Michael: Most of us believe our core values—like fairness, equality, and human rights—are timeless moral truths. What if they’re not? What if they’re just temporary byproducts of the fuel we burn, as disposable as a gas-guzzler in the age of EVs? Kevin: Whoa, hold on. That's a huge claim. Are you saying our morality is just tied to our energy bill? That feels incredibly cynical. Michael: It's a provocative thought, and it’s the central argument of the book we’re diving into today: Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve by Ian Morris. Kevin: Okay, I'm intrigued. Who is this Ian Morris, and why should we take such a radical idea seriously? Michael: That's the fascinating part. Morris isn't just a philosopher in an armchair; he's a top-tier Stanford archaeologist and historian who has actually directed excavations in places like Sicily. He's someone who gets his hands dirty digging up the past to understand these huge, 20,000-year patterns. Kevin: So he's basically Indiana Jones, but for human values? I can get behind that. Michael: Exactly. And his whole world-changing idea started not in a lab or a library, but with a simple, personal moment of culture shock involving a man, his wife, and a donkey.

Kevin: A donkey? Okay, you have to tell me this story. How does a donkey explain 20,000 years of human morality? Michael: Alright, picture this. It’s 1982. A young Ian Morris is on an archaeological dig in a rural Greek village. One evening, he sees an old man, Mr. George, riding a donkey down the road. Walking beside him, carrying a heavy sack, is his wife. Kevin: Oh, I can see where this is going. The modern, progressive students are about to get outraged. Michael: You got it. The students, with their modern Western values, are appalled. They think it's incredibly selfish. So they get their interpreter to ask Mr. George, "Why aren't you letting your wife ride the donkey?" And Mr. George just looks at them, completely baffled by the question, and gives the simplest answer imaginable. He says, "She doesn't have one." Kevin: Wow. "She doesn't have one." Not "she's tired," or "I'm the man," just... a simple statement of fact. That's a total shutdown of their worldview. Michael: It's a perfect example of what Morris is talking about. In that farming village, it was self-evident that he would ride and she would walk. It wasn't a moral failing; it was just the way the world worked. This is the core of his theory: the way a society captures energy—whether it's from foraging for wild plants, farming domesticated crops, or burning fossil fuels—creates a certain kind of social organization. And that organization, in turn, makes certain values seem like "common sense." Kevin: Okay, so let's break that down. What are these different sets of values? What do "forager values" actually look like in practice? Show me. Michael: Foragers, who lived in small, mobile bands, had a very specific set of values born from necessity. They were fiercely egalitarian. Political hierarchy was a huge no-no. Anthropologists studying the !Kung San people in the Kalahari Desert saw this firsthand. Kevin: The !Kung San, right, I've heard of them. Michael: Well, if a young hunter got too successful and started acting like he was a big shot, the rest of the group had a brilliant way of dealing with it. They would mock him relentlessly. They'd sarcastically call him "Big Chief" and complain that his kill was worthless and stringy. One of them explained it perfectly, saying, "When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a chief... We can't accept this... So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way we cool his heart and make him gentle." Kevin: That's amazing. They use social pressure and a bit of roasting to keep everyone on the same level. No room for egos. But Morris says they were also more violent, which seems like a contradiction. Michael: It does, but it makes sense in their world. Without a state or police force, disputes—often over women or resources—were settled directly, and that often meant violence. The rate of violent death in forager societies was shockingly high, far higher than in most modern states. So, their values were: political and economic equality are good, but a certain level of interpersonal violence is an acceptable, if regrettable, tool for justice. Kevin: Okay, so that's the forager package. Egalitarian but violent. What happens when farming comes along? How does that change the moral code? Michael: Farming changes everything. Suddenly, you're tied to the land. You have surpluses, you have property to defend, and populations explode. You can't just have small, egalitarian bands anymore. You need organization. You need hierarchy. And this gives rise to what Morris calls the "Old Deal." Kevin: The Old Deal. Sounds ominous. Michael: It's the fundamental social contract of almost every farming society in history. It says that hierarchy is natural and good. Some people are born to rule, and others are born to work. The poet Hesiod advised farmers to "pile work with work upon more work." A priest in Italy observed that for peasants, "The peasant works in order to eat, he eats in order to have the strength to work; and then he sleeps." It was a brutal cycle. Kevin: So the farmer value system is basically the polar opposite of the forager's. Hierarchy is good, wealth inequality is expected, and you just accept your place in the pyramid. Michael: Precisely. And in exchange for your obedience, the rulers—the kings, the emperors, the priests—provide order and, most importantly, they monopolize violence. The state takes over the job of justice, so individual rates of violence plummet. Farmers become less violent than foragers, but they live in societies that are vastly more unequal. Each age gets the values it needs to make its energy system work.

Kevin: This all sounds a little too neat, Michael. History is messy. Surely there are examples that break this mold, right? I mean, a lot of critics and readers have pointed this out, saying the theory feels too deterministic, like it erases human choice. Michael: Absolutely. And you've hit on the biggest challenge to Morris's entire model, the one that his own commentators in the book bring up repeatedly. It’s a place we all know: Ancient Athens. Kevin: Ah, the birthplace of democracy. I was wondering when we'd get there. They were a farming society, weren't they? Michael: They were. They relied on agriculture, which according to the model, should have made them hierarchical, authoritarian, and obsessed with rank. But instead, they invented democracy. They had a vibrant intellectual culture with philosophers questioning everything. They had a level of citizen equality that was unheard of in the agrarian world. Kevin: Exactly! So the theory falls apart right there, doesn't it? Athens seems to prove that values are about ideas and culture, not just how you get your calories. Michael: This is the heart of the debate. Morris anticipates this, of course. He argues that Athens was a "historically significant exception." He frames it as a special type of society—a commercial, maritime city-state—that could thrive in a very specific ecological and trade niche. Because they could import so much food via sea trade, they weren't as constrained by the typical farming model. He argues they broadened the elite, but didn't abolish it—slavery was rampant, and women had no rights. Kevin: That sounds a bit like he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. 'It's an exception, but it still proves my rule.' Michael: That's exactly what his critics say. Richard Seaford, a classicist who responds in the book, argues that these "exceptions" are the most important parts of history. He says that Morris's core idea, that "each age gets the thought it needs," is itself an ideology. It’s a thought that our modern, competitive, capitalist age needs to justify itself. Seaford suggests that Morris is reflecting the values of today's ruling classes more than he's uncovering a timeless law of history. Kevin: Huh. I like that. It's a meta-critique. The theory itself is a product of the values it's trying to explain. So, is history a story of rigid rules, where energy is destiny? Or is it a story shaped by these brilliant, rule-breaking exceptions like Athens that introduce new ideas into the world? Michael: That's the billion-dollar question. Morris provides a powerful map for understanding the broad currents of history. But his critics remind us that the most interesting places are often the ones that aren't on the map at all. They argue that these cultural traditions, these exceptional moments, can have a lasting impact that ripples through centuries, influencing us even today.

Michael: And that debate isn't just academic, Kevin. It leads directly to the most unsettling and urgent question in the whole book: if our modern values are just a product of fossil fuels, what happens when we run out, or when we're forced to switch to something new? Kevin: Right. This is where it gets personal. We've built our entire global civilization on fossil fuels. Morris would say that our values—democracy, human rights, gender equality, a deep intolerance for violence—are all underwritten by the massive energy surplus that oil, coal, and gas have given us. Michael: Exactly. Fossil fuels created societies so wealthy and complex that they needed, and could afford, these new values. They needed an educated, mobile, and relatively equal workforce. They needed open, democratic systems to manage this complexity. The idea that all people are created equal and have inalienable rights became the "common sense" of the fossil-fuel age, just as hierarchy was the common sense of the farming age. Kevin: This is the scary part. Are you saying that our deep-seated belief in human rights could just... evaporate? That as we face climate change and resource scarcity, we might revert to a more hierarchical, authoritarian, 'farmer' mindset because it's more 'efficient' for survival? Michael: That is the terrifying possibility the book forces us to confront. Morris doesn't give a clear answer, but he lays out the logic. Our values are contingent. They are not guaranteed. They are an adaptation to a specific energy environment, and that environment is now changing faster than ever before. Kevin: You can almost see this playing out in real-time. Morris talks about the Taliban, for instance. He controversially calls their values—especially their subjugation of women—not just immoral, but "backward." He sees them as clinging to farming-age values in a world that has moved on to a fossil-fuel value system. Michael: Yes, he sees it as a clash of historical stages. And it raises the question of what values will be "needed" in a post-fossil-fuel world. Will we need the hyper-cooperation of a global community to solve climate change, leading to even deeper egalitarianism? Or will the chaos and scarcity push us back toward strongman rulers and rigid hierarchies? Kevin: The book includes responses from other thinkers, right? What do they say about this future? Michael: They're just as concerned. The novelist Margaret Atwood, in her response, says this is precisely why we need "megathinking"—we have to consciously think our way out of this trap, because just letting "cultural evolution" take its course could lead us somewhere very dark. The philosopher Christine Korsgaard makes a crucial point: she says values can only work if people believe they are real moral truths, not just useful social functions. If we all come to believe Morris's theory—that our values are just tools for energy capture—they might lose their power to guide us at all. Kevin: That's a paradox. The theory that explains our values could end up destroying them. It's like finding out the love you feel for your family is just a chemical reaction designed for gene propagation. The knowledge itself changes the experience.

Michael: Exactly. So, the book leaves us with this powerful, double-edged idea. On one hand, it offers a stunningly coherent, materialist explanation for 20,000 years of moral history. It feels like being handed a secret decoder ring for civilization. Kevin: But on the other hand, the message it decodes is a deeply unsettling one. It suggests our most cherished beliefs about equality, freedom, and justice are not written in the stars, but are built on a foundation of cheap energy that is rapidly changing beneath our feet. Michael: It strips away the comfort of thinking our values are absolute and forces us to see them as fragile, contingent, and perhaps temporary. It moves them from the realm of sacred truth to the realm of practical adaptation. Kevin: It really makes you think. What values do we believe are truly non-negotiable, regardless of the energy source? And what are we willing to do to consciously defend and shape them, rather than just letting history's "brute material forces" shove us around? Michael: That's the question Morris leaves us with. He's a historian, not a prophet. He provides the diagnosis, but the prescription is up to us. Kevin: We'd love to hear what our listeners think about this. Are our values timeless truths or temporary tools? Find us on our social channels and join what is clearly a very important conversation. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.