Curt Doolittle

Form: Excerpt

  • ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVILIZATION AND MILITARY TECHNIQUE —“There is a b

    http://wordpress.com/BOOKS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVILIZATION AND MILITARY TECHNIQUE

    —“There is a book to be written—but not by me—on the relationship between civilization and military technique. Why is it that the more civilized states in history tend to rely on infantry (Greece, Rome, the modern West) and the more barbaric cavalry?”— Coyle Neal

    The books have been written.

    – Van Creveld on The culture of war.

    – Keegan on History of War.

    – Gimbutas and Armstrong on origins.

    – Malory on Indo Europeans

    – Hansen as you’ve mentioned.

    Each civilization evolved out of a combination of feast ritual and means of war. The west evolved debate, reason, science, common law, and the jury, (which democracy is an evolution of) because we invented truth telling, and required it of one another – all because of our battle tactics. And our battle tactics because we relied upon expensive technology, and voluntary participation (“enfranchisement”) Which in exchange we obtained what we call today ‘property rights’ and the reciprocal insurance of one another’s property.

    However, the answer to your question is simple really: raiding, and retreat of the herdsman vs the problem of holding territory of the agrarian.

    Low trust herdsman and a lack of property rights, medium trust agrarians and organized armies. High trust militias that are self financed and aristocratic.

    Fukuyama is wrong – or at least incomplete.

    He has correctly understood that the transition to bureaucracy requires the prior development of bureaucracy. But he does not grasp for some reason, that trust, truth, and jury are the reason that the west developed higher rates of adaptation than all others.

    Why? Because a law can be constructed under common law, that suppresses an innovation in parasitism (free riding, theft, fraud, conspiracy) faster than in any other method of juridical evolution. And as such the time between innovation and suppression eliminates the opportunity for the systematic development of rents.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    — ARTICLE EN TOTO —

    (link below)

    Discourses on Livy: II.18-19

    by Coyle Neal

    II.18–19

    There is a book to be written—but not by me—on the relationship between civilization and military technique. Why is it that the more civilized states in history tend to rely on infantry (Greece, Rome, the modern West) and the more barbaric cavalry? In merely asking the question I’ve exhausted my knowledge of the topic, but I can at least suggest The Art of War in the Middle Ages, Kenneth Clarke’s Civilization, and Victor Davis Hanson’s The Western Way of War as companion pieces for further reflection on the subject.

    Machiavelli begins to give us something of an answer when he discusses Rome’s reliance on infantry as its primary military force. He notes that Rome always preferred to use infantry rather than cavalry (and certainly, we can add, rather than sea power). This prejudice remained to the very end of the empire when infantry had been, for better or worse, surpassed by cavalry technologically and logistically, and even to some extent through the end of the Byzantine Empire as well—though they were less dogmatic about the subject.

    For Machiavelli, the ultimate evidence of the virtue of infantry over cavalry is not just that Rome preferred the former to the latter, but that Rome repeatedly won. Victory on the battlefield was for him the proof of superior Roman military power, and therefore superior virtue. Example after example from the time of Rome and from recent history (especially drawing on the Swiss) are used to demonstrate the virtue of those who rely on foot soldiers over horsemen. Though Machiavelli does not explicitly say so, he implies that the occasions when cavalry do win the victory are examples of failures of virtue on the part of infantry, not necessarily of superior virtue on the part of the victors.

    But again, we have to ask: why is this the case? What makes infantry so much better than cavalry, either in terms of Machiavelli’s virtue or in civilization itself? Machiavelli gives a number of reasons:

    A man on foot can go many places where a horse cannot go. He can be taught to observe order, and that he has to resume it if it is disturbed; it is difficult to make horses observe order, and impossible to reorder them when they are disturbed. Besides this, as in men, some horses are found that have little spirit and some that have very much; and often it happens that a spirited horse is ridden by a cowardly man, and a cowardly horse by a spirited one, and, in whichever mode this disparity occurs, from it arises uselessness and disorder. Ordered infantry can easily break horse, and only with difficulty be defeated by them. (II.18.2)

    In other words, infantry is to be preferred because it relies more on virtue and less on fortune. Infantry, if well trained, will “observe order” while remaining flexible (going “many places where a horse cannot”). Men can be shaped and trained and formed into a military power which directly translates virtue into victory. Interestingly, many of Machiavelli’s examples are drawn from Roman losses, in which the infantry was defeated, and yet because of the strong discipline present in the Roman forces not all was lost—”Mark Antony,” for example, “virtuously saved himself” (II.18.3) despite having lost the battle in question.

    By comparison, reliance on cavalry brings too much fortune into the equation. To be sure, horsemen need training and “order” too. There is virtue involved in creating a well-disciplined unit of this kind as well. But involving animals brings an inherently irrational element into play—horses can be “impossible to reorder… when they are disturbed” (II.18.2). Likewise, horses and riders each have their own spirits which can be cowardly or bold, and an army might end up with cowardly riders on bold horses or vice versa, all of which brings yet another uncontrollable element of fortune onto the battlefield. At the end of the day, whatever advantages cavalry bring to the table (and Machiavelli is clear that they do have a role to play in combat) are not offset by their disadvantages when they become the crux of the state’s war plans.

    We can add the interesting tidbit as a corollary to Machiavelli’s examples of infantry losses as proofs of the virtue of those nations that societies which rely exclusively on cavalry do have a tendency to topple with a single military defeat. Hannibal could crush army after army of Roman soldiers, but one loss sent him packing for North Africa. (And yes, I’m being generous there and counting “elephants” as “cavalry.”) It is fairly remarkable how much of a beating ancient Rome, or modern America, could absorb on the battlefield without seriously disrupting its civilization. And while I might not go as far as to say it’s solely because of their reliance on infantry over and above other forms of combat, there might still be some kind of correlation there.

    Having won the battle and established rule over new territories, what next? Once again, Machiavelli argues that if we’re not virtuous in the manner of Rome we should not expect any kind of lasting success. In fact, we should expect what little victory we’ve achieved to come undone and leave us in a worse position than that in which we started. The problem is that people “these days” either think times have changed so much that these Roman examples no longer apply, or think those examples were never true to begin with. But if only we would believe what we read in the histories, that well-ordered infantry can defeat whatever is thrown at it:

    republics and princes would err less, would be stronger in opposing a thrust that might come against them, and would not put their hope in flight; and those who have in their hands a civil way of life would know better how to direct it, either by way of expanding it or by way of maintaining it. And they would believe that increasing the inhabitants of one’s city, getting partners and not subjects, sending colonies to guard countries that have been acquired, making capital out of booty, subduing the enemy with raids and battles and not with sieges, keeping the public rich and the private poor, and maintaining military exercises with the highest seriousness is the true way to make a republic great and to acquire empire. (II.19.1)

    The Roman way of war is the key to everything that Machiavelli has been discussing up to this point. Any attempt on the part of a republic to grow without growing in this way is not only futile, but actively destructive to the republic itself. Even if the republic doesn’t wish to expand into an empire, it still must pursue this because “if it will not molest others, it will be molested” (II.19.1). While the German republics might be exceptions to this rule, that is rather the result of oddities of geography than universal truths about republics.

    The republic that does wish to grow and develop must grow and develop its military at the same time, or else risk perishing:

    For he very likely acquires empire without forces, and whoever acquires empire without forces will be fittingly ruined. Whoever impoverishes himself through wars cannot acquire forces, even should he be victorious, since he spends more than he obtains from his acquisitions. (II.19.2)

    Rome itself ultimately fell victim to this process, when its borders finally expanded beyond what it could reasonably hope to rule. As a result, the bad influences of the nations it conquered, instead of being restrained and transformed into virtuous pursuits (as with the Roman conquests in Italy), gradually sapped the strength of Rome until it collapsed of its own corrupted weight. And if the Romans with all their virtue couldn’t save themselves, what hope do modern Americans have?

    http://nomocracyinpolitics.com/2015/04/10/discourses-on-livy-ii-18-19/

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-10 07:44:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/

    Source date (UTC): 2015-03-31 19:52:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://healthpsy.home.ro/files/SCU/3%20laws%20of%20behavioral%20genetics.pdf

    Source date (UTC): 2015-03-24 04:12:00 UTC

  • The Birth of Individualism In The North Sea Peoples

    (must read)(from hbd chick) [I]ndividualism:  (book)

    Northern europeans began to think of — or at least write about — themselves as individuals beginning in the eleventh century a.d. [pgs. 158, 160, and 64-67 – bolding and links inserted by me]: “The discovery of the individual was one of the most important cultural [*ahem*] developments in the years between 1050 and 1200. It was not confined to any one group of thinkers. Its central features may be found in different circles: a concern with self-discovery; an interest in the relations between people, and in the role of the individual within society; an assessment of people by their inner intentions rather than by their external acts. These concerns were, moreover, conscious and deliberate. ‘Know yourself’ was one of the most frequently quoted injunctions. The phenomenon which we have been studying was found in some measure in every part of urbane and intelligent society. “It remains to ask how much this movement contributed to the emergence of the distinctively Western view of the individual…. The continuous history of several art-forms and fields of study, which are particularly concerned with the individual, began at this time: auto-biography, psychology, the personal portrait, and satire were among them…. “The years between 1050 and 1200 must be seen…as a turning-point in the history of Christian devotion. There developed a new pattern of interior piety, with a growing sensitivity, marked by personal love for the crucified Lord and an easy and free-flowing meditation on the life and passion of Christ…. “The word ‘individual’ did not, in the twelfth century, have the same meaning as it does today. The nearest equivalents were *individuum*, *individualis*, and *singularis*, but these terms belonged to logic rather than to human relations…. “The age had, however, other words to express its interest in personality. We hear a great deal of ‘the self’, not expressed indeed in that abstract way, but in such terms as ‘knowing oneself’, ‘descending into oneself’, or ‘considering oneself’. Another common term was *anima*, which was used, ambiguously in our eyes, for both the spiritual identity (‘soul’) of a man and his directing intelligence (‘mind’). Yet another was ‘the inner man’, a phrase found in Otloh of Saint Emmeram and Guibert of Nogent, who spoke also of the ‘inner mystery’. Their vocabulary, while it was not the same as ours, was therefore rich in terms suited to express the ideas of self-discovery and self-exploration. “Know Yourself “Self-knowledge was one of the dominant themes of the age…. These writers all insisted on self-knowledge as fundamental. Thus Bernard wrote to Pope Eugenius, a fellow-Cistercian, about 1150: ‘Begin by considering yourself — no, rather, end by that….For you, you are the first; you are also the last.’ So did Aelred of Rievaulx: ‘How much does a man know, if he does not know himself?’ The Cistercian school was not the only one to attach such a value to self-knowledge. About 1108 Guibert of Nogent began his history of the Crusade with a modern-sounding reflection about the difficulty of determining motive: “‘It is hardly surprising if we make mistakes in narrating the actions of other people, when we cannot express in words even our own thoughts and deeds; in fact, we can hardly sort them out in our own minds. It is useless to talk about intentions, which, as we know, are often so concealed as scarcely to be discernible to the understanding of the inner man.’ “Self-knowledge, then, was a generally popular ideal.” _____ There seem to be two broad sociobiological/genocultural packages when it comes to average nepotistic vs. not-so-nepotistic altruistic behaviors in human populations — these are not binary opposites, but rather the ends of some sort of continuum of behavioral traits [click on table for LARGER view]: Nepotistic vs. not-so-nepotistic The common thread running through the not-so-nepotistic groups of today (primarily northwest europeans) is a long history of outbreeding (i.e. avoiding close matings, like cousin marriage). (and a long history of manorialism. yes, i WILL start my series on medieval manorialism soon!) while individualism and guilt cultures may have been present in northern europe in paleolithic or even mesolithic populations, these behavioral traits and mindsets were definitely not present in the pre-christian germanic, british, or irish populations of late antiquity. those populations were very much all about clans and kindreds, feuding and honor, shame, and group consensus. guilt/individualistic cultures (i.e. not-so-nepostic societies) can come and go depending at least partly on long-term mating patterns. human evolution can be recent as well as aeons old. The individualistic guilt-culture of northwest (“core”) europeans today came into existence thanks to their extensive outbreeding during the medieval period (…and the manorialism). the outbreeding started in earnest in the 800s (at least in northern france) and, as we saw above, by 1050-1100 thoughts on individualis began to stir. around the same time, communes appeared in northern italy and parts of france — civic societies. violence rates begin to fall in the 1200s, especially in more outbred populations, i would argue (guess!) because the impulsive violence related to clan feuding was no longer being selected for. By the 1300-1400s, after an additional couple hundred years of outbreeding, the renaissance was in full swing due to the “wikification” of northern european society — i.e. that nw europeans now possessed a set of behavioral traits that drove them to work cooperatively with non-relatives — to share openly knowledge and ideas and labor in reciprocally altruistic ways. the enlightenment? well, that was just the full flowering of The Outbreeding Project — an explosion of these not-so-nepotistic behavioral traits that had been selected for over the preceding 800 to 900 years. individualism? universalism? liberal democracy? tolerance? reason? skepticism? coffeehouses? the age of enlightenment IS what core europeans are all about! hurray! (^_^) the Project and its effects are ongoing today. It could be argued that the fact that certain mating patterns seem to go together with certain societal types is just a coincidence — or that it’s the societal type that affects or dictates the mating patterns. for example, i said in my recent post on shame and guilt in ancient greece that: “shame cultures are all tied up with honor — especially family honor. japan — with its meiwaku and seppuku — is the classic example of a shame culture, but china with its confucian filial piety is not far behind. the arabized populations are definitely shame cultures with their honor killings and all their talk of respect. even european mediterranean societies are arguably more honor-shame cultures than guilt cultures [pdf]. “if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ll recognize all of those shame cultures as having had long histories of inbreeding: maternal cousin marriage was traditionally very common in east asia (here’re japan and china); paternal cousin marriage is still going strong in the arabized world; and cousin marriage was prevelant in the mediterranean up until very recently (here’s italy, for example).” Perhaps, you say, the causal direction is that nepotistic, clannish shame-cultures somehow promote close matings (cousin marriage or whatever). well, undoubtedly there are reinforcing feedback loops here, but the upshot is that both ancient greece and medieval-modern europe clearly illustrate that the mating patterns come first. (possibly ancient rome, too, but i’ll come back to that another day.) the pre-christian northern european societies were clannish shame-cultures until after the populations switched to outbreeding (avoiding cousin marriage) in the early medieval period. late archaic-early classical greek society was rather (a bit borderline) universalistic, individualistic [pg. 160+] and guilt-based until after they began to marry their cousins with greater frequency (at least in classical athens). the not-so-nepotistic guilt-culture we see now in northwest european populations is particularly resilient, i think, because the outbreeding has been carried out for a particularly long time (since at least the 800s) and thanks to the complementary selection pressures of the medieval manor system (which ancient greece lacked), but it did not exist before the early medieval period. So, the direction of causation seems to be: (long-term) mating patterns –> societal type (nepotistic vs. not-so-nepotistic).

  • The Birth of Individualism In The North Sea Peoples

    (must read)(from hbd chick) [I]ndividualism:  (book)

    Northern europeans began to think of — or at least write about — themselves as individuals beginning in the eleventh century a.d. [pgs. 158, 160, and 64-67 – bolding and links inserted by me]: “The discovery of the individual was one of the most important cultural [*ahem*] developments in the years between 1050 and 1200. It was not confined to any one group of thinkers. Its central features may be found in different circles: a concern with self-discovery; an interest in the relations between people, and in the role of the individual within society; an assessment of people by their inner intentions rather than by their external acts. These concerns were, moreover, conscious and deliberate. ‘Know yourself’ was one of the most frequently quoted injunctions. The phenomenon which we have been studying was found in some measure in every part of urbane and intelligent society. “It remains to ask how much this movement contributed to the emergence of the distinctively Western view of the individual…. The continuous history of several art-forms and fields of study, which are particularly concerned with the individual, began at this time: auto-biography, psychology, the personal portrait, and satire were among them…. “The years between 1050 and 1200 must be seen…as a turning-point in the history of Christian devotion. There developed a new pattern of interior piety, with a growing sensitivity, marked by personal love for the crucified Lord and an easy and free-flowing meditation on the life and passion of Christ…. “The word ‘individual’ did not, in the twelfth century, have the same meaning as it does today. The nearest equivalents were *individuum*, *individualis*, and *singularis*, but these terms belonged to logic rather than to human relations…. “The age had, however, other words to express its interest in personality. We hear a great deal of ‘the self’, not expressed indeed in that abstract way, but in such terms as ‘knowing oneself’, ‘descending into oneself’, or ‘considering oneself’. Another common term was *anima*, which was used, ambiguously in our eyes, for both the spiritual identity (‘soul’) of a man and his directing intelligence (‘mind’). Yet another was ‘the inner man’, a phrase found in Otloh of Saint Emmeram and Guibert of Nogent, who spoke also of the ‘inner mystery’. Their vocabulary, while it was not the same as ours, was therefore rich in terms suited to express the ideas of self-discovery and self-exploration. “Know Yourself “Self-knowledge was one of the dominant themes of the age…. These writers all insisted on self-knowledge as fundamental. Thus Bernard wrote to Pope Eugenius, a fellow-Cistercian, about 1150: ‘Begin by considering yourself — no, rather, end by that….For you, you are the first; you are also the last.’ So did Aelred of Rievaulx: ‘How much does a man know, if he does not know himself?’ The Cistercian school was not the only one to attach such a value to self-knowledge. About 1108 Guibert of Nogent began his history of the Crusade with a modern-sounding reflection about the difficulty of determining motive: “‘It is hardly surprising if we make mistakes in narrating the actions of other people, when we cannot express in words even our own thoughts and deeds; in fact, we can hardly sort them out in our own minds. It is useless to talk about intentions, which, as we know, are often so concealed as scarcely to be discernible to the understanding of the inner man.’ “Self-knowledge, then, was a generally popular ideal.” _____ There seem to be two broad sociobiological/genocultural packages when it comes to average nepotistic vs. not-so-nepotistic altruistic behaviors in human populations — these are not binary opposites, but rather the ends of some sort of continuum of behavioral traits [click on table for LARGER view]: Nepotistic vs. not-so-nepotistic The common thread running through the not-so-nepotistic groups of today (primarily northwest europeans) is a long history of outbreeding (i.e. avoiding close matings, like cousin marriage). (and a long history of manorialism. yes, i WILL start my series on medieval manorialism soon!) while individualism and guilt cultures may have been present in northern europe in paleolithic or even mesolithic populations, these behavioral traits and mindsets were definitely not present in the pre-christian germanic, british, or irish populations of late antiquity. those populations were very much all about clans and kindreds, feuding and honor, shame, and group consensus. guilt/individualistic cultures (i.e. not-so-nepostic societies) can come and go depending at least partly on long-term mating patterns. human evolution can be recent as well as aeons old. The individualistic guilt-culture of northwest (“core”) europeans today came into existence thanks to their extensive outbreeding during the medieval period (…and the manorialism). the outbreeding started in earnest in the 800s (at least in northern france) and, as we saw above, by 1050-1100 thoughts on individualis began to stir. around the same time, communes appeared in northern italy and parts of france — civic societies. violence rates begin to fall in the 1200s, especially in more outbred populations, i would argue (guess!) because the impulsive violence related to clan feuding was no longer being selected for. By the 1300-1400s, after an additional couple hundred years of outbreeding, the renaissance was in full swing due to the “wikification” of northern european society — i.e. that nw europeans now possessed a set of behavioral traits that drove them to work cooperatively with non-relatives — to share openly knowledge and ideas and labor in reciprocally altruistic ways. the enlightenment? well, that was just the full flowering of The Outbreeding Project — an explosion of these not-so-nepotistic behavioral traits that had been selected for over the preceding 800 to 900 years. individualism? universalism? liberal democracy? tolerance? reason? skepticism? coffeehouses? the age of enlightenment IS what core europeans are all about! hurray! (^_^) the Project and its effects are ongoing today. It could be argued that the fact that certain mating patterns seem to go together with certain societal types is just a coincidence — or that it’s the societal type that affects or dictates the mating patterns. for example, i said in my recent post on shame and guilt in ancient greece that: “shame cultures are all tied up with honor — especially family honor. japan — with its meiwaku and seppuku — is the classic example of a shame culture, but china with its confucian filial piety is not far behind. the arabized populations are definitely shame cultures with their honor killings and all their talk of respect. even european mediterranean societies are arguably more honor-shame cultures than guilt cultures [pdf]. “if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ll recognize all of those shame cultures as having had long histories of inbreeding: maternal cousin marriage was traditionally very common in east asia (here’re japan and china); paternal cousin marriage is still going strong in the arabized world; and cousin marriage was prevelant in the mediterranean up until very recently (here’s italy, for example).” Perhaps, you say, the causal direction is that nepotistic, clannish shame-cultures somehow promote close matings (cousin marriage or whatever). well, undoubtedly there are reinforcing feedback loops here, but the upshot is that both ancient greece and medieval-modern europe clearly illustrate that the mating patterns come first. (possibly ancient rome, too, but i’ll come back to that another day.) the pre-christian northern european societies were clannish shame-cultures until after the populations switched to outbreeding (avoiding cousin marriage) in the early medieval period. late archaic-early classical greek society was rather (a bit borderline) universalistic, individualistic [pg. 160+] and guilt-based until after they began to marry their cousins with greater frequency (at least in classical athens). the not-so-nepotistic guilt-culture we see now in northwest european populations is particularly resilient, i think, because the outbreeding has been carried out for a particularly long time (since at least the 800s) and thanks to the complementary selection pressures of the medieval manor system (which ancient greece lacked), but it did not exist before the early medieval period. So, the direction of causation seems to be: (long-term) mating patterns –> societal type (nepotistic vs. not-so-nepotistic).

  • Mind the Gap Global Affairs By Jay Ogilvy The Charlie Hebdo attack and its after

    Mind the Gap

    Global Affairs

    By Jay Ogilvy

    The Charlie Hebdo attack and its aftermath in the streets and in the press tempt one to dust off Samuel Huntington’s 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Despite the criticisms he provoked with that book and his earlier 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, recent events would seem to be proving him prescient.

    [T]he point I’m trying to make is fairly subtle. So, in the interest of clarity, let me lay out what I’m not saying before I make that point. I am not saying that Islam as a whole is somehow retrograde. I am not agreeing with author Sam Harris’ October 2014 remark on “Real Time with Bill Maher” that “Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas.” Nor am I saying that all religions are somehow equal, or that culture is unimportant. The essays in the book Culture Matters, which Huntington helped edit, argue that different cultures have different comparative advantages when it comes to economic competitiveness. These essays build on the foundation laid down by Max Weber’s 1905 work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It is only the “sulfuric odor of race,” as Harvard historian David Landes writes on the first page of the first essay in Culture Matters, that has kept scholars from exploring the under-researched linkages between culture and economic performance.

    Making It in the Modern World

    The issue of the comparative advantages or disadvantages of different cultures is complicated and getting more so because with modernity and globalization, our lives are getting more complicated. We are all in each other’s faces today in a way that was simply not the case in earlier centuries. Whether through travel or telecommunications or increasingly ubiquitous and inexpensive media, each and every one of us is more aware of the cultural other than in times past. This is obvious. What is not so obvious are the social and psychological consequences of the inevitable comparisons this awareness invites us to make: How are we measuring up, as individuals and as civilizations?

    In the modern world, the development of the individual human, which is tied in part to culture, has become more and more important. If you think of a single human life as a kind of footrace — as if the developmental path from infancy to maturity were spanning a certain distance — then progress over the last several millennia has moved out the goal posts of maturity. It simply takes longer to learn the skills it takes to “make it” as an adult. Surely there were skills our Stone Age ancestors had to acquire that we moderns lack, but they did not have to file income taxes or shop for insurance. Postmodern thinkers have critiqued the idea of progress and perhaps we do need a concept that is forgivingly pluralistic. Still, there have been indisputable improvements in many basic measures of human progress. This is borne out by improved demographic statistics such as birth weight, height and longevity, as well as declining poverty and illiteracy. To put it very simply, we humans have come a long way.

    But these historic achievements have come at a price. It is not simple for individuals to master this elaborate structure we call modern civilization with its buildings and institutions and culture and history and science and law. A child can’t do it. Babies born into this world are biologically very similar to babies born 10,000 years ago; biological evolution is simply too slow and cannot equip us to manage this structure. And childhood has gotten ever longer. “Neoteny” is the technical term for the prolongation of the period during which an offspring remains dependent on its parent. In some species, such as fish or spiders, newborns can fend for themselves immediately. In other species — ducks, deer, dogs and cats — the young remain dependent on their mothers for a period of weeks. In humans, the period of dependency extends for years. And as the generations and centuries pass, especially recently, that period of dependency keeps getting longer.

    As French historian Philippe Aries informed us in Centuries of Childhood, “in medieval society, the idea of childhood did not exist.” Prior to modernity, young people were adults in miniature, trying to fit in wherever they could. But then childhood got invented. Child labor laws kept children out of the factories and truancy laws kept them in public schools. For a recent example of the statutory extension of childhood known as neoteny, consider U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement that he intends to make community college available for free to any high school graduate, thus extending studenthood by two years.

    The care and feeding and training of your average human cub have become far greater than the single season that bear cubs require. And it seems to be getting ever longer as more 20-somethings and even 30-somethings find it cheaper to live with mom and dad, whether or not they are enrolled in school or college. The curriculum required to flourish as an adult seems to be getting ever longer, the goal posts of meaningful maturity ever further away from the “starting line,” which has not moved. Our biology has not changed at anywhere near the rate of our history. And this growing gap between infancy and modern maturity is true for every civilization, not just Islamic civilization.

    The picture gets complicated, though, because the vexed history of the relationships among the world’s great civilizations leaves little doubt about different levels of development along any number of different scales of achievement. Christian democracies have outperformed the economies and cultures of the rest of the world. Is this an accident? Or is there something in the cultural software of the West that renders it better able to serve the needs of its people than does the cultural software called Islam?

    Those Left Behind

    Clearly there is a feeling among many in the Islamic world that they, as a civilization, have been “left behind” by history. Consider this passage from Snow, the novel by Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk:

    (Quote)”We’re poor and insignificant,” said Fazul, with a strange fury in his voice. “Our wretched lives have no place in human history. One day all of us living now in Kars will be dead and gone. No one will remember us; no one will care what happened to us. We’ll spend the rest of our days arguing about what sort of scarf women should wrap around their heads, and no one will care in the slightest because we’re eaten up by our own petty, idiotic quarrels. When I see so many people around me leading such stupid lives and then vanishing without a trace, an anger runs through me…”(EndQuote)

    Earlier I mentioned the ironic resonance of this phrase, “left behind.” I think of two other recent uses: first, the education reform legislation in the United States known as the No Child Left Behind Act; the second, the best-selling series of 13 novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins in which true believers are taken up by the Rapture while the sinners are “left behind.” In both of these uses, it is clearly a bad thing to be left behind.

    This growing divide between those who have made it and those who are being left behind is happening globally, in each of the great civilizations, not just Islam. To quote my fellow Stratfor columnist, Ian Morris, from just last week:

    <Quote>Culture is something we can change in response to circumstances rather than waiting, as other animals must, for our genes to evolve under the pressures of natural selection. As a result, though we are still basically the same animals that we were when we invented agriculture at the end of the ice age, our societies have evolved faster and faster and will continue to do so at an ever-increasing rate in the 21st century.<endquote>

    And because the fundamental dynamics of this divide are rooted in the mismatch between the pace of change of biological evolution on the one hand (very slow) and historical or technological change on the other (ever faster), it is hard to see how this gap can be closed. We don’t want to stop progress, and yet the more progress we make, the further out the goal posts of modern maturity recede and the more significant culture becomes.

    There is a link between the “left behind” phenomenon and the rise of the ultra-right in Europe. As the number of unemployed, disaffected, hopeless youth grows, so also does the appeal of extremist rhetoric — to both sides. On the Muslim side, more talk from the Islamic State about slaying the infidels. On the ultra-right, more talk about Islamic extremists. Like a crowded restaurant, the louder the voices get, the louder the voices get.

    I use this expression, those who have “made it,” because the gap in question is not simply between the rich and the poor. Accomplished intellectuals such as Pamuk feel it as well. The writer Pankaj Mishra, born in Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1969, is another rising star from the East who writes about the dilemma of Asian intellectuals, the Hobson’s choice they face between recoiling into the embrace of their ancient cultures or adopting Western ways precisely to gain the strength to resist the West. This is their paradox: Either accept the Trojan horse of Western culture to master its “secrets” — technology, organization, bureaucracy and the power that accrues to a nation-state — or accept the role of underpaid extras in a movie, a very partial “universal” history, that stars the West. In my next column, I’ll explore more of Mishra’s insights from several of his books.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-29 11:13:00 UTC

  • “What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay.

    What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber

    Bruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. Time intensive.

    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND

    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—

    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).

    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.

    (continued…)

    (…continued)

    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that yo cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.

    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.

    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).

    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.

    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.

    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.

    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-04 07:04:00 UTC

  • “Minsky’s theory, however, comprises a “two price” model which is of a very diff

    —“Minsky’s theory, however, comprises a “two price” model which is of a very different distinctive nature. According to Minsky, there are really two systems of prices in a capitalist economy – one for current output and the other for capital assets. When the price level of capital assets is high relative to the price level of current output, conditions are favorable for investment; when the price level of capital assets is low relative to the price level of current output, then conditions are not favorable for investment, and a recession—or a depression—is indicated. Business cycles result from a dance of these two price levels, even as the price of a unit of money is fixed at one. (Kregel 1992, 87; Minsky 1986 [2008], 160”— Ludwig van den Hauwe

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-26 07:19:00 UTC

  • Postmodernism is Pointless, Viscious and Destructive

    (Guest post by Michael Phillip)

    Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual blight, and a moral one. For, as Norman Geras has pointed out, if there is no truth, there is no justice. If there is no truth, there is also no heritage. Creating, in reaction to progressivist post-modernism, PoMo conservatives who are so unaware of the heritage they are supposed to be preserving that they actively undermine it. PoMo conservatism is another manifestation of the destructive intellectual and moral emptiness postmodernism’s attack on truth creates. A conservatism that is not founded in some strong sense of truth, heritage and consequence—but is mere attitude—is not merely pointless, it is vicious and destructive.

  • Postmodernism is Pointless, Viscious and Destructive

    (Guest post by Michael Phillip)

    Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual blight, and a moral one. For, as Norman Geras has pointed out, if there is no truth, there is no justice. If there is no truth, there is also no heritage. Creating, in reaction to progressivist post-modernism, PoMo conservatives who are so unaware of the heritage they are supposed to be preserving that they actively undermine it. PoMo conservatism is another manifestation of the destructive intellectual and moral emptiness postmodernism’s attack on truth creates. A conservatism that is not founded in some strong sense of truth, heritage and consequence—but is mere attitude—is not merely pointless, it is vicious and destructive.