Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each otherโby providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others.
Jared DiamondPerhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.
Jared DiamondThe King's 28 letters have been described by scholars as the world's best alphabet and the most scientific system of writing.
Jared DiamondIn fact, everywhere in the world there has been a flux between big and small societies. Big political units are constantly being formed, later to fragment. The individual pieces try to pull apart, and then they join together again. One sees that in Europe: There have been unifications and then dissolutions and reunifications. So in the long run, it's 10,000 steps toward amalgamation offsetting 9,999 steps toward falling apart again. In businesses and industries, I would guess that's also true.
Jared DiamondWhy is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?
Jared DiamondBut this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the past few thousand years, we have lost our vulnerability to disease and cold and wild animals, but we have also lost good ways to bring up children, look after old people, stave off diabetes and heart disease and understand the real dangers of everyday life.
Jared Diamond