Doctor Penman’s work is focused on tracking the ebb and flow of vigor and civilization, which—if I’ve managed to cram this into my brain—is a case of religious and military discipline mimicking the effects of food scarcity and other environmental stresses on the human genetic code, enabling a civilization to rise, with the eventual prosperity of that civilization undermining its own member’s chemistry. Don’t take it from me—this nerd is speaking way above my pay grade. The entire time I listened to Penman, an image of Robert E. Howard’s theory of the cyclic rise of barbarism and the fall of civilizations, and that barbarism is the natural state—which Penman’s work seems to support, as he characterizes civilized discipline as anomalous.
If you are a tribalist, make sure you hang in there until the 56th minute, when abstract loyalty comes up for discussion.
I have problems with his theorem. Yes societies do get weaker due to not being challenged. I've read a lot of his papers and he goes on and on about food yet in the USA colonial times people had more food than in Europe but were fairly aggressive. Plenty of Amazon tribes are challenged, have food but could hardly be called successful. My criticisms are fairly vacuous and not nailed down cause I don't know the answer either. However I'm not sure he does either. Maybe all his food talk is to simplify for the masses but he doesn't talk about the societies that have challenges but never go anywhere. That's the crux of the problem with his theory. After all he's saying he can predict society and I say he can't because societies that have the same scenarios that he portends don't always follow his path.
That being said he's probably at a minimum of 10 times smarter than me and I'm probably too stupid to understand what he's saying.
I hadn't watched it all when I first commented. I think that I was wrong and maybe the food, food, food talk was a simplification for boobs like me. I get it now. A lot of his stuff I've read has been all about food.
Words from a ex Mormon who has left the reservation.
I don't think they covered that much of the theory exactly, at least not very succinctly. I think the video series does a better job - at least that's what interested me. If you haven't seen it go over to youtube.com/watch?v=b4-Od8cq5Gk