Cultural
roles of tectonism in the modern world
This post has been revised and incorporated in a published book (Aug. 2015; link above)
This post has been revised and incorporated in a published book (Aug. 2015; link above)
Eric
R. Force (eforce@email.arizona.edu)
A strong spatial relation has been established in
previous weblog posts between “great ancient civilizations” of the old world
and various active faults along the southern boundary of the Eurasian tectonic
plate (1). This would seem strange
in view of the seismic disadvantages such locations carry. However, the relation is
probabilistically far too strong, and shows far too many allied phenomena, to
be coincidental. Only a few
factors have the right structure to influence the dynamics of the relation, and
among these is a forced pace of cultural change in response to tectonic
activity. Whatever the complete
explanation(s), it is fairly clear that some relationship of cultural
complexity with tectonic activity existed in antiquity—for at least three
thousand years of our history.
The relation is less obvious in the medieval
period and seems vanished after the Renaissance. These discontinuities were described and discussed
separately (2).
But it’s of immediate importance to know whether
the ancient relation has any relevance to us in the modern world. Is it just a peculiar and obscure
feature of a long-dead era, manifested by a particular type of culture in a
particular part of the world? Or
does the ancient relation provide a fortuitous window that allows us to see
something basic about mankind’s cultures, something that is revealed most
clearly in a snapshot of previous cultural stages? If the latter is true, we should expect some manifestations
in our modern world, and in retrospect I think there are some fairly obvious
ones (3).
The following sections describe the treatment of
tectonism by the fields of philosophy, economics, and psychology, followed by
its real-world modern impact on politics and religion, and the potential for better
including tectonism in anthropology.
Philosophy
For this purpose, discussion of the “modern era”
has to begin in the Age of Enlightenment, as all the threads of subsequent
discussion begin with its philosophies and diverge from there. More specifically, it begins with the
“Lisbon” earthquake (4) of 1755.
At the time all but a few “naturalists” agreed that this event was
caused by God. Abroad there was a
tendency to think it was God’s comment on the Inquisition, but in Portugal
almost all prelates preached that it was God’s comment on their parishioners’
sins (5).
Even more specifically, this discussion begins
with Voltaire’s reaction to the Lisbon earthquake. He published a poem about the disaster almost immediately,
and the novel Candide shortly after (6), ridiculing a prevailing view of the
time (presented most fully by the German philosopher Leibnitz) that “this is
the best of all possible worlds” (7).
In other words Voltaire used the Lisbon earthquake to address the
question of evil in the world.
Voltaire’s commentary immediately sparked
discussion and responses from all quarters of the European world. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, still a
relatively young man who had recently introduced the “noble savage” idea,
pointed out that the main trouble with earthquakes was man’s insistence on
building cities.
Immanuel Kant, an even younger man, published three papers about the
place of earthquakes in the order of nature, and mankind’s reliance on that
order (8). And as with other
earthquakes, theologians such as John Wesley all had something to say.
The popularity of Candide, however, had in the
meantime washed over all Europe.
Many people who had acquiesced in attributing to divine will all events
whether natural or human, were reluctant to do so afterward.—and thus Candide
became a potent vehicle for the Age of Enlightenment.
Later in his life Kant himself was more troubled
with the problem of evil in the world, but said that earthquakes and other
demonstrations of nature’s power are necessary to fire human imaginations, and
inspire “sublime” human responses that attempt to emulate that power (9).
The general change in attitudes, however,
endured long past the influence of individual philosophers. Certainly the
Lisbon earthquake remained in the western world’s folklore for a long time, as
shown by Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem “The Deacon’s Masterpiece” written a
century later. But more important,
the way people think had changed, away from explanations of nature based on
divine will.
In Lisbon itself, the efforts of the Marquis de
Pombal to forge ahead with the reconstruction of the city, armed with
dictatorial powers, made its mark on practical minds elsewhere (10). It is this that left the most lasting
trace on the real world of economics and politics, as we will see.
Economics
An economic approach to earthquakes began to
diverge from philosophy in the work of John Stuart Mill, who is still respected
in both fields. In his
influential “Principles of Political Economy” of 1848 (11) he remarked in a
section called “why countries recover rapidly from a state of devastation” that
observers should not be so surprised that recovery can be rapid, because only
the product of a short interval of production is destroyed.
This theme was repeated and developed by
economists over the following century; San Francisco’s rapid recovery from its
earthquake of 1906 was noted, along with that of other cities from their fires.
By 1946 Lewis Mumford was discussing how a city devastated by WWII could take
advantage of its situation, by which time planners in Warsaw had already put
this idea to work (12). Joseph
Schumpeter introduced the term “creative destruction” in 1950 to refer to a
desired continual renewal of capital, requiring continual destruction of
outmoded parts. Schumpeter’s
followers have pointed out that natural disasters are part of and accelerate
this process (13). His phrase is
still current among today’s economic theorists; it was repeated quite often by
Alan Greenspan as chairman of the US Federal Reserve. The 2011 earthquakes in NE Japan have produced economic
predictions of long-term benefit in the popular-economic media, much of it
referring to studies elsewhere (14).
A corollary use of these concepts is in city planning. Several recent works cover the
opportunity after disasters such as earthquakes to better order cities that
have been allowed to grow haphazardly or to rot away (15). As we’ve seen, this
tradition includes Lisbon but began even earlier (16), and continues with
current thought about Christchurch (17).
Psychology
The divergence between philosophical and
psychological consideration of tectonic activity in the modern world centers on
William James, a philosopher often said to have founded modern psychology. As with our philosophical discussion,
James’ entrance begins with a concrete event; he was in San Francisco for its
1906 earthquake. James’ theory of
moral equivalents had already included the thought that stressful events such
as disasters were necessary to align the instincts into a more civilized
pathway. And his own reaction to
the earthquake and his observations of the behavior of others convinced him
that such events awaken parts of the psyche that lie dormant until necessary
for survival and recovery (18). Several authors made parallel observations at
the time (19), but this theme in the psychological literature has faded away in
favor of psychological treatment of disaster victims on one hand and the
psychology of entertainment on the other.
Ironically James’ thoughts were kept alive via political journalism,
first in the person of Walter Lippman, an ardent student of James’ work. Lippman continued to point out the
galvanizing effect of disasters on cultures, and popular media occasionally
resurrect the theme (20).
The collected works of several of the authors
treated here runs to whole bookshelves if not entire bookcases, so perhaps it’s
not surprising that their thoughts pertinent to tectonic activity, which may be
only a few paragraphs, has been neglected. But it’s interesting that prominent thinkers throughout our
era have noticed creative cultural aspects of earthquakes and other disasters.
Now perhaps it’s time to move out of the realm
of literature and into the real worlds of politics, popular religion,
demographics, etc. Political
response to disaster has varied according to varying conditions of leadership
and resources, but some would consider it positive in the long term in examples
like San Francisco, where extensive reorganization as well as rebuilding occurred
(21). Political change resulting
from earthquakes is especially common where ruling classes refuse to
respond. Such was the case in 1972
in Managua; the nascent Sandinista party was more responsive than Somosa’s regime
(22). Another recent example
is Mexico City after its 1985 earthquake, where entrenched political and
bureaucratic powers were unable to look beyond their own interests in response,
to the extent that local citizens’ groups appointed themselves and directed
recovery. When these groups proved
effective, they retained power (23).
Of course an obvious political response to
disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions comes in the entire
bureaucracies created to deal with them, such as the Federal Emergency
Management Administration in the United States, and similar organizations
elsewhere. The point of such
entities, however, is to ameliorate negative impacts. Another political response, specific to earthquakes, has
been enactment of building codes that minimize damage, leading to entire new
aspects of architecture.
Popular religion showed discontinuities due to tectonism
in the ancient world, and this has proved to be the case in the modern world
also. Perhaps the most graphic
example is provided by the surge in Islamic fundamentalism that resulted from
the eruption and resulting tsunami of Krakatoa in 1883 (24). Another example came in Japan with the
1923 Kanto earthquake, which led via imposition of martial law to a mixture of
chauvinistic religion, racism, and militarism (25). Religion in colonial New England was molded by the Mathers,
father and son, taking advantage of anxiety about the local earthquakes of 1638,
1727, and 1755 . Such religious
changes resemble religious discontinuities in antiquity (26).
Demographically, an impact of tectonism on the
distribution of today’s more technologically advanced populations is apparent
from an image of our world at night.
Tectonic boundaries commonly correspond with brightness, notably in some
areas—California, Japan, Java—that became culturally complex mostly after the
period of antiquity. Apparently
the Pacific rim has become the primary tectonically-active locus of cultural complexification,
taking the place once held by the southern boundary of the Eurasian plate.
The field of anthropology has only recently
grasped the opportunity to incorporate tectonism into its literature, except as
short-term disaster response, preparedness, post-traumatic stress
disorder. Aspects treating
volcanism (27) and the compilations of Oliver-Smith and Hoffman (28) are
conspicuous exceptions, but deal with disasters of all sorts together. However, the newly popular field of
resilience theory (29) has the right structure for comprehensive analysis, and
I fully expect anthropology to take the lead role it should have in this respect.
Tectonism ranges alongside many other events in
molding modern directions. We can
conclude that tectonic activity especially earthquakes impact the modern world
in long-term ways that are clear in aggregate, but subtle enough to escape
overt or concentrated notice. The resemblance to individual changes in the
ancient world in response to tectonic events is remarkable in a few cases (30). Overall, the resemblance is enough to
suppose that the trend toward cultural complexity observable in antiquity over
several thousand years may have manifestations in our societies also.
In some ways it’s easier in antiquity to label
such directions as “positive,” as we only see eventual cultural results. In the modern world we know many of the
names of individual victims along the way, and “positive” trends are therefore
ambiguous, especially where they depend on the observer’s value system. But the literature and event responses
listed above certainly do describe accelerations of the pace of change toward
what an anthropologist would call cultural complexity.
The documented spatial correspondence of tectonism
and cultural complexity may be robust in antiquity, but the world has changed a
great deal over the nearly two thousand years since the close of that era. In our modern world we could only
expect to see dim images of the processes then at work. It appears, however, that those images
certainly are there, and the structure of their occurrence in the context of
cultural change is basically the same as in antiquity. In the modern world we get a better
sense of the cultural dynamics than we get in antiquity—despite the efforts of Herodotus,
Thucydides, and their peers-- and this could be a valuable tool in
understanding the ancient pattern.
For the question I originally posed, the resemblances between ancient
and modern cultural patterns in response to tectonism is a powerful clue that a
forced pace of cultural change is a strong component of any explanation for the
observed spatial relationship between tectonic activity and the distribution of
ancient civilizations.
For people scanning today’s headlines, though,
the significance of this posting may take a different direction: in both the ancient and modern worlds
the power of tectonic activity has commonly accelerated cultural change. This change has ultimately become
constructive in cultures that had certain resources, a choice of options, and
proper leadership. The evidence in
the ancient world consists of the distribution of the most complex cultures,
the archaeology of their sites, and snippets of pertinent history. To this we in the modern world can add
the literatures of economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology.
Political, religious, and demographic corollaries are clear. It appears the dynamics may
actually be the same in the ancient and modern eras, and if so combining the
information from both could lead to a better understanding of current events.
Notes
1. Published as Force, 2008; Force and McFadgen
2010
2. Oct. 16, 2013
3. For the following summaries of “modern”
discussion of this subject, scattered through the literatures of several
disparate disciplines, I need to acknowledge the introduction to it that the
work of Kevin Rozario provides (Rozario 2007). This volume is the main source for unattributed background
information.
I
would like to thank Jim Bliss, Bruce McFadgen, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, and
Ned Brown, who spotted important pertinent literature, and acknowledge several
people who helped improve this posting—Victoria Brandon, Alastair Gill,
Jennifer Dodge, Jane Force, Steve Miller, Germaine Shames, and especially the
late John Dohrenwend.
4.
Actually
this earthquake was centered on a fracture zone at sea off the SW corner of
Portugal (de Boer and Sanders 2005) on the boundary between the Eurasian and
African plates.
5. From Kendrick 1957, Rozario
2007, and deBoer and Sanders 2005.
Such discussion followed each of many earthquakes, some of them
preceding that of Lisbon, such as those of London in 1750 and New England in
1638, 1727, and earlier in 1755.
The latter three were marked by religious interpretations from the Mathers,
father and son, and many revival meetings.
6. And of course Leonard
Bernstein wrote a provocative musical of this title in 1956. Voltaire built into Candide many other
sorts of horrors that were occurring at the time, some entirely manmade.
7. Gottfried Wilhelm Liebnitz,
(1646-1716). To be fair, Leibnitz had said that God created this world with an
optimal ratio of good and evil and refrained from meddling thereafter. Also a victim of Voltaire’s satire was
Alexander Pope’s epic poem Essay on Man.
8. Kendrick 1957. The link with fault movement still lay
far beyond Kant in the future, however.
9. Kant’s Critique of
Judgment of 1790, in the section “As nature regarded as might.” Even Johann
Goethe, only six years old at the time of the Lisbon earthquake, nevertheless
records impressions of it in his autobiography.
10. Kendrick
1957; Tobriner 1980; Rozario 2007
11. Mills’ complete title
continues “with some applications to social philosophy”, thus covering almost
all the bases available at the time.
12. Mumford 1946 re blitz
in UK, and Vale and Campanella, 2005 describing planning in Warsaw concurrently
with Nazi destruction.
13. Cuaresma et al. 2008 is a good example.
14. For
example, Skidmore
and Toya 2002. Popular-economic
predictions of potential eventual benefits of a disaster, and consequent
observations, have a history that certainly goes back to the San Francisco earthquake
of 1906 (reviewed by Rozario 2007).
15. For example Rosen 1986 and Smith 1990. An emphasis on provision of open space is provided by Allan
and Bryant (2010).
16. Tobriner 1980
17. Reviewed
by McFadgen (2013)
18. James’ essays appear
in various forms in different compendiums. The most pertinent post-earthquake essay is entitled “On
some mental effects of the earthquake”; the most pertinent pre-earthquake is
“The moral equivalent of war.”
19. Including Gertrude
Atherton and Simon Patten. The
psychology of severe aftershocks seems not to have been described for this
seminal earthquake, and one can imagine that a population’s determination to
recover can be severely undermined by aftershocks.
20. Reviewed also by Rozario (2005). Indeed as I write this
(Sept. 8. ’13), the New York Times (p. SR1) contains an essay “Value of
Suffering” following disasters, and the World Bank news for Dec. 26, 2012 is claiming net positives in infrastructure for the Haitian earthquake. Personally, I’d like to forgo both disasters
and suffering, thanks.
21. Winchester
2006, de Boer and Sanders 2005
22. de Boer and Sanders 2005.
23. Garcia-Acosta 2002; Davis 2005
24. Winchester
2003. Winchester 2006 makes a less
persuasive but similar claim about religious aftermaths of the 1906 San
Francisco earthquake.
25. Cultural change in Japan has often been
catalyzed by earthquakes, but fortunately the changes have generally been in
other directions than in 1923.
26. Force
and McFadgen 2010, 2012, and postings of Aug. 29, 2013 and May 18, 2014
27. Balmuth et al. 2005 (see especially therein Plunket, P.,
and Urunuela, G., Cultural responses to risk and disaster: an example from the
slopes of the Popocatepetl volcano in central Mexico) and Sheets and Grayson
1979 (see especially therein Nolan, M. L., Impact of Paracutin on five
communities).
28.
Hoffman
and Oliver-Smith 2002, and Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 1999 (note especially
therein Dyer, C. L. The Phoenix effect in post-disaster
recovery).
Oliver-Smith 1979 creates a vivid picture of tectonic-anthropology connections. For archaeologic emphasis, Reycraft and
Bawden 2000, Hegmon 2008.
29. See for example Gunderson and Holling 2002. Resilience theory is now being applied
to archaeology (e.g. Redman and Kinzig, 2003, Hegman 2008), and we may yet see
anthropological analysis of tectonism in antiquity. For related archaeologic
emphases, Reycraft and Bawden 2000.
Oliver-Smith 1979 creates a vivid picture of a modern tectonic-anthropology
connections.
30.
For
example, compare descriptions of Corinth in AD 410 with Krakatoa, or Sparta in
464-5 BC with Managua or Mexico City
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