On "Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel"

 Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel has been a riveting yet hefty read.

 It may not be the best text on West vs. the Rest, but at least I did not see racist undertones while trying to understand his problematization of the oversimplified history.

He claims that he was looking for the answers to why history evolved differently on different continents over the last 13 thousand years. He apparently shunned the common racist response of some people/races to be superior to others. His thesis was that the answer had little to do with people and everything to do with their surroundings.

He/his argument/books did become quite controversial. He has been accused of having masked his biological determinism or historical racism in the garb of natural disposition and distribution of resources. However, biology has been used to explain a lot of other world dynamics: gender relations, patriarchy/matriarchy, sexuality, success, wealth, and cognition.

The "Jared Diamond is a racist" argument suggests that environmental, ecological, and geographical factors led to the West's colonization of the rest, ignoring the determinants of this. Diamond's argument is seen as racist, as it overlooks the terrible actions of Europeans and their unfavorable ideologies.

European descendants can find comfort in the thought that those before them weren't so bad after all while the Whites may find comfort in the thought of no longer having to deal with the horrors of invasion, slavery, and genocide.

But JD (though sometimes extends it too far) does not say any of that. He says that the different historical paths of different countries are not due to racial superiority but to environmental factors. He thinks geographical traits and the availability of plants and animals that can be tamed are two of the most important factors that determine how societies grow. He challenges the idea that racial differences alone are to blame for past events and stresses how important it is to understand these factors to fix world problems of inequality.