Why the West Rules—for Now

first (around 150,000 years ago) producing modern human bodies but not modern human behavior, and the second (around 50,000 years ago) producing modern human behavior but leaving our bodies unchanged.

Some spoke of a Great Leap Forward;* others of the Dawn of Human Culture or even the Big Bang of Human Consciousness.

Soft countries breed soft men

famine, epidemic, migration, and state failure are joined by further forces of disruption, like climatic change (collectively, I call these the five horsemen of the apocalypse

uccess creates new problems; solving them creates still newer problems. Life, as they say, is a vale of tears.

SLOTH, FEAR, AND GREED

History teaches us that when the pressure is on, change takes off.

The Great Divergence

1840 Britons were applying coal-powered machines to every walk of life, including iron warships that could shoot their way up the Yangzi River. Britain would have needed to burn another 15 million acres of woodland each year—acres that did not exist—to match the energy now coming from coal.

the battle of the Boyne in 1690 a Catholic musket ball ripped through the shoulder of the coat worn by William of Orange, the Protestant pretender to England’s throne. “It’s well it came no nearer,” William is supposed to have said; well indeed, says Goldstone, speculating that if the shot had hit a few inches lower England would have remained Catholic, France would have dominated Europe, and the industrial revolution might not have happened.