an external process of selection. Power has been but one human concern among many, however, and the parable of the tribes neither does nor needs to claim otherwise.
The parable of the tribes thus does not require that history be re-written. At any given time and place people were doing what they appeared to be doing with or without this new, social evolutionary perspective. The action of history looks the same through this vision, but suddenly visible is a subtle by-product of this action with long-term significance. The parable of the tribes illuminates not the pieces of history so much as the entire sweep of history. For it is in the overall trajectory of civilization that power has its reign.
Power versus Choice in Social Evolution
The parable of the tribes provides a perspective on social evolution quite different from the commonsense view. Even without rewriting history, the parable of the tribes puts it in a wholly new light.
The Question of Choice
The commonsense model emphasizes the role of free human choice: social evolution is directed by a benign process of selection in which people choose what they want from among the cultural alternatives. Viewed from the perspective of the parable of the tribes, human destiny is no longer governed by free human choice. At the heart
The parable of the tribes thus does not require that history be re-written. At any given time and place people were doing what they appeared to be doing with or without this new, social evolutionary perspective. The action of history looks the same through this vision, but suddenly visible is a subtle by-product of this action with long-term significance. The parable of the tribes illuminates not the pieces of history so much as the entire sweep of history. For it is in the overall trajectory of civilization that power has its reign.
Power versus Choice in Social Evolution
The parable of the tribes provides a perspective on social evolution quite different from the commonsense view. Even without rewriting history, the parable of the tribes puts it in a wholly new light.
The commonsense model emphasizes the role of free human choice: social evolution is directed by a benign process of selection in which people choose what they want from among the cultural alternatives. Viewed from the perspective of the parable of the tribes, human destiny is no longer governed by free human choice. At the heart
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