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Over several thousand years since the emergence of states, societies remained entrapped in cycles of despotic power building and decay—until civilization matured in areas with a cool and rainy climate, what we call the “cool water” (CW) condition. In CW-areas, agriculture and urbanization at a level known since millennia from the pristine civilizat...
Citations
... In simple terms, where China built its civilization around the family under an emperor, Japan built its own around the community under an administration with (but not under) an 488 G. Redding emperor, and the West around the civic-conscious individual. Reflecting these different focusses of identity is a measure of civicness (Welzel, Alexander, & Klasen, 2017): on a scale of 100 China scores 5, Japan 40, and the UK 95. The axioms that shape social coordination are not the same, nor are the behavioural responses that enact them. ...
We turn to history with a biobehavioral perspective, focusing specifically on medieval and modern Western Europe. We observe that many social scientists and theorists maintain that premodern forms of Western social life were more communitarian and purposive than their modern counterparts, but frequently provide no substantive basis for this view.
