ANT KATZ

“It is possible to study Man as one would study any other species,” writes Mike. As pointed out by Suzana Herculano-Houzel in ‘The Human Advantage’, he says “our brains are straight primate in basic biology but much bigger – thanks largely to bipedality and cooking, plus a bit of luck here and there.”

This “basic equipment” allows us to become masters of all we survey – but not of ourselves, he explains.

Mike says that predicting cycles of instability is possible as has been shown by “a new breed of historian willing to use the tools of science to look at collective human behaviour.”

While conceding that this “is not everyone’s cup of tea,” Prof Berger goes into the new field of Cliodynamics which, he says, has already yielded some provocative and fruitful hypotheses.

Western health and agricultural know-how has increased life-spans and decreased infant mortality, says Mike, and has also lit the fuse of vast population explosions in less developed societies.

Read the full blog: RIDDING OURSELVES OF THE ANC ALBATROSS

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Couple this with “histories of conflict and exploitation and absent the evolved democratic culture and praxis of established democracies, many regions within the non-Western world have been unable to manage internal and external conflicts,” he says. Others, have become incubators for radical and violent doctrines.

In the USA, for example, Nike writes that “new ideas hatched in the fertile imaginations of academe, are agitating tribal loyalties and threatening social cohesion.”

SA is a special case

It is apparent that South Africa is a special case of a more general phenomenon, says Prof Mike Berger. While global trends and Apartheid have both contributed to our own situation, a powerful factor in our predicament is the disastrous turn initiated by Mbeki and consolidated by Zuma, resulting in the patrimonial, corrupt state which we currently inhabit.

“Predictably, this is generating high levels of social violence linked to low levels of inter-personal and between-group trust,” he explains, “accompanied by vicious factional conflict within the ruling alliance and against outside competitors (like the EFF and various Fallist movements) for the diminishing spoils.”

“Our rollercoaster is reasonably well-designed but we desperately require new management,” concludes Mike.

– Retired professor Mike Berger lives in Cape Town and, says Mike, he is committed to the survival and safety of Israel in whatever form it and its citizens decide freely for themselves.”