There are many ways of viewing historical events. Each one of them requires a narrative structure. Whether you view history as a series of class struggles or as a progression towards utopia, odds are the structure will highlight human choice as its main driving force. Therefore, by extension, history is investigated through a moral lens, because you can’t separate choice from responsibility. From childhood, every decision is anchored in some form of moral framework. This creates a clean separation, allowing us to cut the world into neat sections, the good people and the bad. This good guy, bad guy paradigm seems to be hardwired into the deepest parts of our brains. In its simplest abstraction the brain can be conceived of as a complicated pattern matching tool. Comparisons with high contrast are always more salient than overlapping shades of gray. Nothing creates contrast in our brains like the battle between good and evil. Or, similarly, the distinction between us and them. This seems to be the default way humans see the world. Consequently, it takes a concerted effort to conceptualize things differently. Amusingly, we even attempt to impose this framework of right and wrong onto our pets. It is interesting that the natural reaction to finding out that your dog has chewed through your new shoes is to impugn its character with the exclamation, “Bad dog!”. Or better yet, consider Katya the brown bear from Kazakhstan. She was imprisoned in 2004 after mauling two people. Only after serving a 15-year sentence was she allowed to continue socializing with animals again. This concept of victim and victimizer runs so deep that even animals can’t escape it. I do not intend to investigate the wellspring of morality here, only to observe that human history is often viewed through its lens. History is examined by a result of history. That is to say, a process that is affected by history turns upon itself in a recursive loop of introspection, leaving the observer alternating between confusion and repulsion. Choices are categorized as moral or immoral. History, therefore, can be considered as an aggregate of moral and immoral choices. This intuitive approach to history is not without its merits, but it is limited in scope. Morality is a poor way to understand history from any significantly removed vantage point. It is too easy to get distracted by perceptual advancements which disguise the absolute movement of history. With this, let us investigate natural fractal systems as an alternative model to understanding history.

The Theory

Theories, especially ones concerned with history, are stories. The goal of a story is to draw connections between consecutive events, giving these events an artificial clarity of causation. This is not the only model by which a causal chain can be imposed on historical events, but it can serve as a helpful way to consider the past and possible futures. With that in mind, if you want to understand history it may be helpful to conceptualize humanity as a “mindless” fungus. Or more abstractly, a natural system devoid of internal intelligence. We are likely to feel that humanity has been heading somewhere. A person is someone that either makes history or is forgotten by it, but let’s zoom out for a moment and consider what actual movements are taking place. Nature tends to act in fractals or phrased differently, nature seems often to use self-similar patterns. From branching rivers to branching trees to branching lungs, the same shapes recur at radically different scales. In the same way, if we watch systems in nature, we will find that the rules which guide the growth of fractal systems (i.e. plants, bacteria, viruses, and fungi) are also key in driving the progression of human history.

Scale

In our home we have a Taro plant that has been growing for a few years. It has been fascinating to watch its development from a small plant measured in inches, to one that is measured in feet. It follows the same pattern of growth, starting with a couple big leaves surrounded by a few smaller leaves. As the plant grows, the smaller leaves, depending on their orientation, gradually lose access to the sunlight. The unlucky ones eventually yellow and die away. Meanwhile, in the center of the plant a new stem grows. More often than not, this new stem will turn into the largest leaf on the plant. As this process continues the entire plant moves towards a sort of stasis. Below the ground, roots, which are a fractal system in their own right, fill the pot as densely as the soil will support. Above the soil the leaves fan out to catch the rays from the sun in an efficient manner. This orchestration of shifting, expanding, and overshadowing repeats as the plant grows larger and larger. The process by which this plant grows can save you from countless hours of reading dusty history books about wars and exploration. There is much that can be learned from its growth. Let us consider this plant a little further. Its life, like all life, is a sort of drama. A drama which changes genre based on the context in which you observe it. In the forest this plant would be cast as an extra, hardly being noticed. If viewed as a separate thing, the biggest, most majestic leaves would no doubt steal the show. But when viewed at the level of the individual leaf, we suddenly have a tragedy on our hands. A story where Goliath always kills David. We would see a yellowing leaf near the bottom of the plant, vainly attempting to twist and turn after elusive rays of filtered light. Eventually succumbing through a war of attrition, the once brightly colored leaf withers and dies.

History

History proceeds in much the same way. We have many persons making choices (perhaps even freely) driven by opaque reasoning, but when taken in aggregate the effect they produce is indistinguishable from the growth of a mindless system. This process has reliably produced several outcomes.

  1. Homogenization.
  2. Increased surface area.
  3. Population growth.
  4. Greater cohesion. Homosapien’s life on earth has been characterized by a transition from extreme diversity of small populations to a handful of densely packed groups. This effect isn’t limited to cultures and people but extends into the flora and fauna as well. Our best guesses place the extinction rate of species near 1000 times higher in the Anthropocene era than previous eras. More than 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. There is only one reason why the most successful mammal per pound is cattle and the most successful bird is a chicken. The latter having an estimated population of over 18 billion. Livestock outnumber wild animals 10 to 1. Humans have been able to quickly and permanently alter ecosystems to their will. The view from the plant world is similar; monocrops of wheat, corn and soy cover miles of the earth’s surface. The homogenization of the non-human world occurred in parallel with the homogenization of human civilization. It appears that our ancestors started in many small hunter gatherer groups that would coalesce into tribes. These tribes eventually converged into cities. These cities into nation states and nation states into sprawling empires that encompassed the globe.

We live in an interesting era; we are more aware than ever before of the vast numbers of varying cultures in the world, while at the same time, living in one of the least diverse moments of human history. Another key attribute of our history has been the way we spread out. Humans have scattered across diverse biomes and environments unlike any other animal before in history. The current theory is that we began this expansion in Africa and spread across the planet from there, spilling into East Asia and crossing the Beringia land bridge into the Americas. One of the more fascinating and mysterious human migrations is that of the Austronesians. Starting in Taiwan from about 3000 BC (1000 years prior to the birth of Abraham), these peoples settled lands from Madagascar to New Zealand. One branch of this group is the people we now know as the Polynesians. The Polynesians earned the distinction of being the last true pioneers, settling some islands in the Pacific around 1200AD. And with that, the ancient command “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” was completed. Much like the roots of the Taro plant, humans had reached into every hospitable place this planet had to offer, and they did it 200 years before the invention of the printing press. Taken from another view, human history can be viewed as a series of technological and ideological advancements that resulted in the ability to sustain increased human population. In the most fecund parts of the world, groups of 100 hunter gatherers still required 7 square miles to be able to collect enough food for survival. Compare this to the city of Uruk, which in circa 3100 BC took up around 2 square miles and thanks to the advances of agriculture, hosted around 40,000 inhabitants. Of course, agriculture alone cannot account for this increase in population density. Without abstract ideas such as governments, national identity, and laws, it would be impossible for stable populations to increase for any significant length of time. Technology and ideology grew together and fed off each other. People need good reasons to work together. They also need the means to sustain those relationships. This leads to the final effect, greater cohesion. With the growth of population and the spread of humans across the globe, it was only natural that the number of contacts between peoples would increase. Early on, these exchanges often resulted in all-out war or at least an uneasy tension between the two parties. As time progressed, something interesting happened. People began to specialize in producing things and trade sprung up between neighboring tribes. These primitive trade networks were an early precursor to the modern global society we find ourselves in today. It turns out that although money may indeed be the root of all evil, it might also be the single most important concept in creating a more peaceful world in the modern era. This assertion on its face seems absurd. After all, many wars could be attributed to a leader’s quest for resources. While true, this same desire for wealth can be leveraged in defense of a smaller country. If positioned correctly, a nation with a meager military can co-exist next to a superpower, because it provides the superpower with something it needs. Money is an abstraction that makes the trade of specialized labor a trivial operation. With its introduction, suddenly everyone in the world had something they could agree on: money is desirable. This premium on specificity makes the destruction of neighboring nations not as beneficial as it once was. The steam engine represents the first time ever that an object could be moved arbitrarily without depending on wind, water, or muscle. It also represents a turning point in the complexity of assembling machines. The number of different operations required to assemble tools quickly ballooned past what any one town could offer.

In a few decades if you wanted the most technically sophisticated tools available, you would need to either be a global superpower, or well-connected with neighboring nation states. These days, even global superpowers rely on an intricate web of trade relations to function. These relationships act as hooks in the body of the Leviathan of war. The hooks can be ripped out, but not without some torn flesh. Many of the most recent technological breakthroughs have helped to increase this cohesion. Gone are the days when remote countries could silently be annexed into larger countries. With the advent of the internet and mass media the average citizen of today has more intelligence on world events than the early Presidents of the United States. This cohesion of global citizens would not be possible if some people refused to participate. Have you ever wondered why all countries in the world are categorized as “Developing” or “Developed”? Like it or not, the pull towards maximizing production is so strong, that there is not a single country that has removed themselves from the game. This fact did not occur by chance, of course. There were originally countries that weren’t playing the game, either for philosophical or geographical reasons. These countries ended up bearing the brunt of colonialization. In his Utopian novel The Island, Aldous Huxley imagines an island nation that has all the technological know-how of an advanced civilization without the emphasis on materialism. Or, put another way, an island that had somehow reaped the rewards of civilization without contracting its vices. The book ends realistically with the island being sucked back into the game. There are certain things a country does not sit out on, or not for long. Whether this is a flaw or feature of human nature is a discussion for another time, but for our purposes it is worth noting that this modern cohesion can’t be easily avoided. It also should be noted that it is a blessing when compared with the only other apparent option, as forced homogenization often required a much bloodier sacrifice.

Conclusion

This theory describes many developments in history that defy explanations via other models. The progression of human history seems to conform to the same rules that guide the growth of many other living systems. This insight provides a different framework to conceptualize many important historical events. For example, the formation of the government of the United States of America can be stripped of its historical context regarding the disagreements between the founding fathers and Britain. Instead, it could be viewed as a self-generated evolution. A potential optimization to the organization of large groups. Its success will in time be judged by its stability and longevity. We can be certain that barring a civilization ending event like that of a nuclear war, asteroid, or super volcano erupting, the governments of both the United States and Britain will be replaced by some new ideology that may better organize a group and leverage its potential output. This model makes no predictions on the effects of this societal evolution in regard to the personal happiness of its subjects. Therefore, the new iteration of society may be worse for the individual than our current version. This would not be the first time in history that this has happened. The theory also tinges history with shades of inevitability. It proposes the idea that societies don’t evolve by choice, but by inscrutable processes. These processes are heading towards a vague goal. Perhaps this goal is no more complex than the ability to create things more efficiently, perhaps not. Another implication of this theory is that it looks at moral advances as side effects. The attempts of abolishing our most shameful vices like slavery, child trafficking, extreme poverty, etc. will either succeed or fail, not based on the overall morality of the world we live in but based on whether the overall system is “ready” to receive these changes. Going back to our Taro plant analogy: imagine the leaves bending towards the sun.

With each of these societal evolutions, there is some movement of the leaf. Each twist will either lessen or increase the amount of sun the leaf is soaking up. The central point here is that we have no guarantees that a relatively moral (as defined by us) evolution to society will result in a leaf that absorbs more sun. In this view we have been extraordinarily lucky that the two movements have coincided with each other. Maybe this will continue, maybe not. This in the end, resembles a dialectical view of history, but one with no known goal. To summarize, human history is moving along an axis, albeit one that may not be recognizable to us. This vector is more heavily weighted than any one human ideal. Therefore, while certain humans may seem to dictate the course of history, if viewed from an appropriate distance, we will see that in time the contributions of these individuals get lost in the growth of the overall organism. Therefore, if your goal is to model the past and predict the future, natural fractal systems provide a better framework than individual human motivations, no matter the lens you choose to view them with.