Guns, Germs, and Steel

Intellects are the persons who could dig deep in an area and explore, gather data, experiment, analyze, repeat, and then draw some conclusions. If someone could follow such rigorous approach, we might be very confident with his conclusions which are always very inspiring. Undoubtedly, Guns, Germs and Steels belongs to this tiny group of master pieces in social science.

As curious as I am, I find it’s very hard to stop thinking how things become how they are, and then the why. Normally it’s very difficult to know the how part which are mostly in the history spectrum. And the why part is even more difficult, since there are always more than one theories over there, especially when it comes to social sciences, if they could even be called sciences. Therefore, to avoid the possible biases and alleviate the insufficiency of data, social scientists have to spend more time to gather the data, explore them, make propositions, and try to prove with new data. The whole process would better be based in a long period of time, not centries, but millions of years. As the time goes that far, the evidence will be very rare and vulnerable or even confusing, which might make the conclusion less convincing even when they are still reasonable.

I am sure Jared Diamond knew this very well, and devoted his time in the field instead of staying in the library to read only. His years in New Guinea were spent there interacting with natives and studying the environment until some pattern surfaced, and he then tried to turn such pattern to a theory, i.e guns, germs and steel to apply them to other cultures, and other territories. When the theory could hold in other situations, and he felt the theory was strong enough, the book was born.

The book is very informative and very nice to read. It is a very high level picture about the progress and advancement of human beings. What are the radical reasons behind our present world’s unbalanced progress and welfare? Why exists such wide discrepancy among different countries? Then it comes to the guns, germs and steels.

Guns

Surely it’s not just guns, but any tools or weapons which could make a big difference in wars, are potential to wipe out a race, a tribe or a country. And the old and underdeveloped culture will become impossible to survive unless it could adopt the new technology and adapt to the new emergent situations.

But sadly, a lot of cultures gradually diminished and became extinct finally.

Germs

This part is new to me. I can understand the role of technology in the conquering of different cultures, but germs even played a greater role. Germs are not that obvious, esp. when it was hundreds or thousands of years ago. Once the natives were infected by the new germ they were not immune, they would quickly die and couldn’t fight back. Over the course, the conquerors might become something god-like and the native would hide out, run away or surrender.

Throughout the history, the pandemics which were caused by germs are not uncommon, and they took the lives of millions of people. The covid-19 still looms large, and since the transportation is omnipresent and very accessible, the spread becomes so easy and so quick. The difference between this one and the ones during the conquering is that everyone is a victim, and it’s not for conquering any longer.

Steel

If weapons are for conquering and expanding territory, steel is technology to improve human life. It’s hard to imagine how life could be without electricity, mobile phone, vehicle, air conditioner, fridge, etc. The list could be very long. Once people enjoy the benefits of the technlogy, it could compensate the inventors and entrepreneurs with money and repute, which will lead to a positive feedback to the advancement of technology.

People live in a denser city while some remote places are deserted without modern facilities. And also the cost of living is not lower with the advancement of technlogy, but even gets higher, which makes the young couples less willing to have kids, and this will lead to a senior society and also a slower pace of technological advancement.

People are the core for a city, and for a country. The huge cost of raising kids, the lower enthusiasm towards having kids, and the dependency on population(esp. the young people) of human beings is a very pressing problem but it also seems to be an intractable one.

At the end, the author also mentioned the lesson we could learn from the history. Being open and interacting with other cultures are all good ways to keep competitive, and how to utilize the young curious and inventive minds is the key to build your competitive advantage.