Video:The Evolution of Religions

Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA

You may have heard of Jared Diamond by his popular book, Guns Germs and Steel. Diamond received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1998 for the book, which I found to contain some major contradictions about 3/4’s of the way through.  Many of the things that I post, I do not necessarily agree with in their entirety; but, having the understanding that even a clock that has stopped is still correct twice a day, I include this and other informational resources.

Peace,
Madcap

A short critical review of Guns, Germs and Steel from a strange (yet correct with their analysis)  site titled NeoEugenics… scroll down for video.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond is one of those books by the racial egalitarians that tries to disprove theories that do not exist in the first place.  Diamond wants to show that Western dominance and technological advancement was not a matter of a higher intellect but was due to environmental and historical circumstances.  The problem is, I am not aware of any advocates who try to make the argument that because Western culture is more advanced, they are therefore the smartest. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Psychometricians have shown that East Asians are more intelligent than Caucasians, and that they do not lead us technologically (outside Japan) because of environmental or political/cultural differences.  So Diamond has written a book to disprove a theory that does not exist.  He is attacking a straw man.

What he is really doing however is attacking Western culture, for no other reason than he finds it distasteful because of his hatred for the existing power structure based on his egalitarian desire to reshape politics.  For this reason, this book is filled with a history of how plants and animals were domesticated, how germs became prevalent at the dawn of modern civilizations, and how advanced societies use weapons to suppress conquered peoples.  The detailed analysis of these issues tends to be too long, and will be of limited interest to most people.  But he does go to great lengths to show how only Eurasia could have developed in the way it did, and that other parts of the world just did not have the proper environment for modern development. I don’t take issue with his arguments. In many ways they are “just so” stories that I found credible but of little real interest when it comes to judging the worth of people, which he seems to be trying to do in this book.  But one must wonder how such a mundane book, with so much speculation and so little impact on the real world, managed to get the Pullitzer Prize? And of course the reason is simple. This is another book by a Marxist with a universalist agenda. It is the same genre as Gould’s , et al. It serves the political interests of those who review, publish and promote authors who are radical environmentalists. Full review

Video via usccollegecrcc