It may very well turn out that the travails of the last few years have been a blip on the radar, a last reactionary gasp of the old order, and Fukuyama will get the last laugh in the end. A tenet of the modern pro-capitalism worldview is that markets and private enterprise will inevitably lead to democracy. China has obviously been investing a lot into disproving this thesis in recent years, provoking plenty of alarmed commentary.
I think the Chinese model can be very effective at large national prestige projects like a mission to Mars. Here the ability to stick to a consistent plan for decades if need be gives China a huge advantage over a country like the United States, which switches directions radically every four or eight years as administrations come and go.
But can the Chinese model yield breakthrough innovations for the consumer economy that come completely out of left field, like the iPhone and iPad, Facebook, the personal computer, or the consumer-focused Internet? Kevin R McHugh. The AK is probably the best example of central planning producing a product both novel and globally successful. Might I just take a moment to congratulate you on actually reading it yourself, rather than projecting your own beliefs onto it as so many do.
Also worth noting is that Reagan turned out to be one of the more successful Presidents when it came to negotiating with the Soviet Union. He was certainly better at it than his immediate predecessor. Dan Quayle! Really looking forward to the rest of the series now. One thing I did notice is that you may be guilty in your article of using another of those maybe soon almost forgotten punching bags.
We all, I presume know who and what you are referring to now, but in 20 years time? Civilization is rather explicit about its optimistic view of progress. The broadest description of how history works can be found on page 93 of the manual. Its last paragraph reads:.
We can examine the progress of human societies as a series of changes and adjustments brought about by the never-ending search for improvement.
The result of this dynamic process has been ever-expanding human populations, a generally improved standard of living, and a greater understanding of the world around us.
This if followed by a highly condensed history of scientific progress and culminates in another sweeping statement on page Although at various times and places this advance has been halted, or even went backwards, somewhere in the world progress continued. A more detailed examination of history can better explain why the process speeded up or slowed down, why certain civilizations advanced rapidly for a time and then declined.
But it seems clear that the acquisition of knowledge was the major dynamic of force of history. There is no suggestion at all that any given civilization including Western civilization will join and benefit from progress. There is also no suggestion that any given advance has no downsides. In fact, one of the key claim of this view of progress is that every new advance creates new problems: More than anything else, it is the need for solutions to those problems that keeps the search for knowledge going.
All of the ancient and some of the medieval wonders can lose their effects through a new civilization advance. The end goal of most technology is more power, whether through larger populations, more industrial production, or better military units. The best way to keep people happy was building the Wonders of the World that make people happy or at least content , but only one civilization can build those.
Great points. As always Jimmy, great article. Your style and analysis keep becoming more refined with practice. This also shows in the quality of the comments, which also keep getting more interesting and thoughtful. His Foundation saga deals expressly with the development of human civilization. A fantastic read. Your site overall has been giving me a lot of really enjoyable deep dives lately, but this one is particularly useful and sorely needed. See e. A game really based on Hegel would have only let the non-European civilizations be NPCs; thankfully Meier and Shelley avoided that pitfall at least!
Buck-Morss on Hegel and Haiti is also worth a look-see. This series will rather look at the game of Civilization and real civilization through different thematic lenses from a bit higher altitude. And I may still have much more to say about the tech tree later on. Still mulling over what to do there. The state of the humanities literature by roughly the time this game debuted saw technology as a part of history, not off to one side following its own progressive unfolding. Or, a later one: the electric refrigerator won out over gas-powered ones, not because it was better in many respects it was worse but because the electrical-appliance duopoly was coterminous with the electric-power duopoly and had incredible resources with which to push the electric fridge onto the market as a way of generating demand for electricity.
If you like, you can pretend that what this choice is modeling is a whole host of qualitative factors specific to your civ and its values, rather than some commandment from the government. Either, of course, would rob the player of a whole layer of decisions to make, and thus probably yield a less fun game…….
If you take the game at its word, you are actually playing a single person. You name yourself at the beginning, and get to add onto your palace as you progress. The other civilizations as well are guided by unchanging leaders down through the millennia.
This is really weird conceptually — a bunch of civilizations being controlled by immortal gods? Just what are the people actually deciding? Beta, which has been kind of the classic example in recent years of a better technology losing out to a worse thanks to external factors. A more interesting question might be how those broader categories might have diverged. But to expect the game to model that is asking a little too much of it.
The singular faces and names of the leader characters struggle with this — but frankly the face-to-face stuff is the least-necessary and least-developed aspect of the entire game IMHO. Community Saloon bar To do list What is going on?
Social media Twitter Facebook Discord Reddit. This page was last modified on 7 November , at Unless explicitly noted otherwise, all content licensed as indicated by RationalWiki:Copyrights. A guide to U. Hail to the Chief? George Abitbol , Oct 3, Joined: Mar 17, Messages: 8, Location: Missouri. Joined: Nov 4, Messages: Hajee , Oct 3, Joined: Aug 23, Messages: 1, Location: Australia.
I couldn't find the "Dan who??? Maybe you forgot it These US centric jokes fall a bit flat with us foreigners! Kjimmet , Krajzen , MarcosQuadros and 1 other person like this. Joined: Jun 29, Messages: 61 Location: Helsinki. Yeah, I can think of someone else who could replace good 'ol Dan. Having said that, just remember that the future will always be better tomorrow.
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