The general theme of Guns, Germs, and Steel is human development. Diamond is interested in the different levels of development in different societies. In other words, he wants to know why some societies became so much more wealthy and powerful than others. Diamond’s overall message is that these differences are caused by geographic factors, not by any factors that are innate to the people or cultures of the various societies.
In our world today, countries populated by people of European descent are, on average, stronger and richer than others. This was even more true a few decades ago when Diamond started to think about the issues that he explores in this book. Many people have attributed this difference to inherent qualities of the people and cultures involved. They have said that Europeans dominate because they are genetically superior or because their culture is more conducive to progress. Diamond disagrees. Diamond says that Europeans came to dominate through geographical luck. He says that Eurasia was more suited to agriculture than any other region in the world. Therefore, agriculture arose there first and spread more easily in Eurasia than elsewhere. Because this area got agriculture first, it also developed civilization and technology first. It had a longer time in which its civilizations could grow and develop. Therefore, by modern times, Europeans and their descendants had come to dominate the world.
Diamond argues, then, that differences in human development around the world are caused by geographical luck rather than by any factors that make the people of one society superior to the people of another.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Please summarize and explain Jared Diamond's overall message and theme of his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
Lionel Wallace is the subject of most of "The Door in the Wall" by H.G. Wells. The narrator, Redmond, tells about Wallace's li...
-
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel Defoe, is a novel. A novel is a genre defined as a long imaginative work of literature written in prose. ...
-
In Celie's tenth letter to God, she describes seeing her daughter in a store with a woman. She had not seen her daughter since the night...
-
Let's start with terms: "expected value" means the average amount that you would win or lose over a large number of plays. The...
No comments:
Post a Comment