The Process of Civilization

When considering the great civilizations of the past, one cannot be faulted for being filled with wonder at what the ancients accomplished in their day. Grand structures erected thousands of years ago such as those in Rome, Persia, and Egypt still stand to this day, annually drawing thousands of visitors who come to marvel at these enduring products of ancient society. As descendants and heirs of these ancient peoples, our souls yearn to build upon their incredible legacy.

Yet being far removed from civilization’s origins, most of us can scarcely comprehend how our ancestors made the transition from hunter-gatherer tribe to sprawling empire. Many theories abound regarding this transition, attributing it to agriculture, religion, or advancements in military technology. It is more likely, however, that a fundamental, gradual shift in behavior is what put humans on the path toward civilization. If we are to advance mankind’s civilizational legacy, then it behooves us to understand how a particular fundamental shift in behavior, the lowering of time preference, constitutes the process of civilization.

The work of Austrian economists such as Hans Hermann Hoppe and Saifedean Ammous provides useful insight into the rise of civilization through the lens of human action. According to Hoppe and Ammous, the development of civilization is rooted in humans striving to meet their material needs in order to improve their chances of long term survival.

All humans act with purpose to satisfy their interests and improve their conditions. The most basic of these interests that every living person on Earth shares is the interest in survival. Individual humans are not all that adept at surviving on their own, and so they require significant social cooperation in order to ensure their long term existence. This is easily verifiable by the simple fact that the overwhelming majority of us choose to live with other people rather than in isolation in the wilderness. We want access to those goods and services that give us a greater chance of living a long and happy life, and so we engage in social cooperation with others.

In our modern way of thinking, we may tend to classify societal elements into discrete categories such as "economy", "religion", and "politics". While such compartmentalization may at times be useful for analytical purposes, it is not an accurate representation of the form and function of a society.

A society’s culture is driven by the purposeful actions of its participants. These actions are carried out with a particular interest in mind, and the common interest that all living people share is the interest in survival. While it is perhaps inaccurate to say that all human action ultimately boils down to this single interest, it does serve as the seed that spawns other forms of human action.

In mankind's primordial state, people acted to acquire the base necessities of life such as food, shelter, and defense. These needs were more effectively met when people united in families and tribes, worked together, traded, and divided tasks. Thus, all social interactions in a very primitive society, whether with regards to handling scarce resources, organizing families, or recognizing and delegating authority, were in some way linked to the common interest of long term survival. People's actions did not build up society into elements stacked loosely in discrete blocks of "economy", "politics", and "religion", but rather wove an intricate social fabric that bound communities together and ensured their prolonged viability.

Humans are unique from other animals in that they can visualize their destiny and utilize reason to determine how to ensure their well-being far into the future. Mankind discovered long ago that by planning for the future, it would be possible to ensure survival for a longer period of time. In order to be more prepared for the uncertainty that lay ahead of them, humans had to lower their preference for satisfying present desires and defer satisfaction to the future. For instance, since any food consumed today could not be consumed tomorrow, they had to find a way to store food if they wanted to be more certain that the next day there would be something to eat. This lowering of time preference, or the lowering of preference for satisfying present desires, was a fundamental shift in behavior that had wide ranging effects across human society.

When members of primitive societies lowered their time preference with regards to material needs, they would work to procure not only those goods needed to meet the needs of the present moment, but also excess goods to meet the needs of the following day. This act of saving freed up their time to develop tools that could increase the production of future goods. Through the process of saving, investing, and innovating, humans were able to accumulate capital, or goods devoted to the production of other goods. The steady accumulation of capital allowed them to build sturdier homes, cultivate sufficient amounts of food, diversify in different professions, and increase the chances of survival for themselves and their posterity.

But our ancestors did not only lower their time preference with regards to economic matters. This shift in behavior, this rational planning for the future, could only take root if it spread to all aspects of society. Food could not be stored and tools could not be developed if they were stolen. People could not work together for their survival if there were not strong bonds of mutual trust that permeated throughout the entire community. Thus, as primitive humans lowered their time preference, social norms, legal codes, and traditions developed to guarantee the protection of property and person as well as to fortify the mutual trust needed to maintain a functioning society and accumulate capital.

Thanks to the influence of philosophers from the 18th and 19th centuries, these social norms, legal codes, and traditions are often viewed as arbitrary social constructions that limit mankind from reaching their full potential. However, when viewed instead through the lens of human action, we can better understand how primitive man conformed social institutions in accordance with universal, natural laws in order to enrich and preserve their own lives and the lives of their posterity. The lowering of time preference takes these universal, natural laws into account, and has the effect of ensuring not just future survival, but also future prosperity.

The first civilizations were primarily agricultural, because in order to accumulate capital, it was first necessary to store food for long periods of time. Grains could be dried and stored for winter months and times of famine. Well tended herds provided meat and dairy throughout the year. With greater food security, people were able to invest more of their time developing tools that would increase their productivity or help meet additional needs.

Agriculture required a significant amount of self-restraint and a natural lowering of time preference. In order to plant for the next season, farmers needed to defer consumption of a portion of their harvest and save the seed for the following year. Only those sedentary cultures with traditions and norms that helped lower time preference were able to transition from a hunter-gatherer tribe to an agricultural-based civilization.

It should come as no surprise then that many of the successful civilizations throughout history have had much in common. Laws have been established to prevent murder, theft, fraud, and promiscuity. Social norms and attitudes have promoted virtues such as trust, integrity, and courage. Religious beliefs have encouraged harmonious relations within the community and alignment of one‘s life with the divine. Marriage between a man and a woman has maintained its role as the most fundamental social union upon which families have been formed. What all these various aspects have in common is that they are closely associated with the lowering of time preference. It might be difficult in our day to see how fidelity in marriage, or the protection of private property, or being true to one's word is linked to the survival of our species and the rise of civilization. But if we can envision the state of our primitive ancestors and with the lens of human action rationally deduce how these institutions arose out of concern for ensuring long term survival, then we can better understand how they advance civilization and allow us to prosper.

After the advent of agricultural production, capital could be more easily accumulated, and humans were able to focus their labors on other productive areas. As labor became more diversified and specialized, it became increasingly difficult for individuals to obtain goods or services through barter. In order to overcome the challenges associated with barter, people found that certain goods were more liquid than others and could be acquired with the sole purpose to exchange them for other goods. These liquid goods were money and served as a medium of exchange. Money which possessed certain qualities tended to be utilized more often for trade and savings. Gold and silver emerged as the dominant forms of money in most large civilizations. As they do not corrode and are difficult to produce, gold and silver could retain their purchasing power for extended periods of time. These types of “hard money” gave people confidence to save for the future, thus allowing for the continued accumulation of capital.

Money may sometimes seem like another one of society's arbitrary constructs that can be altered at will, but it is in fact an essential human invention that organically developed in order to facilitate economic exchange. Because exchange and trade form a significant portion of our social interactions, changes in the soundness of money can affect the general behavior of a populace. Since all culture is the result of human action, general changes in behavior in one aspect of society can have downstream effects on society as a whole.

This is the thrust of Saifedean Ammous’s “fiat standard” thesis, which builds on the earlier work of Austrian economists such as Mises and Hoppe. If the medium of exchange, the money, of a society possesses such qualities that people strive to save it for use in future exchanges, the time preference of the population steadily decreases. People extend their perspectives further into the future, taking actions that they believe will benefit not only their future selves, but their posterity. With a more certain future thanks to sound money, people choose to keep the law and maintain order in society. Parents, teachers, and leaders confidently inculcate the rising generation with time-tested moral and religious values. Civilization fortifies and continues to grow.

When the money is not sound and does not effectively retain its purchasing power, acquiring it for future use becomes a futile endeavor. The uncertainty regarding the money leads people to place higher priority on present needs. Saving for the future gives way to frivolous spending. Labor and thrift give way to crime and debt. Corn seed gets eaten instead of saved for the next growing season. Fruit trees get cut down for firewood. In effect, unsound money whose purchasing power erodes either due to inflation or due to other causes can lower a people's time preference and have a decivilizing influence on a society.

I bring up the topic of sound money because even though money is a necessity for civilization, its powerful influence throughout history is not widely acknowledged or understood. Unlike other civilizational necessities such as social institutions which establish the rules and norms of conduct, money is a technology, a physical (or nowadays digital) innovation that is required for an advanced economy. In contrast with other aspects of civilization, money's soundness is not dependent on the consensus of a populace, but on the intrinsic properties of the money itself. Because money is not an abstract concept but a tool for physical exchange, its supply can be monopolized and distorted, which often leads to an unnatural increase in the supply of money, i.e. inflation. Time and again throughout history, we see inflation preceding the decline of some great civilization as it raises the time preference of a citizenry, affecting not only production capabilities but cultural vitality as well. Due to its significant influence on all aspects of society, the monetary system should always be taken into consideration when identifying the strengths and weaknesses of any civilization, including our own.

While there are arguably several other factors that influence the rise of civilization, time preference serves as a useful metric for gauging civilizational advancement or decline. It is tempting to attribute such societal trends exclusively to religion, government, or the economy, but extracting an underlying variable such as time preference helps us to understand how these societal elements steer civilizations in a given direction. Examining how social norms, religious beliefs, or monetary systems contribute to a lowering of time preference can help determine which specific aspects of these societal elements are healthy or detrimental. By doing so, we can better understand the lessons of the past, and ascertain what we ought to preserve or change in our day.