Mr. Coon’s upbringing as the child of a scholarly anthropologist plus his long and successful career as a U.S. Diplomat has particularly prepared him to write this book. Some may say the book is short, but he takes this criticism as a compliment. And well he should. It is concise, crisply worded, and gets his message across in the fewest of words. This is no mean feat, considering its scope of fifty thousand years of human social development.
 

The theme of the book is man’s social evolution. It traces the probable course of events from the time of the physical, genetic appearance of homo sapiens  with his expanded brain capacity, to his adaptation of symbolic thinking, i.e., where he began to conjure “creatures of the mind.” This was the key to his social progress as his community grew ever so slowly from kin clans to associations of clans to tribes to villages to feudal baronies to kingdoms to empires to nation states.             
 

I believe Mr. Coon effectively makes the case for group selection, which is still a controversial (if not discredited) position among anthropologists and some evolutionary biologists. Simply put, he shows that groups, with their unique cultures, compete under evolutionary pressures and some groups supplant or absorb others. They win out due to strength of numbers, quality of their symbolic thinking (ideas), or the vicissitudes of luck just as individuals have done in a genetic sense. Largely due to the speed of communication of symbolic thinking, evolutionary movement at the group level often occurs far more quickly than it does at the genetic level. Mr. Coon shows how the ideas of priesthood, religion, royalty, and other hierarchies probably originated, how and why they influenced cohesion of these communities.       
 

The thrust of the book is that the logical and imperative next step in man’s progress in social organization is a global confederation that addresses problems not adequately confronted by the nation states model. The global body would probably be some outgrowth of the United Nations. To arbitrate competing rights between states, it must have independent financing and the capability and authority to use force if necessary to maintain order between states that would commit war. Mr. Coon’s vision is of diverse communities that retain their individuality, yet subordinate a limited set of powers to the confederation, much as in the United States of America individual states subordinate certain powers to the U.S. Federal Government.
 

Mr. Coon has identified evolutionary traits that program humans in a “us vs. them” mode. As they made the journey from smaller to larger communities, there always had to be an impetus to move this closed vision of community into a mode of acceptance of the new, larger organization. Cooperating with other individuals in a new and larger group provides benefits for each individual of the group. This is indicated in several passages in the book but Mr. Coon insists that before the benefits are realized, altruistic principles cause the individual to subordinate to the community. For example, on page 49: “When such changes occur, people normally change their behavior for proximate reasons, with the long-term benefit from cooperating on a new and larger scale arising only as a collateral unforeseen bonus.” 
 

I have a small quibble on philosophic grounds with what I see as an ambiguity with Mr. Coon’s attribution of “altruism” as a somewhat magical trait, a motivating factor for individuals foregoing selfish interests to participate in a new, larger society. In my view, “altruism” is a euphemism for disguised selfishness. At some level selfishness is always the motivation for individual behavior — and this is not bad unless it is badly channelled. One can imagine empathetically, but cannot think or feel for another person, only for one’s self. The golden rule is based on this verity. An empathetic response satisfies one’s own innate interest in feeling better about one’s self. The proximate cause of individuals cooperating in a new and larger community is selfish satisfaction of one’s innate requirements — to continue to exist, to obtain peer/superior approval, to respond to “primordial learning” (early social training) and/or to accept the product of someone’s logical analysis of the new conditions as positive. There may be other reasons, but they all distill to benefits for the individual self.    
 

Let me reiterate that this criticism is nit-picking of a high order, for I would highly recommend this book to all literate citizens of the world. It would be of great benefit if translated as necessary and used as introductory material for every course in World History and Social Studies taught  — at college if not secondary school level.
 

© 2004 R. Leland Waldrip