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Social Cooperation

Sep 14

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture | No Comments

I have one last interesting bit from historian Willaim McNeil’s Venice: The Hinge of Europe 1081-1797. Of course there is a lot more there, but you’ll just have to read the book yourself.

It is more than passing interest to understand the rise and fall of particular civilizations, and to wonder at how Europe, once a backward part of the world, rose to world dominance in recent centuries. There was a time (i.e. the age of imperialism), not too long ago, that Europe pretty much ruled the world, either directly, through proxies, or through colonists. Now I’m sure there is more than a single explanation; I’ve thought about it before, and even wrote an essay stressing the importance of the political disunity of Europe, in effect, competing political firms in Europe beat monopolies in the two other great cultures of the time – Islam and China.

There is another strand to consider – social organization within Europe. Specifically, the ability of individuals to form organizations at a level other than family. McNeil addresses this phenomenon:

All complex societies develop ad hoc corporations. What was unusual about the Italian trading cities of the eleventh century (and northwestern Europe generally after about 1000) was the number and effectiveness of such arrangements. As compared to other peoples, the inhabitants of this hitherto rather backward portion of the globe proved strikingly capable of transcending kinship groupings and cooperating smoothly with persons who were not blood relatives but were recognized as belonging to some sort of wider in-group — whether that in-group comprised the inhabitants of a village, the citizens of a town, speakers of a common mother tongue, or even the bearers of a common tradition of high culture, i.i the culture of Latin Christendom. These broader groupings rarely came into play; the operationally imporant transfamilial in-groups for medieval Europe were the inhabitants of a village and citizens of a town.

One of the results of this ability to cooperate, according to McNeil, was the rise of Nothern Italian trading corporations, mainly from Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. The ability to form large corporations beyond family groups led to the displacement of the prior traders, mainly Islamic and Jewish, who relied on kinship ties for organization and thus remained small, family operations. These non-family operations could scale up to a large size yet retain the trust normally found within families.

How was such an ability formed? The claim is that the moldboard plow, which was extensively used in Northern Italy and North Western Europe, forced non-family cooperation in those who used it. It was too big for a single family to use, so within the villages of the time people were forced to cooperate across family lines or lose out at plowing. This in turn fostered a culture that looked at cooperation across family lines as routine and expected in the context of another connection. This is not the case in many parts of the world, and generally in the poorer ones.

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Islamic Reformation

Sep 10

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture, The War on Terror | 1 Comment

I still hear people saying Islam needs a reformation (I suppose because they think that the reformation did wonders for the Christian world’s politics). Callimachus at Winds of Change wrote a wonderful post on the subject a while back, You Say You Want a Reformation. While I don’t disagree with his post, I think there is still more to be covered. First off, the title implies it but Callimachus doesn’t follow up that a reformation really is a revolution, and not all, probably not even a majority, turn out well. The French revolution deposed a King and created an Emperor in his place. The Iranian revolution replaced a repressive and unpopular regime with a far more repressive and unpopular regime, and no doubt has made many Iranians understandably nervous about a second one any time soon. Any revolution carries the risk that things will only get worse.

Secondly, the protestant reformation didn’t actually do what people who call for an Islamic revolution to do for Islam, namely get religion out of politics or change the nature of the religion. The reformed Catholic church was just as involved in politics afterwards, maybe moreso. Nor did it promote religious tolerance, as for instance the Spanish Inquisition was in part a response to the religous ferment at the start of the reformation. During the middle ages the Catholic church was an important political player for two reasons – it was the only universal institution in the Christian world, and it was a feuditory in the fuedal system – i.e a bishop was just another baron, and the Pope even was like a King in the Papal States. The wars that the reformation started did have the effect of strengthening the central state and ushering out the feudal system.

The Reformation did not fundamentally change the nature of Christianity, just it’s organization. We can debate the proper role and balance of faith and works in the Christian life per the various Christian denominations, but they will agree upon what the faith should be in and what the works should be. Certainly the disagreements over theology that loom large within Christianity pale to insignificance as compared to differences with other religions.

Callimachus says that we are looking at an Islamic Reformation right now, and as he observes, not all religions are the same:

For another: There already was an Islamic Reformation. It happened while we were sleeping. The result is Wahhabi dominance, and Islamic Brotherhood, and Bin Laden. This is the Islamic Reformation. We’re fighting it now….

When Christianity reforms — when it goes back to its roots — it tries to foreswear the world. When Islam goes back to its roots, it tries to conquer the world.

OK, I will disagree, Christianity does not foreswear the world. Instead it tries (with mixed success) to love people. Islam at root is a rule based religion, Christianity at root is a relationship based religion. And not only are we facing a current “Islamic Reformation”, Islam had a failed but similar reformation at about the same time as the Christian one. From Venice: The Hinge of Europe 1081-1797, by history professor William McNeil:

Economic difficulties at home and the cessation of victory abroad had serious implications for Moslem thought and self-confidence. As long as success had continued to crown Ottoman standards, the Moslems of the empire could and did argue that the favor Allah continued to shower upon Ottoman arms attested the correctness of their faith. When successes ceased, the inference was obvious. Clearly, Allay was displeased; and the reasons were not far to seek. From almost the beginning of Islam, pious and fanatical puritans had taught that all innovation that went beyond the practices attested in the Koran was displeasing to God. This was a doctrine that demanded reformation of existing Ottoman religious practices every bit as radical as anything dreamed of by the Calvinist reform program for Christianity. The two movements coincided closely in time, for in the final decades of the sixteenth century and throughout the first half of the seventeenth, so called faki preachers inflamed popular discontents, already acute for economic reasons, by demanding uncompromising adherence to Koranic models of piety. The faki attacked the official hierarchy of Ottoman Islam for criminal laxity in condoning innovations of all sorts. They attacked the dervish orders no less vigourously for the heterodoxy of their opinions and ritual practices.Despite their passion and popular following, the faki did not prevail and were never able to seize political power. Their cultural influence was negative, inhibiting all buth the rich and privileged from exploring novelties, whether intellectual or otherwise, for which Koranic sanction was lacking. Even long established rational science — imported into Moslem learning in Abbasid times — withered away as subject of instructions in public institutions of higher learning. Symbolic of this transformation was the fact that in 1580 Sheik-ul-Islam ordered the destruction of the sultan’s private observatory. This institution had been as well equipped as any in Europe; but when popular preachers interpreted the outbreak of plague in Istanbul as a sign of Allah’s displeasure at the sultan’s impious efforts to penetrate God’s secrets by astrological science, the observatory (which was, in fact, inspired by astrological curiousity) had to go.

The book goes on to say that religiously questionable pursuits, such as medicine, were abandoned to Jews and Christians, and that higher education became the memorization of sacred texts and their commentaries. Sounds similar to the problem we’re facing today. And it sounds like that movement sowed the seeds of todays movement as well by setting the Islamic world up for failure in succeeding centuries, causing once again an attempt to return to the glory days of Islam.

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Resistance To Change

Sep 10

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture, The War on Terror | No Comments

I picked up a book at the library about Venice — yes, inspired by my recent trip there (someday, and soon, I will actually get you there in the European Vacation series) — and I managed to get a good one, Venice: The Hinge of Europe 1081-1797, by history professor William McNeill. Since it was written in 1974, no shadow of current political controversy touches it; yet I can’t help but be struck by certain passages and their application to today:

Widely diverse reactions flow from encounters with new and superior cultural traits: successful borrowing or inventive adaptation within the receiving cultural context are relatively rare but of great historical importance because it is in such circumstances that additions to human skills and capacities are most likely to arise. Far more common, but historically less important, are the instances when men draw back, reaffirm their accustomed patterns of life, and reject the attractive novelty because it seems either unattainable or else threatening and dangerous. In such cases it may become necessary to reinforce accustomed ways in order to withstand the seductions inherent in exposure to what appears to be a superior foreign product. Cultural change, sometimes very far reaching, may thus paradoxically result from especially strenuous efforts to maintain the status quo.

I have to applaud the fact that in 1974 a professor could not just mention that one culture could have traits superior to another, but write a book that looked at such cultural flows.

But more importantly, is this what we are seeing in action today on the part of Islamofascist terrorists? An excessive reinforcement of accustomed ways? Is this why poverty has no correlation to becoming an Islamofascist terrorist, but exposure to the West does? Is it possible that the actual agents of 9/11, the Mohammed Attas and Hani Hanjours, as well as the mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed all of whom spent time living in the United States, only had their murderous intent reinforced, possibly created, by such direct exposure to a different culture.

Of course, the actions of al-Qaida et al. aren’t directly entirely, or even primarily, at the West. Far more Iraqi’s have been killed by al-Qaida operatives than westerners. Are we seeing extra strenuous efforts to maintain a status quo, or at least the illusion of one? While al-Qaida dreams of defeating the west, they also dream of ruling the Islamic world and imposing their brand of Islam on it. And to them, their Islam is the original, pure, untainted by foreigners Islam, the idea being to return to the status quo ante pernicious western influence.

Is then what we are experiencing a fight by a part of the Islamic culture against both the rest of the Islamic culture and the West over how much Islamic culture should be influenced by the West?

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Juan Williams Vs. Sylvester Brown

Aug 31

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture | No Comments

Sylvester Brown’s column today was titled:  Blaming blacks is popular with some, but it’s perilously naive. An alternate could be I’ll be blaming whites for the next 210 years. Juan Williams wrote a book Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About I (which I haven’t read – yet) that echoes a lot of Bill Cosby’s laments and self help advice for poor blacks.

Sylvester does what he so often does – misunderstand and mischaracterize: “This diatribe – that the black man is inherently flawed, violent and savage – is older than the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.” If that were so, why are Mr. Cosby and Mr. Williams offering advice to blacks? If the black man were inherently flawed, violent and savage, why would they say if you stop a couple of behaviors and start a couple of others, you’d be much, much better off? How could the advice, which applies equally well to poor whites, “begin with getting a high school education, not having children until one is twenty-one and married, working hard at any job, and being good parents” be so offensive to some?

Sylvester says: “The “blame blacks” message appeals to many whites because it deflects accountability.” Hmm, what does the blame white message do, Mr Brown? And really, if you think whites really are this mass of institutional racism, why entrust us with the responsibility for black success? Seems kind of, well, stupid, doesn’t it?

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White Guilt: Foreward

Jun 16

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture | No Comments

Why yes, I’ve been busy lately – or I should say busier. So less posting. I just finished White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era by Shelby Steele. It really is a GUT (grand unified theory) that explains the political scene of the last 50 years. I’d like to explore the book in greater detail later, but I’ll just note a few quick things, like how the Publisher’s Weekly editorial review calls Mr. Steele “contrarian cultural critic Steele” which begs the question, contrarian to what? The establishment view? The gospel of the left? What the reviewer thinks? It’s especially ironic as the review just noted that he’s “speaking the language of moralism, individual freedom and responsibility” — apparently all those things are no longer part of the dominant culture, or at least the dominant culture in publishing circles.

I found the book to be a quick, interesting, and very important read. I was drawn in when Mr. Steele described how his father would call out “Say chief” to get someone’s attention in the 50’s — something my father did in the 60’s.

But the most important part of the book is his theory of what happened at the culmination for the Civil Rights Movement, how White Guilt replaced White Superiority, and what the effect that has had on not just race relations ever since. Really good stuff.

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What Is A Feminist?

May 31

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture | No Comments

Who died and put Nora Ephron in charge?:

And by the way, Laura Bush isn’t a feminist. You can’t be a feminist if you don’t believe in a woman’s right to choose.”

Um, why not? What exactly is feminism about? I’ve said it before, I don’t consider myself a Feminist, but a feminist. I find Feminism both dreary and alarming – dreary because it is so humorless, so dogmatic, so past its prime, and alarming because as a Man, I’m the enemy. I find feminism sensible and always relevant. The biggest difference to me is that Feminism is all about women being just like the stereotype of manly men at the birth of feminism – career first, sexual predator, all that nonsense, while feminism is about women being free to pursue happiness without gender restrictions (which means we need a healthy dose of masculinism as well). While I oppose abortion, it doesn’t enter into feminism because of the physical reality that reproduction is gender asymetrical, and there is nothing law or culture can do about that. Women are no more or less equal than men due to abortion law because are men not subject to it and there is no equivalent for men. So I’m happy to be a feminist, just don’t call me a Feminist.

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Hug A Mom Today

May 18

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture | No Comments

The Stanford Magazine, which the Alumni Association so thoughtfully sends to me despite the fact I haven’t paid to join (if you don’t count the thousands of dollars in tuition, which I don’t since my father paid that), has a section called One Question. They ask one question, and well known members of the Stanford community (i.e. not me) answer that one question. Last months edition (i.e. the one I’m currently reading) had an interesting juxtaposition of two answers. First up is a condescending piece of snot by a professor (who else?):

Marjorie Perloff is the Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities, emerita: Until recently, I honestly believed that the feminist revolution was irreversible. I took it for granted that women could now have real careers and be independent people. But as I read my daughter Carey’s 25th-reunion class book or the New York Times, I learn that little has changed. Indeed, in some ways, the situation has deteriorated as the “soccer mom,” the mom who “uses her SUV as her office,” is valorized. Moms in my day (late ’50s-early ’60s) who didn’t work outside the home used their spare time to work in the community and the arts, take courses, and so on. We would have been ashamed to be soccer moms and spend our afternoons chauffeuring kids around. So I regard the current scene with dismay but also with bemusement: it will change again just as everything does.

I suppose I could read this with a detached bemusement too if it wasn’t coming from a professor, so I’m forced to have nothing but dismay. This is the chief reason I have come to disdain capital F Feminism while I consider myself a small f feminism — I’m all for throwing open the doors of opportunity to all people regardless of gender (or sex) or race or pretty much anything other than criminal behavior, but where I’m also in favor of people deciding on their own what opportunities to persue, the Feminists are not open at all and only consider particular choices the right ones. I, too, am amazed when I read my reunion books how many of the women chose to stop persuing careers, and I’m talking about high paying, prestigous careers, to be full time mothers. But I don’t think they’ve made the wrong choice, just as I don’t think those women who continued with their careers made the wrong choice, because it’s their choice to make, not mine. On a side note (what, not in parentheses for a change?), I was shocked to read this from a professor; perhaps the instaprofessor wouldn’t be so shocked since he comes in contact to such disdain on a far more regular basis.

But the truly wonderful thing is immediately following they have the perfect rejoinder:

Jim Collins, ’80, MBA ’83, founded a management research laboratory in Boulder, Colo., and is the author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don’t: I used to believe that the critical questions in life were about -what — what decisions to make, what goals to pursue, what answers to give, what mountains to climb. I’ve come to see that the most important decisions are not about what, but about who. The primary question is not what mountains to climb, but who should be your climbing partner. If you want to have a great life, the most important question is not what you spend your time doing, but who you spend your time with. First who, then what – life is people.

Apparently there are plenty of women (and men too!) who have also made it past what to who and have decided that spouses and children are the who, or at least the most signficant who, when it comes to answering who do you spend your time with. Amen, brother Jim.

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Happy Easter

Apr 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture, Faith | 2 Comments

I noticed it on Saturday when about the 4th working person told me “Happy Easter” in establishments where they only go so far as “Happy Holidays” at Christmas time. Isn’t there supposed to be a War on Christians? Did we win and nobody tell me? Or is this just a truce for Easter? Maybe they figured I wouldn’t be out and about on Passover if I were Jewish. Of course, I’m sensitive enough to worry that when clerks were wishing me Happy New Year on or about January 1st they were upsetting the Chinese and Moslems who celebrate New Years at a different time. Oddly enough, nobody told me “Have a good Good Friday” on Friday.

I’m taking my cue from Joshua:

But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

So (belatedly) Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Days, or even Happy Cranky Atheist Day to you, as the case may be.

Are All Creeds Created Equal?

Mar 19

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture, Movies, The War on Terror | No Comments

You just have to love a title like “Jesus and the Duke”, and the post itself doesn’t disappoint after such a strong lead. Andrew Klavan looks at creeds, honor killings, and how they relate to Elizabeth Smart. Yes, there is a difference in creeds, and what make the United States a rare country is that it a nation built on a creed and not ethnicity. Mr. Klavan writes:

I couldn’t help reflecting that if Elizabeth had been the child of Islamic hardliners, her welcome home might not have been quite as loving as it was.Now the Mormons and every other group have their extremists, but they’re not accepted by our society as they are virtually throughout the Muslim world. To the vast majority of Americans, the idea of punishing, let alone murdering, a raped child is so appalling that language fails. And there can be no multicultural dithering about it: our way is better than their way, as civilization is better than savagery, as love is better than hate. But, of course, our superiority isn’t a matter of individuals, it’s a matter of ideas. The Islamofascist’s creed is a bad one; the American creed is not.

Which brings me at last to the films of John Wayne and the ministry of Jesus Christ. I mean, if these are not the twin pillars our nation rests on, man, I don’t know what those pillars would be. Thus my texts for today’s sermon, brothers and sisters, are John 8: 3-11 and John Ford’s The Searchers.

Not just anybody who can weave the Bible and John Wayne together. I might have gone with Romans 12:19 myself.

I wonder what text Mr. Klavan would choose to go with True Grit?

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We Are The World

Feb 16

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture | No Comments

Last night while watching the Olympics (yes, of course after American Idol) they were showing the moguls competition — which I find not just silly but annoying because sports shouldn’t have judges, which is probably the best reason to prefer curling as an olympic sport to moguls — and the funWife and I noticed how they have the current top three competitors sitting in order and the guy in the middle at the time was clearly asian (you don’t see too many in olympic skiing events). He popped up to wave to the stands before the last competitor since he was going to medal, and so the TV obligingly told us that Toby Dawson was waving to his mother, who was clearly not asian. I immediately told my wife, he must be an American. We are the world.

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