cb: "Lots of guns were manufactured in Europe not because of luck".
[WS:] The capacity to manufacture them was created by better access to natural resources, which can be explained by either luck or divine intervention.
^^^^ CB: There were sufficient natural resources to manufacture them elsewhere; and the natural resources in Europe didn't have to be used to produce them; could have been used to produce something else. In Europe, the natural resources were directed to make so many of them at that time because of the European "cultural ideology" , as you term it.
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I prefer the former.
^^^^^ CB: I prefer a socio-historical explanation.
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But anyone in that position would use their advantage to dominate other less advantageous groups - simply because they could.
^^^^ CB: Nope. This is the critical point. It is not human nature to conquer other peoples. The Egyptians were not conquerors, for example.
All over North Americ, for example, there were adjacent groups with differences that would be "advantages" in your sense. Slight but, sufficient to make the difference. However, they didn't conquer the adjacent, disadvantaged groups. This refutes your claim concerning a human natural tendency to conquer the "disadvantaged" group.
For the vast majority of time of the existence of the human species, the stone age, there was no conquest of other humans.
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Imperialist ideology is only a product of that capacity, something produce to legitimate the fait accompli. If you think that other ethnic groups would act differently in this situation, you are deluding yourself.
^^^^ CB: Nope. You are repeating bourgeois ideology as to human nature. Imperialist ideology is not a reflex of geographical environment. Environmental determinism is not valid..
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As to "vulgar determinism" - I do not think it applies to Diamond. He uses culture as an explanatory factor to explain setback societies experienced. In Guns Germs and Steel he makes that argument about China, which was technologically better equipped than Europe to conquer America, but abandoned that pursuit due to internal strife.
^^^^^ CB: Wrong. Due to different cultural ideology than Europe; or the alleged cause of "internal strife" was a cultural difference. Your statement here is basically a statement of my position ,not yours. China being better technologically equipped to conquer translates in the Diamond/Wojtek terminology to " China had better geographical luck than Europe". But it didn't use its better "luck" to conquer. Why ? Because of a different "cultural ideology".
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He advances that point much further in _Collapse_ where he demonstrates how pissing contests and kindred cultural fuckups destroyed societies by pushing them to overtax their natural resources.
^^^^^^^^ CB: That's a non-sequitur.
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So his argument can be summarized as follows. Civilizational successes are fundamentally attributable to uneven playing fields at the start - some groups got better resources than others (which is basically luck.) However, civilizational failures are attributable for a large part to cultural factors which prevented some societies from using natural resources available to them wisely. I like his argument it is based on good counterfactual evidence that he produced.
^^^^^ CB; How come "civilizational successes" are explained by luck and "civilizational faliures" are explained by culture ?
The cultural factors are part of the explanation of the so-called successes , too.
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And if the kulturpolizei does not like it, "fuck the police." :)
Wojtek
^^^^^^ CB: Hey , down with Social Darwinism. Man doeth not live by bread alone.