| Political Philosophy |
| Jim Hlavac |
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Political Philosophy
| Political Philosophy Sections |
A country's or people's culture are products of millennia of development.
Though before we even consider culture we should first define "country"
and "people." Too many people conflate the two. The 196 countries on
the planet today are not natural divisions of "people," but instead are the
artificial boundaries set up over the course of human history. With most of
that boundary drawing coming after 1900. Virtually every border in the
world today was not determined by where similar people live, but through
military and political artifice.
"Peoples" can be thought of as those speaking the same language,
having the same religion and having a historical claim to some portion of
land. Sometimes those people are mostly within one country, such as the
French, and sometimes they are spread out over several countries, such as
the Kurds.
Thus this book will refer to people as ethnic groups and countries as
political groups. They are not the same, and should not be confused. It is
admittedly difficult for most readers to separate the two because we have
been hearing about the "Iraqi people," "Hungarian people," "Mexican
people" and so on. For average readers there are 196 peoples on the
planet, because there 196 countries. But there are several thousand
"peoples."
American, Australian and Canadian readers particularly will have
difficulty separating the two because we are the three countries who have
combined the two separate entities -- the American, Australian and
Canadian people are considered anyone living within the three countries.
Regardless of the language someone speaks, or the religion they practice or
the location of birth, as soon as that individual is within the borders of the
three countries, and obtain legal citizenship, they are transformed into
Americans, Australians and Canadians. These three countries are the First
Order of Countries.
There are a handful of countries where there is a movement towards
this sort of acceptance of divergent peoples within one country: Indonesia,
India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa -- though not totally accepted as with
the first order. But these five are in fact, more tolerant of diversity than
countries we perceive as tolerant, such as European countries. Thus, these
five are the second order of countries.
European countries seem tolerant and we refer to them as western,
developed democracies, but in fact the theory of people-hood far outstrips
the concept of nationhood. Thus the French and the Italians and the
Spanish and the Poles and the Germans, etc., are more concerned with
protecting their people-hood, their language and historical lands and
religions and ways of life, than they are with building the diversity which
leads to prosperity. Sure, they're prosperous to a degree, and even free to
a degree. They all have huge immigrant populations. They are not
generally at war with each other. On the other hand they jealousy guard all
their cultural insecurities, worried whether the other one there is getting a
little further ahead. The wars of the 1900's that raged across the continent
are emblematic of the protection of people-hood and antithetical to building
diverse prosperity.
The same with Japan, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia,
Nigeria, all the countries of South America (except Brazil) and Kenya,
Tanzania, and the West African states. People-hood comes first, and
acceptance of diversity comes second.
It was the USA which altered the peoples-centric thought of Europe,
with our occupation after the Second World War. We might have legally
only been occupying Germany, but with the introduction of the Marshall
Plan, NATO, the United Nations and other organizations and programs the
United States basically occupied Western Europe. Not colonized, but
occupied. We have not been entirely successful, but to a major degree we
took a continent hell bent on destroying other peoples to one that at least
agreed to stop slaughtering each other and begin to think of joining
together in diversity. The European Union is but the most visible
manifestation of the change of thought. Not entirely successful, but only
halfway there. The free passage of peoples in Europe is extremely recent,
and a certain sense of jealousy still prevails throughout the continent.
The Russians, a less diversity tolerant people than Americans, but
though further on the road than West Europe was in the 1940's, brought
Eastern Europe up to their own level of tolerance and thus an uneasy peace
was achieved among the Warsaw Pact states. It was only the relentless
efforts by the United States to contain the Communist leaders of the
Russian Empire that brought about the further enlightenment of those
peoples to the point of their own revolutions of the 1990s. Basically, the
peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia realized that there was more
prosperity and civil society to be obtained through diversity than through
conformity to a cultural goal.
Starting in the late 1990's and leading to today, the Europeans are
finally coming to the realization that diversity of peoples within one
common border is better than the jealous guarding of borders between
people. They are not out of the woods yet, and Yugoslavia was their worst
fall back into protection of the people. The peoples of Western and
Eastern Europe, from Ireland all the way across Russia to the Pacific, have
seemed to finally come together in accepting the concept of America. That
is: the mixing and diversity of people within one common border is better
for each individual and for the society as a whole in every single measure of
human development.
The realization that individuals pursuing their own unique version of
the culture they live in breeds respect, peace and prosperity has seeped into
Europe. There are forces at work trying to prevent this. These
anti-diversity forces are a hindrance of further development of the civil
society and prosperity and the basic rights of man.
Anti-diversity forces always express themselves in the sense of a separate
people who have some divine right to preservation of their people-hood at
all costs. Thus even within Europe there are those who say their
Frenchness is more important than the free transfer of goods from one
corner of the continent than the other. The French remain poorer and
more limited, but they have preserved their Frenchness. While the Greek
farmer remains poorer and becomes resentful of the French.
If the French make no effort to inhibit the Greek from selling and
shipping goods, the Greek will become more prosperous, and respectful of
the French. Meanwhile the French will become richer, because the Greek
will not countervail the French by preventing him from selling and shipping
goods. Thus the French and the Greek will become friendlier, more
understanding of their individuality and both will prosper more.
I use the French and the Greek only as an example, it could be the
English and the Poles, or the Hungarians and the Czechs. The longer they
try to jealousy guard their people-hood the longer they will keep
themselves poorer and less respectful and less diverse.
In every other country on the planet the people who inhabit a country
consider any one not born there not a member of that country. Instead, all
the other people who enter the countries are foreigners. And their children
are foreigners, as are their grandchildren. Thus, whether in England,
France, or Germany, or in Japan, Korea and Thailand, or in Venezuela,
Argentina or Mexico, or Egypt, Nigeria or Congo -- anyone who wasn't
born there, regardless of whether they speak the langauge(s) of that
country, they are not ever considered intrinsically a part of that country.
A large number of conflicts, whether within countries or between
countries, are because of the perceived injustices of one people at the
hands of another people. And about half of that conflict stems from one
group of people refusing to accept another group of people within the same
borders. The other half of the conflicts arise from one group of people
refusing to accept that they are divided by artificial borders.
Economics, control of natural resources, historical perceptions of land
ownership, religion and other factors all seem to be far back in the
conscience of peoples who are fighting each other. These seem to be at
the forefront if only because people who have solved these problems,
namely, America, Canada and Australia cannot grasp the problem strictly in
terms of peoples. We are already beyond those considerations, having
moved on to this lesser group of considerations. So we look at a place like
Yugoslavia and cannot at all understand the problem. Nor, when we look
at places like Rwanda and Burundi contemplate that conflict in the terms the
peoples fighting it perceive it. The Kurds care not a wit about economics as
such, they are concerned about the distribution and mixing of the people
within the artificial borders. There are dozens of examples from across the
globe. To the people of the first order of countries the differences in
peoples are irrelevant. We have grasped the irrelevancy of the provenance
of peoples, and moved on to the task of building prosperity, civil society
and individualism.
To many of the peoples still fighting on the basis of people-hood the
other factors are irrelevant. All these peoples willingly sacrifice their
economies and development of resources because of their grievances as
peoples. They would rather destroy the country to preserve their identity
as separate peoples. They seem to prefer suffering as a people than
prospering as a country.
While this is a broad brush explanation, meant to start off the thought
process, there are many minor variations on the peoples theme. Only a
region by region, country by country and people by people assessment can
truly set out the myriad problems, and solutions, that are faced by the
world.
Peoples seem to prefer one leader, one way of life, one religion, one
language, one concept of living. Countries prefer a vast diversity in all of
these, because we recognize these as builders of prosperity. We accept
differences in every area of human life because it makes life better for
everyone. Peoples will accept incredible hardships because they are
dedicated first to the preservation of their people-hood and only secondly
to the prosperity that diversity brings. Peoples have also shown a desire to
mercilessly slaughter other peoples in a vain attempt to become the only
people.
Which brings us to Cultures. Cultures are those things which define a
people or a country in the eyes of other peoples and countries. In many
ways Peoples and Cultures are the same outside of the first order of
countries. The most significant difference is that peoples came first, before
cultures. People are based on DNA. Cultures are based on ideas, or
beliefs. So in the dawn of history there were groups of people who were
all somehow related who set forth into the world. They "peopled" the
world. Being related by blood they were related by DNA. They were small
groups, perhaps just dozens or hundreds of people. They all were pretty
much the same. They met up with other groups of people. They either
peaceably got along and intermarried, spreading the gene pool and
greeting ever larger groups of similar, though now more distantly related,
people. Or they slaughtered each other.
These bands of people multiplied, and spread and changed and
intermingled, and yes, slaughtered each other. Eventually we got to the
point of written history, whether in stone, as in Stonehenge, or in writing
as in Ancient Sumeria. But a human record was left. And they expressed a
sense of people-hood. Innately there arose a need for a leader, someone
to make the final decision on matters of consideration or dispute.
Regardless of how you think a leader was created, there seemed to be a
combination of brute force and intelligence. Indeed, all human endeavors
seem to attract people who are good at them. If a person is no good at a
task, he moves on to another task, otherwise he could not survive. Some
individuals were good at leadership.
As things got more complicated, it became more organized, and that
led to ideas. And ideas led to cultures. Ideas were needed to explain every
thing and make the world around them comprehensible and explainable.
Regardless of whether you think a certain number of people were zapped
onto the planet by God, or evolution rose us up out of the swamps, there is
no denying the fact that there has been a growing number of people, who
have created a shifting set of ideas to comprehend and explain the world
around us and it has been getting more and more complicated.
The leader's ideas about people-hood were pretty simple for thousands
of years, and to some degree that's true among more primitive peoples
today. But as the world got more complex so did the ideas. Religions
formed. Building projects started, political ideas were floated about, trade
began. By the time of the Greeks and Romans, which were the start of the
world we live in today, there were dozens of countries, mostly based on
one people, but already multi-people countries, that were interacting with
each other all over their regions. There were different unconnected regions
around the world, but within regions there was lots of interaction.
Just like all those millennia before the beginning of recorded history,
either people got along and intermingled -- or they slaughtered each other.
Those that intermingled and tolerated, even encouraged diversity, were
more respectful, more peaceful and more prosperous than those who
adhered to their people-hood over all else and were determined to be the
only people. They were confined by their technological advancement, but
they were better off than others. Thus the Romans were the best at
advancing civilization.
Every region was the same: there was one group who seemed to be
able to get along with all the other groups. While all the other groups were
more intent on fighting each other. The Han Chinese became dominant
because they accepted -- even if they had to force the acceptance onto
recalcitrants -- the diversity of other people within one common border.
Thus they were forever able to grow bigger.
The way this was done was that the most powerful and most diverse
country worked at subduing the peoples fighting them and forced them to
join the peaceful association of peoples. We remember all the wars of
"conquest" yet we forget that there were also a multitude of peoples who
joined together peacefully. Wars leave records, they're, in modern
parlance, sexy. Peace is dull. Reading accounting reports about the
transshipment of wine from Greece to Turkey is far more boring than
reading about the Trojan wars. Sure there was war, but there was peace
too.
As the world moved, particularly Europe, into a higher state of learning
and reached out to the rest of the world the various regions began to
interact. By 1492 the peoples of India, China and Europe not only knew
about each other, but had been interacting for hundreds of years. There
were periods of slaughter of peoples between perceived borders followed
by great empires were diverse peoples lived together in relative peace and
prosperity.
Because of the technological limitations at the time these peoples were
probably freer than many of the people on the planet today. The state
couldn't be that intrusive because the state had primitive power.
The only thing that remained constant was that each individual group
of peoples stayed in one group. The language groups stayed together. The
French stayed the French, even if it was a bunch of French speaking
principalities which eventually became the France of today. Even all the
different Japanese Shogunates eventually merged into one Japanese State.
But the Japanese and the Koreans didn't merge. Nor did the French and the
Germans. They remained separate peoples who jealousy guarded their
DNA.
That lasted until 1492. That brought the discovery of the New World,
which radically changed every thing. When the Mongol hordes came
across the steppes, they found well established peoples. When the Romans
got to Egypt they found a well established people. When the Catholics
came upon the Moors in Spain they found a well established people. When
we got to the New World, and to Africa a few decades before, we found
nomadic peoples and primitive peoples and people who were
technologically far behind the Peoples of the Eurasian land mass and along
the Mediterranean.
When a European who knew Notre Dame in Paris came across an
American Indian or African he was surely surprised at the vast difference.
He knew when he went to India he would find truly spectacular buildings,
and when he went to China or Japan, again, truly spectacular things. When
he got to Africa and the Americas there wasn't much of anything.
This resulted in a free for all. The newcomers and the locals had
absolutely no idea how to deal with each other, they were just so different.
So they set about in trying to slaughter each other. The newcomers won.
Though before we even consider culture we should first define "country"
and "people." Too many people conflate the two. The 196 countries on
the planet today are not natural divisions of "people," but instead are the
artificial boundaries set up over the course of human history. With most of
that boundary drawing coming after 1900. Virtually every border in the
world today was not determined by where similar people live, but through
military and political artifice.
"Peoples" can be thought of as those speaking the same language,
having the same religion and having a historical claim to some portion of
land. Sometimes those people are mostly within one country, such as the
French, and sometimes they are spread out over several countries, such as
the Kurds.
Thus this book will refer to people as ethnic groups and countries as
political groups. They are not the same, and should not be confused. It is
admittedly difficult for most readers to separate the two because we have
been hearing about the "Iraqi people," "Hungarian people," "Mexican
people" and so on. For average readers there are 196 peoples on the
planet, because there 196 countries. But there are several thousand
"peoples."
American, Australian and Canadian readers particularly will have
difficulty separating the two because we are the three countries who have
combined the two separate entities -- the American, Australian and
Canadian people are considered anyone living within the three countries.
Regardless of the language someone speaks, or the religion they practice or
the location of birth, as soon as that individual is within the borders of the
three countries, and obtain legal citizenship, they are transformed into
Americans, Australians and Canadians. These three countries are the First
Order of Countries.
There are a handful of countries where there is a movement towards
this sort of acceptance of divergent peoples within one country: Indonesia,
India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa -- though not totally accepted as with
the first order. But these five are in fact, more tolerant of diversity than
countries we perceive as tolerant, such as European countries. Thus, these
five are the second order of countries.
European countries seem tolerant and we refer to them as western,
developed democracies, but in fact the theory of people-hood far outstrips
the concept of nationhood. Thus the French and the Italians and the
Spanish and the Poles and the Germans, etc., are more concerned with
protecting their people-hood, their language and historical lands and
religions and ways of life, than they are with building the diversity which
leads to prosperity. Sure, they're prosperous to a degree, and even free to
a degree. They all have huge immigrant populations. They are not
generally at war with each other. On the other hand they jealousy guard all
their cultural insecurities, worried whether the other one there is getting a
little further ahead. The wars of the 1900's that raged across the continent
are emblematic of the protection of people-hood and antithetical to building
diverse prosperity.
The same with Japan, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia,
Nigeria, all the countries of South America (except Brazil) and Kenya,
Tanzania, and the West African states. People-hood comes first, and
acceptance of diversity comes second.
It was the USA which altered the peoples-centric thought of Europe,
with our occupation after the Second World War. We might have legally
only been occupying Germany, but with the introduction of the Marshall
Plan, NATO, the United Nations and other organizations and programs the
United States basically occupied Western Europe. Not colonized, but
occupied. We have not been entirely successful, but to a major degree we
took a continent hell bent on destroying other peoples to one that at least
agreed to stop slaughtering each other and begin to think of joining
together in diversity. The European Union is but the most visible
manifestation of the change of thought. Not entirely successful, but only
halfway there. The free passage of peoples in Europe is extremely recent,
and a certain sense of jealousy still prevails throughout the continent.
The Russians, a less diversity tolerant people than Americans, but
though further on the road than West Europe was in the 1940's, brought
Eastern Europe up to their own level of tolerance and thus an uneasy peace
was achieved among the Warsaw Pact states. It was only the relentless
efforts by the United States to contain the Communist leaders of the
Russian Empire that brought about the further enlightenment of those
peoples to the point of their own revolutions of the 1990s. Basically, the
peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia realized that there was more
prosperity and civil society to be obtained through diversity than through
conformity to a cultural goal.
Starting in the late 1990's and leading to today, the Europeans are
finally coming to the realization that diversity of peoples within one
common border is better than the jealous guarding of borders between
people. They are not out of the woods yet, and Yugoslavia was their worst
fall back into protection of the people. The peoples of Western and
Eastern Europe, from Ireland all the way across Russia to the Pacific, have
seemed to finally come together in accepting the concept of America. That
is: the mixing and diversity of people within one common border is better
for each individual and for the society as a whole in every single measure of
human development.
The realization that individuals pursuing their own unique version of
the culture they live in breeds respect, peace and prosperity has seeped into
Europe. There are forces at work trying to prevent this. These
anti-diversity forces are a hindrance of further development of the civil
society and prosperity and the basic rights of man.
Anti-diversity forces always express themselves in the sense of a separate
people who have some divine right to preservation of their people-hood at
all costs. Thus even within Europe there are those who say their
Frenchness is more important than the free transfer of goods from one
corner of the continent than the other. The French remain poorer and
more limited, but they have preserved their Frenchness. While the Greek
farmer remains poorer and becomes resentful of the French.
If the French make no effort to inhibit the Greek from selling and
shipping goods, the Greek will become more prosperous, and respectful of
the French. Meanwhile the French will become richer, because the Greek
will not countervail the French by preventing him from selling and shipping
goods. Thus the French and the Greek will become friendlier, more
understanding of their individuality and both will prosper more.
I use the French and the Greek only as an example, it could be the
English and the Poles, or the Hungarians and the Czechs. The longer they
try to jealousy guard their people-hood the longer they will keep
themselves poorer and less respectful and less diverse.
In every other country on the planet the people who inhabit a country
consider any one not born there not a member of that country. Instead, all
the other people who enter the countries are foreigners. And their children
are foreigners, as are their grandchildren. Thus, whether in England,
France, or Germany, or in Japan, Korea and Thailand, or in Venezuela,
Argentina or Mexico, or Egypt, Nigeria or Congo -- anyone who wasn't
born there, regardless of whether they speak the langauge(s) of that
country, they are not ever considered intrinsically a part of that country.
A large number of conflicts, whether within countries or between
countries, are because of the perceived injustices of one people at the
hands of another people. And about half of that conflict stems from one
group of people refusing to accept another group of people within the same
borders. The other half of the conflicts arise from one group of people
refusing to accept that they are divided by artificial borders.
Economics, control of natural resources, historical perceptions of land
ownership, religion and other factors all seem to be far back in the
conscience of peoples who are fighting each other. These seem to be at
the forefront if only because people who have solved these problems,
namely, America, Canada and Australia cannot grasp the problem strictly in
terms of peoples. We are already beyond those considerations, having
moved on to this lesser group of considerations. So we look at a place like
Yugoslavia and cannot at all understand the problem. Nor, when we look
at places like Rwanda and Burundi contemplate that conflict in the terms the
peoples fighting it perceive it. The Kurds care not a wit about economics as
such, they are concerned about the distribution and mixing of the people
within the artificial borders. There are dozens of examples from across the
globe. To the people of the first order of countries the differences in
peoples are irrelevant. We have grasped the irrelevancy of the provenance
of peoples, and moved on to the task of building prosperity, civil society
and individualism.
To many of the peoples still fighting on the basis of people-hood the
other factors are irrelevant. All these peoples willingly sacrifice their
economies and development of resources because of their grievances as
peoples. They would rather destroy the country to preserve their identity
as separate peoples. They seem to prefer suffering as a people than
prospering as a country.
While this is a broad brush explanation, meant to start off the thought
process, there are many minor variations on the peoples theme. Only a
region by region, country by country and people by people assessment can
truly set out the myriad problems, and solutions, that are faced by the
world.
Peoples seem to prefer one leader, one way of life, one religion, one
language, one concept of living. Countries prefer a vast diversity in all of
these, because we recognize these as builders of prosperity. We accept
differences in every area of human life because it makes life better for
everyone. Peoples will accept incredible hardships because they are
dedicated first to the preservation of their people-hood and only secondly
to the prosperity that diversity brings. Peoples have also shown a desire to
mercilessly slaughter other peoples in a vain attempt to become the only
people.
Which brings us to Cultures. Cultures are those things which define a
people or a country in the eyes of other peoples and countries. In many
ways Peoples and Cultures are the same outside of the first order of
countries. The most significant difference is that peoples came first, before
cultures. People are based on DNA. Cultures are based on ideas, or
beliefs. So in the dawn of history there were groups of people who were
all somehow related who set forth into the world. They "peopled" the
world. Being related by blood they were related by DNA. They were small
groups, perhaps just dozens or hundreds of people. They all were pretty
much the same. They met up with other groups of people. They either
peaceably got along and intermarried, spreading the gene pool and
greeting ever larger groups of similar, though now more distantly related,
people. Or they slaughtered each other.
These bands of people multiplied, and spread and changed and
intermingled, and yes, slaughtered each other. Eventually we got to the
point of written history, whether in stone, as in Stonehenge, or in writing
as in Ancient Sumeria. But a human record was left. And they expressed a
sense of people-hood. Innately there arose a need for a leader, someone
to make the final decision on matters of consideration or dispute.
Regardless of how you think a leader was created, there seemed to be a
combination of brute force and intelligence. Indeed, all human endeavors
seem to attract people who are good at them. If a person is no good at a
task, he moves on to another task, otherwise he could not survive. Some
individuals were good at leadership.
As things got more complicated, it became more organized, and that
led to ideas. And ideas led to cultures. Ideas were needed to explain every
thing and make the world around them comprehensible and explainable.
Regardless of whether you think a certain number of people were zapped
onto the planet by God, or evolution rose us up out of the swamps, there is
no denying the fact that there has been a growing number of people, who
have created a shifting set of ideas to comprehend and explain the world
around us and it has been getting more and more complicated.
The leader's ideas about people-hood were pretty simple for thousands
of years, and to some degree that's true among more primitive peoples
today. But as the world got more complex so did the ideas. Religions
formed. Building projects started, political ideas were floated about, trade
began. By the time of the Greeks and Romans, which were the start of the
world we live in today, there were dozens of countries, mostly based on
one people, but already multi-people countries, that were interacting with
each other all over their regions. There were different unconnected regions
around the world, but within regions there was lots of interaction.
Just like all those millennia before the beginning of recorded history,
either people got along and intermingled -- or they slaughtered each other.
Those that intermingled and tolerated, even encouraged diversity, were
more respectful, more peaceful and more prosperous than those who
adhered to their people-hood over all else and were determined to be the
only people. They were confined by their technological advancement, but
they were better off than others. Thus the Romans were the best at
advancing civilization.
Every region was the same: there was one group who seemed to be
able to get along with all the other groups. While all the other groups were
more intent on fighting each other. The Han Chinese became dominant
because they accepted -- even if they had to force the acceptance onto
recalcitrants -- the diversity of other people within one common border.
Thus they were forever able to grow bigger.
The way this was done was that the most powerful and most diverse
country worked at subduing the peoples fighting them and forced them to
join the peaceful association of peoples. We remember all the wars of
"conquest" yet we forget that there were also a multitude of peoples who
joined together peacefully. Wars leave records, they're, in modern
parlance, sexy. Peace is dull. Reading accounting reports about the
transshipment of wine from Greece to Turkey is far more boring than
reading about the Trojan wars. Sure there was war, but there was peace
too.
As the world moved, particularly Europe, into a higher state of learning
and reached out to the rest of the world the various regions began to
interact. By 1492 the peoples of India, China and Europe not only knew
about each other, but had been interacting for hundreds of years. There
were periods of slaughter of peoples between perceived borders followed
by great empires were diverse peoples lived together in relative peace and
prosperity.
Because of the technological limitations at the time these peoples were
probably freer than many of the people on the planet today. The state
couldn't be that intrusive because the state had primitive power.
The only thing that remained constant was that each individual group
of peoples stayed in one group. The language groups stayed together. The
French stayed the French, even if it was a bunch of French speaking
principalities which eventually became the France of today. Even all the
different Japanese Shogunates eventually merged into one Japanese State.
But the Japanese and the Koreans didn't merge. Nor did the French and the
Germans. They remained separate peoples who jealousy guarded their
DNA.
That lasted until 1492. That brought the discovery of the New World,
which radically changed every thing. When the Mongol hordes came
across the steppes, they found well established peoples. When the Romans
got to Egypt they found a well established people. When the Catholics
came upon the Moors in Spain they found a well established people. When
we got to the New World, and to Africa a few decades before, we found
nomadic peoples and primitive peoples and people who were
technologically far behind the Peoples of the Eurasian land mass and along
the Mediterranean.
When a European who knew Notre Dame in Paris came across an
American Indian or African he was surely surprised at the vast difference.
He knew when he went to India he would find truly spectacular buildings,
and when he went to China or Japan, again, truly spectacular things. When
he got to Africa and the Americas there wasn't much of anything.
This resulted in a free for all. The newcomers and the locals had
absolutely no idea how to deal with each other, they were just so different.
So they set about in trying to slaughter each other. The newcomers won.