I have been reading books about the conquistadors in Central and South America. I started reading about the conquistadors because in Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel he has a chapter about the conquest of the Incan empire by Pizarro in 1531-2. It is a staggering story, and one that perfectly illustrates the problem that the book starts with. Framed as a question by a man called Yali to Diamond on a beach in New Guinea in 1972 the problem is: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea but we black people had little cargo of our own?" Why is it that the world is so unequal? How can it be that Pizarro and 168 Spaniards can conquer an empire of 10 million? Why was it not the case that the Incans conquered Europe?
Whether you accept Diamond's arguments or not seems to come down to which side of the fate versus free will debate you go for. The more I read about history, and the more of my life I have to compare against it, the less I am inclined to believe in free will. If it exists it seems to me that we freely choose to make the same (often quite bad) decisions from generation to generation.
There's nothing we can do about it: permed mullets, boring National Prime Ministers and the same five news stories will keep coming back, over and over again.
4 comments:
Great post dean!
Yes, I think I might have to agree - I've certainly made many of the same mistakes my father made!
Hey, I think that Pizarro was quite driven and not put off by failure. Most of his early 'expeditions' turned to crap.
Full marks to his stubborn nature; although he did meet with a not so nice death.
jy said " the more of my life I have to compare against it, the less I am inclined to believe in free will"
Just say "no". If that doesn't work say it three times.
It always makes me nervous when Richard is nice to me.
No. No. No.
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