Environments change! Recent events suggest that several environmental factors within society, developments of the 20th Century, will change human societies forever over the next millennium.
These developments are computer networks, nonviolent protest, and persistence of the human spirit.
Jared Diamond won a 1998 Pulitzer Prize for his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
It became a National Geographic series broadcast on PBS in 2005.
There he outlined the factors that have molded the fates of societies globally over the past 13,000 years, and explained why Eurasian civilizations have risen to dominance.
Diamond explained that Eurasian peoples developed immunities to the diseases of their farm animals.
When they brought those animals to other localities, during the age of discovery and conquest, other populations lacking those immunities died off.
This was particularly true with the spread of smallpox.
At first, Europeans did not bring germs consciously, but gradually they learned their advantage.
Professor Diamond noted that on the night of November 15, 1532, Francisco Pizarro Gonzalez did not know that his 62 horsemen and 106 infantry had several game-changing advantages over the 80,000 Inca warriors arrayed against them before the Battle of Cajamarca.
Spanish cavalry mounts were well trained and other worldly to the Incas, they carried single shot weapons and wore steel armor.
But it was their rapiers (swords) of Toledo steel that won the day.
After the battle of November 16, 1532, several thousand Inca warriors lay dead, without a single Spanish fatality.
Later, the Spanish inadvertently brought smallpox to the New World, and sealed the doom of many native peoples.
Professor Diamond's thesis was that it was the environment that really helped evolve these game-changing advantages.
But, times change and so do environments.
We no longer live in a time of exploration and conquest.
The advantages of the past have been nullified or vastly reduced.
For a time they will still seem strong, but in the end they cannot prevail.
As computer networks become ubiquitous, acquisitive dictators can no longer commit genocide in secret.
Murderous behavior will be their downfall.
It draws global attention to their crimes, and nowadays, that information reaches a global audience in seconds, not months or years as before.
We will see despots try to use weaponry to dominate their people for some time to come, but they cannot succeed for long.
The world community will not stand for it.
Hosni Mubarak thought he could simply cut off the Internet and cell phone service, but he discovered the double-edged sword.
Like the Inca Emperor Atahualpa before him, he misunderstood his environment, thinking that he had a foolproof weapon.
He thought he could cut off the computer networks and cell phones.
Civil society, even of despots, now relies on computer networks.
If you shut them down, goods and services cannot be ordered or delivered easily, and civil society breaks down very quickly—even for the despot's supporters.
You either have to restore service, thereby giving your dissidents access to communication again, or face anarchy.
Yes, we are entirely reliant on our computer networks and power today.
If these are cut off for a week, we will see anarchy begin to rise up and challenge any government, regardless of its apparent power.
The same effects apply to the supporters of despots as apply to their opponents, so denying service is not a long-term strategy.
Societies have become so large and complex that a simple reversion to a paper based economy could not be implemented in time to prevent anarchy from emerging.
Nonviolent protests will always emerge victorious in the long run, because they have the tendency to create a movement.
Governments cannot stop a movement, because it is often leaderless or it has many leaders.
Where one leader is put down, another will emerge.
Examples are the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s, as well as the movements of Gandhi and King.
In Cairo we saw a dress rehearsal of what the future will be.
People who participate in revolutions sometimes die, but that is true whether or not they carry guns.
When despots fire on unarmed people, they bring down the approbation of global civilization.
When they fire on armed protesters, on the other hand, they can make the case that these are simply criminals or foreign influenced people in their society, who need to be controlled.
The civilized world tends to ignore the protest.
Those who seek change through protest must therefore have the courage to do so nonviolently, in order to win the rest of us as their allies.
Finally, we must recognize that real change takes place in decades, not in days or weeks.
Real change requires persistence.
This was the sobering lesson for the idealistic young Egyptians of February 2011, who thought they had really won when they caused Hosni Mubarak to resign.
Yes, they won a small victory, but it will only be through persistence of their movements that they will really win the reforms and human rights they so richly deserve.
The successful movements of Gandhi, King, and anti-Vietnam War took years to succeed.
The movements of the "Arab Spring" will need to plan and prepare for the long haul to achieve the basic human rights they want and expect.
One fallen despot does not mean you have Freedom, unless you persist and insist that the gains remain permanently.
Human beings are built for persistence, so the protestors demanding their Human Rights and Freedoms will win through.
Guns, germs and steel, the old tools of the age of exploration and domination globally, while for a time they can continue to seem very strong, can no longer win in the long-term.
Remember what Susan B.
Anthony said at the beginning of the women's rights movement in the United States: "Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.
"