one side or preemption by the other. Imbalance in the direction of appetite on the part of
an elite is likely to lead to both emulation and resentment by other actors. It risks
unraveling the social order through widespread violation of nomos and increasing class
tensions that ultimately lead to the same kind of fear and responses to it associated with
an excess of spirit.
Social orders at every level undergo cycles of consolidation and decline. As it is
always easier to enter fear-based worlds than to escape from them, realism is the default
social condition. Human history at this level is cyclical, as realists contend. However,
there are broader historical trends. Over the span of human existence, societies, which
are originally appetite-based, evolve into spirit-based worlds, and then back into worlds
of appetite, but ones that emphasize material well-being at the expense of other appetites.
I raise the prospect of further evolution in the form of a return to a spirit-based world that
would not be a warrior society, but one with diverse, if still competitive, forms of
recognition and standing. This evolution is discontinuous, far from uniform, and driven
by neither a single or necessarily dialectical process. Breakdowns of existing orders are
an essential component, as they make way for change, but also stimulate learning (in the
form of a renewed commitment to constrain and educate spirit and appetite). Evolution
also exploits technological developments, for purposes of building and destroying orders.
Although spirit, appetite and fear-based worlds have existed in pre- and post-industrial
societies, with strikingly similar characteristics, technological, intellectual and social
changes have contributed to transitions between them. Future advances in bio- and nano-
technology, and the ways in which they shape our thinking, might be expected to do the
same.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
3
Convention