Barbarians

The story of civilization’s advance is often told as a tale of destiny - particularly Western destiny. In this telling, the achievements of European civilization, from the Scientific Revolution to industrialization, represent the natural flowering of unique cultural and institutional characteristics stretching back to Classical antiquity. Yet this narrative of Western exceptionalism obscures a more complex reality: that human progress represents not the predestined triumph of any particular culture, but rather the contingent accumulation of knowledge, technologies, and institutional innovations that, once developed, inevitably transform the societies that possess them. The fact that these developments crystallized first in Western Europe reflects less any inherent European superiority than the fortunate convergence of various streams of human achievement - Arabic mathematics, Chinese inventions, Indian philosophical insights - combined with specific geographic and material advantages at a crucial historical moment.

Ironically, this view actually reinforces what is truly exceptional about Western civilization: its capacity to absorb and synthesize knowledge from diverse sources. The Greeks themselves were extraordinary synthesizers, incorporating Egyptian, Persian, and Phoenician learning into their own intellectual tradition. Later, medieval European scholars would eagerly translate and build upon Arabic texts, which themselves preserved and expanded upon Greek knowledge while incorporating Indian and Chinese innovations. The Renaissance, far from being a purely European flowering, represented another great synthesis, as classical learning returned to Europe through Islamic Spain and the Byzantine empire.

When we broaden our view beyond the conventional narrative of Western civilization, we see that the thread of human progress extends far deeper into the past and ranges far more widely across cultures than traditional Eurocentric histories suggest. Why begin with Greece? The foundations of mathematics and astronomy were laid in ancient Babylon; the concept of zero and the decimal system came from India; paper and gunpowder from China. The scientific method itself, often attributed to European thinkers, owes much to the empirical traditions of medieval Islamic scholars. Even during Europe’s supposed “Dark Ages,” the Islamic world was experiencing a golden age of scientific and philosophical achievement, preserving and expanding upon classical knowledge while making crucial advances in mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. What we call “Western civilization” is, in truth, a global inheritance, shaped by countless innovations and exchanges across cultures and millennia.

Yet perhaps the most intriguing question is not why Europe ultimately industrialized, but why other advanced civilizations - particularly the Islamic Empire and China - did not. Both of these societies had, at various points, far surpassed Europe in technological sophistication, institutional development, and material wealth. China, in particular, had developed a remarkably advanced bureaucratic state system that effectively administered vast territories and populations centuries before anything comparable emerged in Europe. The Islamic Empire, meanwhile, had created sophisticated networks of trade and learning stretching from Spain to India, fostering extraordinary advances in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.

The answer, paradoxically, may lie in these civilizations’ very success at state-building. As historians like William McNeill and Fernand Braudel have argued, the achievement of stable, hierarchical imperial systems may have actually hindered further development. These highly organized states, while impressive in their efficiency and scope, created rigid institutional structures that discouraged the kind of dynamic, competitive innovation that would later characterize European development. Europe’s apparent weakness - its persistent political fragmentation and competing power centers - may have been its greatest strength. The absence of a single, dominant imperial authority created a landscape where different political entities, cities, and institutions (including the Church, universities, and mercantile leagues) had to compete and innovate to survive.

Barbarian Supremacy

The reality of medieval England stands in stark contrast to romantic notions of an advanced civilization. As late as the 17th century, travelers reported encountering people living in caves throughout the English countryside, practicing ways of life that would have been familiar to their neolithic ancestors. This profound backwardness, far from being an impediment to progress, may have been key to England’s later emergence as the cradle of industrialization. The very word “civilization” implies a kind of calcification - the transformation of dynamic processes into rigid structures. It is precisely in the gaps and fissures of such structures, in the chaotic spaces between established orders, that revolutionary change becomes possible. The barbaric elements of English society - its resistance to complete systematization, its pockets of primitive living, its messy institutional competition - created the conditions for radical transformation. History suggests that it is not the most civilized societies that perform revolutions, but rather those that maintain some crucial element of barbarism - some capacity for chaos, upheaval, and fundamental reimagining of social order.

Barbarian Dynamics in the Modern World

What of these dynamics in our present moment? China, after centuries of civilization’s stasis, was violently reintroduced to barbarism through foreign incursion and internal collapse. The resulting period of revolutionary upheaval continues to generate technological and social transformation, even as signs emerge that this phase may be drawing to a close. The United States, meanwhile, seems structurally designed to maintain a productive level of chaos - its federal system, born from the forced marriage of radically different regions and cultures, continues to generate friction and competition between states that drives innovation. This internal barbarism might yet fuel decades more of technological advancement.

Europe, however, presents a striking counterpoint. After resisting coherent unification for millennia, it has finally achieved what countless emperors could not - a genuine political and cultural union. Yet this victory may be pyrrhic. The European Union increasingly operates as a brake on technological progress, deploying massive tariffs against Chinese electric vehicles and fostering aggressive anti-AI lobbying efforts. It has developed an admirable culture of tolerance and equality on paper, but is busy ossifying these principles into rigid legal frameworks controlling speech, dress, and employment practices. The continent that once channeled chaos into world-changing innovation now seems likely to struggle even to maintain its current level of technological development, let alone meet the enormous energy demands of emerging technologies like AI.

Europe appears to be civilizing itself into a corner - albeit one its inhabitants might describe as enlightened and desirable. But such corners only remain comfortable as long as they can be defended against barbarian innovations at the gates. History suggests this is a temporary condition at best: civilization may resist barbarism’s transformative power for a time, but it cannot hold it at bay forever.

The Global Potential for Barbarous Innovation

And what of the wider world? The Arab world seems perfectly positioned for a great barbaric flowering. They possess an abundance of energy resources - nuclear capability, vast desert solar potential, and remaining fossil fuel reserves - while American military intervention has thoroughly disrupted any calcified cultural structures. The region can hardly be said to suffer from an excess of stable institutions. Perhaps the next phase will see them cease exporting their energy wealth for minimal returns and instead harness it domestically, building the technological artifacts of the coming era. The very chaos that has been their curse may become their advantage, as new institutions emerge from the rubble of the old.

Africa, too, presents a landscape rich in productive barbarism. The challenge there is not disrupting calcified structures but rather allowing some coherent institutions to emerge from the chaos - just enough organization to channel the energy without stifling it. Kenya’s world-class geothermal potential offers a perfect example: the raw resources exist in abundance, requiring only enough institutional stability to make investment viable. Once that minimal threshold is crossed, there will be no shortage of partners eager to build data centers and other infrastructure of the future. The continent’s very lack of entrenched systems might allow it to leapfrog directly to newer technologies, unencumbered by legacy infrastructure or ossified regulations.

The Self-Congratulation of Civilization

It is in the nature of civilization to celebrate itself, and to do so spectacularly. After all, civilizations excel at producing and disseminating cultural artifacts - the songs, stories, and ceremonies that trumpet their own excellence. Each civilization defines itself through a cherished collection of innovations and achievements, yet these were invariably created during periods of barbaric dynamism rather than civilized stasis. The Chinese civilization venerates inventions from its warring states period, European civilization celebrates achievements from its fractured medieval era, and American civilization glorifies innovations from its chaotic industrial age.

The irony is that by the time a society is sufficiently organized to effectively broadcast its cultural superiority, it has usually already begun to calcify. Like scientific progress, which as Max Planck observed advances “one funeral at a time,” civilization proceeds through cycles of creative destruction. Each great civilization must eventually yield to new barbarisms, which will in turn create their own novel artifacts and institutions, crystallize around them, and eventually succumb to the next wave of dynamic disorder. The civilized will always look down upon the barbarians at their gates, even as those very barbarians prepare to generate the innovations that will define the next great civilization.