2022.02.09 乌克兰问题的关键在于人类历史的发展方向

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By Invitation | Russia and Ukraine
Yuval Noah Harari argues that what’s at stake in Ukraine is the direction of human history
Humanity’s greatest political achievement has been the decline of war. That is now in jeopardy
By Yuval Noah Harari


Feb 9th 2022


At the heart of the Ukraine crisis lies a fundamental question about the nature of history and the nature of humanity: is change possible? Can humans change the way they behave, or does history repeat itself endlessly, with humans forever condemned to reenact past tragedies without changing anything except the décor?

One school of thought firmly denies the possibility of change. It argues that the world is a jungle, that the strong prey upon the weak and that the only thing preventing one country from wolfing down another is military force. This is how it always was, and this is how it always will be. Those who don’t believe in the law of the jungle are not just deluding themselves, but are putting their very existence at risk. They will not survive long.


Another school of thought argues that the so-called law of the jungle isn’t a natural law at all. Humans made it, and humans can change it. Contrary to popular misconceptions, the first clear evidence for organised warfare appears in the archaeological record only 13,000 years ago. Even after that date there have been many periods devoid of archaeological evidence for war. Unlike gravity, war isn’t a fundamental force of nature. Its intensity and existence depend on underlying technological, economic and cultural factors. As these factors change, so does war.

Evidence of such change is all around us. Over the past few generations, nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into a mad act of collective suicide, forcing the most powerful nations on Earth to find less violent ways to resolve conflict. Whereas great-power wars, such as the second Punic war or the second world war, have been a salient feature for much of history, in the last seven decades there has been no direct war between superpowers.

During the same period, the global economy has been transformed from one based on materials to one based on knowledge. Where once the main sources of wealth were material assets such as gold mines, wheat fields and oil wells, today the main source of wealth is knowledge. And whereas you can seize oil fields by force, you cannot acquire knowledge that way. The profitability of conquest has declined as a result.

Finally, a tectonic shift has taken place in global culture. Many elites in history—Hun chieftains, Viking jarls and Roman patricians, for example—viewed war positively. Rulers from Sargon the Great to Benito Mussolini sought to immortalise themselves by conquest (and artists such as Homer and Shakespeare happily obliged such fancies). Other elites, such as the Christian church, viewed war as evil but inevitable.


In the past few generations, however, for the first time in history the world became dominated by elites who see war as both evil and avoidable. Even the likes of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, not to mention the Merkels and Arderns of the world, are very different types of politicians than Atilla the Hun or Alaric the Goth. They usually come to power with dreams of domestic reforms rather than foreign conquests. While in the realm of art and thought, most of the leading lights —from Pablo Picasso to Stanley Kubrick—are better known for depicting the senseless horrors of combat than for glorifying its architects.

As a result of all these changes, most governments stopped seeing wars of aggression as an acceptable tool to advance their interests, and most nations stopped fantasising about conquering and annexing their neighbours. It is simply not true that military force alone prevents Brazil from conquering Uruguay or prevents Spain from invading Morocco.

The parameters of peace
The decline of war is evident in numerous statistics. Since 1945, it has become relatively rare for international borders to be redrawn by foreign invasion, and not a single internationally recognised country has been completely wiped off the map by external conquest. There has been no shortage of other types of conflicts, such as civil wars and insurgencies. But even when taking all types of conflict into account, in the first two decades of the 21st century human violence has killed fewer people than suicide, car accidents or obesity-related diseases. Gunpowder has become less lethal than sugar.

Scholars argue back and forth about the exact statistics, but it is important to look beyond the maths. The decline of war has been a psychological as well as statistical phenomenon. Its most important feature has been a major change in the very meaning of the term “peace”. For most of history peace meant only “the temporary absence of war”. When people in 1913 said that there was peace between France and Germany, they meant that the French and German armies were not clashing directly, but everybody knew that a war between them might nevertheless erupt at any moment.

In recent decades “peace” has come to mean “the implausibility of war”. For many countries, being invaded and conquered by the neighbours has become almost inconceivable. I live in the Middle East, so I know perfectly well that there are exceptions to these trends. But recognising the trends is at least as important as being able to point out the exceptions.

The “new peace” hasn’t been a statistical fluke or hippie fantasy. It has been reflected most clearly in coldly-calculated budgets. In recent decades governments around the world have felt safe enough to spend an average of only about 6.5% of their budgets on their armed forces, while spending far more on education, health care and welfare.

We tend to take it for granted, but it is an astonishing novelty in human history. For thousands of years, military expenditure was by far the biggest item on the budget of every prince, khan, sultan and emperor. They hardly spent a penny on education or medical help for the masses.


The decline of war didn’t result from a divine miracle or from a change in the laws of nature. It resulted from humans making better choices. It is arguably the greatest political and moral achievement of modern civilisation. Unfortunately, the fact that it stems from human choice also means that it is reversible.

Technology, economics and culture continue to change. The rise of cyber weapons, AI-driven economies and newly militaristic cultures could result in a new era of war, worse than anything we have seen before. To enjoy peace, we need almost everyone to make good choices. By contrast, a poor choice by just one side can lead to war.

This is why the Russian threat to invade Ukraine should concern every person on Earth. If it again becomes normative for powerful countries to wolf down their weaker neighbours, it would affect the way people all over the world feel and behave. The first and most obvious result of a return to the law of the jungle would be a sharp increase in military spending at the expense of everything else. The money that should go to teachers, nurses and social workers would instead go to tanks, missiles and cyber weapons.

A return to the jungle would also undermine global co-operation on problems such as preventing catastrophic climate change or regulating disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. It isn’t easy to work alongside countries that are preparing to eliminate you. And as both climate change and an AI arms race accelerate, the threat of armed conflict will only increase further, closing a vicious circle that may well doom our species.

History’s direction
If you believe that historic change is impossible, and that humanity never left the jungle and never will, the only choice left is whether to play the part of predator or prey. Given such a choice, most leaders would prefer to go down in history as alpha predators, and add their names to the grim list of conquerors that unfortunate pupils are condemned to memorize for their history exams.

But maybe change is possible? Maybe the law of the jungle is a choice rather than an inevitability? If so, any leader who chooses to conquer a neighbour will get a special place in humanity’s memory, far worse than your run-of-the-mill Tamerlane. He will go down in history as the man who ruined our greatest achievement. Just when we thought we were out of the jungle, he pulled us back in.

I don’t know what will happen in Ukraine. But as a historian I do believe in the possibility of change. I don’t think this is naivety—it’s realism. The only constant of human history is change. And that’s something that perhaps we can learn from the Ukrainians. For many generations, Ukrainians knew little but tyranny and violence. They endured two centuries of tsarist autocracy (which finally collapsed amidst the cataclysm of the first world war). A brief attempt at independence was quickly crushed by the Red Army that re-established Russian rule. Ukrainians then lived through the terrible man-made famine of the Holodomor, Stalinist terror, Nazi occupation and decades of soul-crushing Communist dictatorship. When the Soviet Union collapsed, history seemed to guarantee that Ukrainians would again go down the path of brutal tyranny – what else did they know?

But they chose differently. Despite history, despite grinding poverty and despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Ukrainians established a democracy. In Ukraine, unlike in Russia and Belarus, opposition candidates repeatedly replaced incumbents. When faced with the threat of autocracy in 2004 and 2013, Ukrainians twice rose in revolt to defend their freedom. Their democracy is a new thing. So is the “new peace”. Both are fragile, and may not last long. But both are possible, and may strike deep roots. Every old thing was once new. It all comes down to human choices.■

Copyright © Yuval Noah Harari 2022.
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Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher and author of “Sapiens” (2014), “Homo Deus” (2016) and the series “Sapiens: A Graphic History” (2020-21). He is a lecturer in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s history department and co-founder of Sapienship, a social-impact company.




应邀参加｜俄罗斯和乌克兰
尤瓦尔-诺亚-哈拉里认为，乌克兰问题的关键在于人类历史的发展方向
人类最大的政治成就是战争的减少。这一点现在正处于危险之中
作者：尤瓦尔-诺亚-哈拉里


2022年2月9日


乌克兰危机的核心是一个关于历史性质和人类本质的基本问题：改变是否可能？人类可以改变他们的行为方式吗？还是说历史会无休止地重复，人类永远注定要重演过去的悲剧，除了装潢，什么都不会改变？

有一个学派坚定地否认了改变的可能性。它认为，世界是一个丛林，强者掠夺弱者，防止一个国家吞噬另一个国家的唯一办法是军事力量。过去是这样，将来也是这样。那些不相信丛林法则的人不仅仅是在自欺欺人，而是将自己的生存置于危险之中。他们不会生存很久。


另一个学派认为，所谓的丛林法则根本就不是自然法则。人类创造了它，而且人类可以改变它。与流行的误解相反，有组织战争的第一个明确证据仅出现在13000年前的考古记录中。即使在那之后，也有许多时期没有战争的考古学证据。与重力不同，战争并不是自然界的基本力量。它的强度和存在取决于潜在的技术、经济和文化因素。随着这些因素的变化，战争也在变化。

这种变化的证据就在我们周围。在过去的几代人中，核武器已经将超级大国之间的战争变成了一种疯狂的集体自杀行为，迫使地球上最强大的国家找到不太暴力的方式来解决冲突。大国战争，如第二次布匿战争或第二次世界大战，一直是历史上大部分时间的突出特点，而在过去70年里，超级大国之间没有发生过直接战争。

在同一时期，全球经济已经从基于物质的经济转变为基于知识的经济。以前，财富的主要来源是物质资产，如金矿、麦田和油井，而今天，财富的主要来源是知识。虽然你可以通过武力夺取油田，但你无法通过这种方式获得知识。征服的利润率也因此而下降了。

最后，全球文化也发生了结构性变化。例如，历史上的许多精英人物--匈奴酋长、维京人和罗马贵族--都积极看待战争。从萨尔贡大帝到贝尼托-墨索里尼的统治者都试图通过征服来使自己永垂不朽（而荷马和莎士比亚等艺术家则愉快地满足了这种幻想）。其他精英，如基督教会，认为战争是邪恶但不可避免的。


然而，在过去的几代人中，历史上第一次，世界被那些认为战争既邪恶又可以避免的精英所支配。即使是乔治-W-布什和唐纳德-特朗普这样的人，更不用说世界上的默克尔和阿德恩，也是与匈奴人阿提拉或哥特人阿拉里克非常不同的政治家类型。他们通常带着国内改革的梦想上台，而不是对外征服。而在艺术和思想领域，大多数领军人物--从巴勃罗-毕加索到斯坦利-库布里克--都因描绘战斗的无意义的恐怖而闻名，而不是因颂扬其建筑师。

由于所有这些变化，大多数政府不再将侵略战争视为推进其利益的可接受工具，大多数国家也不再幻想征服和吞并其邻国。仅凭军事力量就能阻止巴西征服乌拉圭，或阻止西班牙入侵摩洛哥，这根本是不可能的。

和平的参数
战争的减少在许多统计数字中是显而易见的。自1945年以来，因外国入侵而重新划定国际边界的情况相对罕见，没有一个国际公认的国家因外部征服而从地图上完全抹去。也不乏其他类型的冲突，如内战和叛乱。但即使考虑到所有类型的冲突，在21世纪的前20年里，人类暴力造成的死亡人数也少于自杀、车祸或与肥胖有关的疾病。火药的致命性已经低于糖。

学者们对确切的统计数据争论不休，但重要的是要超越数学。战争的减少是一种心理现象，也是一种统计现象。其最重要的特征是 "和平 "一词的含义发生了重大变化。在历史上的大部分时间里，和平只意味着 "暂时没有战争"。当人们在1913年说法国和德国之间有和平时，他们的意思是法国和德国的军队没有直接冲突，但每个人都知道，他们之间的战争随时可能爆发。

近几十年来，"和平 "已经意味着 "战争的不可信性"。对许多国家来说，被邻国入侵和征服已经变得几乎不可想象。我生活在中东，所以我非常清楚，这些趋势也有例外。但认识到这些趋势至少与能够指出例外情况一样重要。

新和平 "并不是统计上的侥幸或嬉皮士的幻想。它已经最清楚地反映在冷酷计算的预算中。近几十年来，世界各国政府都感到足够安全，平均只将其预算的6.5%用于武装部队，而在教育、保健和福利方面的支出要多得多。

我们往往认为这是理所当然的，但这是人类历史上的一个惊人的新事物。几千年来，军事开支是每个王子、汗王、苏丹和皇帝的预算中最大的项目。他们几乎没有花一分钱在教育或医疗帮助大众上。


战争的衰落并不是因为神的奇迹，也不是因为自然法则的改变。它的结果是人类做出了更好的选择。它可以说是现代文明中最伟大的政治和道德成就。不幸的是，它源于人类的选择这一事实也意味着它是可逆的。

技术、经济和文化在继续变化。网络武器、人工智能驱动的经济和新军国主义文化的兴起，可能会导致一个新的战争时代，比我们以前看到的任何东西都要糟糕。为了享受和平，我们需要几乎每个人都能做出良好的选择。相比之下，只有一方的错误选择会导致战争。

这就是为什么俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的威胁应该引起地球上每个人的关注。如果强国对弱国的狼性攻击再次成为常态，这将影响全世界人民的感受和行为方式。重返丛林法则的第一个也是最明显的结果将是以牺牲其他一切为代价的军事开支的急剧增加。本该用于教师、护士和社会工作者的钱将转而用于坦克、导弹和网络武器。

重返丛林还将破坏在防止灾难性气候变化或监管人工智能和基因工程等颠覆性技术问题上的全球合作。与那些准备消灭你的国家一起工作并不容易。而随着气候变化和人工智能军备竞赛的加速，武装冲突的威胁只会进一步增加，形成一个恶性循环，很可能使我们的物种灭亡。

历史的方向
如果你相信历史性的变化是不可能的，而且人类从未离开过丛林，也永远不会离开，那么剩下的唯一选择就是扮演捕食者还是猎物的角色。如果有这样的选择，大多数领导人宁愿以阿尔法捕食者的身份载入史册，把自己的名字加入不幸的学生在历史考试中注定要背诵的严峻的征服者名单中。

但是，也许改变是可能的？也许丛林法则是一种选择，而不是一种不可避免的情况？如果是这样，任何选择征服邻国的领导人都会在人类的记忆中得到一个特殊的位置，远比你的普通的泰梅尔兰更糟糕。他将作为毁掉我们最大成就的人而载入史册。就在我们以为已经走出丛林的时候，他又把我们拉回了丛林。

我不知道在乌克兰会发生什么。但作为一个历史学家，我确实相信变革的可能性。我不认为这是天真，这是现实主义。人类历史上唯一不变的是变化。而这一点，也许我们可以从乌克兰人那里学到。在许多代人中，乌克兰人只知道暴政和暴力。他们忍受了两个世纪的沙皇专制统治（最终在第一次世界大战的大灾难中崩溃了）。一次短暂的独立尝试很快就被重新建立俄罗斯统治的红军粉碎了。随后，乌克兰人经历了可怕的人为大饥荒、斯大林式的恐怖、纳粹的占领和几十年令人心碎的共产主义独裁统治。当苏联解体时，历史似乎保证乌克兰人将再次走上残酷的暴政之路--他们还知道什么？

但他们选择了不同的方式。尽管有历史，尽管有极度的贫困，尽管有似乎无法克服的障碍，乌克兰人还是建立了一个民主国家。在乌克兰，与俄罗斯和白俄罗斯不同，反对派候选人多次取代了在职者。在2004年和2013年面临专制的威胁时，乌克兰人两次起义，捍卫他们的自由。他们的民主是一个新事物。"新和平 "也是如此。两者都是脆弱的，可能不会持续很久。但两者都是可能的，并可能深深扎根。每一个旧事物都曾经是新事物。这一切都归结于人类的选择。

版权所有©尤瓦尔-诺亚-哈拉里2022年。
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尤瓦尔-诺亚-哈拉里是历史学家、哲学家和《智人》（2014年）、《智人》（2016年）以及《智人：图形历史》系列（2020-21）的作者。他是耶路撒冷希伯来大学历史系的讲师，也是社会影响公司Sapienship的联合创始人。