I’ve been reading “War and Peace and War” by Peter Turchin. One of his central arguments is that societies and especially empires are characterized by a changing degree of social cohesion, that represents how willing individuals are to cooperate and sacrifice for the greater good of their society. This degree of cohesion, which Turchin calls “asabiya”, can even be given a numerical value. The dynamics by which asabiya changes depends on the amount of inter-society conflict in a spatially nearby area. High conflict leads (through group-level selection) to the emergence of high-cohesion groups, so that new empires are born on the spatial boundaries of old ones. Turchin reinterprets a great deal of world history (retelling many stories along the way) from this perspective. The result is an attempt at “cliodynamics”, a dynamical theory of history.
I might identify “asabiya” as a member of the “activation” cluster of values in Sapientism. Activation can be defined at the individual or group level, and asabiya would be a form of group-level activation. However, besides activation there are two other primary values, knowledge and ethics, which must be balanced with activation in Sapientism. Asabiya knows no such restriction of course, since it is intended to be a theory of the often brutal history of empires. On the other hand Turchin points out that equally high asabiya groups such as Sparta and early Rome had very different levels of ultimate imperial success depending on their ability to welcome new groups into the fold, and become cosmopolitan or “meta-ethnic” societies. Rome absorbed many external groups and influences; Sparta didn’t, and was far less successful in expansion.
The Cogniverse 