Exchange
The Natural Social Imperative
An author’s conclusions or reflective summaries are normally reserved for insertion at the end of a book. But I have always been impressed by the writing style of Pulitzer Prize writing author Jared Diamond who offers the reader an insight into what he has learned in his introductory chapters.1 Let me follow suit and share my own thoughts, as a number of amazing concepts came out of my research and editing of this book. Overall the essential contention of this book is that globalization incites and magnifies humanity’s strengths while exposing its weaknesses. It thereby acts as a prime provocateur for the growth and development of civilization. Built on a system of multiterritorial, economically inspired social mobility, it facilitated cross-cultural relationships, thereby engineering not only the exchange of products but also the sharing of ideas and talents through competition, which alters the human experience and continues today. Out of this process were modern business principles born. More specifically, the text attempts to show that, firstly, the exchange process is a man-made event. It originated everywhere on Earth and no specific society and no specialized civilization can take credit for its invention, as it is a unique human trait shared by all. While other species on Earth do in fact horde or store food resources for future use, share their kills in the field with other hunters, bring back to the pride or nest their finds for the benefit of others, and engage in a division of specific labors for collective survival, only man trades.
Second, without the exchange process, the world would have never progressed. Civilization would not have evolved. Hence the two are intertwined with trade, the golden thread in the tapestry of civilized development. Exchange fuels men’s actions toward each other and is fundamental to the establishment of relationships. It rewards specialized individual abilities within the context of a group. Trade allows for society to be organized and brings us together.
These two conceptual considerations led me to examine the research of anthropologists, archeologists, and the writing of historians in regard to the importance of the element of cross-cultural exchange in their inspections. While these scientific and scholastic fields report on finding ancient physical artifacts, products or goods from other territories or societies, usually pottery shards, and other detritus objects as evidence of foreign trade, they do not always discuss the influence of cross regional and even intercontinental associations in respect to the evolution of mankind. Answers as to where, when, how, and by whom advancements in civilization were made require inserting the trade factor into the examination of life on Earth. It is a key factor, an important link in the appreciation of how people developed in settlements around the world.
The numerous merchant transactions that accompanied cross territorial trade produced a myriad of interpersonal relationships and with it the transfer, sharing, and borrowing of knowledge and ideas on living. Sometimes the process of information exchange is hidden or its identity masked; it does not have the physical properties evidenced in the survival of ancient artifacts, as rarely were philosophical thoughts or advanced technological skills written down and preserved. They were passed on orally or via demonstration. We tend to attribute learning to the group that first offered it to us, forgetting that perhaps they learned it from others. For example, the Arabs are credited with inventing Western style mathematical numerals, advancements in chemistry, and star navigation. But what if they learned these from Indian traders crossing the Indian Ocean who had in turn first learned them from the Chinese with whom they also traded? Each time a new discovery from antiquity is made, evidence is found in the cross contaminated nature of cultures due to the trading phenomenon. This makes it more and more difficult to determine where anything first began. In my research I observed that every society at one time or another had contact with alien societies. Even a seemingly isolated island always attempted to reach out to another remote island. For others the desire for foreign contact stretched out from their singular territorial land borders, while still others crossed continents and eventually circumnavigated the globe. Often we see only two sides of a trade link and forget that it is part of an elongated sequence that is connected to all the others, an interlocking elongated series. Each link dispenses and receives information not just from the links on either side that it is attached to but from all the other links in the chain. When you touch one you are really touching all the others, essentially forming stepping stones across the world pond, each influencing the other.
Third, most of the modern-day basic business concepts, commercial instruments, organizational models, legal regulations, and the administration of institutions involved in profit-making activities were developed and used in antiquity. They have not changed dramatically but have merely improved due to technological advances. And while on the subject of technological improvements, the motivation behind new inventions that have bettered mankind over history either are traceable to the commercial imperative or owe their spread across the globe to the business imperative. The need for, and the investment in, developing them arose out of entrepreneurs whose visionary understanding provided the value incentive.
Fourth, while the exchange process begot cross territorial trade and emerged into what we now call the globalization phenomenon. This mechanism contributed at all times in the history of mankind to the advancement of civilization even if such an apparatus came with pluses and minuses. It has opened new areas and brought people together, offering the bounties of the world to an ever-widening audience. But the process also depressed and robbed people of their human freedoms, did not result in shared equal economic returns, and destroyed natural environments. The process is not perfect as it emanates from man who himself is not perfect. All one can do is recognize its creative and destructive forces, hoping future business managers strive to make it a positive component in the sociopolitical and economic system it initially helped to create.
Globalization is the final chapter in the spreading and widening of the natural human exchange process, a commercialization of the need for reciprocity between people. It has been going on since mankind first engaged in a bartering transaction wherein the fruits of one’s knowledge and/or physical labors, in respect to their interaction with the varying environments around them, allowed them to swap or replace the products of their skills and abilities with those of another. In the process, a materially measured worth was assigned to each man’s harvesting and/or alteration of the earth’s bounties and a relative value was established between the parties. While the principles first used in the exchange process have evolved over time into a more mature and sophisticated system, the conceptual imperative remains the same. People are connected and they need each other to survive and progress. Exchange is the bedrock on which civilization was constructed. It is the socially induced phenomenon that allows for growth and change. It has been with mankind since the beginning of time on Earth and will remain with us in the coming millenniums as we search the stars.