2010 by Ian Morris entitled Why the West Rules—For Now, in which the author offers his own Morris Theorem to summarize the universal cause of social change in history: “Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things.” To Morris, “culture, values, and beliefs were unimportant” in explaining the great currents of history, and instead we need to look for “brute, material forces,” specifically those arising from geography.9
