Fireside this week! I had hoped to have the start of the Imperator Teaching Paradox series ready for this week, but it has been a bit stubborn and I do not want to derail my book writing/revising schedule in order to push it out before it is ready. So that will almost certainly come next week.
For this week’s musing, I want to talk a bit about the illusion of historical stability. This was occasioned by a particularly foolish tweet that went around Twitter declaring the “feudalism was actually a pretty good system” in part because “it’s[sic] hierarchy ensured long-term stability.”
Now we’ve already talked here a bit, in the context of the Crusader Kings III series, on the problems with imagining ‘feudalism’ as a coherent political-economic system. The term has been in largely ill-repute among medieval historians since E.A.R. Brown’s famous “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe” AHR 79.4 (1974). Part of the problem is that feudalism bundles together a number of aspects of medieval societies (notice the plural) which need not be so bundled. In particular, the concepts being bundled are vassalage-based polities (a political system), manorialism (an economic system) and serfdom (a status for commoners), which need not go together. They did go together for a few hundred years in some (but not all) of Europe and that leads to the deceptive conceptual bundling.
Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the problem, the tyranny that the construct imposes, is to simply ask the question of when feudalism started and ended. The popular answer – assumed by the original tweet, which asserts a thousand years of feudalism – is to give the date brackets for the Middle Ages itself, from around 500AD to 1500AD, but that is on its face utterly unworkable. If feudalism means anything it means vassalage based polities where individual military aristocrats were bound to each other in a hierarchy by a grant of lands, a feodum, which carried an obligation of military service from whence the term comes.
But that system, in fact, comes quite a bit later than the sixth century. We might see some early roots of the system in Charles Martel’s (r. 718-741)’s use of certain kinds of leases to exert control over his territory, but the practice was sporadic and key administrators (comites or counts) remained largely appointed and could be dismissed by the king. It’s only in the 9th and 10th century that first these titles, and then the subordinate titles below them, begin to become hereditary that we get the emergence of a vassalage-based polity rather than simply a monarchy with appointed aristocratic administrators and regional commanders.
On the other hand, as a military system, ‘feudalism’ – armies that were retinues of retinues, raised from lords who pledged fealty and homage to a king (their titles having become hereditary in the manner described above) is dying in the 1400s and dead by 1500, replaced by early modern armies of professional soldiers commanded by aristocrats acting as military entrepreneurs in the service of kings who increasingly sat at the head of unified, centralized states.
Meanwhile, manorialism, the economic side of the system where landholders, often living in a fortified manor house, administered and profited from large rural estates through the exploitation of the labor of dependent farmers, that is a sort of economic system that crops up (pardon the pun) repeatedly in all sorts of agrarian societies, including many not based on vassalage. We connect it with the concept of serfdom – the creation of a semi-free underclass tied to their land and compelled to work the lands of their landlords without quite being reduced to slavery – but these systems are not coextensive and manorialism as an economic system persists past the abolition of serfdom in many places.
So the stability of an economic-political system called feudalism is largely an illusion created by taking a lot of different systems and violently cramming them into the same box labeled ‘feudal’ and then declaring that nothing changed, because the box is labeled ‘feudalism’ at the beginning and the end. And of course some parts of Europe simply weren’t ‘feudal’ in any real sense in the first place, like the Eastern Roman (‘Byzantine’) Empire, the communes of Italy, and of course many towns with civic systems of governance which might function as gigantic singular vassals of a king or emperor, but which otherwise existed outside of this system.
But even inside of that box, the ‘stability’ of the system is an illusion created by historical distance, a form of long-distance historical nostalgia that I cannot help but notice a great many reactionary social media accounts exploit. Imagine the problem this way: you are given a single paragraph – perhaps just a few hundred words – to describe the history of the last, say, century of European or American history. The Second World War and the Cold War surely merit mention, but do the Troubles or the Yugoslav Wars? Vietnam probably makes it in for the United States, but does Korea? The First Gulf War? The Second?
As we ‘zoom out’ historically, closer to what can be covered in, say, a high school world history course, or even a college-level ‘Western Civ’ survey, many of those wars, disturbances and crises first blur and then fade out of the memory entirely, producing vast swathes of apparent ‘stability’ – of periods where nothing much seems to be happening.
And so the history of ‘feudal’ France perhaps includes the wars of Charlemagne (r.768-814) and maybe the catastrophic breakup of his empire in three civil wars under Louis (running from 818-840), but then mostly nothing (except some vague mention of ‘Vikings’) until the First Crusade (1096-1099) which is in any event far away. If we are quite lucky, the next thing someone might have heard of is the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) but probably not in the English speaking world; public memory might actually pick up with the Hundred Year’s War (1337-1453) and by the end of that we’re basically out of the ‘feudal’ era and the whole thing looks like centuries of stability punctuated by the occasional bit of unpleasantness.
But of course that isn’t the case: the ‘blank space’ of that history is, in fact, filled with minor wars and struggles and even some major ones. After all, the Treaty of Verdun (843) didn’t actually settle much and the status of the ‘middle’ Carolingian kingdom, Lotharingia, is in turn the subject of regular warfare until the issue is settled by Robert Capet (the Pious) in 1023. Robert’s son, Hugh, rebels against him to seize the throne at age 18 and dies fighting in 1025. His successor, Henry I was first at war in Normandy in 1047 to support William (‘the bastard’ soon to be ‘the conqueror’) against his rebelling subsidiary nobles before being at war in Normandy in 1054, 1057 and 1060 to oppose William. I could keep going, but the point is the Kingdom of France was never long at peace, just in wars that – while very significant at the time – aren’t going to make the cut in a modern history survey.
One of the things that is usually mentioned in an introductory survey but not delved into in much depth is the endemic, small-scale warfare in vassalage-based polities, because even if the Kingdom of France is not at war, that doesn’t mean it is at peace. It’s been a long time since I’ve taught the European Middle Ages, but in the past I’ve used a reading of the agreement between Hugh IV of Lusignan, a baron, and his liege Count William V of Aquitaine, which is in the venerable Rosenwein reader but you can also read online. The run-up to explain the agreement – essentially a list of all of Hugh’s grievances – provides a great sense of the continuous, petty warfare this system generated: Hugh is always at war with someone, often at war with multiple someones, notably Viscount Ralph of Thouars and a castellan, Aimry of Rancon and at points with Count William V of Aquitaine.
These sorts of smaller wars might not be as destructive as the big ones (or as destructive as wars in later or earlier periods) because state capacity was so much lower, but they were hardly stable. A peasant outside the castle at Mouzeuil (which Hugh calls the fort of Parthenay) in the first two decades of the 11th century certainly enjoyed no political stability: he was ruled first by Joscelin, then by Ralph, who was at war with Hugh, then by Hugh (briefly at peace and then back at war with Ralph), then the place was seized by force by Geoffrey (successor to Ralph) and that poor peasant’s farmland was probably raided or foraged every damn time. That poor peasant experienced at least four ‘regime changes’ in just a couple of decades (since it was the local lord that was ‘the government,’ not the king).
This same ‘flattening’ effect can happen with much more recent history. One sees this in the assertion of some sort of recent, idyllic American past (often with wildly incorrect ideas about what average Americans could afford, based on TV shows that feature either affluent families or families inexplicably living in affluent circumstances and foolishly taking them as normal). And I always find myself wondering exactly when this was supposed to be? Not the 1940s, with the Second World War. But the 1950s, with the Korean War, conscription and – by modern standards – skyhigh defense spending? The 1960s, with the country torn by the battle to end Jim Crow and establish civil rights and Vietnam? Or was it the 1970s, the famous decade of ‘malaise?’ All, of course, under the pressing thread of nuclear annihilation; I never had to do an ‘aid raid drill’ at school, but my parents did. All of that is painted over with this vague sense of a time ‘before’ where things were ‘stable.’
That isn’t to say some periods aren’t better than others: it is much better to live now than it was to live a thousand years ago, basically anywhere on Earth. But it is to caution against the assumption that periods in the past that look stable at a very basic level of knowledge were stable.
Of course the more troubling thing to me here is the general rise of these distinctly reactionary ‘history’ accounts, not because I dislike their implied politics (though I often do), but because the history they are peddling is very bad. It is deeply flawed, the sort of thing that would get an undergraduate marked down for errors filled with simplistic misstatements like the ‘pyramid chart’ of ‘feudal society’ (which incorrectly implies, among other things, that the relations between lords and vassals were understood in the same term as those between lords and peasants; they were not, peasants were not vassals, they did not take oaths of fealty or homage) or that VIRILITAS was a chief Roman value. The past these low-quality pseudo-history accounts imagine is almost entirely astro-turf: half-mis-remembered and twisted into flattering shapes that have as much to do with the past as the upcoming Gladiator sequel, which is to say, almost nothing.
And yet these accounts are massively successful despite their terribly low quality, first because their audience doesn’t know any better but also, I suspect, because their audience is flattered by the historical narrative being advanced, which almost invariably hinges on the ‘greatness’ of something called ‘western civilization,’ the bounds of which are intentionally left conveniently vague and undefined, to which the speaker and the listener belong, but not those scary others. Of course any working definition of ‘western civilization’ is going to include many of those others: the Islamic world are the heirs of Mesopotamia and Rome as much as Europe, while ‘Christendom’ includes huge swathes of the ‘Global South’ and always has.
I admit, the whole thing sometimes leaves me rather despairing, because I am actually pretty successful when it comes to public history outreach and yet my reach is often far less than these low-quality, no-research meme accounts. However I am determined to continue to try, because while these sort of pseudo-historical channels do little more than replace a beautiful historical forest with astroturf, I am myself one in a long line of tenders to a 2,400 old living tradition of actual history inquiry and preservation and that legacy brings with it a duty to preserve that “exact knowledge of the past” not as an essay for the moment, but a “possession for all time.”
On to Recommendations!
For a bit more film criticism by a historian, over at The Long Library, Peter Raleigh has a long take on The Misfits (1961), which ends up as a fascinating rumination on masculinity and its connection to the theme of the dying frontier so present in Westerns, but viewed essentially with an interloper’s lens. I think its also a useful reminder that this sense of masculinity-ennui that seems especially strong in the past few years is not a new thing, but a regular and consistent strain in the culture.
In the latest Pasts Imperfect, Javal Coleman and Cole M. Smith lead in with a short essay on the value of amphorae as evidence not merely for the movement of goods, but also the movement of people, particularly enslaved people. The reminder that human beings were ‘commodities’ being moved on the same ships as the liquids (garum, olive oil and wine, generally) moving in the amphorae that we can see archaeologically is a valuable one, but the essay is also a really useful first step generally into how we can learn so much from what are basically the shipping containers (for liquids) of the ancient world.
Meanwhile, behind the War on the Rocks paywall, but Rob Lee and Michael Kofman have come back from a trip to the front lines in Ukraine and have been discussing what they’ve seen on The Russia Contingency; they’ve got two podcasts out on it now and at least one more part coming. I’ve found their observations (this is hardly their first trip out to Ukraine) from talking to the folks on the front lines very valuable for understanding the conflict, avoiding a lot of the media driven ‘wonder weapon’ hype and instead getting at the impact that events are having in the conflict itself.
Also at War on the Rocks, but not paywalled today is an interesting article by Shanshan Mei and Dennis J. Blasko looking at how one actually goes about counting the personnel strength of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The exercise is interesting both for the current security policy import but also in revealing just how complex these questions can be, even about what seems like it should be a simple question with reliable figures: how many troops do they have? The complexity of unpacking that question can also serve as a useful antidote to the common paper-strength comparisons one finds all over the internet, trying to judge military strength merely by counting tanks.
And for this week’s book recommendation, it really had to be J. Ma, Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity (2024). As it says on the tin, John Ma has written a monumental history of the polis, from its origins as a political community in the Archaic period past the normal terminus for such studies in the Late Classical, proceeding through the Hellenistic and Roman periods to the end of antiquity in the fifth century CE. It is a work more than a decade in the making, not merely because Ma started it in 2011, but even more than that because it is fundamentally built up on the foundation of material produced over the last forty-or-so years, perhaps most notably years of work by the Copenhagen Polis Center published in 2005 as the Inventory. Throughout, Ma makes a clear effort to get beyond the largest and most famous poleis, instead treating the whole of what we might call the polis-world, the network of autonomous but interconnected poleis, often drawing examples from smaller and more obscure communities, a welcome change in focus as compared to what one would get in, say, a historical survey.
The book proceeds chronologically, beginning by setting the stage before the polis in the Late Bronze Age. I think this precis on what is known or suspected of pre-Archaic political systems will actually be very valuable for many readers whose knowledge of that earlier period is sketchy, if it exists at all. The book then moves into the formation of the polis from 675 to 450, understanding the polis as a fundamentally legal, political and ideological community, one identified by declarations made in laws and pronouncements as much as something subject to a neat definition, as well as how social tensions produced drifts either to the ‘open’ polis (with a relatively broadly defined citizenship, think Athens) or the ‘closed’ polis (with a narrowly defined one, think Sparta). From there the narrative moves into the crises of the classical period: the tension of polis autonomy and empire-building poleis, the challenge of stasis (domestic civil strife) and eventually towards the end of this period the steady convergence towards a more common model of the polis with “omni-democratic” and “omni-autonomous” features both as an internal political development but also as a response to Macedonian domination. Finally, we see the poleis interact with Rome, first with the brief ‘Indian Summer’ of polis autonomy brought about by Rome’s loose handling of Greece between the Macedonian wars, followed by a long process of negotiation with Roman imperial power, leading to increasingly elite-controlled poleis and a process of negotiation with Rome. After this long (c. 400 pages) narrative, we then get a series of what are, in effect, topical essays, looking as polis society, its ideology, the balancing of interests within the polis and then looking at its structure from the viewpoint of those it treated the worst.
The amount of material Ma brings together is absolutely massive, often with simple statements about developmental trends in various regions supported by paragraph long end-notes of archaeological and historical material that Ma is assimilating together into a single, coherent narrative. The scope of this book is astounding. It is thus very fortunate that Ma is a talented writer: the prose here is easy to follow, almost meditative in its flow, punctuated by illustrations and vignettes that give a sense of place and feel, especially in the chronological chapters. Consequently, while this is one of those books I have no doubt will be a mandatory addition to every grad-school comprehensive exam reading list for quite some time, it is also a great thing for the lay reader to read if they just want to learn more about the Greek polis: where it came from, what it valued, how it was structured and defined. There are a few instances where terms are used without being so clearly defined (though Ma has a talent for self-explanatory terminology, one does not really need to define ‘clusterville’ as opposed to the more technical pre-urban nucleated settlement) and some information introduced with an ‘of course’ that the lay reader may yet be meeting for the first time.
In short, the book is, I think, a masterpiece – an astonishingly learned study of the Greek polis as a political, social and cultural institution, putting together an enormous amount of material to do so. It is usable by non-specialists in a way that something like the Inventory is not. The chronological scope makes the book even better, as it begins before the beginning and proceeds all the way through the ending, rather than simply trailing off in the late classical as so many treatments of the polis do. If you ever wanted to know more about the Greek polis, in all of its periods and all of its forms, this is the book for you.
Another place where this sort of misconception becomes really noticeable is worldbuilding in speculative fiction, especially settings for games like D&D often fall afoul of this. Most setting just seem to have vast periods of time where nothing happens, which seems to at least half be based on the belief that history was far more stable than it was. (The other half coming from the fact that the writers want a sufficiently big number for the age of the ancient ruins you find and then go “oops, ten thousand years is a lot of history to fill”.)
Golarion (the setting for Pathfinder, a spinoff of Dungeons and Dragons) is particularily egregious for this – the most egregious example being Urgir, the largest city in the orc-controlled region of the map. It was originally conquered from the dwarves by the orcs, and then remained as an unofficial capital held by the currently strongest warlord in the area while nothing really changed. For *eight thousand years*.
Yes, and the frustrating thing about is that the core features of D&D work better with a more realistic understanding of medieval history:
1. Parties of murder hobos are a lot easier to justify in a world with constant small-scale warfare.
2. The D&D price list is screwy – the wage of a skilled laborer relative to food prices is realistic for 19th-century England, not for anything premodern. But it’s easier to work with it if you assume the party comprises a sub-aristocracy ranging from armed guild members up to knights bachelor rather than the uplifted peasants that epic fantasy likes. (Tolkien at least got it right: Frodo, Merry, and Pippin are all from elite families, and Sam is Frodo’s manservant.)
3. No matter how big a city in epic fantasy is said to be, it will feel like it has 10,000-20,000 people. King’s Landing may canonically have 500,000 people, but it has about as many gates as medieval London (population: 80,000 in 1300) and doesn’t have neighborhoods other than Fleabottom, even for minorities like the Dornish or the Old Gods-worshiping Northerners. D&D cities feel even smaller, often with one or two stores of each type, like it’s a mid-20th century Main Street. This works well with realistic medieval city sizes, not with GMs who think they’re writing the next Sigil.
In the first edition, it was held that the price list showed massive inflation, like a gold rush, from the adventurers bringing in gold. This made it easier for the monsters to have impressive amounts of treasure without the PCs being able to buy the known universe.
I started with 2nd ed, so maybe that got changed in between?
But anyway, my complaint is not about what you can buy with gold. The real value of gold and silver has swung dramatically in history, with longlasting historical consequences (like the 1500-1650 inflation followed by deflation). Rather, my complaint is about the ratio of the stated wage of a skilled laborer that the party could hire with the prices of staples.
In 5th ed, they clarify the system by having daily prices based on lifestyles: squalid is 1 sp/day, poor is 2 sp/day, modest is 1 gp/day, comfortable is 2 gp/day, wealthy is 4 gp/day. A pound of wheat is said to cost 1 cp. Poor is said to represent an unskilled worker or peddler, modest a laborer, comfortable a skilled tradesman or merchant. All of this is too wealthy. Robert Allen’s basket of goods for what D&D calls modest lifestyle is 30% bread by price, and includes some meat and cheese rather than absolute bare subsistence, so if you’re spending 1 sp/day on your family, you can just about afford that basket of goods and are not going to be squalid. In fact, premodern unskilled laborers usually earned a bit less than required to afford that lifestyle, and skilled ones earned 2x unskilled laborers, not 10x. To get to a skilled craftsman earning 10x subsistence, or really 20x in this case, you need to get to 1900, not 1300. Only way you’re earning 10-20x subsistence in 1300, or for that matter 1600, is passive income as some kind of gentry.
(Also, while we’re dumping on D&D realism, the lifestyle price list in 5th ed speaks of “worst part of town” and “middle-class neighborhood,” which are modern industrial notions. Even in the 19th century, they existed with asterisks – the main streets of East London were nice, and the slum conditions were on alleys; pre-industrial cities did not have separation into rich and poor neighborhoods.)
Some of it’s going to spent on non-food items, but yes, it sounds a bit rich.
And the slums part is also unreasonable until transportation gets better.
The most reasonable explanation of a D&D universe (with the “gold-rush style inflation”) is that Hermes didn’t confuse the languages of men (hence Common) and that Pandora didn’t get sent with her box. The gods decided to plague mankind with monsters on a small scale as well as a grand one. Substitute gods to taste.
On the other hand, if the laborers have more options to work — such as for adventurers, or becoming adventurers themselves — their actual wages will go up, not just the inflation side.
The price list often makes more historical sense if you replace every occurrence of GP with SP. Or at least all the prices of the ‘adventuring’ goods like arms and armor; the civilian side of the 3.5 price list wasn’t too bad. Plus, if you put the economy on a silver standard, then finding gold becomes a bigger deal.
I forget how I did it, but at one point I estimated that D&D gold was less valuable (in real goods purchased per bullion weight) than historical silver.
Also the coins are sometimes too heavy. Early on it was 10 coins to the pound. 3.5 has 50/pound which isn’t too bad — 8 grams, like a stater. But come on, the drachma or early denarius is almost exactly 100 to a modern pound, how can you pass that up?
(Also copper should be 100:1 to silver, not 10:1.)
“Hermes didn’t confuse the languages of men (hence Common) and that Pandora didn’t get sent with her box.”
Huh, interesting ideas. Could ‘explain’ the lacks of plagues and child mortality, I suppose.
Me, I like to justify a Common (Koine Greek and Vulgar Latin are basically literally ‘Common’). Diglossia around common epics, like Homeric Greece or Koranic Arabic or Earthsea’s _Creation of Ea_. Or a lingua franca of a long-lived species like Elvish or Draconic, or Exalted’s Old Realm (the language of the gods/spirits.) Sindarin could have kept being a plausible lingua franca of Middle-earth, beyond the First Age.
Koine Greek and Vulgar Latin were very useful as long as you stayed to the heavily traveled places, and even then you would need a translator.
Off the beaten track?
Remember that at the time of the French Revolution, most French did not speak French. They spoke regional patois, which varied across distance: they could understand someone five villages away, had some difficulties with someone ten villages away, and twenty villages away could barely communicate.
Comprehend Languages might be more useful than Cure Light Wounds.
“pre-industrial cities did not have separation into rich and poor neighborhoods.”
Really? That seems unlikely. Pre-industrial cities were generally too small to have many neighbourhoods, but there wasn’t a distinction between “the bit down by the river where the docks and slaughterhouses and tanneries are” and “the bit up on the hill where the rich people live”?
Only in very large, cusp-of-industrialization cities (like Edo or London ca. 1800), and even then it came with a lot of asterisks. The London Poverty Map of 1889 shows rich and poor neighborhoods, but even in poor neighborhoods, the main streets are inhabited by the middle class; the slums are in the alleys. Contemporary Berlin had rich and poor neighborhoods but buildings were often mixed-class: rich on the first floor with windows facing the street, poor on higher floors and in apartments with windows facing internal courtyards. Paris had maid units in the attics.
And even those distinctions are trending toward the 20th-century pattern of relatively homogeneously poor or homogeneously middle-class neighborhoods. Previously, rich people had such huge armies of servants that technically most people living on an urban estate were poor, servants generally earning at the bottom end of the working class. In turn, there was no mass employment of the working class in factories and other sites that the middle class would disdain living next to.
“The London Poverty Map of 1889 shows rich and poor neighborhoods, but even in poor neighborhoods, the main streets are inhabited by the middle class; the slums are in the alleys.”
I’m not even sure if by that measure 2024 London has any rich and poor neighbourhoods. Grenfell Tower, the tragic symbol of urban neglect for the poor and marginalised? On the other side of the leisure centre from the tower, less than a hundred yards away, you’re in Walmer Road, where a two-bed flat will cost £3 million.
” there wasn’t a distinction between “the bit down by the river where the docks and slaughterhouses and tanneries are” and “the bit up on the hill where the rich people live”?”
That would be noxious industries, not poverty.
Remember the fundamental issue with foraging, everything that transports stuff eats stuff? The city has the problem — at a shorter distance, but it is every single day. You need to live close enough to the poor people doing the work to get the products of their labor in a timely manner and without too much cost in transportation.
On languages, bilingualism was a lot commoner than we think. The usual example cited is that most people in France could not speak French (ie Parisian French) until the 19th century. But France was tied together by the church, the army, the law and royal service, all of which used Parisian French (and which together covered a lot of people), and then had boatmen, pedlars, itinerant labourers, (harvest in the Ile de France employed people from Normandy and Champagne), seamen, merchants, people rafting timber from the Auvergne to Paris and so on. So Auvergnat at home, Parisian on the river, Occitan with the pedlar up from Provence. More like modern India, where most people have a fair bit of standard Hindi and most middle-class people some English as well, but speak a dialect or, outside north India, a different language or two.
It absolutely does, but gentrification, which is a late-20th century trend, has created mixtures in some inner areas.
(Gentrification as a term dates to the 1960s, describing things that had been going on since somewhat earlier, but the early examples were things like “city center train stations no longer need vast goods yards for coal shipments” or “Italians and Jews stop being poor and assimilate to white America.”)
Among the gentry and mobile middle class, yes, but that’s a small minority of the population. Here, Tolkien uncharacteristically flubbed: Sam should not be able to speak the same language as anyone outside the Shire.
In a Roman Empire-style world it would be different, but that’s not most RPG settings – even settings with vast empires are medieval and Early Modern rather than Classical.
Regarding Sam Gamgee and his ability to speak languages known outside the Shire, well, Sam has a passion for tales of the outside world, elves, wizards, that sort of thing. Furthermore, while he is of the peasant class, he is not on the lowest rung of that ladder- he’s a son of a family who have close retainer-like relationships to the Bagginses. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to be able to get along haltingly in ‘the common tongue’ of the outside world, and total immersion in that language after he leaves the Shire would tend to improve that.
Regarding rich and poor neighborhoods, it’s quite true that housing for the rich and poor tended to be commingled in historic pre-industrial and even early industrial cities. Any moderately wealthy person’s home would likely include servant quarters, and it was very common for propertied people to sublet. However, if you are writing a price list for a 20th or early 21st century reader, the idea “poor neighborhood” conveys the general idea of “you are living in a place where most of your neighbors are poor.”
To some extent it’s our problem, not the author of the Player’s Handbook, if when we hear “rich neighborhood” we imagine a place where servants don’t live in the back rooms and attics of the same mansions they clean and maintain on behalf of the owners.
“Tolkien uncharacteristically flubbed: Sam should not be able to speak the same language as anyone outside the Shire”
Westron/Common was questionably common, but that’s not unique to Sam. The Shire, Beorn, Lake-town, Gondor, Treebeard, Eagles, and various orcs all sharing a language, across 1000 miles and 1000 years of separation, stretches the imagination… OTOH, populations were typically ahistorically small, so maybe linguistic drift was slow.
As for Sam, he was somewhat educated by Bilbo and grew up around Bilbo and later Frodo. And the Shire isn’t totally isolated, it has dwarves passing through, who probably trade metalwork for food. So Sam having a useful dialect isn’t the weakest link of credibility for me.
On bilingualism – just to take France, in 1700 of a population of c20 million, around 1m (5%) would have been in the army in the last 30 years (strength usually above 250,000 with high turnover), around 1% were formally noble – with their households (servants etc) multiplying that, the ordained clergy numbered c400k, then add in the merchants, lawyers, minor officials and so on who made up the bourgoisie – around 1 million in 1700, people whose job took them away from the village (drovers, boatmen, seamen, itinerant labourers, packmen…). It all ads up to a significant fraction of the population who needed to use Parisian French. Then, of course, there are the people in contact with those people (need to petition the bishop? Write to your son in the army? Plead in a court of law? Undertake a minor pilgrimage? Beg a favour from the gentry?).
One can see hints of this in Roman history – the Galatians retaining their language well into imperial times, Gallic spoken in the Gallic countryside ditto, Severus’ family with their Punic accents …Code-switching between dialects and languages was not at all unusual.
It’s amazing how few bilingual people are needed as translators under those circumstances. Most people whose jobs took them from home needed only a few phrases to get by. Not to mention you would need a professional anyway for many of those things.
@Mary Catelli
I’m 100% with you on having ‘Comprehend Languages’ being more useful than ‘Cure Wounds’. Wounds cure themselves given time and a bit of care.
I’ve been working on a way to operationalise this in a game-development context. It’s a lot easier in a computer game with text-based speech, where you can have a percentage-based ‘language skill’ in each of the relevant languages. Then you can replace a given percentage of user-language words in a piece of text with gibberish (or do it as a probability roll). Eventually the conversation should become legible as you gain skill in that language (approaching 100%).
There’s a bit of this capability in DnD, but you’d definitely need to up the number of languages and dialects to make it genuinely useful. But then you’d also need a DM who is adept at making it fun rather than frustrating, which might be a challenge depending on your player group.
More like modern India, where most people have a fair bit of standard Hindi and most middle-class people some English as well, but speak a dialect or, outside north India, a different language or two.
@PeterT,
Most Indians don’t speak Hindi, no. A little under half the population knows Hindi at all (most of those are first-language speakers, and then maybe 200 million L2, L3 or L4 speakers).
And most of the northern languages (Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali etc.) are unequivocally *different languages* even if they’re broadly in the same language family as Hindi. there’s more debate about whether the language spoken natively in, say, Lucknow is a dialect of Hindi or a separate language, but as far as the 25 or so official languages of India go, they’re all very clealry distinct languages.
https://www.ethnologue.com/insights/ethnologue200/
On languages:
Dyer – Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages – gives concrete examples. Lordly travel involved a lot of people: Lady Talbot took 20 servants for a trip of 60 miles to visit the Duke of Bedford; when the Duke of York moved from Cardiff to Worcestershire it took 42 wainloads and so on. Two-fifths of the migrants into York in the late 1200s came from more than 20 miles away; labourers would routinely move up to 24 miles to obtain a few days or weeks work. Moving meant picking up a new dialect (and I can attest that Worcestershire can be incomprehensible even now to the RP speaker).
Hector – I did not mean that most Indians speak Hindi (whatever that means – I understand the Delhi version is closer to Urdu than to anything spoken in Varanasi). Just that a great many pick up a bit of standard Hindi or English and often another Indian language as well.
For D&D specifically the implied setting (especially in the older bits of D&D) is more of a post-Apocalyptic Western (think Fallout) with some Medieval anesthetics than anything from real history.
If you want to pin D&Disms to real history D&D tends to work much better as Early Modern (with the PCs as mercenaries) or pre-Medieval with the PCs as travelling headbreakers who are hosted by local aristocrats (think Beowulf). The High Middle Ages is actually one of the harder eras to slot some murder hobos into.
Check out Mazes and Minotaurs, the free RPG written as if D&D had been inspired by Greek mythology instead of “medieval Europe”.
With large doses of current day. The social structure did not have, as a fundamental issue, ensuring enough babies are born to replace the current generation despite infant and childhood mortality.
Dungeons and Dragons is not about the medieval ages or even Europe, of course. It is a fantasy pastiche of 19th century America. It is a game about “savage” land being colonized by Western-looking dudes and dudettes, justified by racial theories that other the colonized people into evil savages who deserve their fate.
Edgy! Gosh, that’s just so edgy. Tell us your thoughts about depictions of orcs next.
Look, mockery aside, it’s a pretty clear fact if you look at the way Gygax wrote about interspecies/”race” relations in D&D, such as the passages specifically encouraging paladins to kill prisoners from ‘always evil’ species, there’s some pretty ugly furniture that D&D has inherited from its metaphorical grandparents.
You can very easily play D&D without casting the orcs as either “the Indians from a Western movie, who exist to be dispossessed of all that they have so the white hats can ‘win’ the West” or as “the swarthy invading hordes who have no culture or intellect and desire only to invade the Good Lands on behalf of their sinister masters.”
But D&D is written in such a way that it’s easy to adopt those narratives if you like, and it doesn’t naturally challenge those assumptions
Simon, you started off by saying “[D&D] is a fantasy pastiche of 19th century America. It is a game about “savage” land being colonized by Western-looking dudes and dudettes, justified by racial theories that other the colonized people into evil savages who deserve their fate”.
Then when people told you, correctly, that you were talking utter nonsense, you shifted to saying that if you want, you can play D&D so that it has some vague similarities to some stories about 19th century America. Which is trivially true. You *can*. You can play D&D so that it’s a fantasy reskinning of Ocean’s Eleven, or you can play it so that it’s a game about restoring civilisation in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, or you can play it so that it’s Miss Marple with pointy ears. And, yes, you can play it like it’s The Searchers but with orcs.
This is dishonest behaviour and you shouldn’t do it.
Uh, I didn’t start off saying what you say I did, Ajay. That was Tambourine who said that. This isn’t a case of a motte-and-bailey argument; this is a case of Tambourine living in a big, desirable, indefensible stockade and me legit having an entirely disconnected hill fort.
It is true that D&D has some ugly ‘inherited furniture’ in the assumptions that went into designing its early versions. And some of those assumptions can be traced directly back to Gygax’s mid-20th century ideas about the frontier and about race.
It is also true that D&D has evolved a lot in the fifty or so years since it started growing those roots, and that many of the people involved with it have tried to keep the ‘ugly furniture’ from dominating the overall product, which is commendable.
The traces of the Bad Old Days are still there if you know where to look, but it’s not a solid product of the Bad Old Days from ear to ear, if you know what I mean.
It really isn’t. Fantasy and Westerns are different genres, and they’re not even mixed much, unlike the Space Western mixing SF elements. Of notes:
1. There’s no real notion of an expanding frontier of civilization against barbarism in D&D. The islands-of-civilization model from 4e specifically does not include any frontier. Nor is there any theme of settling a new place. This point also distinguishes fantasy from Jules Verne-style adventure stories, which otherwise are closer to it than Westerns are.
2. D&D centers the party, the Western genre centers the individual cowboy. There’s no rugged individualism in the fantasy genre, unlike in the SF genre.
3. The depictions of orcs are racialized, but nothing like Native Americans. Key elements of white American stereotypes of indigenous people are missing, like scalping or the total inability to understand each other’s languages. Instead, the elements of orcs that set them up as savage are much more like stereotypes of non-Western cultures that medieval Europeans came in contact with, especially Arabs and Central Asians, like an extensive system of slavery. The other elements that play up orc savagery, like eating human and demihuman prisoners and speaking broken Common, come from European stereotypes of colonized peoples, the first one directly via Tolkien.
“There’s no real notion of an expanding frontier of civilization against barbarism in D&D. The islands-of-civilization model from 4e specifically does not include any frontier”
D&D has undergone various changes over the years. The early editions shaped by Gygax definitely have a frontier element, especially at higher ‘Name’ levels, where the game encouraged you to ‘clear’ a region of monsters (including people-like monsters such as orcs), build a castle/stronghold, invite in settlers, and start a minigame of domain management. Even at low levels, one of the most beloved Basic modules was B2: Keep on the Borderlands. Civilization vs. barbarism, or Law vs. Chaos, was a major theme.
As was gameplay oriented about killing things and taking their stuff (with more emphasis on taking their stuff; killing was optional and being sneaky was encouraged. You got way more ‘experience’ for treasure than for killing the things that had the treasure.)
The audience and thus later editions seem to have migrated toward more ‘heroic’ play, ironically also more often fighting to the death multiple times a day, and without the element of clear-and-conquest. “D&D” is not just one game any more.
“D&D centers the party, the Western genre centers the individual cowboy. There’s no rugged individualism in the fantasy genre”
‘Centering the party’ is largely an artifact of being a game to play with friends, plus literary influence from Tolkien. But even setting side Chaotic Neutral madness or “I’m just playing my character”, the D&D party is often played as a collective “rugged individual”, the stereotypical band of ‘murderhobos’ who might menace even the town and its guards.
As far as fantasy _fiction_ goes, I think there’s plenty of rugged individualism to go around. It’s even easier to justify in fantasy when you can have special magic powers.
In Gygax’s original Greyhawk megadungeon, the city was for selling loot, which is not reeeeally how Westerns conceive of big cities.
Selling loot might match a story about prospecting, but prospector stories are usually man vs. nature – I can’t think of Westerns with conflict with Indians in which the main is a prospector rather than a cowboy or settler. I think it’s geographic – the most famous American gold rushes weren’t in the Great Plains but in California and Alaska.
To the other point, as soon as you have a party, it ceases to be a rugged individual. Banter between the players is a key element to the tabletop RPG, and that just doesn’t exist in Westerns. Closest I can think of is Blondie-Tuco, but a) only kind of, b) in a story in which the three mains are fighting one another more than mooks, c) written by a European with WW1 references rather than American historic ones, and d) without Indians.
Computer RPGs can have a multiheaded rugged individual, like Might and Magic, Icewind Dale, and other single-player games in which the player creates the entire party. But even that is not universal to computer RPGs – some have you create one character and recruit the others, like Baldur’s Gate, with banter between the recruited characters in your party forming a key element of the game, because tabletops aren’t really fun unless you have inter-player dynamics and these games aim to recreate that.
@Alon Levy “as soon as you have a party, it ceases to be a rugged individual”
I’m not sure that holds up to scrutiny of the source material. Take all of the various Western genre depictions of the Gunfight at OK Corral. Or the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. These focus on building a party of ‘rugged individuals’, which is a simple extension of the existing trope that doesn’t seem to preclude these films being Westerns.
As I mentioned in my previous comment, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is atypical. For one, it was made by a European, in dialogue with European tropes rather than American ones; Leone didn’t even speak English that well. The depiction of the Civil War in the film has little to do with the actual Civil War and a lot to do with the Western Front of WW1. The amoral gunslingers were not the norm in American films of the pre-New Hollywood era but were the norm in European films. There are no Indians, the original subject of this subthread, because that’s not something Europeans thought about much. There are Mexicans but they’re not treated as a stereotyped minority or an underclass, because to a European, a Latin American is a type of Spaniard or Portuguese. Common tropes like the hooker with the heart of gold, a poker game at the saloon perhaps with a dead man’s hand, and the small town church are entirely missing.
It’s generally a good rule of thumb to take a zero off any number in a fantasy story. Empire lasted a thousand years? Nope, a hundred. That’s five generations, more than enough time to build up a legacy. Army of a hundred thousand men? Nope, ten thousand is more than enough to conquer England and it’s good enough here. City of a million people… actually, Rome did reach a million at it’s peak, but everywhere other big can have a hundred thousand and be grateful for it. Towns are lucky if they hit ten thousand.
D&D food price lists are screwy, but D&D food production is also screwy. There’s a lot of stuff in the ecosystem that, realistically, should make it pretty hard for subsistence farmers to be confident of bringing a crop in, and conversely there’s very literal magic influencing the yields.
In any case, it’s impossible to make the economics of D&D rational since it was never intended to accurately simulate the material economics of its own world except as a sort of “surface” that the player character party interacts with. But it does at least make a lot of sense that whatever quasi-rational structure the economy of a D&D world has, it won’t look all that much like the very consistent and very typical realities imposed by the material economy of the nonmagical Iron Age.
Yes remembers me of a discussion, about how peaceful the old times in that setting had been.
I answered, only one war in the last 20 years of gametime would perhaps made it into an history of the setting describing the last thousands of years.
Because the enemy were ogres not humans or otcs
That at least is understandable, since concocting thousands of years of fictional history is a LOT of work. And for game designers at least, that work is probably better spent on creating the actual game
Aye – the issue is less that the writers don’t fill ten thousand years of history, and more that they put ten thousand years into their setting in the first place. A singular thousand years is more than enough for the time since the fall of the ancient empire.
Eberron’s setting also had huge timelines, into the hundreds of thousands of years.
Some other games are different. I think Exalted had 5000 years from the Primordial War to the present day; there was history before then but fuzzy due to metaphysical cataclysm. (Also Exalted had two world-wide governments in the latter period, so reason for stability apart from the events that caused a change in government.) Glorantha (RuneQuest) has only 1500 years from the gods inventing Time to the ‘present’ day, and still had 3 Ages in that period.
But another aspect is that D&D has multiple species with vastly different lifespans. Depending on edition, Glorantha’s 1500 years of world history might be a single lifespan for an elf or dragon. If you want multi-generational Deep History for elves and dragons, as Eberron apparently did, you end up with what seem like absurd timescales by human standards.
Eberrons scale in all aspects was also flatly multiplied by ten between writing and publishing, or so the story goes.
It’s a bigger issue for the forgotten realms, where even a casual “worst timeline” hypothetical has about twenty different society ending apocalypses all occurring at once, and three or four that threaten all life. The idea that this world existed for a century, let alone millenia, is laughable; Saurons war of the Ring would be a *lesser* crisis for the average FR year.
It seems to be commonfor fantasy settings to have static technology and social structures. Sure there are wars, and borders may change for one reason or another, but technology doesn’t and how those societies work don’t either.
The world is the board on which the game was played. Imagine playing Candyland if the path added new loops and changed colors of the squares.
I’d blame this on “fantasy settings” being the output of people’s brains. We have a tendency to look at history and project the characteristics of one period into other periods we know less about. And I think fantasy settings are what happens when this tendency is used to create artificial history.
For example, people assume that Rome was one thing throughout all the Republic, and another thing throughout all the Empire, and then another thing after a discrete “fall of Rome” event (ignoring the East). And that legions were one thing before Marius and another thing after. And maybe there *is* punctuated equilibrium going on, but often I think that’s the result of a trend increasing until at some point there’s some official recognition (probably accompanied by a slight bump in actual distribution), after which the trend continues on its path up and down. But people looking at a distance don’t have the resolution, and see the official recognition as a binary switch from one thing to another, and when they write artificial history, that’s the mode they write it in.
A certain number of things happen in each paragraph, and the paragraphs cover more and more time, the further back into history we go.
“It seems to be common for fantasy settings to have static technology and social structures”
Pretty common, yeah. But it’s also common for there to be _regressive_ change, with things having been better — or at least, more advanced — in the past, before the Golden Age or Decadent Empire fell, possibly with a loss of magic if not technology, and possibly with a social change (to, hey, the standard pseudofeudal society).
Thus explaining hoards of treasure, or magical items that can’t be made again, or weird monsters, or powerful immortal mages whose like are not born today, or good roads in a Points of Light society incapable of making good roads now…
Sometimes it’s a mix. In the “romantic fantasy” RPG _Blue Rose_, the kingdom of Aldis doesn’t have a lot of the magical knowledge of the Empire of Thorns, but it’s well-run and far more agreeable socially/morally than the Empire or any other society. The timescale isn’t too deep — 300 years for Aldis, IIRC — and stability is plausible; there are only 4 major polities in the accessible world, 3 have good reason for internal stability (and you don’t really care about the 4th), and the current geography (itself altered by Great Magics) discourages major warfare.
> But it’s also common for there to be _regressive_ change
That’s the “fall of Rome” thing, right? Pre-Renaissance medieval people living among the ruins of an ancient civilization that produced mighty works which their lesser descendants are incapable of duplicating, or sometimes even understanding.
See also, Numenor vs. Gondor, or any story of Atlantis. And some of it might be mediated through Jack Vance’s “Dying Earth” books, which certainly left an impact on D&D’s magic system.
On the other hand, the near constant cataclysms and the high magic setting does make it somewhat more believable that some of the ahistorical things, like a lack of conflict between most nations exist. e.g. different polities, like the big cities on the Sword Coast tend to band together rather than war with each other because they are under near constant attack from dead gods, flights of mad dragons, ocean dwelling monsters and ork hordes.
This also explains the blank areas of the map. People stick close to the big cities for protection, because its a really dangerous world out there. There might be some great potential farmland in that area that was once an ancient empire, but roving monsters, make it too dangerous to expand there in anything except a huge migration with significant military force.
“That’s the “fall of Rome” thing, right?”
Rome is the biggest contributor to the cultural concept, yeah. But now we can enrich it with the Bronze Age Collapse, and various lost cities that never recovered from sacking, climate change, or rivers moving. The whole Indus Valley Civilization was basically lost to knowledge for a few thousand years. The Amazon seems to have been a lot more developed than you’d expect when the first Europeans passed through. Mayan cities and Angkor War overgrown by jungle…
Almost before Rome itself even existed, Hesiod had his ideas of Golden/Silver/Bronze/Heroic/Iron ages, so the idea of lost golden ages or accomplishments was already out there.
Uh, that sounds like a sort of version of the anthropic principle for game worlds. A D&D game world is necessarily going to be a world it’s interesting to play D&D in, which usually means there’s a lot of stuff going on that the players would have good reason to put a stop to.
So you get worlds that have had centuries of relative peace and stability (dynasties may be running around overthrowing each other, cities may rise and fall, but the world itself isn’t in constant danger of annihilation every two or three months). And yet, in order for the players to have something to do, suddenly the world is thrown into a giant cluster-storm of crises RIGHT at the calendar year that represents the official campaign start in the sourcebook. With the intention that the DM can pick any one or two of these big threats and make a whole campaign about defeating them, while ignoring the others.
The Lord of the Rings has an odd sense of historical time. The entire journey of the Fellowship from Rivendell to Mount Doom takes only about three months, yet most characters know nothing about the places they visit, save Gandalf and (usually) Aragorn. Even the elves of Mirkwood and Lothlorien are unfamiliar with each other. Repeatedly it told that different peoples have not been in contact with each other for many lives of men. Apparently little has happened during the millenia preceding the War of the Ring. So Tolkien pads his chronicles (found in the appendices) with events that last years or even centuries. Sauron spends no less 400 years with the elven smiths of Eregion, the Siege of Barad-dur lasts 7 years, and it takes almost 1000 years for the White Council to act against the dark power in Dol Guldur.
“only about three months, yet most characters know nothing about the places they visit,”
Semi-justified because it seems hardly anyone lives _between_ the places they visit, making travel difficult. Thus Aragorn’s growing “how the shit did Saruman trade with the Shire???” (Though that’s never really answered! People who recall the Donkey Equation should wonder, too.) OTOH there _are_ people living in the Anduin valley, and dwarfs make it across (or around) Mirkwood all the time, so the disconnect between Mirkwood and Lothlorien is just elves being lazy.
But yeah, Tolkien often likes having long-isolated populations. The Teleri of Aman, with ships, don’t seem to have a hankering to re-connect with the ones left in Beleriand. Gondor falls out of touch with the Grey Havens despite ships at both ends. Lindon elves coming to trade at the Shire’s Free Fair just _feels_ wrong, even though it’d be economically logical.
…despite this, everyone still speaks Common/Westron, even across 1000 miles and 1000 years of separation. _Treebeard_ speaks it fluently and his nearest neighbors don’t even know Ents exist.
To be fair to Tolkien, and Saruman, the trade seems to be in luxuries. Coins one way, pipeleaf the other. That kind of trade could and was done over largely depopulated areas with a few trade settlements. It’s still very hard.
The other insight is that physics and psychology explicitly don’t work the same way; most people live twice as long as a minimum, some live millenia, and decay and rot are literally less extreme. The world is being magically preserved and ours is magically rotten in Tolkiens mythos. While only magic food was literally better, that is a neat explanation for why language didn’t change, at least amongst people’s connected to the elder races.
Also a lot of characters are just telepaths, maybe treebeard just read common out of the Hobbits minds.
Started in pipeweed, but later implied if not stated that Saruman was buying bulk supplies from the Shire too, courtesy of Lotho.
I think in Middle Earth they can actually have centuries without conflict because the elves are so long lived and their only surviving rulers are the ones with prudence. Meanwhile for most of the period the most powerful realms of Men, Numenor then Arnor and Gondor, are closely aligned with the elves in foreign policy.
A huge problem in real world foreign policy is that new generations will repeat the same dumb mistakes of older generations. The Elves are lead by people who saw all those mistakes first hand thousands of years ago and are very keen on not repeating them. Yet on the other hand when they do act against dire threats they can go all out, they are prudent but not overly cautious. There are a lot of conflicts that could be avoided if you had peace loving immortals who could nip them in the bud.
Add to that the fact that Middle Earth is pretty obviously much wealthier then historical pre-industrial Earth. Earth had an endless supply of young men who didn’t have good prospects at home and would sign up to become mercenaries and pillage the countryside. If there aren’t hungry people and the nobles aren’t as worried about becoming redundant, there are a lot fewer soldiers of lesser fortune to be the fuel thrown on conflicts.
“their only surviving rulers are the ones with prudence”
I think more fundamentally, elves don’t have exciting politics. They never want to conquer their neighbors, they don’t outbreed their food supplies, their kingships are more like elected club presidents under the hood. The Silmarillion (aka “ELVES BEHAVING BADLY”) is largely about a _limited_ number of exceptions, under extraordinary circumstances — mostly at the beginning or end of a 400 year period of not much happening in the middle.
Elf history is largely like the military history of post-1805 Sweden, especially if left to themselves and not having to respond to Sauron.
The Teleri refused to do more than transport the host of Valinor in the War of Wrath, they remember the kinslaying
There are several concrete incidents that explain this actually. I think I did the math on specifically Eberron a while back, and in the authors own words every distance and span of time was blown up by a factor of ten by the publisher. Without accounting for that populations are spread out to a degree that is literally below like, nomadic hunter gather levels. Either Eberron is post apocalyptic and relies of industrial automation to have an economy or it’s unimaginable that nations exist.
This is relatively common. Dnd and other games need a perception of deep time for marketing, apparently, but authors almost always have an understanding of how silly that is.
Still, Pathfinders Golarion and the DNDs forgotten realms have both had years with seven apocalyptic events and millenia with zero. That makes some sense for a pre and post industrial society, but to my knowledge only Eberron displays explicit, considered signs of a significant economic transition among the major constructed worlds.
In the 2nd edition AD&D boxed set for ‘Waterdeep’, in the then most recent five hundred years or so of history listed in the Campaign Setting, from 882 DR (when a warlord takes power and starts building city walls) to 1368 DR, I count two trollwars, at least one orc horde (1235 DR, described as ‘…the largest orc horde in recorded history…’ so there may have been others not worth noting), pirate raids, the ‘Avatar Crisis’, at least one invasion by creatures flooding up into the city from Undermountain, and multiple internal conflicts as various individuals, criminal organizations, or guilds tried more or less successfully to seize control of the city. And other things such as the occasional plague.
And that was the first boxed set I pulled off the shelf. Thay kept trying to invade its neighbours so often that only the most spectacular failures get listed in the ‘Unapproachable East’ boxed set, and there is the official Zhent propaganda timeline, full of internal bickering and skirmishes with neighbours in the ‘Ruins of Zhentil Keep’.
At least in second edition AD&D they did flesh out the history of the places, to some depth, with things going on every few years, at least for the boxed sets. I have no idea how much of this has been ret-gonned or discarded and forgotten about by subsequent editions, mind you…
The one D&D setting I really read into was the Gazetteer of Glantri, and I feel it was fairly detailed, more so close to the present, which would make sense.
I really liked Mother of Learning (the original web serial, now published novel fantasy story) for this reason. It’s a fantasy setting with a historical aesthetic (although the aesthetic it sells is that of nascent industrialisation, not the medieval stasis more common in fantasy settings) and it is very much a setting where things are *not stable*.
There was a war that shattered Continental politics recently, everyone’s expecting a follow-up soon because the new balance of powers is not remotely stable, massive mage losses sustained in said war promote the rise of first-generation mages not affiliated with existing magical lineages, the monarchy is being strengthened because that new middle class tends to side with the Crown over the aristocracy, and that Crown is using its newfound power to colonise the wild northern forests in the hopes of gaining an advantage for the next round of Continental wars…
The plot of the story is centered around none of these. These are just bits of worldbuilding that get off-handedly mentioned here and there. But they make the setting feel *alive*, in the sense that you can plausibly buy that these are Real Societies inhabited by Real People who sometimes want to Change Things (or, alternatively, are changed against their will by material circumstances).
It’s nothing innovative, all familiar tropes even to people with a fairly cursory understanding of history, but as our host has mentioned once — actually grounding things in history is an easy shortcut to getting that sense of historical plausibility.
“violently cramming them into the same box labeled ‘feudal’ and then declaring that nothing changed, because the box is labeled ‘feudalism’ at the beginning and the end”
This kind of thinking is very common once you start looking for it. It’s focusing on the label by which a broad concept is called at the expense of the concept itself. As René Magritte taught us “ceci n’est pas une pipe”. Just because two things are called by the same name doesn’t make them the same thing, and neither does two things having different names mean that they are meaningfully different. It’s rather like confusing a map of the some land with the actual land itself (cue that scene from Blackadder IV…)
The real fun is that “feudal” was a term imposed on the whole arrangement by modern historians. The actual people in the system knew it as a bunch of ad hoc to semi-systemized relationships.
As another example of people doing just this thing look at all the comments below arguing that “Western Civilization” does exist and has well defined boundaries. Despite being worded as if they’re substantive discussions, it’s actually all just semantics to find a definition that fits their preconceived notion of what should be “in” rather than “out”. The meat of the debate ought to be about how similar those that count as “in” Western Civilization are to each other compared to those that are “out”, and whether putting an arbitrary dividing line in the middle of a complex spectrum is meaningful or helpful for our understanding. But nope, instead it’s all about the definition of the words “Western Civilization” rather than the concept itself.
Kind of surprising how many commenters can read a blog post, and then somehow miss the fundamental point.
I don’t think “western civilization” is a useful term, but i think some ways to conceptualize it are definitely worse than others and are more likely to mislead the people who hold them.
I agree with you that these things are spectra rather than the kind of situation where you can neatly place a dividing line.
My point isn’t whether it’s useful or not, but that the substantive aspects of it are what’s worth debating, rather than the semantics – and yet people do mostly the latter. Including the comments below.
For what it’s worth, I think it is useful as long as it’s defined in a specific context. If you’re talking about the schism of the church in the 11th century, or the cold war in the 20th, west vs east is a meaningful and handy divide. It’s just not the same one in both cases.
the break up of the carolingian empire and the decline of central authority (especially in West Francia) always seemed to be something I wanted to read more on but didn’t know where to start
Chris Wickham wrote a good general survey, covering from the end of Western Rome to the 1200s (Medieval Europe), with emphasis on the different political systems and structuring ideologies. Good place to start.
I have read, that and several other Wickham works. Theyre quite good.
I don’t remember where I came across the line, but I remember hearing or reading somewhere that “scratch the surface of any historian, and you’ll find a storyteller underneath”. We as people definitely seem to be creatures of narrative, and while it’s probably overdoing it to say that facts and narrative are completely independent of each other, sticking to what is factually true as much as possible is not the way to make the most compelling narratives.
So I’m sorry to say, but those meme accounts? They’ve got a structural advantage over you. You’re going to tell stories that stick to a degree of factual accuracy. They’re going to be messy and occasionally punctuated by lacunae of “We don’t actually know”. They are not so restricted. They’re going to stick to simple overarching arcs that feel correct even when they are almost never actually correct.
But the work you do is still super-important. It’s just likely never-ending and bailing against a tide of human nature.
The meme guys have an even bigger advantage. People need a sense of history, and they need to feel good about themselves. The meme guys provide both. Historians can only provide the first.
Well this blog helps feed the second one for me, it makes me feel Very Knowledgable when compared to the meme guy and that feeds my hungry ego 😉
I very recently had my own conception of “time period X was stable” broken. I had just kind of assumed that things in Europe were calm (if tense) in the years after WW1, before hostilities started ramping up in the 1930s (e.g. Spanish Civil War), only to find out that Poland and Russia had a whole war lasting three years *right after WW1!* I should have known better, but I just hadn’t thought of it before.
With this post, I’m now probably just going to assume that at any point in recorded history, there was at least one war happening somewhere, even if it isn’t a Big Famous One we’ve all heard of.
The immediate aftermath of WW1 was a series of wars among the successor states of fallen empires squabbling over new boundaries. If you also include the collapse of China which happened during WW1 but not because of it, then you end up with a pretty continuous series of wars from around 1912 to 1949 that involve basically every country on Earth at some point (although no one is involved the entire period) and that are really hard to draw into neat boundaries and call individual wars.
As for the constancy of war, there’s something like 100 active conflicts that can be plausibly called “war” going on right now, most of which you likely haven’t heard about. And this is a very peaceful time compared to the past!
If you also include the collapse of China which happened during WW1 but not because of it, then you end up with a pretty continuous series of wars from around 1912 to 1949 that involve basically every country on Earth at some point
Minus South America, but otherwise, yes.
And even there, Bolivia and Paraguay had a war in the early 1930s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_War
Well, France and England were more or less stable.
Germany went through something like seven years of failed coups, abortive revolutions, the Great Inflation, extensive terror campaings by both right and left wing groups (though the right-wingers seem to have murdered more people than the communists) etc.
Poland and the USsR had a war. And a lot of the other countries in that were formarly part of either Russia or Austria-Hungary went through wars with their neighbours, revolutions and counterrevolutions.
For the first few years after the war, the struggles of the Russian revolution affected most of the countries formerly ruled by the Tsar. Finland, the Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine. The latter two of which got reconquered by the USsR.
Turkey had a bloody war of independence against the victors of the Great War, and there was bloody upheavle in Protectorat of Palestine between the native population and early Zionist settlers.
And than at the end of the 1920ties you had the Great Depression.
And that is ignoring everything that is happening in Asia, and central Russia.
It’s worth noting that if you popular memory “edits out” most of the conflict of the conflict in a period (because its scale and consequences don’t make it notable to the modern world), AND it edits out most of the details of political/economic/social systems (to produce an easily-comprehensible framework called “feudalism”), then the thing that gets edited out most is *conflict over what the details of the system should be.*
The big, well-remembered conflicts that Bret lists are mostly fights over who got to be king, and it’s easy for a modern reader to say “those may have been violent and destructive, but they still represent a stable system. Everybody knew what the post-war order would look like, even if they didn’t know who would run it.” What this misses is the tremendous amount of edited-out conflict *between different stakeholders in the system* over how the system would work; rural commoners, urban commoners, secular nobility, church nobility, and monarchs all had diverging interests that could spark violence.
The silly meme that prompted this post imagines Medieval Europe as “stable” not because there was never any fighting, but because everybody knew their place in society and didn’t rock the boat too much. This misconception exists in part because we get major pop-culture retellings of the Hundred Years’ War or the War of the Roses, but not the Investiture Controversy or the Jacquerie.
I think there are two different kinds of conflict, that should probably be kept distinct:
(1) As you put it, conflict between different stakeholders in the system over how the system should work.
(2) Attempts to abolish the system entirely.
Something like the Investiture Controversy would count as (1): it was a tussle for power between the Pope and the Emperor, but both sides were acting within the same framework. The Pope didn’t want to abolish the Holy Roman Empire, much less monarchy in general, and the Emperor didn’t want to abolish the Papacy or the Catholic Church. The Jacquerie and Peasants’ Revolt, on the other hand, would count as (2), as the peasants’ aims included abolishing the aristocratic social system in which they lived.
I’m not sure if there’s been any research quantifying this, but my impression is that, compared to modern Europe, medieval Europe had more wars over (1), but fewer wars over (2). Yes, you did get peasant rebellions like the aforementioned ones, but they were comparatively rare, and also generally quite easily defeated. There was no real medieval equivalent of the French or Russian Revolutions, or of the 1848 revolutions.
Even in the modern world tries at abolishing the system are rare (although there are always groups advocating some different system). but one could argue that the Investiture Controversy was a significant change – it overturned 500 years where the Pope was an adjunct to emperors and kings (as one historian put it the Emperor’s VP for Religious Affairs) to put forward the Papacy as an independent power with claims to a broad supremacy.
Most peasant rebellions were (1). They wanted things like fixed maximums on rents or the right to wear red, that is, the repeal of sumptuary laws.
Yeah, the grievances that sparked many peasant rebellions are often surprisingly narrow.
Same with a lot of modern revolutions, the initial demands of the people pushing for change are often incredibly mild. But then things have a tendency to snowball.
Snowballing is much more modern than medieval. Wat Tyler’s demands, at a point where he could parley with the king, were still of the same vein.
The CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle had a bit of that, and also some in reverse. It obviously started as part of the George Floyd protests, but it rapidly gained support from the local anarchists and others of similar political tendencies, leading to the “Autonomous Zone” name and some talk about rejecting law of the United States, and even talk of secession.
But after a number of group discussions, the faction that came out on top was BLM, and they abandoned the broader sweeping claims and instead focused on policing (inside of which there was a microcosm which spanned “police reform” to “defund the police” to “ACAB”). And that’s where the “Occupied Protest” name came from, although honestly I suspect a lot of people just thought “Chaz” sounded way too white.
And then after the borders solidified and the city government took a hands-off approach, it started transitioning into an encampment of homeless and activists (I don’t know what the ratio was), and ended up as something similar to the “free zones” in “The Wire”, except with more guns. The rhetoric changed too – earlier on, there was more of an emphasis on sharing between equals, but as the number of homeless increased, it became more and more about providing services to people with almost nothing.
I wonder if a similar thing happened with the peasant revolts, where as they gathered more people, the rhetoric and focus shifted from specifics to more general complaints shared by all. I suppose the lowest common denominator would be something like jacquerie?
A lot of the peasant rebellions get edited from historical memory; ISTR reading that “peaceful” Tokugawa Japan averaged about 1 per year. Assigning all of them to category (2) may be a stretch, since most apparently start from such society-shattering positions as “government relief during the current famine would be great.”
But the details get awfully gory, there’s little honor or glory in sight, and even acknowledging the mess ever happened tends to get kiddies asking questions about the Glorious Current Regime. So only particularly successful or weird examples get chronicled.
There were however wars over religion – including wars over different varieties of Christianity, wars between Christians and Muslims and persecutions of Jews. The history of Spain for example is one of violent conflicts over religion. And this was a time when the church was intertwined with politics, partly because it was the main available source of educated people for state administration for a lot of this period. So arguing over religion meant arguing over politics.
I don’t think these two are quite as exclusionary as that points it out: Many stakeholders will take attempts to reform something as an attempt to abolish society altogether, because they see their stake as just that important.
It also kinda underestimates the ideological bits of kingship in terms of what kings were, what they did, etc. If someone revolted to put the King’s younger brother on the throne, that implies something about what they feel a king should be like and what she should do: Obviously there’s a degree of self-interest going on, but questions about if the king should own fisheries or not could very well be important, even existential, to various stakeholders.
“The big, well-remembered conflicts that Bret lists are mostly fights over who got to be king, and it’s easy for a modern reader to say “those may have been violent and destructive, but they still represent a stable system. Everybody knew what the post-war order would look like, even if they didn’t know who would run it.” ”
Does that really deserve to be called stable though? Just because the new guy decides to do things the same way doesn’t necessarily make a stable system.
I think the concept is that it is stable because the game consists of the same kind of pieces, only with new people in the slots. Like a parliamentary democracy is stable, even if it changes government. Think of the violence as the equivalency of our elections.
> while ‘Christendom’ includes huge swathes of the ‘Global South’ and always has.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by this.
Is “Christendom” is the totality of realms *ruled* by Christians? Then in, say, AD 1300, the only parts of Christendom coinciding with the current “Global South” would be Ethiopia and some neighboring polities, which I wouldn’t exactly call a “huge swath.”
If you extend it to all majority-Christian areas, you might add in some bits of the Middle East/North Africa, but these were uniformly under Muslim subjugation at the time.
It means that low-quality, no-research meme accounts aren’t the only ones who misrepresent history to advance their own political agenda.
You see, this makes me question what political agenda you think it being served by saying that Christianity isn’t a Euro-centric religion. I ask because the implied “correct” position, that it has a core European identity, is distributing close to numerous white nationalist ideologies.
And there we have it. Bad people think that western civilisation is linked with Christianity in ways that other civilisations aren’t, therefore they must be wrong. We start from the contemporary political concerns, and construct our history to suit.
This isn’t a rebuttal, it’s factually wrong, *and* you didn’t answer the question in a way that all but confirms you *can’t*. Are you too weak to answer direct questions?
I think it is the other way round, but probably because I am a theologian: Christianity has the capability to impact cultures deeply, and has interacted and been shaped by several different cultures and political environments. The Western Church (the Roman Catholic Church and the historically established protestant churches) and Europe have shaped each other to an immense degree, although the current Catholic church has been greatly enriched especially by South America, which it has also markedly impacted. (As South America doesn’t have any living intellectual tradition that would originate in the local civilisations, I whole-heartedly class it as an offshoot of Western world: West is about the Greco-Roman tradition of thought, not about politics or wealth. Essentially: if Russel’s History of Western Philosophy covers most of your intellectual tradition, you belong to the West.)
The Christian theology itself doesn’t have much attachment to Europe or whiteness. For it, a Germanic pagan of late antiquity is not much different from a pagan in the 19th century Pacific. Both are God’s children in need of salvation, and questions of cultural integration and adaptation during missionary work are mainly administrative and practical. (Historically, dictated by real-world power relations between missionaries and local polities. When you have missionaries protected by force of arms of a Christian conqueror, they tend to be much less adaptive than when they are dependent on the goodwill of local rulers.)
Similarly, the Eastern Orthodoxy was shaped by the East Roman Empire (and vice versa), the Ethiopian Church by the conditions of Ethiopia and the Nestorians and other Oriental Orthodox by being minority religions among non-Christians. The radical reformation, which is today the most powerful grouping in the US, was marked by being splinter groups that never could call upon the sanction of the state, even if the society itself was Christian.
So, it is wrong to frame the issue as a question of global North and global South, or by Euro-Centricism. The Western and Byzantine cultural spheres (if they exist) are both shaped by their particular styles of Christianity (and vice versa), and Western civilisation covers a major part of the global South. However, history shows that Christianity has a capability of adapting to different cultural environments. If the South Korean and sub-Saharan African Christian churches survive for 500 years, they will surely develop a lot of interesting theology.
If the South Korean and sub-Saharan African Christian churches survive for 500 years, they will surely develop a lot of interesting theology.
Conversely, let’s speculate about what would happen if large numbers of people in some European country were to convert en masse to neopaganism (let’s say, some self-perceived revival of Baltic or Slavic or Scandinavian paganism). Would you then consider that country, or at least a part of it, to have left “western civiliztion” (or “Eastern Christian civilization”) and to have formed a new civilization of their own?
Hector,
It depends a lot of how the rest of “Western civilisation” would develop. It is a bit like the difference between Byzantine and Western cultures: the Byzantine and Islamic cultures were the main offshoots of the Roman state and its intellectual heritage but the heirs of the poorer Western Rome developed their version of the heritage in a different direction, mainly because of relative isolation from the cultural centers of the time. It took some thousand years for the West to develop a culture that was so strong that it was not immediately overwhelmed in contact with the Eastern Rome or with the Arabs: you can readily see that even in the 14th century, Europeans tended to use Islamic and Byzantine styles in their buildings when the craftmanship was available. (E.g. Norman Sicily, St. Marco in Venice) And of course, the Renaissance and Scholasticism were reactions to Western recontact with Aristotelian philosophy that had been retained and further developed in the Arabic world.
Similarly, having Northern Europe develop into a cultural sphere of its own would require some catastrophic event isolating it from the rest of the world and its intellectual development for hundreds of years, and even then, considering its relatively scarce natural resources and small population, the ensuing culture would probably be overwhelmed during re-contact with the larger, more lively and wealthy cultures prevalent elsewhere, especially if they shared the same background.
Up to the Seventh century Muslim Jihad Christendom covered Europe, the Middle East and North Africa with the center of power in Anatolia.
Hello, monster. Nice reveal of your genocidal culture-supremacist views.
What? Who in this thread have advocated any
The sentence should have ended “anything genocidal”
It’s not you. If you go back to the last Fireside before this one, you will find this person ranting about three commenters (one me) in a frankly deranged manner.
OK, I am checking that right now
I am not, to put it mildly, one who has a reputation for being the kind of person with “genocidal culture-supremacist” views in these comment threads, and I have to say:
If you believe that Madame Z or whoever else is “revealing genocidal culture-supremacist views,” then it becomes fairly important to establish HOW these views are being revealed. If someone says “go far enough back in Christianity’s history, and it becomes a minority or outright absent religion everywhere in what we now call the ‘Global South’ with the exception of the Middle East,” then that is more or less plain and simple fact. If Madame Z accuses our host, Dr. Devereaux, of being biased, then the correct response is to say “please substantiate your accusations,” not “this reveals that you are a genocidal culture-supremacist.” And so on.
If you insist on following commenters from thread to thread and making accusations against them that are not visibly connected to what they have said in that thread, then you are not calling them out. You are cyber-stalking.
There was actually a significant contraction of Christianity by AD 1300, again, because of Islam. If you look at prior periods AD 600 is a good snapshot there are lots of public maps for, the majority of North Africa was Christian. Given that the global south is typically divided at the Mediterranean and basically Russia’s southern border (I don’t make the rules here, it’s a stupid term) that’s a lot of the area.
There’s also the Indian and Chinese churches, which have at various times had significant fractions of the population. If you include syncretic religions like Manicheism then at various times they might even have comprised at least the largest plurality of individuals in some Chinese states or Indian principalities; I don’t know enough to defend that with primary sources, though.
“Christendom” is generally considered to have “ended” by the later 1600’s with the treaty of Westphalia, but that still leaves a lot of colonial missionary time which converted (or replaced via genocide) the American and African indigenous populations.
So if you restrict the realm of Christendom to the formal areas which were subject to a Christian ruler, then you only get a small snapshot of the global south at any one period of time. If you include areas where there was a majority it’s heavily time dependent too, but only for a few snapshots is it irrelevantly small. If you’re just looking at a significant minority, enough to be politically notable, then the majority of the global south is part of the story as OP said.
There’s also the Indian and Chinese churches, which have at various times had significant fractions of the population
Do you have a cite for that? Because I would tend to doubt it. Christians account for a very small percentage of the Indian population today (probably 3%- you will hear otherwise from some over-optimistic missionaries, but there’s no reason to believe them). And since more than half of Indian Christians are Catholic, rather than a member of the old precolonial Monophysite church, I assume it would have been much less in the precolonial era. India wasn’t a single polity prior to the British, and there are some portions of India with both large and longstanding Christian communities (Kerala is a little under 20%, and may have been higher in the past), but Kerala by itself wouldn’t account for “a large swath of the global south”.
Now, you can find a lot of people who incorporate some Christian elements into their spirituality- I’ve seen a guy’s house before where he had a Hindu idol against one wall, a cross or something on another, and a picture of a Muslim saint on a third- but I would assume that guy self defines as a Hindu, not a Muslim or Christian, and I wouldn’t call him a Christian either.
Manichaeanism, similarly, is usually classified as a distinct religion in its own right, which borrows from Buddhism as well as Christianity, probably more from Zoroastrianism than either of the other two, and maybe a little from Babylonian religion as well. I certainly wouldn’t consider Manichaeanism a variant form of Christianity, although I know the medieval Christian heresiologists did.
I think the better criticism here is that the concept of the global south didn’t exist prior to colonialism, and as soon as it came into existence, it had Christians in it (the Kongo kingdom was officially Christianized by the early 1500s, for example).
I think the better criticism here is that the concept of the global south didn’t exist prior to colonialism, and as soon as it came into existence, it had Christians in it (the Kongo kingdom was officially Christianized by the early 1500s, for example).
Indeed; it makes no sense whatsoever to lump sixth-century Africa with modern China as both being part of the “global south”, because they have nothing meaningful in common.
(I pause to note the double standards inherent in claiming that “Global South”, thus defined, is a meaningful term, whereas “western civilisation” is too vague and heterogenous.)
Though I will note that whilst there have been Christians in the “Global South” since the beginning, they were, with a comparatively few exceptions, there because of European influence — the Kongo was instroduced to Christianity by Portuguese traders, Central America by Spanish conquistadors, and so on. IOW, Europe was still the Christian “centre” to the Global South’s “periphery”, and would remain so until (at the earliest) well into the twentieth century.
The justification for using global south but not western civilization is that western civilization corresponds to a broadly privileged section of the world while the global south has been broadly victimized. Western civilization was also more relevant a century ago whereas the global south remains largely relevant today, with a few critical exceptions like China and Argentina.
That’s a complete failure of a definition, and I’m really stretching already to support it. Both terms suck because the actual thing being said is hidden. Western civilization is a dog whistle for white and global south is a dog whistle for post colonial.
It’s just not served by the political majority to say either thing outright, because saying white pisses everyone on the left off so it’s optically valuable to be coy, and calling things post colonial ignites debates that liberals don’t like, so it’s optically valuable to be coy, making everyone talk like teenagers trying to flirt with the actual point.
I believe that @dcmorinmorinmorin is in error about discussing the use of the terms “Global South” and “Western Civilization.” The proposition- both of yours- seems that some nebulous conspiracy of ‘political correctness’ attacks ‘Western Civ’ as vague and heterogeneous, while using ‘Global South.’
The difference is that the terms “Global South” and “Global North” are of a very different sort than ‘Western Civ.’ They are a reference to levels of industrial development, and the meaning is quite specific.
If you mark fully developed countries on a world map, you find that overwhelmingly they are concentrated in a continguous band (allowing for oceans) that wraps part or all the way around the Northern Hemisphere, mostly well north of the equator. Effectively the sole exceptions are (arguably) Israel and (definitely) Australia, New Zealand, and various territories directly administered by a Northern Hemisphere country such as some Pacific islands.
Conversely, you will find the overwhelming majority of the poorer nations of the Earth south of this band. The notable outlier is Russia, which has economically lagged behind Europe, the US, and so on, with a per capita GDP about on the level of Mexico. This pattern has persisted with only slight variation under the czars, under the communists, and now under the capitalist oligarchs alike.
Notably, the relatively prosperous “Global North” includes Japan, which really doesn’t make sense as a part of “Western Civ.” Conversely, the mid-income to impoverished “Global South” includes Latin America and the Caribbean, which logically should be considered part of “Western Civ” if the definition of the latter is to have any coherency at all.
So to sum it all up, the “Global North/South” divide isn’t vague at all. It’s a broad and simplifying term, but it means, essentially, “the big loosely contiguous blob of (overwhelmingly) Northern Hemisphere countries that are rich” and “the bigger loosely contiguous blob of (overwhelmingly) equatorial and Southern Hemisphere countries that are not.”
This is very different from the situation with ‘Western Civ,’ as I shall discuss.
To expand on my argument for why there is no double standard in using “Global South” but not “Western Civ,” I will say more. To sum up my previous post, “Global South” is a specific term that refers to nations that have not reached our time’s ‘top’ level of economic development, or that are extreme newcomers to the ‘top.’ Some of the wealthiest of these nations (China is entering this category in our time) are major powers in their own right, and are somewhat disrupting the concept, because they are now able to act independently and contend with the nations of the ‘North’ on equal or even superior terms. But the category of the ‘Global South’ is reasonably well understood by those engaging with it in good faith.
The problem with ‘Western Civ’ is that it is commonly defined so as to provide commonality, but then creates issues far more serious than objections like “but China has become quite wealthy and autonomous and is doing imperialism of its own these days.”
“Western Civ” is used to refer to a mix of different things. It can mean some sort of continuity of cultural or political structure from the Greeks or the Roman Empire. It can mean ‘whiteness.’ It can mean ‘early adopter of industrial technology.’ It can mean ‘liberal democracy’ in the sense of Dr. Deveraux’s last post on July 5th. It can mean ’embraces capitalism.’
Notably, people routinely use the term ‘Western Civ’ to mean several of these things at once, and to juggle them together. If I ask, say, Victor Davis Hanson what it is to be a part of ‘Western Civ,’ I will get a grab-bag of those things I listed in the last paragraph, though the part where it means “whiteness” is generally not said out loud.
But what’s very strange here is how this works with the edge cases.
It seems nearly impossible to qualify as a ‘Western Civ’ nation if the most politically active religion in your country is Islam rather than Christianity, even if your government is a liberal democracy, if your economy embraces capitalism, and if you have been part of a more or less industrialized nation for a reasonably long time.
Both the United States and Haiti are former European colony states that had a revolution against their European overlord, but somehow our image of what ‘Western Civ’ means has a lot to say about how Americans fit into the picture and very little to say about how the Haitians fit in.
Japan is clearly nonwhite and overwhelmingly non-Christian, but in many ways much more closely resembles our image of a ‘Western’ nation than did, say, the overwhelmingly white Soviet Union.
It’s a lot harder to hammer together a coherent definition of ‘Western Civ’ than of ‘Global South.’
There is no hypocrisy at work here. It is a simple fact that ‘Western Civ’ has a fair amount of ambiguity, and, importantly, that this ambiguity is exploited actively. This is, importantly, a reason for people who are serious about truth to be careful how they use the term or whether they use it at all, especially when other terms are available.
I can look through some old notes, but note first that I consider regional minorities a significant fraction; if 20% of a region was locally Christian I consider that a significant minority. I’m just clarifying so that when I come back in a couple days we have the same expectations for what I meant.
I agree on most of the rest; the global south isn’t really a strong term until recently (but is relevant in discussing recent events and historical continuity) and I’ll note that defining Christianity narrowly fits with a political definition of Christiandom, which is probably best served by saying “Catholic” at that point. In which case it’s nearly a tautology to say it’s a European definition until colonialism, and the discussion can reasonably end.
I also would like to offer an alternative; the person you described? They can reasonably say they are Hindu *and* Muslim *and* Christian. Unitary religious identities are often a sign of state control, people can have many internal labels. It’s different enough from the religious statism of European Christianity to be valid to separate, but it isn’t less valid.
I agree with most of this, but some quick Googling says that most Christian Indians are Protestant; I think a good deal of these are recent converts in tribal parts of the northeast that were never substantially incorporated into Brahminic Hinduism in the first place.
Among Catholics, a pretty substantial portion (though not a majority) are Eastern Rite Catholics, i.e., descended from pre-1497 Christian communities (not all ‘Monophysite’/Oriental Orthodox – others were ‘Nestorian’/Church of the East/East Syriac) who later entered into communion with the Pope while keeping most of their traditions and liturgies.
Thank you for the correction! I was wrong about two things, as you point out- I didn’t realize the majority of Indian Christians today are Protestant, nor that more than half the Catholics were Eastern Catholic.
I think my broader point though stands, which is that 1) there aren’t that many Christians in India, and probably never have been, in relative terms (in absolute terms, India has a lot of people, so that there are a fair number), and 2) most of them are not descendants of the pre-colonial Christian communities (wikipedia statistics are more than 10 years out of date, but they estimate about 20% of the total in India are broadly “Saint Thomas Christians”, of whom some these days are Nestorian, some are Monophysite, some have united with Rome and some have reformed along Protestant lines).
I’d also agree with you that a lot of the tribal peoples in the northeast were never “Hindu” in any meaningful sense either (and I also agree with your term “Brahminic Hinduism” to distinguish it from what might be called the folk, popular religion). The extent to which “Hinduism” can be extended to cover animism, ancestor-worship, nature-religions, etc. is kind of slippery, both in India and in Southeast Asia, and almost always is politically charged.
Fascinatingly enough, there’s a militant group in one of those northeastern states (Nagaland, which I’ve seen described as the least Indian state in India) that’s simultaneously Communist (specifically, Maoist) and Evangelical Christian, their motto is “Nagaland for Christ”.
I don’t think they’re going to get anywhere in the foreseeable future, since the Nagas are a small and weak group fighting against a much bigger one, but it would be interesting to see what their vision of society is if they ever got to run the show.
There’s actually a long history of that in the US; many of the Utopian Communities in the US blended early socialism and religious fervor. It’s not limited to America; Kibbutz in Israel are also informed by the same movement (not surprising, as modern Judaism has incorporated a lot of outside concepts due to the diaspora).
It turns out the Utopian visions of Communism and Christianity aren’t terribly different at all. Personally this has informed my belief that American Christianity has become a form of narcissistic rot completely unmoored from any of it’s theological or moral presuppositions, but that’s probably no pertinent to the topic.
yeah never know what people are talking about with that. like legit question, has there ever been a year, ever where they has not been at least 1 war going on somewhere on the planet? not just Europe or China or America as that is a different question but a legit none anywhere. ever been a couple months? a Single Month? a week? a Day???
Well, you have times before there were humans, and even after the rise of H. Sapiens there were probably long periods where there was no large enough social organization that you can really have ‘war’ as it is commonly understood.
But once you start having states or statelike entities that are organized enough to wage war? My guess is never.
The first great English political theorist, Thomas Hobbes wrote about the definition of war and its relation to states:
“Out of Civil States, there is alwayes Warre of every one against every one. Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man. For Warre, consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of Warre; as it is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foule weather, lyeth not in a showre or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many dayes together; So the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is Peace.
“The Incommodities of such a War. Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
LEVIATHAN, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a COMMON-WEALTH ECCLESIASTICALL and CIVILL. By Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. LONDON, 1651
Part I.: OF MAN. CHAP. XIII.: Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-leviathan-1909-ed#lf0161_label_094
Further food for thought:
“Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage” by Steven Le Blanc & Katherine E. Register.
https://www.amazon.com/Constant-Battles-Peaceful-Noble-Savage/dp/0312310897/
War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence H. Keeley
https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126/
And before that, you had raids, which were plenty lethal. (See War Before Civilization by Lawrence H. Keeley)
I believe that Chimpanzees have been observed engaging in conflicts that look remarkably similar to human tribal warfare. So I don’t think you need humans to have war.
War in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been going on for decades now, since the 90s. And before that there was war in Ethiopia in the 70s and 80s. So I’d say not.
Another issue of course is defining “war”. How large do the powers fighting each other need to be? Gang warfare is a thing.
People have tried to answer this before, as “268 years out of the last 3400” from “The Lessons of History” by historians Will Durant and Ariel Durant. Not all at once, it little bits and pieces along the way.
Note that I recalled this and googled the source, I have not checked this rigorously.
And of course, this gets into wrangling about defining “war.”
There is also a claim out that there were only 26 days of world peace since 1945, but not clear on the source.
That feels very much like it needs a big asterisk of “as far as we know”. Not every war of the last 3400 years could possibly be visible to us.
The smaller the scale of the average polity, the more of them there will be in any given area, and the more likely it will be that two of them are fighting each other.
And, given that people are involved in a war, the closer they will be to the frontier and the more exposed they will be to the knavish acts of the adversary.
So the further back you go, the more likely people were to be involved in a war, and the more likely they were to be attacked by someone during it.
In the hallway where I work, there used to be a map that I loved to look at, of Europe around 1990, and the reason I loved it so much is because it had both a reunified Germany and the Soviet Union on the same map. The end of the Cold War, which is only a few decades ago, is already collapsed into a single “thing” that happened at one point in time in popular memory. But that map was a very specific snapshot that showed how it was actually a process that took years and consisted of lots of individual separate events with their own stories that could fill books on their own.
Every time I looked at that map I was reminded that that all of history is like that, way more complex and messy than a paragraph in a textbook can explore.
I grew up with a globe like that. (Turns out 1990 was a terrible time to buy a globe for your kids.) So when reading about the Cold War era, I sometimes forget that East Germany existed.
Whereas I know other people who think of East Germany (more so than say Cuba or the Soviet Union) as the prototypical communist society.
Bret defines “a single paragraph” as “perhaps just a few hundred words,” and honestly, that explains só much!
My experience is that a typical paragraph in academic writing will be something vaguely like 100 words. Sometimes you’ll be able to express what you are trying to say in half that many words, granted. But often, you won’t. On the other hand, if you need more than about 150-200 words to express something, it should probably be divided up into multiple paragraphs.
Writing where 50-word paragraphs is typical usually involves either paragraphs that are basically one big run-on sentence, or paragraphs that have an appropriate number of sentences but are all very cut-down and simplistic in what they’re saying. Writing a history book in either style is kind of restrictive, I’d expect.
I suspect that the source of the treatment of feudalism that you complain about is Marxist schemataization of history. https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch03.htm
I’d bet that Marx got that part from the general culture, not the other way around.
I suspect a dialectical effect: he encouraged a tendency that he had picked up.
Fair enough. 🙂
It’s never been a field of study for me, but I get the strong impression that Hegelian philosophy and all of its descendants work primarily by making sweeping generalizations about the world, and then treating them as fixed Truths that can be manipulated with rules of logic.* From that perspective, it seems obviously tempting to collapse a whole bunch of things under the single term “Feudalism”, highlight all the similarities (or maybe point out “internal contradictions”), and track how the Thing Called Feudalism evolved in a singular and inevitable process to become Something Else, which will also be a massive simplification of a bunch of complicated details. And then everyone gets to go home and pat themselves on the back for having achieved a high-level understanding of How the World Works, and maybe pen a few treatises on how the change was important, or what the next change will be, etc.
* Yes, I’m self aware.
Now if you want to enter the fun side of philosophy, why does any of that make their approach wrong?
The obvious response, @dcmorinmorinmorin, is that if a theory is proven to be based upon factually suspect generalizations, then its conclusions must necessarily be even more suspect than the original generalizations were. They can hardly be less suspect, after all, because each additional step in the chain of inferences and reasoning introduces more uncertainty on top of the already shaky foundation.
Ah, but nothing about the post actually proves that the generalizations are factually suspect.
It’s an assertion that there are sweeping generalizations, but I can make sweeping generalizations about a number of *scientific* fields, and be absolutely correct.
There’s no *inherent* value statement to anything in that post, which is why I’m pointing it out. There’s a lot of inferred ones, but generalizations aren’t bad, logic isn’t a dirty word, collapsing distinction into a reductive point isn’t invalid, and simplification is how we understand the world. What this is describing is *academic reasoning*.
So we’re back to the core question-is the generalization *valid*, which is just another way of asking if Feudalism actually existed. Of course everything about the discussion depends on that, but if the answer is “yes” then the entire system works. You can produce useful knowledge that way.
Dan, I would argue that if we can show that a group is making sweeping generalizations about a very broad period of history, then their generalizations start out as “suspect” by default. They might still be right, but one is practically required to apply some skepticism when hearing someone say “these things that happened 400 years and 1000 miles apart are basically the same.”
Dan: the short version is that it’s an attempt to apply logic to mysticism, and while that’s not impossible, it can’t be done like that. Everything else I’ve got to say is basically what Simon_Jester said, but I’ll rephrase anyway, in case another perspective helps.
Abstractions are leaky. We can look at two things, see similarities, and claim that they are “the same”, and then assign a single name to that category of things. But when the category is used in any other context, it becomes suspect, because it conceals all the differences of the individual things that comprise it. When two categories are manipulated by a logical operation, those differences can matter in ways that are not readily apparent. It can require careful work to be able to establish categories that are useful in multiple contexts. And it’s especially hard to tell when our own biases are motivating us to ignore some differences and highlight others. In short, it’s a great way to trick ourselves into thinking we have deep insights. As to whether they’re “right”, as always, the proof is in the pudding, and it’s impossible to be more specific when talking at this level of generality. 🙂
For a relatively simple and non-politicized example, we talk here about “Roman legions” a lot, and there are some useful things that can be said at that level. But Prof. Devereaux has written about how the legions changed over time, in organization and in composition and in equipment and in support. And of course all the legions were fundamentally each a bunch of distinct people united by a variety of ideas, some of which we presume were shared (like the basic “I’m a legionary”). In some contexts it’s fine to talk about “legions”, but in other contexts we need to specify the time period, or even the ethnic composition (for some late imperial politics), and sometimes the allied wings count and sometimes they don’t. And in general, we need to be mindful that legionaries were individual people with lives and personalities, and try to avoid thinking of them as identical sprites with identical stats in some computer game (although in my non-professional opinion it’s somewhat less vital than when dealing with, say, medieval European warfare).
As opposed to doing what, precisely? All language and communication involved abstraction.
It’s obvious that a broad point is always going to be less valid than a narrow one, but in defense of broad points they can both be correct and are useful for identifying trends.
While it’s an incredibly broad point to say that for the past three hundred or so years economic activity per capita has been increasing, and very abstract to say that it’s because industrialization has led to utilization of more forms of power generation than previously and scientific theory has led to rapid advancement in valid knowledge, but it’s also *mostly* true. I can find exceptions, but that’s the defining trend of, say, 1750-Today
Now if we say that Roman civilization underwent an industrialization, where there was a similar increase in wind and water power being used along with mass infrastructure and specialization, we have obvious problems like-there was no formal scientific method, there was no mass utilization of fossil fuels, there was no electricity generation, etc. However by making that claim we have enabled the determination of *useful distinction*. In defense of the *process*, it’s not useless to talk about it then find where the analogy breaks, that’s useful for identifying meaningful characteristics of each period and getting a better understanding of how history, humans, economies, etc. work.
In essence, it depends on if you are primarily concerned with generating useful knowledge on general human trends or if you are interesting in being strictly right about events as they occurred. If you can engage with abstraction and generalization in a way that is honestly open to being contradicting you can generate knowledge about humans, but if you are stubborn or dishonest of course that form of discourse doesn’t work.
In other words-I think you’re conflating a real and observed flaw with a person being an obstinate fool while engaging in discourse with a flaw with the form of discourse.
A lot of people aren’t cut out for saying stuff like “Western civilization is characterized by liberal, scientific, and secular modes of thought as opposed to conservative and theistic modes of thought”, because they’re never going to accept that being told all the ways they’re *wrong* is valuable. But that doesn’t mean the method is wrong-they’re doing it wrong. And maybe I am to. But the thing I want to get from history, philosophically, is lessons about how humans and societies work. I have to be abstract and broad to do that.
‘Feudal’ was not a word used in the middle ages. It was a word used to describe the complex of legal obligations associated with property (often foisted on the peasantry). The OED gives the first attested use in 1614 and it became common use in France, England and Italy in the 18th century, especially among lawyers. The abolition of feudal tenures by the French Revolution gave it currency as a short-hand for the whole period. Marx was using a term common at the time.
Possibly, but that’s not the right source to prove that by a country mile. That’s a textbook from the late 1950’s; I know for a fact that the Nazis engaged in similar reductive myth making about the grand history of European economies and they predate that textbook by 20-30 years.
If you want to prove it’s a Marxist trend you have to go back to Marx and Engels, or their inspirations. And as is common, they are more nuanced than later Soviet writers, although if they’re any more valid is an open question; Marx explicitly deals with Celtic, roman, Greek, German, Asiatic, and pastoral economies as separate things, although what I was skimming didn’t really talk on western “feudalism” before I decided to just reply. I know he talked on it though, of you want to go trawling.
Even then it’s still possible he was reproducing the concepts of earlier authors; in this case I’d look at classical liberals to see if they spoke of a millenia of feudalism. I suspect they are the primordial source here, to build on moon moth.
To the contrary, much of the historiographic rejection of the notion of feudalism specifically exempts the Marxist definition, saying that it’s okay to speak of feudalism in the Marxist sense but not in the more usual one. In Marxism, economic relations underlie everything else, so feudalism really just means manorialism with a surplus of peasants and a shortage of land making slavery unprofitable for the overclass (this is the Domar serfdom model, which managed to make it to conventional, non-Marxist economics). Vassalage, as a political rather than economic system, is of little concern in Marxist historiography. A Marxist would have little trouble identifying the France of 1750, an absolute monarchy with a professional army, as a feudal state.
Marxists’ use of the term “feudalism” seems to not just be about manoralism but also beliefs about how the manors interacted, or more specifically didn’t. E.g. they don’t expect widespread wage labour or grain trade to have happened during what they call feudalism. Though of course different Marxists have different beliefs.
If we don’t take stable in it’s “hierarchy ensured long-term stability” to mean peaceful, there is some truth to it. But that tweeter is attributing to feudalism in particular what should more accurately be attributed to agricultural societies in general. You tweeted about that some time ago:
The big conflicts in the last ~250 years, be they wars or political divides or clashing social movements, were often about how to organize society. In pre-modern times states and state-adjacent societies on the other hand it was most often about who got to be on top of the hierarchy and make some minor alterations in amount and distribution of the tribute. It is plausible that one day industrial societies will reach a similar equilibrium and achieve a model of social organization that is rarely contested. But we are not there yet, so in some ways our society is less stable than the society of the Middle Ages – the changes that can happen here are bigger.
Some thoughts on this:
I wonder to what extend these low quality posts are downstream from more rigerous reactionary thinkers. Maybe it would be worthwhile for you to argue for Liberalism – on the basis of your historical knowledge – against the likes of Joseph de Maistre and their 21st century admirers. (And in the same vein against Marx and Lenin and their fanclub.)
Seems like a screwed up the link (at least I can’t click it). So here it is for copy-paste:
https://x.com/BretDevereaux/status/1740495589974978752
If the If Books Could Kill podcast has taught me anything, it’s that even when reactionaries with PhDs or professorships or long careers in the State Department sit down to lay out their theories in books, it’s just as bad history and logic as these short-form tweets.
It’s kind of impossible to argue with people who will twist events like “students sit down with campus administrators to talk about quality of cafeteria food” into “Cultural Marxism!” and “immigrants protest draconian anti-immigration measures” into “Clash of Civilisations!”
Reactionaries? The leftists are just as bad.
So you are just a fascist, fully, got it.
See? This is an example based on the history within the last month — and an entirely fictious past invented by a leftist.
“Nazis are bad” -> “Bu- but so are leftists!” is the kind of thing literally only a fascist would say. It’s hard evidence.
Notice that this doesn’t even try to respond to my comment.
The appropriate response to your comment is scorn. It’s a textbook whataboutism; the only significance is what it says about you.
Using the term “whataboutism” is an ad hominem in an attempt to enforce double standards. It is using the term that is the just object of scorn.
lol? Do you understand what any of those words mean?
An ad hominem is a personal attack as a way to discredit someone-technically “you’re a fascist therefore you’re wrong” can be ad hominem, but pointing out a logical fallacy isn’t. That you misidentified that is just pathetic.
A whataboutism is a type of ad hominem; it’s a type of ad hominem tu torque, or an appeal to hypocrisy. A basic form is “you did x in the past, therefore x is no big deal”.
The obvious reason it’s a fallacy is that both can be true and it doesn’t change the validity of the point. It’s rhetorically effective but logically irrelevant. One would only say it to make the original target look better.
To respond to “Nazis are irrational” with “so are leftists” this formally reveals three precisely three things.
1. You support Nazis.
2. You think leftists are bad.
3. You’re irrational as a core personality trait.
An irrational nazi supporter who hates leftists is a fascist. It’s the formal definition, in truth.
That’s why your post is such a strong self report.
You do realize that everyone can literally see that your evidence for your claims is literally a figment of your imagination?
Note that this *still* isn’t a flat statement that she’s not a fascist-*at no point has she actually denied it*. Nothing she’s posted *actually says* “I’m not a fascist”, it’s about how silly it is to say it. People naturally behave this way when trying to dodge *truthful* allegations.
When you’ve already made it clear that you consider anyone you want to kill to be a fascist, trying to backtrack and insinuate instead doesn’t work.
What makes you think Mary is a fascist?
I’ve answered this (changed display name), but to writ: people who aren’t fascists or at least heavily aligned don’t argue that reactionaries aren’t that bad, particularly not with logical fallacies, and people who have their political positions misidentified *correct you*. She has yet to say she isn’t a fascist; she’s just refused to identify her beliefs and said it’s silly to call her a fascist.
Psychologically, that’s one of the best indicators of deception; people have to be trained to directly say untrue things, they’ll avoid it whenever possible.
It’s not foolproof, but it’s also a particularly common tactic in the far right. Almost no neonazi will say they’re a neonazi outside the in group; for an example of how ludicrous this can get, there are videos from Charlottesville of people saying “it’s 2017, Nazis don’t exist” to counter protestors at the rally perimeter, while someone led a blood and soil Nazi ritual chant [em]at the same time inside their circle[/em]. Gaslighting is their primary tactic.
Reactionary and fascist is not the same thing, although there might be significant overlap. Also, you cannot assume that just because a person claim that Stalin was bad in the same way as Hitler, they are actually supporters of Hitler who are engaging in whataboutism. Thay may actually be against both and consider them equally dangerous threats.
Reactionary and fascist overlap nearly perfectly. You’re technically correct, but reactionaries, in a fascist regime, almost universally get behind the state, no matter their supposed distinctions. They amount to the same thing.
Plus in this context the post she responded to specifically referenced Nazi rhetoric, where Nazism can be defined as an antisemitic fascist idealogy-all fascism has a great enemy, for Nazis the enemy are Jews. Supporting them narrows the field further.
And you’d have a point-if her post was that leftists could be that bad. She specifically disagreed with using reactionaries as an example in how she framed her post. She wasn’t just providing another example-she was *objecting to the given example*.
But even ignoring that…no, only fascists use rhetoric that equates modern leftists to the soviets. There’s a clear difference between leftists in the present tense and Stalin. You’re adding text that is actually *inconsistent* with what she said, not merely a stretch.
Of course there is difference between most modern leftists (there actually still exist
Stalinists and Maoists), in the same way as there is a diffference between modern rightist ps and Nazis. Seriously, what nazi thing do you claim she was saying?
“Of course there is difference between most modern leftists (there actually still exist
Stalinists and Maoists), in the same way as there is a diffference between modern rightist ps and Nazis. Seriously, what nazi thing do you claim she was saying?”
Modern rightists are different from Nazis in that their enemies have been personalized by the media The core beliefs are the same; right wing idealogy always collapses to the same thing, empirically.
Leftists share nothing of note in common with stalinists or maoists; everything about their platform or ideals are different. This isn’t actually a matter of temporal context either; the Nazis equivocated all leftists with Stalin, it was equally indicative then.
And, again, I’ve explained this. Using fallacies to support Nazis is a characteristic of fascism.
Well, most Stalinists/Maoists would probably claim that their core values are justice and equality etc, but there is of course a real difference ( but not for everyone). And the same goes for the right. On both sides there are people who accepts democratic rules, and also on both sides people who threatens violence when opponents utter the wrong views (I mean real violence, not “words are violence”. But you also have to differentiate actual behavior to theoreticall beliefs. One of the best trade union leaders I interacted with while doing trade union work was a convinced Stalinist. But it did not affect his leadership style, actually he was the opposite of behaving like Stalin. I think you should be more clear what you are meaning when you put everyone to right of the center (which is what rightist means) as a nazi. That seems in every way as stupid as claiming that everyone to the left of center is a communist.
“I think you should be more clear what you are meaning when you put everyone to right of the center (which is what rightist means) as a nazi. That seems in every way as stupid as claiming that everyone to the left of center is a communist.”
Well, to be fair, I’m rapidly losing all patience with actual non-fascist people right of center. It has not been a good couple weeks for the argument that there is a substantial difference between conservatives and fascists, given that I now have to live with the incredible humiliation of being under a *presidential dictatorship*, at least going by the definition of dictatorship where the president is above legal redress. I was very explicitly told that wasn’t possible because Republicans are *conservatives*, they aren’t *radical* like fascists.
I still don’t actually believe everyone right of center in America is just a Nazi, but I’m rapidly losing all hope that the ones who aren’t know *literally anything*. It seems conservatives have to just…not know how to think. They have to literally not understand what they believe or say to still be on board with their leadership and not be fascists.
All that said, I’m not saying it idly. This really is a distinguishing feature. Conservatives don’t use this rhetoric, or they didn’t twenty years ago, if they even exist now.
“He can assume it. He does assume it. He shouldn’t, but then he equivocates about what he means by “fascist” in the space of two sentences.”
I don’t think you know what that word means.
“And your evidence for this assertion?”
I can start citing about a hundred different papers and books on the rhetorical style of fascism and whataboutism shows up in every single one of them, with almost this *exact* example in most. It’s literally textbook.
“When you immediately dive into logical fallacies after this, that’s an unwise assertion to make.”
Oh do tell, what do you think *that* term means?
Argumentum ad auctoritatem.
He can assume it. He does assume it. He shouldn’t, but then he equivocates about what he means by “fascist” in the space of two sentences.
“people who aren’t fascists or at least heavily aligned don’t argue that reactionaries aren’t that bad,”
And your evidence for this assertion?
“particularly not with logical fallacies, ”
When you immediately dive into logical fallacies after this, that’s an unwise assertion to make.
“Argumentum ad auctoritatem”
You don’t know that until you’ve read the cited works, which I haven’t even provided because I was giving you a chance to do…this, namely reject the concept of evidence *after asking for it*.
It’s obvious now, in context, that you were never actually asking for evidence-you were just conveying the emotional concept of doubt without any of the intellectual associations, which is, you guessed it, *another* characteristic of fascist rhetoric.
You didn’t cite any works, which falsifies your claim.
Furthermore your account makes it clear that they do not have the evidence necessary.
That means it’s not an argument from authority. I cannot simultaneously be making an argument from authority and have not provided the authority, that’s not how causality works.
As for actually providing the sources-You’ve exhausted your usefulness as a lesson to others. If someone else requests the sources I can compile a list, but this has officially just looped; there are no more new examples of Fascist Rhetoric to explore.
That’s a lie. You appealed to authority, you were just deliberately so vague that no one could check them for political bias.
As are “centrists” and “liberals”, I don’t think any side has a monopoly on poor logic (and I think lots of people, including reactionaries, left wingers and reactionary left wingers, often have good insights that I’ve learned from).
You did notice that was my point?
You did notice that was my point?
Yes I did- I just hoped you weren’t exempting small-L liberals or people broadly in the political “centre”.
@MicaelGustavsson:
<iIOne of the best trade union leaders I interacted with while doing trade union work was a convinced Stalinist. But it did not affect his leadership style, actually he was the opposite of behaving like Stalin
That doesn’t surprise me at all. I’d guess that “Stalinist” types (and really I feel like this term is pretty wildly overused) are extremely unlikely to “act like Stalin” themselves- that’s not the way psychology operates. People who gravitate towards strong authoritarian leaders don’t want to be the leader themselves, they want to have a strong leader in which they can place their faith. Quite the opposite (in fact I’d guess that people who have a high opinion of themselves are quite *unlikely* to end up as followers of authoritarian political parties).
I think what Kuhn said about the communication problems of scientists that follow different paradigms is true here as well:
“Briefly put, what the participants in a communication breakdown can
do is recognize each other as members of different language
communities and then become translators. Taking the differences
between their own intra- and inter-group discourse as itself a subject for
study, they can first attempt to discover the terms and locutions that,
used unproblematically within each community, are nevertheless foci of
trouble for inter-group discussions. (Locutions that present no such
difficulties may be homophonically translated.) Having isolated such
areas of difficulty in scientific communication, they can next resort to
their shared everyday vocabularies in an effort further to elucidate their
troubles. Each may, that is, try to discover what the other would see and
say when presented with a stimulus to which his own verbal response
would be different. If they can sufficiently refrain from explaining
anomalous behavior as the consequence of mere error or madness, they
may in time become very good predictors of each other’s behavior. Each
will have learned to translate the other’s theory and its consequences
into his own language and simultaneously to describe in his language
the world to which that theory applies. That is what the historian of
science regularly does (or should) when dealing with out-of-date
scientific theories.
Since translation, if pursued, allows the participants in a
communication breakdown to experience vicariously something of the
merits and defects of each other’s points of view, it is a potent tool both
for persuasion and for conversion.”
– Thomas S. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – Postscript 1969
and “immigrants protest draconian anti-immigration measures” into “Clash of Civilisations!”
I wouldn’t call this a “clash of civilizations”- I dislike the whole “civilization” language for some of the reasons others have brought up in this thread- but surely it’s not a surprise to you that people who disapprove of immigration (or emigration, or migration in general), and I’d certainly count myself in that group, tend to dislike stuff like “immigrants protesting draconian anti-immigration measures”?
People who dislike immigration have terrible reasons 99.9% of the time, in that you are the *first and only* actual human I’ve ever seen who appears to dislike it because they think it’s bad for the nation which is emigrating talent, or even consider the interests of those left behind valuable.
In basically all media and pop sources from immigration destination countries the only question is “is immigration good for us”, and the objectively correct answer is “yes”. The people who conclude it’s bad for them, despite the incredible wealth of data that they’re wrong, just don’t like diversity or more accurately brown people. You can’t say that and win arguments, so they lie and come up with deceptive rhetoric.
Assuming I’m correctly pegging your personal take, you legitimately just aren’t like the people being discussed. You’re still wrong to dislike immigration or emigration, but you actually have reasons that aren’t just bigotry. The ultra majority don’t.
“The people who conclude it’s bad for them, despite the incredible wealth of data that they’re wrong, just don’t like diversity or more accurately brown people.”
Odd that so many of them are, in fact, “brown people” in the usage you give here.
And what is the “incredible wealth of data”?
“Odd that so many of them are, in fact, “brown people” in the usage you give here.”
Source?
“And what is the “incredible wealth of data”?”
Every economic paper written on immigration in the last hundred years. I’m hardly being facetious, it’s that definitive.
The other metrics have to be dealt with comprehensively, but none withstand scrutiny; immigrants commit fewer crimes by 50-66% than citizens, are something like 90% less likely to smuggle illegal drugs than US citizens, contribute more to public programs than they take out, etc. as shown by everything from FBI statistics to economics papers.
There’s literally no rational reason to dislike immigration into your country. It’s purely beneficial.
Ah, so you cite works that conflate illegal immigration with legal immigration. That sort of faulty reasoning casts doubt on all the rest.
Actually no, the papers and statistics break down legal and illegal immigration. For instance the rate of crime for undocumented migrants is *lower* than the rate of crime for legal immigrants. There’s even data that corrects for reporting biases, it’s almost certainly not a data artifact.
The economic papers are even clearer; undocumented immigrants *as an isolated group* contribute more to the economy and budget than they take out. It’s a weaker correlation on how they impact local and state taxes or programs because of how variable those tax systems are, but the overall impact is positive for the country as a whole.
Legal immigrants do even better.
Basically, *nothing*, and I really mean *nothing*, supports an anti immigration position in terms of its empirical impact on you. This is one of the best studied economic and social problems in the world, and the only rational conclusion is that all opposition to immigration on any level is irrational.
Actually, no, I have myself heard of many studies that don’t break them down.
That’s…not even a wrong statement, it’s just a nonsequeter. What does that even mean? Studies which don’t separate out legal from illegal immigration don’t magically influence studies that do, you realize that right?
Yes, your comment is a non-sequitur. You claimed “every” paper backed you up*, and that “the” papers and statistics do separate them. To say you were speaking only of a subset is false.
*Not even on your own showing did they, since you claimed that any individual American was not worse off, and then cited evidence that claims that on the whole, Americans are better off.
That’s sophistry. It’s also not even correctly formed sophistry, my English grammar is ambiguous there as to if I meant the cited papers or all of them.
Do note this tactic is also in handbooks on how to identify fascists; it’s a perculiar form of missing the point, mixed with the motte and bailey fallacy. Construct a misunderstood version of the enemies position, then try to force them to defend it. If they retreat declare victory, if they defend it you’ve destroyed the discourse. It’s not unique, but it’s a common tactic.
No, I never said every paper breaks them up, as in that’s not in my replies and does not affect my point. Every paper still supports me, because the ones that don’t break them up are consistent with my conclusion too. Why do you believe it’s such an important point of claification when it’s obviously irrelevant to if I’m right?
No, “the” is not ambiguous. And if it were ambiguous, the blame would be yours, not mine.
Note that Mary has still yet to either acknowledge that she’s wrong about immigration or rebutted this point; this is entirely a deflection. It has no relationship to if I’m correct.
At this point there’s no reason to engage further on this deflection; Mary will find the topic or not, it’s clear why she refuses to.
In this context it is clear that the purpose of her reply isn’t to establish the empirical truth of what reality is. She doesn’t actually believe immigrants are bad in any measurable way. *Being* an immigrant is bad, the essentialist character of having that identity is a flaw.
The term of “illegal immigration” is also unimportant to her; as she’s had it explained to her that the distinction isn’t a factor for measurable metrics, meaning that the difference is again, a inherent one. To Mary, undocumented immigrants are just bad, definitionally. There’s no *reason* for that, beyond, again, who they are.
And the most obvious difference between undocumented and documented immigrants is that undocumented ones are more likely to be Hispanic, African, or Asian. Likewise, if she’s not European, the biggest difference between the historical immigrant majority she likely belongs to and the current immigrant wave is that the current immigrant wave is brown skinned.
Notice that within the last week, Dan was having vapors about the homeless.
Now he is the very person he was having vapors about because people — elderly vets — have literally been turned out of their homes onto the street to provide accommodation for illegal immigrants, and he thinks that anyone who notices is objectively horrible.
This shows that this tirade is just Dan’s talking nonsense.
https://apnews.com/article/migrants-veterans-evictions-new-york-buses-hoax-be45e60b829c35352ac236d1c2ca15cf
It’s a Hoax, Mary. As it was always obviously going to be.
You *idiot*.
Did you even read the title before you linked that?
Did you really think that “accusations” were going to do it?
https://nypost.com/2023/05/18/advocate-lied-about-vets-getting-kicked-out-of-ny-hotels-for-migrants-pol/
The person who *said it was happening has admitted to lying*. That was linked *in the AP article*. Holy shit Mary.
I think if one notices that most migrants are driven by a desire for better economic conditions, and think from there further, it is pretty natural to come to the conclusion that in a better world immigration wouldn’t be happening in the way it does today. “Fluchtursachen bekämpfen” = “fighting against causes of flight” was a pretty common talking point during the 2015 refugee crisis in Germany by pro-immigration parties, in the sense of: “Right now we should take in refugees, but in the longer term we should also try to make sure that fewer people have a reason to flee.”
That’s not exactly the same as “migration is bad for the country of origin”, but it is also an altruistic motivation to work towards less immigration.
I’m sorry, but this strikes me as complete nonsense. You are applying a strictly economic definition of what’s “good” and “bad” for a society. Maybe people, you know, value other things besides money, like, I dunno, the preservation of their ethno-national community, its ability to thrive into its far future, and its defence against outsiders? I know that I would much rather that my homeland stay ethnoracially, ethnolinguistically and culturally homogeneous, even if it stays at its current middle-income status, than become a rich cosmopolitan society like America. (A modern middle-income society is still pretty prosperous by historical standards). I take pride in the fact that it’s *more* linguistically homogeneous than it was a hundred years ago, that we’re about 50% descended from people who have been there for 40k years, and that we make it difficult for outsiders to move their by hanging on fiercely to a language that it’s tough for other ethnic groups even to pronounce.
Your point about “disliking brown people” is even stranger. It’s not *disliking* someone to not want millions of them to emigrate to your homeland. I’ve talked to plenty of people who oppose mass immigration before, and I’ve never got the sense that they ‘dislike’ people of other racial groups. I assume you’re a “white” American: I certainly wouldn’t want 10 million people like you moving to my homeland and intermarrying with us, and I’d expect you to dislike it if 10 million people like me were to do the same. If you actually believe this cosmopolitan stuff, I’d assume that either something is wrong with you, or more likely that you have some kind of deceptive political agenda. That doesn’t mean either of us dislikes the other, or the other’s ethnic group: it means we want to preserve our own ethnic community. (I am a US citizen and live in America, but I don’t consider America my ‘homeland’ in the relevant sense, since it’s not where my ethnic roots are). N.B. opposing migration at the wholesale level doesn’t mean you oppose it in any particular case, any more than disliking intermarriage as a mass social phenomenon means that you resent individual couples who date or marry outside your group. One of the most anti-immigration friends of mine (she’s Polish, and gets infuriated by Ukrainian migration) invited me to come work there (which I wouldn’t accept, since I have no intention of moving to a place where I’m not wanted in genereal).
This all puts me in mind of a wedding reception I was at a couple years ago when I was talking to an Oxford economics grad student who studies migration, and she was mentioning that India has a very low level of internal migration (that’s to say, not a lot of people migrate to a different state, compared to other large countries), and how that’s considered a bad thing from an economic point of view. I challenged her on that and said, “Maybe people value other things besides money? Like, maybe the value of having an ethnically homogeneous society outweighs the lost increase in GDP?” She responded, with some embarassment, “yes, I don’t think we economists are very good at weighing non-economic factors”. Same goes for people like you- you remind me of the old adage about people who understand the price of everything and the value of nothing,
Oh, then I misread you.
Yeah, strictly go fuck yourself Hector. That’s an evil fucking philosophy that’s been used to justify murdering millions, maybe billions, of people. Ethnonationalism is death, it breeds weakness into a nation and kills the vibrating core of human experience in it. I don’t care if you think it’s common, it’s not acceptable and a direct and virulent evil that needs to be exterminated.
You believe precisely what Mary believes, but you’re educated in Marxist philosophy and captivated on that-you’ve taken all the wrong lessons from what he wanted and why.
“Ethnonationalism is death, it breeds weakness into a nation and kills the vibrating core of human experience in it. ”
Physician, heal thyself.
You accuse me of it when I am guiltless, on literally no evidence, because you are a racist. You have literally and openly declared that a brilliant black scholar is not worth listening to because blacks don’t accept him. Not people qualified to judge and having no conflict on interest.
That makes YOU the ethnonationalist.
…I’m racist for thinking that black people are qualified to speak on if a black scholar is accurately representing them?
God, fascism is a hell of a drug. Go back to falling for hoaxes.
To even suggest that it is the duty of a black to “represent” blacks is racist.
To bring it up in a discussion of the merits of a scholar’s works is double-dyed racism of a sort that would fit in with certain people we are discussing.. Economics does not come in a “black” variety any more than physics comes in a “Jewish” variety.
“To even suggest that it is the duty of a black to “represent” blacks is racist.
To bring it up in a discussion of the merits of a scholar’s works is double-dyed racism of a sort that would fit in with certain people we are discussing.. Economics does not come in a “black” variety any more than physics comes in a “Jewish” variety.”
It’s not the Duty, you invertebrate waste of space, it’s a matter of if someone would know what the fuck they’re talking about. Sowell is not speaking as an economist when he peddles his trash, and every economist knows it. He’s solely supported by a tumorous, cancerous mass of conservative intelligencia formed from the other refuse of society, those rejected because they don’t cut it within actual academia. But even ignoring that he’s entirely cited by an in group of idiots, he hasn’t made a contribution to economic theories in ever. Period. His only academic contributions have been history of economics, and those are mostly highly politicized garbage. He’s worthless as an economist. He hasn’t furthered the profession at all. All he does is write books for idiots like you.
He’s said a bunch of other, unrelated trash about black culture, which *no black person agrees with*. And they, black people, are obviously the ones who can speak to their own goddamn culture; what other conclusion do you have, that the white conservatives who support Sowell financially are the ones who know black culture, not actual black people? Because that’s the people Sowell speaks to and the people whom you’re trying to let judge the merits of his work-academia left him behind decades ago.
No one falls for this shit except hoax believing idiots like you. You don’t get to cite the one black guy with a degree who agrees with your bigotry, fuckwad.
What a racist screed.
I think if one notices that most migrants are driven by a desire for better economic conditions, and think from there further, it is pretty natural to come to the conclusion that in a better world immigration wouldn’t be happening in the way it does today.
+1000 to this. (I’d note of course that most socialist countries I can think of had *extremely* closed borders, although they often made exceptions for ethnic minorities).
I would clarify though that economics isn’t my *only* reason for being hostile to mass migration (and yes, this goes for migration within countries as much as migration between them). Free movement of people is destabilizing to communities from *every* point of view: it destabilizes economic relations and it destabilizes the ethnic, linguistic and cultural makeup of societies as well. I’m opposed to migration from *both* of these points of view, the anticapitalist perspective as well as the nationalist one, and I view my economic and cultural views as completely consistent.
What I don’t get is people who pretend to be on the “left” economically and also are in favor of mass migration: separately from my distaste for cosmopolitanism, do they not get that large scale migration undermines the kind of cohesive communities that are a precondition for any kind of collectivist economic order?
There were also numerous wars over religion, which were wars over how to organise society.
+1000.
I was wondering about religious conquest (and other religious change) as well, but my impression is that none of them changed society to the extend that more recent processes like Liberalism, Industrialization, or the Sexual Revolution did.
Under medieval Islam, Christianity, or Buddhism there were still subsistence farmers and Big Men in the villages, polities were mostly politically dominated by a military aristocracy, city dwellers were a minority, taxation and conquests were the best ways to increase wealth, most adults married (or at least aimed to marry) and wives were supposed to obey their husbands, social interactions were regulated by ideas of honor (in the sense of “expected behavior for a person of one’s station”), etc.
The newer religions (with a universalizing worldview which made proper religious wars possible) like the three mentioned above tried to implement some of the most important changes within the general framework of argicultural societies. But mostly they were focussed on transcending society instead or reorganizing it. A minority of people left their social roles to pursue salvation/enlightenment/etc, while the majority tried to invest a bit into these goals while staying within their social roles (in particular by supporting and seeking the help of the first group).
Now, in the very biggest of big picture, giving people a much better shot to save their immortal souls is bigger reorganization of society than abolishing the nobility. But in the realm of social hierarchies in this world – not the next – the changes were limited in pre-modern times. (More radical sects that tried to implement much larger social changes – like complete pacifism or celibacy for everyone – existed but were never more than a fringe phenomenon in the pre-modern religious landscape.)
As you note though, for a religious person (that is, if you think one of these religions is true, or at least that some are truer than others), then changing a society’s religion is a *very big deal*- in the big picture, with far more lasting relevance than changing the political or economic structures.
Yeah. But religion has also become more unstable with these changing political and economic structures and especially with better communication technology. (I don’t think the Reformation or the Age of Enlightenment would have happened without the printing press, for example.)
Since for a religious person changing a society’s religion is such a big deal – observing how quickly and uncontrollably it can change today – I am not surprised when some of them long for a time when the most serious threat to the religious order was being conquered by people of a different religion.
I agree that the first and second industrial revolutions had a far greater impact on ordinary people’s lives than any religious transformation. For example, in a world without DNA testing, nor contraceptives, nor antibiotics, but with STDs, the consequences to sex (or at least some popular forms of it) are fundamentally different to what they are with DNA testing and antibiotics.
But the intention of various religious movements was to transform society utterly – if we did all live according to, say, the values of the Sermon on the Mount, even a pre-industrial society would look and operate fundamentally differently.
I think it’s strikingly accurate to point out that quite a few religious movements have had very transformational intentions towards society. In practice, these transformational intentions tend to “blur” as the religious influence is brought into coexistence and compromise with political power and control over property.
It is much easier to insist that people should be humble when you never talk to kings, who in order to perform the role of kingship in their culture have to exhibit a certain amount of pride and self-aggrandizement.
It is much easier for a monastery’s monks to remember a commandment to be generous and harm no one if they do not support themselves by being the landlord of tenants who occasionally fall behind on their rent.
A majority of people following the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount would indeed change society. However, current biblical scholarship leans towards the idea that Jesus and the early Christians expected God to establish this new society in the near future. Their attempts to follow it were about making themselves worthy of the Kingdom of God – not to bring it about.
Then in the Middle Ages a common view was that it was meant for monks in particular, not for every Christian. Lay Christians could gain spiritual benefits from the people who followed the Sermon on the Mount, but it wasn’t expected that they would follow it themselves.
So I would say there was a wish for a different society, but people largely didn’t belief it was in their power to create that new society.
Even today a common accusation conservative Christians make towards progressive Christians is that they try to “immanentize the eschaton”.
Marvin – Wickham makes the case that the Carolingians in particular were keen to transform society – their missives are full of admonitions, their ceremonies usually included dramatic public penances, communal confession and commitments to future good behaviour and their imagery draws heavily on Biblical (OT) narratives of correction. East Rome, IIRC, had a similar ideological orientation.
Of course the tension between a common code oriented to violent defence of honour and the values of the Sermon on the Mount proved hard to overcome, but the effort was there.
And yet, almost of all those warring religions had and still have to this very moment, that WOMEN must be vastly inferior and subordinate to not just A Man, but All Men, pretty much. Political systems the same. The twain shall ever meet. See Project 2025.
“They did go together for a few hundred years in some (but not all) of Europe and that leads to the deceptive conceptual bundling.”
To be fair, a few hundred years and “some” of Europe is actually an enormous amount of time and space. It sounds like it really is possible to say things about a coherent political-economic system known as feudalism, as long as you’re willing to limit the scope to a much smaller time period and geographic range than a lot of people first imagine.
The issue being that the ‘some of Europe’ isn’t contiguous. It’s not ‘feudalism was a thing from Spain to central Poland’, it was ‘within this 50 mile radius in France there are half a dozen different social and political organisations, each of which share only a handful of traits with the social and political organisations one finds 100 miles away, or 100 years ago’.
In order to say something about a coherent political-economic model called ‘feudalism’ you’d have to restrict your scope to, say, three counties in central England…excluding all of the cities within that space to focus wholly on the countryside, and conveniently ignoring that time when the Danelaw existed just next to it.
> something called ‘western civilization,’ the bounds of which are intentionally left conveniently vague and undefined, to which the speaker and the listener belong, but not those scary others. Of course any working definition of ‘western civilization’ is going to include many of those others: the Islamic world are the heirs of Mesopotamia and Rome as much as Europe, while ‘Christendom’ includes huge swathes of the ‘Global South’ and always has.
This seems very different from the usual meaning of “Western Civilisation”. Its two meanings are nowadays usually denied, because they are inconvenient:
1) before the end of colonialism it was synonymous with Christendom. This is also the obvious explanation for its shifting boundaries: Christianity became first Greek, then also Roman. Later it expanded into Northern and Eastern Europe (the pagan Vikings were no Westerners), but Islamic conquests drastically reduced its territory. The Mediterranean was split, and the Near East ceased to be majority Christian. The Great Schism (aided by Mongol conquests?) also cut off Orthodox Christianity from the Western tradition. (Whether Russia can belong to the West is still disputed.)
This view is unpopular because it ignores the glories of classical antiquity. Did the West not rise out of the Dark Ages only after re-discovering the ancients? Jews are also missing in this story, and it has become custom to claim that Western Civilisation is based on Judeo-Christian values. What these are, and why exactly Jews should be so important remains a mystery. (One might point out that Western law and parliamentary democracy owes much to the customs of Germanics, but they have far fewer adherents.)
2) with the end of colonial rule, it became synonymous with the white race. It is almost superfluous to point out that no non-white country, be it South Korea or South Africa, will never be considered a Western country regardless of how many Western institutions it adopts or how fervently its inhabitants believe in Christianity. The minimum requirement is white rule, but to be certain you need a white majority. On the other hand, a white country would not cease to be Western even if it abandoned all of the so-called Western values that supposedly define Western Civilisation today, like Nazi Germany did.
Many people do consider Japan Western, or partially so. Conversely, many would say Russia is not Western, despite being white and Christian.
I mean, this is one reason why I’m critical of the whole concept of “western civilization”. Countries and peoples differ from each other continuously, not categorically (plus, there are lots of axes along which you could group countries, and they don’t all match up).
That said, to the extent that I talk about “western” cultures (and I don’t do so all that often), I definitely would not include Russia, nor any other Eastern European country (and by Eastern Europe I do mean the old Cold War definition of Eastern Europe). You can see a sharp difference in stuff like the World Values Survey between countries which spent the 1960s / 1970s on one side of the Iron Curtain versus those who spent the 1960s / 1970s on the other side (and what that indicates to me is that what happened in that era was really a seminal, culturally earth-shaking moment, for better or worse, which has shaped the kind of society that America is as much as Christianity and English literature have).
With Orthodox Christianity as a criterion, you can include Poland and the Czech Republic. Are these not WEIRD enough?
Right now, Ukraine is increasingly considered Western. There is a conscious effort to re-brand that country, and that of course includes re-interpretations of its history. Greece is a special case. Considered the “cradle of Western civilisation”, it is defined as Western although its history includes Orthodox Christianity (and Islamic rule). Such sentiments enabled its early EU membership despite a poor economy. European leaders also felt that it belonged into the Euro zone, and chose to ignore that its national debt was much higher than claimed.
With Orthodox Christianity as a criterion, you can include Poland and the Czech Republic. Are these not WEIRD enough?
Not in my book (I wouldn’t include Greece either, or, obviously, Ukraine).
I think “Orthodox vs. Catholic Christianity”, though, as a criterion, overstates how important religion is in shaping cultures today. It’s important, sure, but not the only criterion- other things matter too.
Who calls Japan Western?
In Singapore, the notion of Asia, which contrasts with the West, comprises South, Southeast, and East Asia, which can be abbreviated as “monsoon Asia”; if you called Singapore Western, Singaporeans would laugh at you, and from interacting with other people from monsoon Asia I’ve seen similar attitudes. No, Japan is not Western. It’s just rich.
2 years ago, /r/geography had a poll “Do you consider Japan a “Western” country?”
51 yes
115 “In some ways yes, in some ways no”
114 “the term Western is outdated”
147 no
So of the people who didn’t reject the question outright, a bit over half (166 to 147) opted for either “yes” or “kind of”.
Japan isn’t just rich, like some Gulf petrostate. It’s industrialized, democratic, and increasingly friendly to e.g. gay rights. For some people, especially if they associate Westernism more with the Enlightenment than with Christianity, that makes Japan somewhat “Western”.
Do the Japanese consider *themselves* to be “western” though?
I would consider Japan a model of not being Western, but being modern and liberal. Japan has its own culture, which is not Western. They don’t share with us the heritage of Greco-Roman culture, or of the Middle Ages. Japanese culture is also not only an ethnographic phenomenon but it is modern, vibrant thing: the Japanese modernity has clearly native elements which utilise modern technology in a peculiarly Japanese way. Thus, I would not count Japan Western, even if it is politically a US ally and a liberal democracy. The Japanese version of modernisation is a shining example of how you can have modern technology and a free government without being Western.
I mean, I associate the West with Treblinka, so YMMV. But Asian democrats do not all self-perceive as Westernizing. Kim Dae-jung specifically draws on East Asian traditions talking about democratic governance. He acknowledges the West figured out representative government first but does not at all treat Korea as Westernizing for adopting it, but instead points out that other elements of modern governance, like the civil service, began in Asia, and yet nobody says that the adoption of such systems in the West counts as Asianization.
He acknowledges the West figured out representative government first but does not at all treat Korea as Westernizing for adopting it, but instead points out that other elements of modern governance, like the civil service, began in Asia, and yet nobody says that the adoption of such systems in the West counts as Asianization.
Agree wholeheartedly with this.
We all use mathematical concepts that were figured out in the Muslim world, but that certainly doesn’t make Americans part of “Islamic civilization”.
And the Nazis considered the Japanese honorary Aryans. It’s no mistake that basically the only Western country not included was the great Boogeyman of the Nazis, and the only one included was their ally.
It does make it real clear what the term really means, and to whom.
No, actually, it really doesn’t.
Western Civilization means Aryan/White, to reactionaries. They’re willing to add “the good Asians” because they’re directly inspired by Nazi irrationalism. Every time someone says “Western Civilization” in political context they are either appealing to reactionaries or parroting their rhetoric.
That’s the primordial meaning, that’s who the term was invented for.
Given that the phrase was invented before Nazism existed, please go peddle your nonsense elsewhere.
This is the kind of irrationalism that clearly indicates my analysis is correct.
No, Western Civilization as a term *didn’t* exist before Nazism, or more accurately the institutional ethno-nationalism that predated Nazism, existed. It first started getting used in education in the 1920’s, and became an actual term *in the public consciousness* within the decades of Nazism, as a result of the general reactionary trend.
More basically, the predating term, *European* civilization, is just utterly explicit in what it means. It became Western civilization-as in, textbooks saying “European, or Western, Civilization” bridge the gap-when it became politically convenient to unify the Americas and Europe into a single political block as the US was a primary partner in their alliances. The unifying characteristic was whiteness, explicitly and textually.
The only nuance is inherited from cold war politics, which was inherited from Nazi reactionary politics.
It’s just that simple.
> Western values that supposedly define Western Civilisation today, like Nazi Germany did.
You mean back when the english speaking world called us “Huns”?
I don’t care to defend the term “Western Civilisation”, but claiming that english speakers in the first half of the 20th century would hold the consensus position that Germans are part of it, would be a stretch.
Hell, eastern european people weren’t really considered part of Western Civilisation back in the 90ties.
On the other hand, as others already pointed out. Japan is considered more of less Western.
I am stunned. Having lived in different parts of the UK for several years, I have no idea why you think Britain did consider Germany anything other than a civilised country in the early 20th century. The great reputation of German culture at that time made the Nazi takeover especially shocking!
As Hector said below. Maybe they considered Germany as civilised, but many considered it as not fully Western.
I already brought one example, the first idea the British war propaganda had in WWI was to call the Germans something, that was considered a short hand for asiatic invaders at the time.
I’m sure that changed in the second half of the last century. But a hundered years ago, claiming that Germany was not part of the Western World, would not have been that controversial.
Germans had been called “Huns” at least since 1900 (after the Kaiser made the comparison) and possibly since 1870. It wasn’t originated by British propaganda.
It was wartime propaganda. The term didn’t exist before then and didn’t exist after; it was entirely a tool of mass manipulation by the British (and french?) government, which was abandoned once it became less useful. The idea that Germans weren’t civilized wasn’t widespread except in this extreme snapshot-although it does speak to how “western civilization” as a term is just a tribalism fetish brandished forth and given mythological importance.
The claim here wasn’t that Germany wasn’t civilized, it’s that it wasn’t perceived as “western”. Apparently even someone like Conrad Adenauer didn’t perceive the eastern parts of Germany as really “western”, and that wasn’t just because they were communist at the time- he referred to crossing the Elbe River as entering “Asia”.
https://unherd.com/2019/11/there-have-always-been-two-germanys/
I wouldn’t really say this is about “tribalism”, my criticism is much more quite the opposite. Defenders of the idea of “western civilization” (or like I said below, “Hindu civilization”) are papering over the very real differences between peoples that have very little in common.
Conrad Adenauer was a theocrat, his opposition to including part of Germany in the rest of the country should not be taken as evidence of some real cultural divide besides the obvious ones.
And yes, actually, his distaste was almost entirely due to his distaste of Marxism, which he appeared to believe (along with our host, unfortunately) was a synonym with collectivism.
Western civilization *is* tribalism. It’s a unifying *statist* tribalism, as opposed to more primitive linguistic or regional tribalism, but it’s tribalism. The state is constructing a narrative to unify people into a joint identity-“us and our allies: Western Civilization”-and using that to pave over differences, but this is *also* an arbitrary tribe.
(Nationalism is the same, but the national identity is used to unify-and exclude-people from the state, while “Western Civilization” is used to unify the global alliance.)
Of course, papering over the very real differences between peoples is a good thing, because it let’s us unify based on our much more important and vast list of similarities, and hybridize those differences into a joint synthesis culture with greater power, prosperity, and liberty.
That’s precisely what happened with “Western Civilization”-all countries that comprised it are a global melt of every component, allowed to blend. It’s uneven, regional differences exist, but we’re unquestionably more similar today than we were a century ago. You can talk to someone from halfway across the world and be understood perfectly, even beyond linguistic barriers, because you have shared *concepts*, even philosophical ones. True cultural blocks are rare amongst developed nations.
It’s just inescapable that “Western Civilization” means “*White* Civilization”, and hence using that as a unifying identity is very stupid and very dangerous. Something we are all still dealing with daily.
Adenauer disliked how Prussia had ruled his native Rhineland and hated its militarism. But your well-worn anecdote does not show that he had a racial conception of history like the Nazis, and that Western civilisation meant nothing to him. As a Catholic (not a theocrat or Protestant-hating bigot), he often spoke about “the Christian occident”, a now-dated German way of referring to Western civilisation. The Christian values shared by Western countries he considered indispensable.
To summarise, he clearly belongs in my category 1, for whom Western civilisation (or “Abendland”) was essentially Christian. He did not approve of neo-pagans or atheists.
The bigger point is that it doesn’t matter if he meant white-it means white, in that most people hear white when you say “western civilization”. It’s a dog whistle, and even if a politician somehow doesn’t understand that-and a prior they can be assumed to-their success is intimately tied into that concept if they use it.
It’s the same as “Cultural Marxist” meaning jew or “Welfare Queen” meaning black single mother. Even if the politician truly doesn’t mean it that way it’s undeniably what the term means to the majority of their audience, and if they get elected based on that rhetoric it’s a *strengthened* term, one which persists and informs politics.
Hence if he merely meant “Christian” or if he meant “White” is irrelevant. Without even getting into the intentional conflation of those that defines the modern far-right.
Presumably Adenauer was riffing off Metternich’s “Asia begins at the Landsraad” (the road east from Vienna).
A great deal of discussion about who’s in and out of Hindu/Chinese/Western/American/Islamic etc civilisation are about elite projects of incorporation or rejection.
A great deal of discussion about who’s in and out of Hindu/Chinese/Western/American/Islamic etc civilisation are about elite projects of incorporation or rejection.
Agreed, although I think “American” or even “Anglosphere” is a little different from the others, and easier to define, since it’s a narrower and more coherent concept.
Anglosphere has always been iffy, partially because anglo doesn’t mean what people think it means, partially because if it’s just defined as a plurality or even majority of English speakers most of the world is included. Neither makes it comprehensively incoherent, but it’s not useful in a lot of realms where it’s used.
American or Chinese *are* much more coherent, because it’s a legal definition. You’re either a citizen or you aren’t. That still leaves the blurry edges of resident noncitizens or transients, but there’s nothing incoherent there. It’s just clearly about elite mediated incorporation or rejection, which makes it a stronger definition.
(Unless you mean American as in the continent, which is coherent and geographical, so my point is invalid)
Anglosphere has always been iffy, partially because anglo doesn’t mean what people think it means, partially because if it’s just defined as a plurality or even majority of English speakers most of the world is included.
When I say “Anglosphere” i mean countries that use English as their mother tongue (not as a second language / lingua franca) and that are shaped more by English culture than by anything else. So, Jamaicans and Barbadians are definitely part of it (as are Black Americans), India and Nigeria are definitely not.
“Chinese civilization” is kind of slippery since there are lots of other countries that were historically quite influenced by China, like Korea and Vietnam, and then there are peoples within China today that aren’t “Chinese” and have distinct civilizational roots of their own (Tibetans, Mongols etc.).
I don’t think it’s obvious that India or Nigeria aren’t included at all, then. The current borders, of Nigeria were defined by England (mostly), English is the only language shared by a majority population, the government is modeled off of America, the biggest city was largely urbanized under the British, etc.
Hell, for Nigeria English is spoken as a first language by 8-10% of the population, a growing percentage. Give it a few centuries and it’s probable that most will speak it as the primary, the cultural trend is relatively strong and there are material reasons for it.
This doesn’t make their culture British, but it means that the cultural identity of the people is as intimately tied to British culture and especially language as, say, Australia or America.
India has similar influences in a smaller way; the Brits didn’t oversee the building of their major cities, but they did fund much of the infrastructure and plan the logistics of the nation, as well as provide the lingua franca, much of the political framework, and the modern borders.
The line is probably between Nigeria and India right now, but even then a century from now English might be a primary for most Indians, or a hybrid language might develop.
Chinese civilization is indeed more complex, I didn’t consider the surrounding states and Chinas history of imperial hegemony. You’re right.
IIRC, in 1914 the British Army’s Field Service Regulations distinguished between civilized and uncivilized opponents, and I’m sure that Germany (and Russia) fell into the first category.
You should add the: 3) during the cold war, the “West” means capitalist systems allied to the USA
I had not thought of that. That way of thinking would indeed turn Japan into a Western country, not just a Westernised one. Perhaps this view was more typical for Americans, considering that their national history begins much later and that owing to geography they might be less invested in concepts like the border between Christian and Muslim states?
Politically, Japan and Taiwan is often considered western. Stephen Kotkin (who have written excellent biographies of Stalin) considers “the west” as a set of institutions and practices. Somewhere on YouTube I heard him explain “Japan is not European, but it is part of the West. Russia is European, but not part of the West.” I think how different countries responded to Russias illegal and genocidal invasion of Ukraine is a good argument for this view.
The feudal system of land holding in Scotland was abolished as recently as 2000. By that time it was totally corrupt. If you sold a bit of your land you could charge the buyer feu duty, an annual payment in perpetuity. This meant that a developer could build a housing estate and charge every owner a fee (a feu) every year forever. When a house was sold the responsibility of the feu duty transferred to the new owner.
An early reform permitted owners to buy out the feu for a multiple of the annual payment. The whole system was scrapped in 2000. Thank goodness.
So if you sold land, you were allowed to. . . demand money from the buyer as part of the transaction? I don’t think that’s an meaningful relic of feudalism so much as how selling things works. It sounds like it stuck around as long as it did because it didn’t actually do any harm, apart from giving your real estate agent a headache.
I am not from Scotland, and the Scottish law is its own can of worms, but a cursory search leaves me with an impression it was a combination of owning the land (you paid a huge chunk of money at the moment of transaction, were treated as an owner legally same as the guy in England who bough a chunk of land) and renting in perpetuity (you still had to pay more money every year). While its not impossible to imagine an English or American contract that replicates the financial side the difference in who is treated as an owner does have a lot of implications downwind – so I would think while it was not internally inconsistent, the headaches involved were actually doing a little bit of harm.
Call me brainwashed, but I, as a Russian, never understood the concept of Russkiy Mir. Yes there are Russian minorities outside of Russia and it is possible to imagine Russia including them again, but the current project of “gathering lands” is beyond irresponsible. It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. But if we are not talking about mega-Russia but about a community of nations? I am at a loss.
So in your personal opnion – which nations are part of the Russkiy Mir and would normally gravitate towards Russia?
Call me brainwashed, but I, as a Russian, never understood the concept of Russkiy Mir. Yes there are Russian minorities outside of Russia and it is possible to imagine Russia including them again, but the current project of “gathering lands” is beyond irresponsible. It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. But if we are not talking about mega-Russia but about a community of nations? I am at a loss.
So in your personal opnion – which nations are part of the Russkiy Mir and would normally gravitate towards Russia?
deeply sorry, was intended as a reply to xcalibur
Only if you sold part of your land. That made you the buyer’s feudal superior and you could impose feu duty as part of the sale. If you sold all of it, your former superior became the buyer’s superior and the buyer took over the feu payments.
The system kind of worked until large house building companies got involved. Imagine a company with a perpetual fixed income from every house they’d ever built.
I imagine it’s a bit like ground rent in England but I’m not clear how that system works.
A lot of human-designed systems revolving around concepts like “ownership,” “liability,” and “control of property” start to become problematic when you take an immortal hive mind that can easily amass the combined wealth of thousands or even millions of regular people, and give it the same rights to own and control property that a regular person would have.
We intuitively understand that “owning my trousers” is a valuable and very innocuous concept. Ownership of personal belongings is important for most of us in every day life.
The trouble comes when giant mega-institutions or super-‘big men’ who have transcended the normal scale of human social activity come around and say “I own the entire valley and the right to control the labor and resources of everyone in it, in the same sense that you own your trousers.” At that point ownership stops being a custom whose implications we understand intuitively, and becomes a kind of superpower with a lot of use cases that don’t apply to the private individual.
Oh hey, email notifications are working again. \o/
Trousers are too easy; basically no one talks about communal trousers. The more interesting case is “means of production”: land, tools, factories, stores, and a concomitant right to rent it out or hire employees. There’s lot of evidence/argument that private ownership and production, and competitive markets in the products, are more productive and innovative than the alternatives (at least, where markets _can_ be competitive.) But it’s also the case that snowballing ownership of the means of production easily leads to toxic and counter-productive levels of inequality, and no one’s shown a long-term stable solution for that.
(Even if large estates owned by Roman senators were more productive than the same land as farms owed by third-class citizen-soldiers, which isn’t necessarily true, the loss of said farms and citizen-soldiers seems to have contributed a lot to the end of the Republic qua Republic. But it’s tricky in the modern world since large farms and corporations may well _be_ more productive. Though it also depends on what you optimize: industrial agriculture is maximally efficient per labor and pretty good per land, but some high-labor farms show more output per land and energy.)
Arendt points out in The Origins of Totalitarianism that false “histories” like you describe, with many of the characteristics you mention, were a key element of fascist and totalitarian movements.
Ah, but are they uniquely so?
> Hugh is always at war with someone, often at war with multiple someones, notably Viscount Ralph of Thouars and a castellan, Aimry of Rancon and at points with Count William V of Aquitaine.
Yeah. I’m no historian, but the one time I delved into a particular small area of medieval Europe for a few generations, I got the same result. Maybe Normandy was a bit exceptional, but it seemed like a constant struggle. There’s internal stability: consolidating power against rivals and independent power sources and uppity underlings. And there’s external stability: creating and exploiting casus belli, fending off overbearing overlords, pushing out the borders (causing instability for neighbors) and proactively preventing neighbors from doing the same, making friendly alliances and breaking up hostile ones. And then there’s occasional targets of opportunity, like launching raids against England when they seem weak. And once you made peace with someone, your Viking relatives come to visit on the way back from raiding them, and of course you can’t be inhospitable to your relatives (plus they’re selling off their plunder), so there goes the peace…
Part of the issue is what you mean by “stable”. If you mean “The same institutions endure for long periods of time”, then yes, Europe was fairly stable for a long time–war was part of those institutions (hard to have military aristocracy without a military, and it’s even harder to have a military without a war). Individual holdings may change, but since that happens with births, marriages, and non-violent deaths anyway (as well as purchases, trades, gifts, and the like), it’s hard to justify singling out war as a major issue in this regard. And you’ve said yourself that Medieval warfare at least rarely if ever rose to demographically identifiable levels.
I’m sympathetic to the view that “stable” means “People can live peaceful lives”, but you have to admit that’s a fairly recent development in this discussion. Caring about the lower classes at all is novel and fairly unique–in the past they were seen as property, part of the land, the way trees and creeks are. The cultural inertia of viewing history from the perspective of the ruling class is going to be hard to break.
If those meme accounts explicitly said “This system was stable, as long as we ignore the fact that peasants were likely getting their farms foraged every few decades, because we don’t care about them”, they I’d respect them for their intellectual honesty (although I wouldn’t like them any more).
There are, I think, two different concepts here that are getting conflated.
First, there’s the factual/definitional argument: Is the system of government stable or not? Do its institutions endure for significant periods of time? Does it work as intended over periods of time considered long by humans? (I’m a paleontologist; human civilization itself is a rounding error on timelines I’m used to working with.) This is an amoral argument. If destroying farms every once in a while is part of the system, than seeing farms destroyed is not evidence of instability, but rather of the system working as designed. I’ve read that the war that lead to Agencourt started in part because England had too many nobles. They were either going to conquer new land for those nobles, or get slaughtered; either way, England came out ahead. Brutally nasty logic, but since it’s part of the social system at that time it does not represent instability.
This argument is being disrupted by the increased focus on the poorest people. But it’s worth noting that this is an outside perspective. WE consider the system unstable. I don’t see much evidence that THEY did. The fact that the peasants went on Crusade several times (the Peasant’s Crusade was merely the biggest) indicates this, among other things. And I learned a long time ago that much of what I consider absolute moral obligations are in fact merely due to our society. I’m hesitant to say “I’m right, your entire culture is wrong.” I could see the argument being made by peasants that war was no more brutal than disease, injury, bad weather, wild animals, or any of the other million or so problems they had to face. If you object to this on the grounds that war is human-made, well, that shows how deeply you’ve accepted the principles of liberalism (as defined by our host last week). That’s not a bad thing, but it makes for complications in assessing the moral status of social institutions extremely tricky.
The second argument is the moral argument: Is this system good? And as I said above, this is a tricky one. I of course accept the liberal concept that all are created equal, and the natural consequence is that I view systems that brutalize their people as part of the system as inherently wrong. But it’s always worth asking if THEY considered the system wrong. Their views of their system is a factor worth considering (in as much as we can see it). I give more weight to “Everyone deserves to live their life without violent disruption”, but I’m very hesitant to take it as an absolute when assessing other cultures. Especially since Bret’s examples of disruption are illustrative, not representative.
The problem with conflating these two is that it leads to people talking past one another. I was making a factual/definitional argument, and you were making a moral argument. The two aren’t really relevant to one another. They are two axis that are orthogonal to one another. Which makes any response to your response to my post tricky, because you haven’t really responded to my post.
Well your post was a response to Devereaux’s, ahich was itself in part a response to a certain Twitter thread. And that thread was absolutely engaging in the type of conflation you’re describing here (i.e. it says “Feudalism was actually a pretty good system”, and points to its “long-term stability” as one of the reasons why).
Are you arguing that I’m not allowed to examine the argument in greater detail than Bret or the Twitter thread did? If not, I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say. And if you ARE trying to say that, all I can say is that you are entirely wrong, and that there’s a tremendously long intellectual history of taking even stupid ideas and digging into them to see how they work to better understand both the arguments and epistemology.
OK, you’ve convinced me that this idea is worth examining in greater detail. Having given it more thought, I’ve decided that I still don’t like your definition of stability. In particular, I’m not convinced that it would’ve been perceived by the people at the time as stability. i.e. if there’s a civil war over who gets to be king, I don’t think people at the time would see things as “stable” just because both sides agree that there will be a king at the end of the conflict.
If I were to give an amoral definition of “stability”, it would be something along the lines of “everyone knows who holds power, everyone expects them to stay in power in the short to medium term (or within a well-defined period of time), and everyone has a good idea of how their successor will be chosen”. I’m not sure that feudalism (however defined) actually does that well by that definition.
How much of how a society operates is ever intended? The vast majority of the time what we get is evolved systems that contain messy compromises between ideals, political compromises and hard physical realities. Medieval Europe was massively shaped by the demands of grain farming and the threat of war. If one part of the system is Vikings forever showing up to loot your land and take away your family members as slaves, that’s probably not something you intended. If you are Alfred the Great and develop the military systems to prevent the raids, that’s not what the Vikings intended. Etc.
Then there’s broader questions. The Crusades were because the rise of Islam – the holy places of Jerusalem being under Muslim control was not what Christians intended.
I would argue that something like the Vikings were an outside problem as far as the system is concerned. Your system can be designed to fight the Vikings, but the Vikings are more or less by definition coming from outside your socio-political system. Conscription to defend against the Vikings, and the foraging of friendly armies as they go to fight the Vikings, on the other hand, are–they can be absolutely brutal, but they are not instabilities in the system.
The Crusades are more complicated. Obviously retaking the Holy Lands was part of it, and the more vocally avowed part of it, but the reality is that it arose from complex socio-political forces. The Church’s desire to increase temporal power, for example. They also served as a convenient way to dispose of second, third, and fourth sons–an honorable, even laudable task that would either result in those sons winning lands and titles or in the removal of a potential source of instability within the system.
In point of fact, the number of ways the Middle Ages found to deal with potential threats to their socio-political system is perhaps the best argument for the inherent instability of feudalism (however defined). And note that failure here doesn’t have to be destructive. Cluny failed repeatedly–their system was based on chastity, poverty, and obedience, but they kept ending up being extremely wealthy and powerful, which undermined their whole system. They kept going through reforms to correct that.
Sounds like distinctions without differences to me. Every system deals with outside disturbances.
Surely the question of institutional stability devolves into a debate over which institutions are the appropriate locus of study. The London Stock Exchange is 450 years old, roughly the same length as the interval that Bret identifies as the period of vassalage; does that mean that modern capitalism has the same stability as premodern feudalism?
It’s not clear to me what exactly the Twitter poster meant by “stable,” and again part of the problem, as Dr. Devereaux points out, is that manoralism and vassalage systems are being conflated, but defining the stability of an economic system is different than defining the stability of a political system.
Political systems are usually described as “stable” when they have a regular succession of leadership: the emperor followed by the emperor’s son, the king followed by the choice of the witan. If that succession is interrupted, particularly by violence that overthrows the legally-expected successor, the system is considered unstable. By this definition, it doesn’t appear that the system of granting feudal estates in exchange for expected future military service was particularly stable, compared to other political systems.
What if – as in many polities and through much of imperial Roman history – the regular rule of succession was “the contenders fight and whoever wins rules (of course after being endorsed by the relevant legal body)”?
“social tensions produced drifts either to the ‘open’ polis (with a relatively broadly defined citizenship, think Athens) or the ‘closed’ polis (with a narrowly defined one, think Sparta).”
Unfortunately chosen terms. Broad and narrow would have been wiser, because Athens was almost as rigorous as Sparta in keeping people out. Yes, they occasionally admitted people, but the real difference was the original size, and the not kicking people out, resulting in more or fewer citizens. (Indeed, Aristotle observed Athens had an unwieldy citizen body, it was too large for its structure.)
Also, possibly, more natural increase. If your sons’ poverty will not forfeit their citizen status, it’s more likely you’ll let them live. And let more of your daughters live, too. After all, they can work for the family and you never know, you may lose most, or all but one — but then, you may see them all live and marry and have children.
Feudalism stable?!? Primogeniture meant that any ruler who died prematurely set the stage for an Uncle-Nephew war over whose claim took priority. Add in all the nobles who saw an opportunity to become kingmakers by lining up on one side, the other or becoming turncoats, and successions could be quite sanguinary.
DeLong-Shleifer go exactly into this in Princes and Merchants – they talk about how succession wars were common in European absolutism. They go into every English succession from the Norman conquest to the formation of the constitutional monarchy at the end of the 17th century, finding that about half the time, something went wrong in the succession, such as a usurpation (like Richard III) or execution of the heir (like Mary, Queen of Scots), and only 21% of the time did a monarch successfully bequeath to a grandchild.
People who talk about stability under premodern absolutism mostly mean Bourbon France and post-Westphalian Habsburg Austria, except that they too fought increasingly bloody wars at regular intervals, sometimes over other states’ succession crises. And neither was remotely feudal in the political sense – they were centralized states with professional armies, in which the aristocracy was a hereditary overclass but not local rulers.
And England was considered relatively stable. Consider that the first time a swedish monarch manages to bequath the throne to a grandchild without some kind of usurpation is in the 1600’s.
England was considered unstable – the standard was France, where father to eldest son was uncontested for 340 years; then continued in the senior cadet line for another few centuries, and then again for another few centuries. Basically, two succession crises but lots of wars over other issues
No, the french were considered *extremely* stable. It’s not called “The Capetian Miracle” for nothing.
“They go into every English succession”
Cool. I did something like that myself in a blog post, though just using Wikipedia as a source, but found something similar. Between succession fights and baronial rebellions, the first internally peaceful reign was Longshanks, 9 kings and 206 years after William. Not _externally_ peaceful but England wasn’t tearing itself apart for once.
From my post:
‘If we don’t count Henry-to-Lionheart or Edward III, the longest chain of intended successions is 4, in 622 years. You don’t get two internally peaceful (by my estimate) reigns in a row until Elizabeth and James. That’s 22 kings and almost 500 years after the Conqueror.’
Then Parliament takes over in 1688 and English royal history suddenly becomes very boring.
Does DeLong go in depth into other monarchies as well? The only other one I tried was the Ming Dynasty, which did look more stable, but “English language wikipedia” hardly seems a comprehensive source.
No; the paper mostly does regressions on city growth in the second millennium versus regime type, with controls. The list of English successions is an aside, explaining why absolute monarchs do not in fact govern with a multi-generational timescale in mind.
If you want, it’s available online – look for the title, “Princes and Merchants”; I’m not linking only because I worry about the ire of the gods of automatic comment moderation.
I suspect that the person who posted that nice neat pyramid thinks that “feudalism,” as they imagine it, was a pretty good system because they also think that they themselves would have been several steps above the peasant level. If they actually thought that they’d have been peasants themselves, no matter how “useful” that would make them, they might not be so enthusiastic about it. Knowing your place in the system (and staying in it, because that keeps the system “stable”), is a lot more attractive if you’re on top.
I have seen this idea used as an argument both against reactionaries (“you imagine yourself as a noble”) and against communists (“you imagine yourself as a party official”), but I think mostly that isn’t accurate. Instead, it is a wish for trustworthy leaders. A reactionary thinks they could trust a medieval noble* more than a modern politician. And a communist thinks they could trust a communist party official** more than a modern politician.
*(may be completely imaginary and generic, not an actual historical figure)
**(may be limited to their particular version of communism, which has never been implemented so far)
but I think mostly that isn’t accurate. Instead, it is a wish for trustworthy leaders. A reactionary thinks they could trust a medieval noble* more than a modern politician. And a communist thinks they could trust a communist party official** more than a modern politician.
+1000 to this.
When I think about alternative social orders (which I do a lot, I have a fairly dim view of America and its economic / social / cultural / political value system, to put it mildly), I rarely think about what it would be like to be a political leader myself, I tend to think much more about the kind of leader I’d like to submit to, in exchange for defending my interests and values against those of my opponents. I don’t think I’m that atypical here, in that I think fewer people than you might think actually want to be leaders themselves.
We actually run this as a living experiment in America, because so many of our frankly ministerial local positions are elected (a Midwestern village will commonly have a multi-page ballot in the general election); every time some offices go unfilled and most go uncontested, because so few people imagine themselves as local leaders that the contests cannot draw enough candidates. Occasionally even Federal and Statewide offices are uncontested, because American parties are not allowed to assign placeholder candidates, people must volunteer themselves.
The portion of humanity that actually imagines themselves as elites is quite small.
Alternatively, the positions may be seen as unpleasant chores, not as elite leadership positions.
I’ve been in a couple of clubs: a college science fiction library, and a singing group. Yeah, just getting volunteers to run can be a challenge. (I stepped up as librarian because the previous librarian wasn’t checking in books I wanted to check out; I happily kept the job without bothering with elections once I discovered the privilege of spending the library budget.) But being even club president isn’t “elite”, it’s just work, and probably lots of local positions are similar.
As for federal positions, I doubt it’s common for _no one_ to be running. Sometimes one of the main parties doesn’t have a candidate, because the _other_ party is deemed 99% likely to win, and no one wants the work of being a token opposition. So, ‘uncontested’ in the sense that no one is contesting the incumbent, but that’s more people not being able to visualizing winning.
Reactionaries don’t have coherent internal worlds; most don’t actually believe in anything except their biases. It goes beyond trust in a particular type of figure and more to trust in *choosing* a leader, whose characteristics are almost completely irrelevant to how these movements work. Trump being a beacon of a reactionary movement is completely irrational-it makes no objective sense-but reactionary politics is all vibes anyway so it makes perfect sense.
He said the right things to become a beacon of Authoritarian rhetoric whilst challenging none of their preconceptions, and had enough privilege to dodge the consequences of his crimes, which is almost the thesis statement of Reactionism.
Communists, as defined by the incredibly deficit American education system*, believe as you said though, yes. Vanguardists in the former soviet states are a good example-many have nostalgia for sections of the Soviet world because A. The current one sucks and B. They trust officials, even repressive ones, more than their modern politicians.
Socialists more broadly, including most major leftist organizations active in the western world, are not defined by trust in authority as a concept to begin with. It’s about as accurate to describe them as trusting their type of officials as saying that liberals trust politicians-no they don’t, the entire system of liberal democracy is designed with a *distrust* of politicians in mind, to limit their authority.
* Communism is not “socialism but more extreme”, they were broadly synonyms until the 20’s when Lenin called Communism the end-state socialism strived for (still not different systems), and then until the 50’s when a blatant propaganda effort created a distinction between socialist and communist systems out of whole cloth. The proper term for Authoritarian Socialist movements is usually Vanguardist or Marxist-Leninist. Socialist parties in the west predate Authoritarian socialism, and trend sharply towards Libertarian Socialism instead, hence the distrust of authority.
“Vanguardist” doesn’t work because you can believe in a vanguard party without being Marxist, and for that matter without being a socialist or a communist at all. There are lots of different types of vanguard party historically (ethnic nationalist, civic nationalist, Baathist, African Socialist, conservative/militarist, probably other stripes too, in theory you could even have a liberal vanguard party).
And we do need some terminology to distinguish between a country where the means of production is, say, 60% publically owned versus one where it’s 90% publically owned. If you have better terms than “socialist” and “communist”, let’s try them out and see if they stick.
The term is never really used to describe those ideologies. You can add vanguard socialist if you wish, it’s just largely redundant.
And no, we don’t need that terminology, because that’s not a real difference. It certainly wasn’t the difference between historical communist versus socialist societies, as defined by Marxist leninists versus others. The defining characteristic is the idealogical role of the party and state.
It absolutely makes a difference- in practice, the decisions that face a state are not “should we nationalize the economy or convert it to worker ownership, as a whole”, they’re more about “at the margin, should this particular industry be owned by workers, by the state, or by private capitalists”. (Some industries are obviously better candidates for nationalization than others, e.g. oil drilling vs. a women’s fashion boutique). The difference between 60% and 90% can matter a lot.
Also, I’m absolutely not going to use the term “commnism” to describe a moneyless, stateless society where people just work for the pure enjoyment of it, since that end state is never going to exist and it would effectively mean removing “communist” from our collective vocabulary. (Similarly I have zero time for “Christians” who argue that a truly Christian society has never existed and that a really Christian state would involve everyone being perfectly nonviolent, chaste, etc.- that’s never going to happen either). I’d rather discuss the *feasible* end state for a noncapitalist or even a nonmarket society (the first of which I’m very optimistic about, the second of which I’m somewhat optimistic about).
“Similarly I have zero time for “Christians” who argue that a truly Christian society has never existed and that a really Christian state would involve everyone being perfectly nonviolent, chaste, etc.- that’s never going to happen either”
So you want Christians to disbelieve Christianity, which explicitly teaches that there never will be a really Christian society?
Yes Mary, Christian Utopianism is inherently self-contradictory. If your God is going to come back and fix everything, and that is a core tenant, than reordering society is pointless. Either shut up and wait for magic to happen like the other 2000 years of Christians who got suckered by an obvious fallacy or find a more coherent way to frame your desires.
Hector, while I understand in a vague sense what you’re saying, I absolutely think it’s nonsense. And self-defeating nonsense. From our position we can’t really imagine a society where 90% of the economy is publicly owned without being a horrible clusterfuck; the Soviet Union never managed it, for instance. And not to put to fine a point on it, but how is that in any way different from *non-capitalist* as an end state? The Tulip consortium in 20xx will be real powerful without any meaningful capitalist competition or reasonable objection to their enterprise from the public.
My point is that we always accept compromise of our ideals and this does not mean we should be imprecise in our definitions, particularly not in ways that become incoherent in the public debate. Communist versus Socialist is a dangerous distinction because A. It’s been used to smear and confuse people in the past so is imprecise in public usage and B. If people go *read theory* they’re going to find no real distinction and just be confused. Socialists can get a lot of rhetorical milage out of offering a truth that is hidden by the establishment (and it’s true!), we lose that if we accept their definitions and terms.
Nonsense. Preventing people from trying to reorder society in literally the same way that has been tried dozens of times before, causing death and poverty — because the same old claim of being different this time is being made again — is a worthy cause.
While I like the idea of God being a core tenant (which floor does he rent?) autocorrect is eroding the useful distinction between ‘tenet’ and ‘tenant’.
So you want Christians to disbelieve Christianity, which explicitly teaches that there never will be a really Christian society?
I’d disagree that all Christians hold that position. I think most people would fairly describe, say, England in 1300 AD as a Christian society.
It’s a Christian society in the sense that the USSR was a Marxist one. In neither one were the guiding principles fully implemented. The difference is that Marxism claims that they could and would be implemented; Christianity teaches that in no age in history would they be fully implemented.
“the upcoming Gladiator sequel”
“This IS the Bad Place!”
“And I always find myself wondering exactly when [the recent, idyllic, American past] was supposed to be?”
I’ve always assumed it was more or less the period covered by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Stalin was dead, Korea was over, Bretton Woods was still in full force, and the revolutionary upheavals of the 60s, combined with Vietnam, were yet to really kick off. And at the same time there was a feeling of technological progress, with rapid improvements in telecommunications, the start of the space race, and so forth. Not just in the US either, for that matter: in Europe this was the era of “never had it so good” in the UK, and roughly the midpoint of the “trentes glorieuses” in France. (West) Germany has its own positive stuff to report from the same period.
Which isn’t to say that I think the perception is correct. It’s not hard to pick some fairly big holes in it, especially on the European side, including one you can pilot a container ship through. But I think on both sides of the Atlantic when people get nostalgic for the “good old days” that’s the era they’re thinking of, even if they’re wrong about what it was actually like (and of course they are! If you’re old enough to remember that period in any detail, you’re at minimum in your late 70s by now – people aren’t remembering reality; they’re at best idolising the era of their own childhood as almost everyone does to some extent because they’re insulated from actual concerns, but a lot of the time merely passing on the edited versions they themselves picked up from previous generations talking about the “good old days” without remembering it themselves).
Stalin was dead, Korea was over, Bretton Woods was still in full force, and the revolutionary upheavals of the 60s, combined with Vietnam, were yet to really kick off.
Stalin’s death (which, to be clear, I think was a godsend) didn’t make the US establishment (in particular, the execrable Dulles brothers) ease up in their enthusiasm for fighting the Cold War, so I’m not sure it was perceived at the time as much of a golden age as you indicate.
IIRC, Stalin’s death did make the Russian government ease up in their enthusiasm for fighting the Cold War, so from the view point of an American looking for an idyllic past, the world would certainly at that time become more idyllic.
Fair point!
I’ve assumed that a big part of that alleged idyllic period was because the US was making a lot of money selling stuff to rebuild the rest of the industrialized world from all the damage of WWII. And of course it was a good thing for the rest of the industrialized world because things were getting rebuilt. Once things were rebuilt enough to start giving more competition to US manufacturing, making that money got more difficult.
Yep. A lot of the US’s problems in the 1970s and 1980s came from failure to adjust to a reality in which the US did not possess the majority of the world’s industrial output by itself.
That, and self inflicted austerity related damage to the economy. There are several economic crashes related to pushing industrial capacity as part of a global economy or bullying countries that could fight back, and several caused directly by conservative malfeasance.
Actually that’s a myth – Europe’s net capital flows were pretty balanced from 1950 onwards. see https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2021/july/marshall-plan-not-key-to-europe-reconstruction
I’d say the late 1960s and early 1970s were the “golden age” personally, at least for First and Second World countries (not so much for developing countries). And no, i of course wasn’t actually around for them.
The 1960’s weren’t particularly bad for Africa in general at least, or at least they were not seen as that at the time. Independence was being won, and the economy was (relatively speaking) good. A lot of that ran into troubles in the 1970’s with the economic crisis (which in turn caused political upheaval)
Of course a lot of that 1970’s instability was due to things building up during the 1960’s, but there seems to have been a pretty general (with a few exceptions) sense that things were getting better.
In the Soviet block, the communist governments markedly increased the production of consumer goods from the late 1950’s onwards, which improved also the living standard of citizenry there. The stagnation set in only in the 1970’s.
right, that’s what i was referring to, i’d consider the late 1960s / early 1970s (before the great oil shock) to be the “golden age” for industrilized countries in general, be they capitalist, communist or social-democratic.
In America, beyond just the economic stuff, it was after the civil-rights revolution and the introduction of contraception, but before deindustrialization really hit.
Fair point- I was thinking more about how African countries, for the most part, are objectively materially and socially better off today than they were in the 1960s, but it’s quite possible that people were subjectively happier then, since they were in the honeymoon period after just having won independence.
That’s when Bretton-Woods exchange rates fell apart and the start of the oil shocks.
Not necessarily so, quite not so for some even European countries. Look at Spain and Portugal, for instance. Their post WWII economic prosperity didn’t begin until the fascist rulers were gone, and they joined the EU. You can see that exuberance even in films — Almodóvar, for instance. But the Spanish civil war and Franco basically destroyed Spain so thoroughly that the nazis didn’t even see any particular benefit to specifically take it over and put their own people in charge.
Funny too, how in the US, if our golden age was the 1950’s and the 1960s, nobody recalls the McCarthy reign of terror, or that women couldn’t get credit, were thrown on the ash heap if raped and pregnant, etc. How bad it was for returning African American vets in other reigns of terror — Jim Crow very much alive and in force.
Those golden prosperous ages always depended on very large groups of Others not being prosperous or even having rights.
Thus that’s why we are doing everything we can in this country — and globally even — to return us to the great golden ages of reign of terror prosperity.
To name just one container ship-sized hole, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations were the height of the fear of thermonuclear immolation.
The idea that *any* Western Eurasian sociopolitical system can claim to have have “ensured long-term stability” is a real knee-slapper for this [amateur] student of Chinese history. LOL, as we say.
As a general rule, from c500 BCE (at least) until sometime between 1492 CE & 1750 CE[1], at any given time China Proper[2] was always more technologically advanced than Western Eurasia. This includes social engineering: insofar as China had “feudalism”, it peaked in the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE), and never included vassalage or fiefs–so not terribly feudal.
The Chinese “early modern” period was the Song dynasty (920-1279), cut short by the Mongol Yuan dynasty. But the important point I’m making is that there are many regions in China that have had long stretches (200-300+ years) of peace during the last 1500 years. The trouble is that when there are civil wars, major rebellions, or dynastic changes the loss of life is staggering.
As for *why* China Proper has always been so populous (and thus so advanced): the North China Plain is covered in first-rate agricultural soil, approximately as flat as a pancake, and is as large as the *entire* state of California–mountains, deserts, and all. Any state there that gets a significant military advantage over its competitors will tend to just roll up until it has more population than can be dealt with under any kind of personal rulership. They *had* to invent more sophisticated methods of government, they had no choice. Anyhow, that’s why the List of largest empires by share of world population is so heavily weighted toward China.
I keep hoping Dr. Brett will find a convivial expert on Han Dynasty military history to have a compare-and-contrast chat with. Meanwhile, anyone who’s interested in the current state of research on Chinese history go to this Google Scholar entry on “How Do We Know What We Know About Chinese History” and see what you download.
————-
[1] relevant search terms: “The Great Divergence”; “the Needham question”
[2] It didn’t actually have a name yet, & it’s an anachronism to act as though it was always “the same country” just with different rulers
Heh. I’ve had something resembling fun correcting notions on a forum of the Middle Ages being…. there weren’t arguments of stability, as such, but lacking dynamism for hundreds of years.
I think the reason why the meme accounts get so much traction is because they present a positive, inspiring, heroic vision of history. Dr. Devereaux, on the other hand, may be more accurate on certain points, while still coming across overly cynical. The old saying about vinegar and honey applies here.
Also, as an acolyte of Progressive Liberalism, you may be overlooking your own biases — for example, your claim that Western civilization can’t be defined coherently, because Dar-al-Islam also has Greco-Roman roots, and much of the Global South is Christian. This ignores important distinctions, like the divergence between the West & Islam regarding separation versus unity of Church and State, and how the Global South was insulated from the Protestant Reformation, which made huge waves in Europe. Another example is Russia falling under the “Tatar yoke” of the Golden Horde, a fate which the West evaded.
Naturally, zooming out and using low-resolution blocs of civilization leaves out tons of important detail, but it can still be a useful way of making sense of the world. The fact is, there is a Western world, which was transformed from medieval to modern by the Faustian spirit. Likewise, there is a Dar-al-Islam, a Sinosphere, and a Russkiy Mir (however politically incorrect that concept is nowadays).
As always, this is meant in a spirit of constructive criticism.
I, as a Russian, never quite understood the concept of Russkiy Mir. Yes there are Russian minorities outside of Russia and it is possible to imagine Russia including them again, but the current project of “gathering lands” is beyond irresponsible. It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. But if we are not talking about mega-Russia but about a community of nations? I am at a loss.
So in your personal opnion – which nations are part of the Russkiy Mir and would normally gravitate towards Russia?
I won’t get into the current flare-up in Ukraine, except to say that in many ways, it’s a proxy war between NATO and Russia.
Anyway, Russkiy Mir, or the Slavic world if you prefer, is fairly easy to distinguish — I’d sort it to those countries that use the Cyrillic writing system.
Serbia is in Russkiy Mir but Croatia isn’t? Tajikistan is part of Russkiy Mir? Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were part of it but moved out of it specifically because they changed writing system? I think it is not a useful way of making sense of the world.
Slavic cultural sphere exist, though in my opinion it does not include every Slavic country, but Russkiy Mir is an extremely loaded term – broadly comparable to “natural borders of France”. So I’d recommend against using it if you do not share the political convictions of its originators
Those are fair points. I realized after posting that it’s not so cut & dry, that writing systems are only one factor out of several. There are other edge cases eg Mongolia, which uses Cyrillic (alongside its traditional vertical writing), but is ethnically/culturally not Slavic. It can also be a political issue, as you inferred. I wouldn’t say writing systems are useless for sorting, but you have to consider it along other factors. In this case, the use of Slavic languages (descended from Old Church Slavonic) might be a better marker. Keep in mind also, cultural spheres can and do overlap.
As for my use of that term, I was trying to use the name those cultures would approve of, eg Dar-al-Islam is how the Muslims refer to their sphere. But given all that’s going on, you’re right, “Russkiy Mir” is dangerously loaded nowadays.
Like Xcalibur writes, the cultural blocks are useful as wide-scale identifiers. For me, personally, the Western World is the historical area dominated by Church of the West. (Thus, I tend to think Latin America as an integral part of the West.) This is also the common way of thinking the issue in Finland, because for us, the cultural border IS the border of the two churches. The Karelians who learned the Orthodoxy became Russian subjects, and those who became Catholic – later, Lutheran, were in the Swedish heartland, and numbered among the Finns. The issue became very clear when the Finnish troops tried to “liberate” Eastern Karelia, with its Orthodox inhabitants, in 1919. The locals mostly didn’t like the idea, and didn’t identify as Finns (whom they call Swedes, “ruotsit”). (Of course, there does exist a small minority of Karelian Orthodox in Finland.)
I am quite sure that in the border regions of these cultural spheres, there are different ways of identifying, but historical religious situation is a good way looking at the thing, because the Western Church is very much the home of the Western philosophy, too.
I would define the “western” world as the parts of the world that had fully embraced the printing press, with all the implications that movable-type printing introduced, by the end of the Sixteenth century. As contrasted to those parts of the world where either it hadn’t been introduced yet or in some cases had been actively opposed. No rule of thumb is perfect but I think this one has merits.
“the parts of the world that had fully embraced the printing press, with all the implications that movable-type printing introduced, by the end of the Sixteenth century.”
Well… this leaves Japan in a gray area yet again, as perhaps “convergently Western”, because while they didn’t use Gutenberg’s press per se, and abandoned movable type for woodblock, they nonetheless had a vigorous book and printing culture and industry, with high literacy rates (despite a writing system much harder to learn than anything based on the Latin alphabet.)
I am quite sure that in the border regions of these cultural spheres, there are different ways of identifying, but historical religious situation is a good way looking at the thing, because the Western Church is very much the home of the Western philosophy, too.
I’d certainly agree that religion is an important thing that goes into defining what a culture, a civilization, and a nation is, I just don’t think it’s the only thing, and that other things (language, and especially history) matter too. Especially in an era where religion matters less than it did in the past (for better or worse), and at a point in time when there has been so much earth-shaking historical change since 1500, or even 1800. I think that modern America, say, is shaped by stuff like the experience of colonialism, expansion across the frontier, slavery and the civil war, mostly unfettered capitalism with more and more in the ways of fetters placed on it in the 20th c, and then civil rights and the other cultural revolutions of the 1960s, as much as it is by Christianity and the English linguistic and literary heritage. A country that doesn’t share those historical experiences is going to look very different today, even if they both had roots in historic “Western” CHristianity.
As you note, at the border areas things get fuzzy, and I would point out (going back to that World Values survey again) that the differences in worldview between cultures that it traces don’t really follow the boundary between Eastern and Western Christianity, at least in Eastern Europe. When it comes to issues like “openness to outsiders” or “racial intermarriage” or “favorability towards capitalism”, Hungarians and Slovaks (in spite of being historically Catholic/Calvinist in the first case and Catholic in the second) tend to resemble the Orthodox countries to the south and east more than they do the historically Catholic/Protestant countries to the west. And I’d say that all of these are pretty important factors that go into shaping a worldview.
For the record, I’m not just critical of the idea of “western civilization” here, I generally have a dim view of the talk about “Hindu civilization” or “Indic civilization” too, for similar reasons: its an attempt to construct some spurious “unity” and paper over the real differences between peoples that have very little in common with each other prior to the colonial era. A Punjabi Hindu Brahmin and a Tamil Hindu peasant are going to come from different ethnoracial ancestries, speak languages from different *language families*, probably worship different (though overlapping) sets of deities, and have very different ways that they think about history and the past. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the defenders of “Hindu civilization” typically want to include lots of other groups like Sikhs and Animists who would vehemently *not* even consider themselves Hindu to begin with.
This is not very wide-spread way of looking at things, because the Cyrillic script is a bad indicator of anything. The Bulgarians are very definitely a people of their own, and have never been part of Russia. Serbocroatian is a single language with two scripts and three names, and many aspects of culture are widely shared, despite differences of religion. Those parts of Orthodoxy that are not under Moscow Patriarchate have a pretty different culture from Russia. The borders of cultural spheres are pretty fuzzy in the Balkans, calling the whole concept into question. It is much different from Fenno-Russian border, where the border boom nowadays separates two language families in a very clear-cut manner.
The idea of “Russian” world is particularly problematic because the current war in Ukraine is very much about the heritage of Kyivan Rus. If the Ukrainians can continue their independent existence and develop a liberal society, they call into question the whole ideology of the Putinist Muscovy: there will exist an heir of Vladimir the Great who doesn’t preach totalitarianism and presents an alternative to Putin’s worldview. Essentially, the question is whether Slavic cultural sphere is permanently and fundamentally incompatible with Europe. The current Ukrainian government is fighting for an answer that doesn’t require Russian imperialism as the only solution.
Yes, as I said above, I was a bit too hasty with my response, which is something I can’t get away with here. Writing systems are insufficient by themselves, they need to be considered alongside other factors, like language groups, ethnicity etc, in order to coherently define cultural spheres.
Also to reiterate, I definitely downplayed just how incendiary the term “Russkiy Mir” is when referring to the Slavic sphere, which is in fact distinct from the West, Islam, East Asia, and so on.
I take it the term “Faustian spirit” is meant to imply some kind of unique pursuit of technical knowledge, with an edge of willingness for self-sacrifice in pursuit of it.
Which, given the matter of European development being an acknowledged trend but one in which the causes remain hotly debated by academics, I find to be a take carrying its own biases.
Personally, I think the European transition from Medieval to modern had a lot to do with ad hoc economic circumstances, a few of the factors that our particular brand of endemic warfare contributed to both state centralisation and weapon and tactics development (and what they provided to ensuring certain dominance in areas that helped make those economic contributions), and no small amount of luck.
Maybe add in some things like a less volatile climate to produce fewer occasions of disastrous famine and less conducive to some nasty diseases. Mephistopheles probably couldn’t help us if we had something like the Black Death with greater regularity.
I assume the “Faustian spirit” is referring to some such idea as this:
“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious — such as digging up and mutilating the dead.
If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe’s Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality, he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he wants from the devils, but gold and guns and girls. ‘All things that move between the quiet poles shall be at his command’ and ‘a sound magician is a mighty god’. In the same spirit Bacon condemns those who value knowledge as an end in itself: this, for him, is to use as a mistress for pleasure what ought to be a spouse for fruit. The true object is to extend Man’s power to the performance of all things possible. He rejects magic because it does not work; but his goal is that of the magician.” (CS Lewis, “The Abolition of Man”).
I take it the term “Faustian spirit” is meant to imply some kind of unique pursuit of technical knowledge, with an edge of willingness for self-sacrifice in pursuit of it.
Medieval Islamic cultures did plenty of proto-science so I don’t think this is an uniquely or unusually ‘European’ thing.
The thing is that this was definitely defined as unacceptable, and with firmness enough to shut it down.
Are you saying that Islamic cultures were hostile to natural philosophy?
It became unacceptable to study it because, it was held, that would mean that God was bound by the laws of nature.
This is not quite clear-cut. Many Islamic dynasties of what was later seen as the Golden Age of Islam were very liberal towards philosophy, both natural and moral. The stagnation and hatred of free intellectual pursuit came as part of the regimes that tried to improve their internal control by using conservative parts of the Islamic scholarly community as their enforcement arm. (To be honest, these regimes had a lot of reasons to do so: crusades, Mongol invasion, Ottomans etc.)
So, this was not an inherent quality of the culture, but a product of the circumstances, just like steam engine was by no means an inherent part of pre-industrial Western culture, but a product of very odd combination of circumstances on a remote island on the fringe of that cultural sphere. (I really am not joking: the Highland clans that were eradicated only at the time were not really a part of Western civilization proper.)
It became unacceptable to study it because, it was held, that would mean that God was bound by the laws of nature.
No serious religious person believes that their god(s) are completely bound by the laws of nature (if they were, they wouldn’t be divine), but I take your general point, that the school which won out in the Sunni world, at least at that point in time, held to a strong “occasionalist” view where they thought that God doesn’t even normally or typically act according to natural laws.
Correct me if I’m wrong though, but didn’t a lot of Calvinists believe in occasionalism too? And that certainly didn’t prevent the development of scientific inquiry in Holland, Scotland or Calvinist Switzerland.
Have you heard stories of college geology professors being told by Calvinist students that earthquakes were caused by the will of God, not by all this subduction zones and the rest he was trying to teach them?
Hector,
if I remember my theological studies correctly, Luther held a belief that God sustains creation continuously, in a manner very close to al-Ghazali’s Islamic idea that God creates the universe anew every moment. This view allows pretty nicely for supernatural occurrences. In it, the laws of nature are God’s a result benign will that allows the causality necessary for life.
To be honest, Luther’s views on the contemporary philosophy were quite negative. While he tended to take somewhat nominalist positions against Aristotle, he actually rejected most of the problem-setting of the contemporary philosophical tradition in favour of somewhat mystical approach. If you follow his train of thought, you are not encouraged in rational philosophical study, let alone natural research, and to be honest, orthodoxically Lutheran countries, like 17th century Sweden, didn’t really produce any interesting science or philosophy. The statutes of Swedish universities expressly prohibited all work on new ideas or concepts, “so that there should be no strife or that no professor should imagine himself wiser than his colleagues”. When the great Linneaus did his work a hundred years later, the rationalist enlightment had changed the intellectual atmosphere completely.
This also shows very nicely that an illiberal government that enforced intellectual uniformity at the expense of intellectual stagnation is by no means unknown a phenomenon in the Western cultural sphere.
@FInnish Reader,
Thanks for the correction, I seem to have confused Luther’s thought with Calvin’s. But yes, I was thinking of Ghazali’s thought and the similarities with some Protestant schools of thought.
@Mary Catelli,
No I haven’t (although some of them certainly deny evolution), but that demonstrates that there are other things going on besides purely religious doctrine, right?
Why on earth would it demonstrate that?
Why on earth would it demonstrate that?
Because other religious groups who deny the existence of natural laws (in that strong philosophical sense) don’t seem to have the same issues?
How can they be denying it in the same sense if they don’t deny it in the same sense? Because that’s literally all these students are doing.
@Hector and @Isator Levi, Medieval Islamic cultures did plenty of proto-science, the difference is that they rarely or never progressed into applied science in the way western Europeans did. Bernard Lewis has written a couple of history books with the details.
The best example is the printing press. Whether or not Gutenberg actually invented the press doesn’t matter for this. What matters is that in 1453 the number of printing presses in Europe could be counted on your fingers, by 1500 had probably reached a thousand, and just kept going from there. Massive effect on religion and education and business …
And it’s not a particularly difficult piece of technology. Japan at least also had printing presses, and the Ottoman Empire was in close contact with Europe and quickly learnt about this new thing.
The difference is that while there was religious and state opposition to printing presses in various parts of Europe, none of them were strong enough to suppress printing. But in the Ottoman Empire the religious establishment thought that the printing press would be a Bad Thing (and given Protestantism in Europe, from the religious POV they were probably right!) so while the more European subject peoples of the Sultan could print in their own language, it was forbidden to print in Arabic or Turkish, the languages of the dominant Islamic culture.
And this ban held until 1729, at least two centuries. Then one (1) printing press was allowed, which was closed down again in 1743. A couple of European embassies in Instanbul started printing their own Turkish language journals later in the 18th C, and finally the Sultanate and religious establishment gave in and allowed printing at the beginning of the 19th C. Literally centuries after printing presses had spread all over “Christian” Europe and into the Americas as well.
The obvious question is if this is best understood as an Islam thing, or just an Ottoman thing. The Ottomans were uniquely economically positioned amongst the Islamic states, with the exception of maybe the Mughals (and their complexities deserve more than offhand mention), so it’s possible only they could have made the political decision to embrace or reject the printing press and meaningfully influenced “Islamic culture”.
Given that several European powers, including Russia, censored (or tried to censor) printing presses to the point of irrelevancy, I’m inclined to say that it was incidental. Deeply unfortunately incidental to the people of the Ottoman Empire, but incidental. What made Europe more successful here was that the various hesitancies of different rulers didn’t matter, as there was no political unity.
Once it got widespread enough it became impossible to reasonably stop, but natural barriers kept it from spreading further and the political entities on the edge of Europe were monolithic and massive, creating the impression it was a European cultural thing rather than a product of specific events. Or rather, the part of European culture that actually favored the printing press was political factionalism, which is a valid perspective but not terribly flattering.
Mostly an Islam thing, according to Lewis and others.
Russia and many other European political powers tried to censor the printing press, ie control what was being printed, but couldn’t suppress the idea of the printing press itself. It wasn’t just political disunity, but also religious disunity and the notion built into Christianity from the beginning that the spiritual authority of the Church doesn’t necessarily coincide with the secular power of the state. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s…” (Although yes Emperors and Popes were always trying to appoint themselves as divine authorities.)
In the Islamic dominated states, roughly Africa north of the Sahara through the Middle East and Turkey through to Iran, Islamic religious and state power were one and the same for many centuries. The Ottomans were Sultans rather than Caliphs, but they still had to be faithful servants of Islam to remain in power. There wasn’t an Islamic “Pope”, but the equivalent of the College of Cardinals still had the final say on a lot of issues, including the introduction of new technology such as printing presses.
And the same thing keeps happening. High quality metal casting for cannons? The Ottomans have to hire experts from Europe. Oceanic sailing vessels with broadside guns? The Algerians have to hire experts from Europe. Sure, sometimes the Europeans suppress a discovery, and sometimes the Ottomans do make progress. But the overall trend is for the Islamic states to fall behind.
Doing a little more research, the Chinese and Koreans seem to have independently invented similar printing presses themselves, and the Japanese got them from either China/Korea or Europe early in the 17th C. None of these states were noted for political disunity at the time.
Persia (Iran) seems to have had much the same progress, or rather non-progress, as the Ottomans, which also suggests Islam rather than incidental. The first printing presses were created when the area was under Mongol rule rather than Islamic. Then they faded away under the more religious Safavids, until an Armenian (Christian) introduced European style presses in the 16th C.
Oh, I somehow missed that you’re citing Bernard Lewis. That fills me with absolutely zero confidence. The man was a genocide denier, nothing he wrote can be trusted uncritically, and with critical analysis there’s every reason to think this is one of the things he’d get wrong. What other sources are you using?
I’m honestly not trying to find reasons not to listen, but oh boy is he not a trustworthy source. I’d trust the conclusion more if you were speaking off the cuff.
The political disunity argument I’m making isn’t really negated by countries which adopted it and were unified. The point is that a single decision could freeze it from most of the Muslim world, but not Europe. That it wasn’t frozen out elsewhere isn’t really significant unless only Muslim states limited it, which isn’t what happened.
One quick point of support-that isn’t conclusive-is southern India, which was similarly disunited, and which had the pretty continuous presence of at least one major printing house since the 1600s. This was specifically because when one was closed a separate press was open in another state. It’s muddied in relevance because it’s neither majority Muslim nor true native adoption, most printing houses were European run, but it does support my point.
(Also there are enough languages that a handful of presses weren’t really enough for the potential demand, but still)
Persia seems to be similar moderate evidence for your conclusion; that a cultural characteristic of Islam trends towards this result. Do you know what printing press adoption was like in Egypt or Northern India? Those regions were rich and urban enough to adopt it, and I’m not very knowledgeable on the specifics there.
It should always be noted that what makes the printing press efficient is *movable type*, and that gives part of the reason why it caught on in Europe a lot faster than in all the other places the tech passed through: The Latin alphabet is a lot more suited to the requirements of printing than Arabic (which has its letter shapes a lot more context-dependent) and especially Chinese (which has so many glyphs that it’s unfeasible to have enough of each to print a page).
“what makes the printing press efficient is *movable type*”
Movable type certainly helps, and having the right metal of type so that the pieces don’t wear out too quickly under use, but there’s some efficiency even from woodcut printing, or even with Chinese characters.
> Tokugawa Ieyasu established a printing school at Enko-ji in Kyoto and started publishing books using a domestic wooden movable type printing press instead of metal from 1599. Ieyasu supervised the production of 100,000 types, which were used to print many political and historical books.
> By 1640 woodblocks were once again used for nearly all purposes.[11] After the 1640s, movable type printing declined, and books were mass-produced by conventional woodblock printing during most of the Edo period.[3][12]
> The mass production of woodblock prints in the Edo period was due to the high literacy rate of Japanese people in those days. The literacy rate of the Japanese in the Edo period was almost 100% for the samurai class and 50% to 60% for the chōnin and nōmin (farmer) class due to the spread of private schools terakoya. There were more than 600 rental bookstores in Edo, and people lent woodblock-printed illustrated books of various genres.
> travel guides, gardening books, cookbooks, kibyōshi (satirical novels), sharebon (books on urban culture), kokkeibon (comical books), ninjōbon (romance novel), yomihon, kusazōshi, art books, play scripts for the kabuki and jōruri (puppet) theatre, etc.
Wikipedia “Woodblock_printing_in_Japan”
@dcmorinmorinmorin, please stop assuming that no-one else is capable of reading critically or checking their sources.
Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1517 until the French conquest in 1798. The French set up a couple of native language (Arabic by then, not hieroglyphs) presses. So while as Alien@System points out Arabic is more complex to typeset than the Latin alphabet, it is doable. Then in 1805 Egypt became sort of independent under Mohammed Ali and he established the official Egyptian government press in 1815. But this is about the same time as the Ottoman Empire was also setting up a printing press.
No idea about Northern India. Anyone?
@mindstalk0 You are correct, and I was imprecise in my language there. What I meant was the efficiency for the purpose of spreading new ideas. With woodcut printing, you can also produce loads of copies of books, and thus fuel a massive rise in literacy, but the economy of scale is different: Since each woodcut of a page can only be used to print that page, you want to maximise profit by printing that page as often as you can. That means printing a lot of copies of the same book, and thus it’s better to print books which are already known to sell well. Doing a small print run for a new book has a massively smaller profit margin, and thus few printers will be willing to risk it.
For movable type, it is more feasible to print smaller “trial runs” of new books, since the material investment into casting the type is not sunk into this specific book, but can be re-used for other projects. Thus, new ideas have a lower barrier of entry into the printing market and thus into people’s heads.
Hmm. The first printing press in the Islamic world was set up in Tabriz in the 1630s, and produced editions of the Koran among other things. Shah Abbas was interested and promoted it, but the obstacles to widespread use seem to have been practical and cultural rather than ideological – a preference for hand-written holy books, low levels of literacy and difficulties with materials.
One tends to forget that the Islamic world includes Iran and Central Asia, considerable parts of South Asia and a lot of South-East Asia (Indonesia is the single most populous Islamic country).
“@dcmorinmorinmorin, please stop assuming that no-one else is capable of reading critically or checking their sources”
Then demonstrate some basic literacy and don’t quote genocide deniers? If you have a better source just use them instead. What does that even mean? Trust you? That’s not how any of this works.
I.e. “No, prove I don’t have to.”
To the actual discussion, from what I understand the issue with block printing for Islamic text is two fold. First, you need a lot of characters because the letter forms change depending on where they are in a sentence, and second you need to switch out a lot of characters because of that. This increases the cost both for training and supplies, but I’m not actually sure it’s prohibitive; Latin alphabets have similar variations, they’re just less critical.
@dcmorinmorinmorin The notion that an idea can be examined separately from the personality / morals / character of the writer simply doesn’t exist for you?
As other commentators have already noted, you demonstrate very nicely Tom Holland’s thesis in his book “Dominion” that 21st C progressives are continuing the philosophy of radical Christianity. There are the Elect who hold proper opinions, and the Damned who don’t, and the latter must be isolated from all right thinking folk
“issue with block printing for Islamic text is two fold. First, you need a lot of characters”
You’ve confused block with movable type printing. Having lots of character types is a complication with movable type. With woodblock, you’re just carving into wood. It can handle funky complicated text and outright drawings just as easily as simple text. As I quoted earlier, Edo Japan experimented with (wooden) movable type but settled on woodblocks for its mass publishing industry.
And wikipedia “Woodblock_printing” has passages talking about how woodblock printing revolutionized scholarship in the Song Dynasty, with book prices allegedly dropping ten-fold. Though apparently manuscripts weren’t entirely displaced, partly for prestige reasons; they still had to get cheaper.
‘In 1488, the Korean Choe Bu observed during his trip to China that “even village children, ferrymen, and sailors” could read, although this applied mainly to the south, while northern China remained largely illiterate.[23]’
‘The early Jesuit missionaries of late-16th-century China, for instance, had a similar distaste for wood-based printing for very different reasons. These Jesuits found that “the cheapness and omnipresence of printing in China made the prevailing wood-based technology extremely disturbing, even dangerous”.[45] Matteo Ricci made note of “the exceedingly large numbers of books in circulation here and the ridiculously low prices at which they are sold”.[46]’
‘one British observer at the end of the nineteenth century, who noted that even before the arrival of western printing methods, the price of books and printed materials in China had already reached an astoundingly low price compared to what could be found in his home country.’
If printing could make decently large impact in China and Japan, with their literal thousands of characters, I don’t think “our alphabet is too hard” is a good reason for a lack of Ottoman printing.
“@dcmorinmorinmorin The notion that an idea can be examined separately from the personality / morals / character of the writer simply doesn’t exist for you?”
A. That’s not the topic, B. This deflection proves you didn’t think critically on the author. That’s fine, we all make mistakes, but don’t pretend it’s not one.
Also, *no*, why someone is saying something is never irrelevant. Self evidently. Considering an idea that has been constructed to deceive you requires first identifying the deceit, and there are so many techniques of deception that the only sure way is to first hit on the biases involved; “Why are so many Jews in positions of power?” has the form of a question, and it’s earnestly possible to not understand the trap, but looking at what the asker believes about Jews and the history of the question instantly shows it to be a deceit.
Reflexive, absolute skepticism and absolute criticism are a defense mechanism.
It also has nothing to do with morals; the issue isn’t morals, it’s the fact he *lies*. That he lies for influence about genocide just makes me detest him; lying should trigger immediate skepticism of everything he ever wrote regardless.
“As other commentators have already noted, you demonstrate very nicely Tom Holland’s thesis in his book “Dominion” that 21st C progressives are continuing the philosophy of radical Christianity. There are the Elect who hold proper opinions, and the Damned who don’t, and the latter must be isolated from all right thinking folk”
No, I just think I’m right and can prove it. That’s not unique to Christianity and if Tom Holland believes that he’s an idiot. It’s also not radical; you’re creating a fancy way of saying that they had *actual beliefs*. Nothing you’re describing is about moral gatekeeping, except that a respect for truth is paramount.
And sorry Mindstalk, I misspoke. I didn’t know block printing was that effective, by the way.
I also agree; I find the explanation insufficient. I’m moving towards it being a cultural thing, although I suspect it’s due to specific school of thought that became popular, not some persistent character of Islam; there have been too many pro science Muslim states for that.
Along with memes pasting some simple label on a broad chunk of history or a diverse and changing culture-area, there is a common meme that attributes failure to adopt some invention to ideology or misguided policy or very often individual stupidity.
More often there turn out to be other factors – in this case low levels of literacy, low levels of urbanisation and state structures that did not demand much in the way of writing. China (and Japan and Korea) had moveable type but found woodblock printing cheaper – and enough literacy to support a market for printed material (Chinese officials found it worthwhile to have pamphlets on new agricultural techniques printed and distributed to the peasantry). Note that Thailand and Myanmar also did not pick up the press, nor the Indian states on any scale.
A fairly urbanised western Europe consumed with religious debates was an eager market not just for books but for tracts and pamphlets (On the Monstrous Regiment of Women is typical of the genre). And states were keen to put the official view out.
It’s worth noting that the biggest book markets of the medieval period were in Cordoba and Baghdad.
On periods, this from Adam Tooze is useful: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-298-built-not-born-against
Perhaps more to the point, in the Ottoman Empire, it was the scholarly, edcated,intelligentsia, which did yes, include religious figures, who objected to the printing press because it would destroy their jobs/income and status, as being the only ones who could read and write. Every community, neighborhood had the writer, to whom everyone came to, and paid a fee, to have what was needed to be written, written. This was not by any means merely personal missives, but deeds, wills, etc. Also the very lucrative and pleasant government positions that involved all that copying of whether poetry or Greek treatises, etc.
They pa$$ionately petitioned the emperor to outlaw printing presses, and he granted them their petition.
As other commentators have already noted, you demonstrate very nicely Tom Holland’s thesis in his book “Dominion” that 21st C progressives are continuing the philosophy of radical Christianity.
Tom Holland is also a conspiracy-theory guy who thinks Muhammad didn’t exist (in the sense that most of us think he existed) and that Islam was invented by one of the early Umayyad caliphs, I forget which one, maybe Muawiyah (he’s gotten numerous death threats from annoyed Muslims for that reason). He gets there by applying extremely liberal historico-critical standards to Islam, which he would probably never apply to Christianity. You’re free to continue to value him highly, of course, but that’s why *I* personally have an extremely dim view of his judgment. (it’s not the only one, but maybe the most egregious/hilarious one).
I don’t Think it is correct to call Holland a conspiracy theorist regarding Islam. Just as it is wrong to call the 19th century higher criticism of the Bible a conspiracy theory. He seems just to have used the same kind of tools on early Islamic history that is routinely used on the Bible. Whether is right or not is a different question, but I do think it is fair from a scholarly point of view to treat Islam the same way you treat Judaism and Christianity.
Strictly speaking that’s a conspiracy theory. Not all conspiracy theories are insane, although to be clear the idea that Muhammad didn’t exist is out there; a better theory might be that, like Jesus, a prophet was mythologized, particularly in the ~300 years following their deaths to be a more impressive religious figure, but did in fact *physically exist*, even if their miracles obviously didn’t. Holland toes the line there, because he’s a pop-cultural author, and his takes on religions are pretty generically stupid. He has blinders on regarding Christianity, for sure.
Holland doesn’t deny that there is an historical basis for the story of Muhammad. My guess is that he thinks Muhammad is about as historical as King David, and more historical than Moses. He is not alone in taking a critical historical view of Muhammad and early Islam. There are non popular historians who does the same, especially in Germany.
I don’t know if it’s the same guy but I have seen such conspiracists offer 19th century claims that Jesus never existed as evidence toward Mohammed never existing.
I think “Faustian spirit” might be referring to Oswald Spengler’s “Der Untergang des Abendlandes”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West
Correct! I was referring to Spengler’s concept, “accelerating into infinity”, which may be romantic & poetic, but also accurately describes the animating spirit of the modern West. The above interpretations are interesting and not far off. Also, none of this necessarily conflicts with the historical conditions of Europe, eg natural harbors, navigable rivers, national competition, and a Christianity that sought new converts.
In my experience, when someone claims not to understand the meaning of a widely-used concept, nine times out of ten what they actually mean is “You’re a bad person for caring about this thing and should stop thinking about it.”
it’s not that they don’t understand the claim, it’s that they disagree with it.
Yes, and pretending not to understand a claim is often a way of passive-aggressively disagreeing with it.
I think more often it’s a polite way of saying that a concept, such as Western Civilization (or perhaps crabs, or trees), is so incoherent that only an idiot or someone who had only the most cursory knowledge of it could believe in it.
I think more often it’s a polite way of saying that a concept, such as Western Civilization (or perhaps crabs, or trees), is so incoherent that only an idiot or someone who had only the most cursory knowledge of it could believe in it.
None of those concepts are incoherent.
Sounds like it’s your day to learn about carcinization. 🙂
Sounds like it’s your day to learn about carcinization. 🙂
That doesn’t change anything. Either we define “crab” as a member of the Brachyura infraorder, as I believe is the scientific definition, or we define “crab” as any animal with a certain morphology. Either way, the concept is quite coherent, and there’s no reason to pretend that you have no idea what you’ll be getting when you see “crab” on a restaurant menu.
If you define crab genetically you exclude many colloquial crabs. If you define crab by physiology you include many unrelated organisms that share superficial traits. Either is incoherent.
Incoherent doesn’t always mean useless; it is incoherent here in the sense that it’s coherence depends on if you are using it in the tight use case, in the same way light is focused on a point an incoherent elsewhere.
As you say, ordering crab, as defined by appearance, almost always gets you a similar food. That may break utterly when breeding them, but eating them it usually works
The problem is that “western civilization”s use case is to lie to stupid people, in the same vein as “Cultural Marxism” or “East coast elite”. It’s coherence is as a tool of propaganda.
In other words-you would have to be an idiot to believe in it. Or more accurately a mark.
If you define crab genetically you exclude many colloquial crabs. If you define crab by physiology you include many unrelated organisms that share superficial traits. Either is incoherent.
That’s not what “incoherent” means.
Yes. It is. Admit you’re wrong, now.
If a definition of a term that leads to deeply counterintuitive or actively counterproductive problems when you try to apply the term in real life isn’t “incoherent,” then I’m at something of a loss as to what is.
As noted, you can have a definition of ‘crab’ that’s coherent for purposes of “are these superficially similar lifeforms that can all be prepared for cooking in the same way,” or that’s coherent for the purposes of understanding the genetics and genesis of any given population of ‘crabs.’ Definitions that satisfy one condition usually don’t satisfy the other too well, and that’s okay; the categories were invented for man, not man for the categories.
I agree with, ah, “Morin cubed,” in that the fundamental problem with terms like “Western Civ” (and “cultural Marxism” and “East coast elites” and “globalists”) is that they are used specifically as tools of propaganda to manipulate people in the name of beliefs that would seem unconscionable or just plain wrongheaded if spoken out loud.
It is not a passive-aggressive form of opposition to the Good Folks to point out the incoherence of these propaganda terms.
Which concept is that in this case?
“Something called ‘western civilization'”.
Ah, I see. So the concept of western civilisation has credibility not by virtue of providing an effective definition of what it means, but by being widely employed.
I believe that falls under argumentum ad populum.
Shall we go over the list of other things that have been widely and uncritically taken as a given in a way that did not preclude them being challenged, and have since lost credibility?
Ah, I see. So the concept of western civilisation has credibility not by virtue of providing an effective definition of what it means, but by being widely employed.
What do you mean by a concept “having credibility”? For that matter, what do you count as an “effective definition”?
Shall we go over the list of other things that have been widely and uncritically taken as a given in a way that did not preclude them being challenged, and have since lost credibility?
Please do.
Well, I suppose in the spirit of the line that began this tangent, I could begin with a definition for credibility of “thing you don’t actually need to feel bad about”.
As for the weaknesses of appeal to the masses, the founding principle of the Confederacy cited last week is the most obvious place to start, but one can also do things like contemporary propositions that crime rates are notably high in the modern United States.
Well, I suppose in the spirit of the line that began this tangent, I could begin with a definition for credibility of “thing you don’t actually need to feel bad about”.
So a “credible concept” is “a concept you don’t need to feel bad about”?
As for the weaknesses of appeal to the masses, the founding principle of the Confederacy cited last week is the most obvious place to start, but one can also do things like contemporary propositions that crime rates are notably high in the modern United States.
Bad analogies. Bret wasn’t saying that the Twitter thread was wrong about western civilisation, or that western civilisation is a bad thing, he was claiming not to understand the concept itself. The equivalent would be Abraham Lincoln pretending not to know the meaning of the word “slavery”, or a modern criminologist saying that “crime” is a meaningless concept.
I do not believe a statement like “something called western civilization”, in the context of both the overall article and general awareness of this person’s level of education and literacy, is meant to imply lack of comprehension. Frankly, it seems like a very motivated reading even without such context.
I am fairly sure it merely means “these people use western civilization as a canard for their worldview, a buzzword with implications of being something special and fragile without critical evaluation”.
I do not believe a statement like “something called western civilization”, in the context of both the overall article and general awareness of this person’s level of education and literacy, is meant to imply lack of comprehension. Frankly, it seems like a very motivated reading even without such context.
In my experience, highly educated and literate people are very capable of deliberately not understanding basic concepts, if it’s in their rhetorical or ideological interests to do so. In fact, highly educated people (or people with pretensions to being highly educated) are often more likely to resort to such tactics, because they’re better able to come up with quibbles and edge cases than a less educated person.
“In my experience, highly educated and literate people are very capable of deliberately not understanding basic concepts, if it’s in their rhetorical or ideological interests to do so. In fact, highly educated people (or people with pretensions to being highly educated) are often more likely to resort to such tactics, because they’re better able to come up with quibbles and edge cases than a less educated person.”
See: Your entire own post history!
I’ve been wondering, does anybody have an issue with Middle Eastern Civilization? Or Far Eastern, or pre-Columbian American? And if not, why not?
“anybody have an issue with Middle Eastern Civilization? Or Far Eastern, or pre-Columbian American?”
Yes, especially the last. Mesoamerica and the Andes were barely in contact, apart from some minor coastal trade. Different religions and styles of government between Aztecs and Incas, hardly anything shared except maize and lack of tool metals.
I know just enough about China, Japan, et al to be bothered by “Far Eastern”, though “China-influenced” or “Confucian” might have legs in some contexts.
Far-eastern is pretty reductive. About the only shared cultural traits are a writing system and some architectural styles, and even those are significantly influenced by the materials of construction.
Western civilization at least has a classical unifying empire which occupied the vast majority of the nations, or whose descendants did. Even at it’s maximum extent the Chinese tributary system was barely as hegemonic as the modern British Commonwealth, or the EU; it was effectively a trade union. This lack of any real central authority means the only thing uniting the region is the writing system-not even language, just method of writing characters-of the hegemon, and some vague religious and cultural similarities.
Oh, and it should be equally morally problematic as western civilization, because Japan set out to unify the far east during WW2 to save some weird concept of east Asian culture or prosperity, and killed about as many people as died on the eastern front of WW2 in the process.
So yeah, fair bet people are equally bothered.
For the middle east Arabic, Iranian, Turkish, and North African/Berber/I don’t know the correct term cultures are obviously distinct. If the middle east is Arabic only, then it’s more coherent than Western Civilization but still imperfect. Egyptian and Philistine cultures are relatively distinct, and there are minorities throughout the region, but at least there’s a recent hegemonic empire and there’s a shared language. That clearly ends in Anatolia and the Iranian mountains though.
I guss you mean Commonwealth&Empire as they were before the 1960s. The Commonwealth today is a mere discussion (and cricket and polo) club with shared imperial ancestry. The Chinese tributary system at least included tributes.
No, I mean today. The tributes given were basically tokens for all the time period I’ve heard of, and the real effect of the system was to put China in charge of trade licenses, which created a very soft regional trade hegemony. China only rarely interfered in local affairs, and when it did it almost always failed to enact any real control. It’s very similar to, say, the British monarch being technical head of state of a commonwealth nation and their opinions having a political influence on the countries elections. Which is, to be clear, not a predictable influence. The legacy of this is primarily linguistic; the various tributaries adopted Chinese script.
There were periods of attempted or actual regional conquest separate from the tributary system, but the main legacy of those is that there’s a cultural distrust of China, particularly in Vietnam.
I may not know some period of the tributary system though, I have a spotty knowledge here at best.
I’ve been wondering, is there a similar problem with Middle Eastern Civilization? Or Far Eastern? And if not, why not?
I’ve been wondering, does anybody have an issue with Middle Eastern Civilization? Or Far Eastern, or pre-Columbian American? And if not, why not?
@Roxana,
I absolutely have tons of problems with the idea of “Indic” or “Hindu” civilization, for some of the same reasons as I have problems with “western” civilization: both of them paper together the real differences among peoples who have very little in common.
I don’t really know enough about Islam to comment about whether, say, Mali, Kosovo, Malaysia and Pakistan could coherently be described as one civilization, but I doubt it. And as far as Chinese civilization goes, I’m doubtful that you could fairly describe Tibet, China, Korea and Vietnam as part of a single civilization either. Especially Tibet.
In my experience, highly educated and literate people are very capable of deliberately not understanding basic concepts, if it’s in their rhetorical or ideological interests to do so. In fact, highly educated people (or people with pretensions to being highly educated) are often more likely to resort to such tactics, because they’re better able to come up with quibbles and edge cases than a less educated person.
I agree, but this isn’t a positive defence of the idea that “western civilization” is a coherent or useful concept.
If you want to talk about ANglo-American civilization, in contrast, then I think that’s a narrow and cohesive enough concept to actually be useful.
Yes. The problem (for the person trying to write far-right propaganda, anyway) is that “Anglo-American” calls too much attention to the specific pair of countries that form the name. Among the disadvantages of this (for the propagandist):
1) It spoils the appeal of the propaganda for those who identify as some other ethnicity such as ‘Dutch’ or ‘Italian.’
2) It zooms in the focus more tightly on the actual history of those countries, rather than on a vague and potentially self-contradictory narrative. Which makes it harder to do things like say “the _________ tradition of virtuous self-discipline” and “the ____ is marked by its radical embrace of individual freedom” in the same paragraph without getting called out for contradicting yourself.
In short, the propagandist likes to take terms that don’t normally have a strong, clear meaning in the discourse already because they are seldom directly used in the discourse, and use them in a novel way.
If you call someone a communist in a society with a functioning communist party, that’s a question of fact and they can defend themselves by proving they’re not a Party member. But if you call someone a cultural Marxist, they hardly have a workable defense against the accusation, because nobody has a clear sense of exactly what the boundaries of ‘cultural Marxism’ are or how you become a member or for that matter turn in your subscription.
Likewise, if you say that someone is acting in the finest traditions of Roman civilization by seizing power and rewriting the constitution, you open yourself up to someone (like our host) ripping you to pieces by pointing out that Cincinnatus was a far better role model than Sulla. If you say that someone is acting in the finest traditions of “Anglo-American” civilization by ignoring election results on the grounds that surely a lot of nasty oiks voted, you open yourself up to contradiction by people who note that traditionally, Anglo-American oiks have had the right to vote for a long time.
But you can say ‘Western’ tradition includes this and be a lot trickier about your sources.
That’s been my experience too.
I don’t have a Twitter account, so I can’t explore the take that began this any further, but I really do have to laugh at the person attributing the merit of “everybody had a defined role”.
Like, setting aside the question begged of if that even is a thing with merit, it further betrays the ignorance of taking that pyramidal diagram at face value by leaving out the key caveat of “if you possessed land”.
So many perspectives of Medieval history, and history in general, really, make the error of overlooking the vast number of people who were ever excess to what their parents could leave to them or what they might manage to claim in a general grab, and yet inconveniently had the audacity to continue living.
Best case scenario in a lot of those cases could be having some long term position as a sibling or widowed mother’s virtual servant. Even then, it was hardly a stable position; often a growing nuclear family could end up pushing you out of the household.
Otherwise, it was the tenuous position of seasonal labour, itinerant peddling and tinkering (maybe shepherding, if you were lucky), begging, and no small amount of crime.
These were periods in which just being unemployed was criminalised, with a social bias to assume the physically able bodied were capable of work but too lazy to, regardless of how much labour might actually be available.
And these people probably did not merely die out in short order as a result of Malthusian pressures, considering things like a generally continuous upward trend in numbers while economies tended to grow much more slowly, and actual records of how they were treated.
Medieval Europe gave no definition for these people, and if it defined everybody else, I’d expect that just made their lives even harder for being seen as outside of the norm.
“it’s[sic] hierarchy ensured long-term stability.”
I am tempted to misquote Galileo and suggest that people who say this sort of thing really deserve to be turned into marble statues of themselves, which can remain stable for centuries.
I am strongly skeptical that the people making this argument on social media are engaging in good faith, in that I doubt they care much one way or another what historical feudalism was like. What they are doing is expressing frustration with the modern world, and by extension egalitarian democracy and liberal values. They are yearning for a social order in which cultural values and economic relationships are more stable and unchanging than they seem to be today. And that is tantamount, of course, to saying “I am tired of being challenged by people not from my background or community.” They don’t want Feudalism back, whatever they think that consisted of. They want a rich person to come along and give them a job for life. “Feudalism” is just a proxy symbol for that.
We have an international, multi-billion-dollar industry (advertising) designed to make us restless and dissatisfied so we’ll keep buying new stuff. I think that’s a bigger driver of modern unhappiness than “being challenged by people not from my background or community”.
I respectfully disagree. We have been living with scientific marketing for 100 years, and so far no one has attempted to overthrow an election because of it. Not saying that consumerism isn’t a source of disaffection, just that it takes second place to populist bigotry.
So are we talking about general “frustration with the modern world”, or are we talking about something more specific? Because your first post was all about the former, but now you seem to be referring to the latter.
“And that is tantamount, of course, to saying “I am tired of being challenged by people not from my background or community.””
I apologize if I wasn’t being clear. By “Background or community” I was referring to identity, in the US that normally takes the form of race, gender, and social class.
Wanting more stability in your life, and wanting to be able to stay in the same job, isn’t bigoted, unless you’re using a very non-standard definition of the term.
“identity, in the US that normally takes the form of race, gender, and social class.”
No, it does not. There is an amazing diversity of what people think of themselves as, but in fact, most people, if asked to identify what they were, give occupation.
In all fairness, the bigots and fanatics now use scientific marketing techniques; they might be less dangerous if they were not so well armed.
Honestly, I’d say it’s probably a tie between “advertising industry” and “general bigotry against people who don’t follow my community’s social rules” to see who’s driving the most modern unhappiness.
Because, as we all know, thinking that something might be wrong with a society where around one out of eight people are on antidepressants, one in six people are single and don’t want to be, and it seems like the people in charge are much more interested in their perks than their duties means that you’re frustrated with egalitarian democracy and liberal values.
Is the alternative they’re suggesting a liberal, democratic society? Or is it an authoritarian society? That gives you a lot of insight into how someone thinks society should go.
Having one of six people involuntarily single seems to be pretty normal, even benign. The industrial and early modern societies had at least the same amount of permanently single people. My favourite statistic is that in late 18th century, rural Finland had one out of six children born out of wedlock. Today, one out of six Finnish children is born to single mothers who claim not to know the father, i.e. don’t have a stable relationship with the father.
And having about 10 per cent of the population with some sort of mental disturbance is also more or less par for the course. So, I would see neither of your pieces of statistics as particular condemnations of our culture.
Yep, those statistics don’t seem out of line with what I knew of historical results: A significant chunk of people never got married for whatever reason. (many of them involuntarily) of course “marriage” and “single” aren’t exactly the same, but they’re pretty close as far as pre-modern society goes.
Do you have some reason to believe that the type of person who promotes Feudalism (as they understand it) in the modern world is primarily concerned with those sorts of things?
If so, that would in some ways be worse.
Such stats as I mentioned are frequently cited among those who think something has gone very wrong with modern society and are looking for some kind of remedy, and this includes the people who talk about feudalism like it would fix things.
Look, I’m a fan of modernity and the liberal order, but let’s not pretend that everything is just fine and the only reason someone would be dissatisfied with modern society is because they’re a horrible person.
So who should society force into being the lonely person’s friend and the single person’s partner, in your opinion?
Alienation and solitude are so intimately characteristic of a free society that I don’t see much of a point in distinguishing people who think that we need “strong communities” to “fix” those “problems” from authoritarians who hate liberal values. Those people *are* authoritarians who hate liberal values.
If “liberal values” really are inseperable from “alienation and solitude”, then it’s entirely justifiable to hate them.
I disagree. That nobody is entitled to my amity is so important to me that I am fully willing to accept the flip side, which is that I am not entitled to anyone else’s either.
Let me explain in a bit more detail. The chain of reasoning here is a bit long and I’m bad at communicating things concisely, so please be patient with me. I’ll cover (1) what our host says liberalism is, (2) what I believe to be logical, currently demonstrated extensions of those principles, and (3) why I thus believe alienation and solitude to be inevitable side effects of those principles.
Dr. Devereaux explained, in this year’s Fourth of July post, that liberalism exists to solve problems. He says that what it does, very briefly paraphrased, is take things out of shared political spaces and into the personal space of individual conscience, thereby preventing large diverse societies from bleeding themselves out fighting over their internal differences in that shared space of state politics.
I think this explanation is good but insufficient, at least if we’re speaking normatively and not descriptively. I think that to genuinely have liberty, to enjoy peace and dignity and all those other good things of life that are the domain of free individuals alone, it is necessary to take things not merely out of politics, but out of *all communal spaces* which might be fought over between people, including *social and economic* spaces, and that the distinction between these different forms of communal spaces is ultimately arbitrary and constructed (we have concepts like “office politics” for a reason).
States and politics produce the most violent struggles because modern administrative states command a tremendous amount of violence. So it is most important that things are taken out of that space first, sure, but if we see the objective of liberalism not merely as the elimination of violence but the elimination of *conflict*, we should not tolerate contentious issues existing in other kinds of communal spaces too. People whose subsistence was dependent on a shared economic space tended to fight for their right to eat. People whose dignity was dependent on a shared social space tended to fight for recognition. And those sorts of fighting spill over into politics all the time because, like I said, these spaces aren’t *really* separate in any meaningful way. People who are hungry and out of a job, as FDR said, are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
I’ve gotten to know several LGBT+ people who grew up (or, in one case, are currently growing up) under conservative parents, and listened to way too many horror stories to conclude that any reasonable liberal can possibly delude themselves into thinking that such is a free and dignified existence.
In much the same way that a peaceable society requires that you be able to practice your own faith regardless of what society at large thinks of it, a peaceable society requires that you have food and dignity regardless of what society at large thinks of you.
And it is *state power* which assures this! Perhaps counterintuitively, I imagine strong, centralised states as being essential for liberalism in the extended sense that I described above.
Consider our host’s previous articles on premodern lifestyles, and how subordinate people in the past were to their communities: they weren’t really separable from their neighbourhoods, their extended families, and their religious congregations, *on which their physical and economic security were fully dependent.* Being disinherited or ostracised could be and often was literally fatal.
Communities can be a source of tremendous oppression.
The way liberal societies – or, more accurately, liberal states – freed people from this oppression of communities without trampling on the freedom of communities (because, after all, it’s a core tenet of liberalism that communities can practice whatever consensus belief they like) is by freeing individuals *from communities*. If you are an adult of sound mind in a well-functioning 21st-century high-income democracy, the market will feed you and the police will protect you. You don’t have to befriend your neighbours if you don’t want to. You don’t have to talk to your family if you don’t want to. And you certainly don’t have to attend church if you don’t want to. If your community is hateful and discriminatory, *you don’t have to put up with them.*
But… but, the logically inevitable flip side of this freedom is that they don’t have to put up with you either. Your neighbours don’t need to befriend you if they don’t want to, your family don’t need to talk to you if they don’t want to, and churches don’t have to accept you if they don’t want to, because they, too, have their security assured by the state and they are no more dependent on you than you are of them. On the other side of every child who cuts their toxic parents out of their life are parents who wonder why their child doesn’t visit them anymore.
In a liberal society that is organised around liberal principles, therefore, it is each individual’s own responsibility to convince other people to hang out with them. People who fail to convince others that they would be good companions don’t get companionship from others. People who develop lifestyles that don’t involve hanging out in crowded places might not get many opportunities to try in the first place.
At the same time, that dissolution of the rigid and regimented structure of community life that liberalism inherently entails means a proliferation of diverse lifestyles – because human beings have naturally diverse desires and will, in the absence of social pressure, naturally pursue diverse lifestyles – means that any given pair of people can expect to have fewer shared experiences and shared interests in a liberal society than in illiberal societies.
And this so obviously leads to alienation and solitude. Sure, most people have what it takes to do fine in this environment. They convince people to like them, make friends in college, get married to loving partners, and do *fine*. But not everyone does. A lot of people don’t have naturally sociable personalities. And even of the people who do, many find themselves not sharing much with the people around them. The wave of loneliness crashing across pretty much every 21st-century high-income democracy is an *inevitable* result of liberal values, carried out to their logical conclusion. It is not a disease, but merely the side effect of some very necessary medication.
A lot of well-meaning people have proposed some possible “solutions” to this “problem”, but they all seem to revolve around the idea of bringing people together, revitalising lost social spaces, you know, for people to interact with each other like they used to.
But even though I am myself a person who has had little success in my social life and who is feeling pretty alienated by society, when I hear the proposal “let’s bring strong communities back”, my answer is always going to be ‘ahahaha noooooooooooo’.
Being lonely is painful. But it is so, so much less painful than being unfree. It’s not even close.
@Mr. X, and what makes you think you’re entitled to other people’s obedience, goods, and *lives* because you’d be alienated and solitary otherwise?
I’m entitled to your life, btw. 😛
Russ is right.
If “liberal values” really are inseperable from “alienation and solitude”, then it’s entirely justifiable to hate them
I’d strongly agree with you there, of course.
Dr. Devereaux explained, in this year’s Fourth of July post, that liberalism exists to solve problems. He says that what it does, very briefly paraphrased, is take things out of shared political spaces and into the personal space of individual conscience, thereby preventing large diverse societies from bleeding themselves out fighting over their internal differences in that shared space of state politics.
That’s the founding myth of liberalism, sure, but I don’t think it really holds up to historical scrutiny, for several reasons:
(1) Plenty of states have had to manage large, diverse societies from the time of Sargon of Akkad on, and until the 18th century, none of them adopted liberalism as the answer. IOW, liberalism isn’t actually necessary for this.
(2) Liberalism has historically been hostile to diversity as often as it’s been tolerant or in favour of it. Nationalism, for example, was originally a liberal phenomenon, and went hand-in-hand with imposing a common language and set of customs (think the French Revolutionaries trying to make everyone speak Standard French, for example).
(3) The successful examples of diverse states in the post-liberal era have often been comparatively decentralised, like Switzerland or the United States. IOW, instead of trying to impose liberalism on society as a whole, they divided the country into smaller units so most decisions could be taken at a local level. It doesn’t really matter if you’re a French-speaking Catholic in a mostly German-speaking Protestant country if 99% of the decisions that impact your daily life are made by and in your French Catholic home canton.
(3a) The other successful examples of diverse states have often been comparatively authoritarian. Singapore, for example, has government-mandated quotas for who’s allowed to live in each area, in order to prevent people from self-segregating into ethnic ghettoes. Successful? Yes. Liberal? Very much not.
(4) In western Europe, increasing diversity has led to increasingly authoritarian legislation, rather than vice versa. See, for example, the implementation of hate speech laws and anti-discrimination laws. In several important ways, you were more free to choose what to say and whom to associate with in the 99.99% white Britain of 1950 than in the diverse Britain of today.
So, no, I don’t think liberalism is necessary to solve the issues it purports to solve, nor do I think it’s even the best way of solving them.
Being lonely is painful. But it is so, so much less painful than being unfree. It’s not even close.
Rates of mental illness have increased in the last half century as society has become more “free” and lonely. Deaths of despair are up, too, indicating that this is a genuine phenomenon, not just a case of people being more willing to seek help. I’m afraid the statistics are against you on this one.
In western Europe, increasing diversity has led to increasingly authoritarian legislation, rather than vice versa.
That should be, increasing diversity has led to increasingly authoritarian legislation, rather than to increased personal freedom.
“Rates of mental illness have increased in the last half century”
Eh, it’s pretty hard to distinguish increased rate of illness from increased rate of recognition and diagnosis of illness that was there all along. Or increased rate of medicalization and dubbing things as illness rather than simple individual variation.
And even if there is a real increase in illness, is it from liberalism and freedom, or from industrialization and modes of work that aren’t hunter-gathering or farming, aka modernity in general?
Also, changes need not be uniform. If liberalism makes women feel safer and happier, while many men feel more lonely, is that a bad thing on net?
To get this out of the way-most of the reasons you are citing are only failings within a liberal philosophy.
For one, those states have often devolved into internal violence, to the point where it is the default state. Liberalism is one of the primary things that ended this, along with industrialization.
For another, this is what I mean above-theocrats wouldn’t care about this, it isn’t a positive or negative to them. Liberal societies can fail to live up to their standards, but you’re assuming their standards are valid.
There’s a couple minor issues here, but the core one is that liberalism wasn’t hostile towards diversity because nationalism is a consequence of it’s value system, liberalism has been historically hostile to diversity because nationalism occurred simultaneously and states could either successfully tame it or oppress it, and oppression is illiberal.
What I mean is that the French State was being mildly illiberal when it imposed a single code of law and common language. It was also almost inarguably right to do so from a practical perspective, and by doing so it managed to create a single national identity, one that it then used to unify a somewhat arbitrary collection of peoples into “The French”. This ultimately let France be a liberal country in the decades and centuries that followed, because the early state forged an identity for itself through force; it navigated the disparate forces intact.
Other states, such as Austria Hungary, were in even more dire straits because they rapidly lost control of the nationalist movement, so they were never able to impose a single code of language or law. This ultimately disintegrated them, as liberal movements had to be suppressed and this internal violence and political tension was fatal.
Liberalism has self determination as a core value. What other ideological philosophy would value that? Certainly not conservatism, theocracy, fascism…liberal nations may be failures at implementing it, but still.
Singapore is one of a few examples of an authoritarian system working, actually, and the reasons it does are myriad and unique. It’s also not a diverse state; it’s actually less diverse than Malay, which is separated from. It’s just that Chinese dominate Singapore with a Malay minority, while Malay dominate Malay with a Chinese minority.
Well that’s simply a complete lie, or possibly a vivid delusion. You were not more free to choose want to say or who to associate with in 1950’s Britain, are you crazy? Alan Turing was tortured to death by the state for being gay, you could be arrested for publishing obscene works and routinely were, Blasphemy was still illegal…What are you talking about?
Also, there’s nothing authoritarian about opposing authoritarianism. Tolerance of intolerance is intolerance.
Or to put it another way, treating others as they would treat you is fully justified.
Eh, it’s pretty hard to distinguish increased rate of illness from increased rate of recognition and diagnosis of illness that was there all along. Or increased rate of medicalization and dubbing things as illness rather than simple individual variation.
That’s why I made sure to mention deaths of despair, as well. When we have people self-reporting feeling more miserable and mentally unwell, combined with increased of numbers drinking themselves to death, overdosing, or outright committing suicide, by far the simplest explanation is that people aren’t feeling as happy as they used to.
And even if there is a real increase in illness, is it from liberalism and freedom, or from industrialization and modes of work that aren’t hunter-gathering or farming, aka modernity in general?
The trends of which I speak have been observed from the mid-twentieth century on (not sure there’s really any way to get accurate mental health statistics from, say, the middle ages), over which period society didn’t become less farming- or hunter-gathering-oriented, but did become more liberal.
Also, changes need not be uniform. If liberalism makes women feel safer and happier, while many men feel more lonely, is that a bad thing on net?
Firstly, citation needed for the idea that women feel safer and happier, because all the statistics I’ve come across, as well as the overall tenor of discourse nowadays, rather suggests the opposite.
Secondly, as mentioned above, deaths of despair are up, which suggests that, at least on the metric of “Are people sufficiently minimally happy not to kill themselves?”, no, any benefits from liberalism don’t outweigh the disadvantages.
The alternative to letting other people decide what to do is not letting them decide what to do. The alternative to freedom is compulsion. The alternative to classical liberalism is authoritarianism.
And almost every political grouping is authoritarian. They all want to use the power of the state to get people to do something they approve of.
The only problem is that different groups all want people to do different – and in many cases mutually contradictory – things.
Classical liberalism isn’t some kind of invented utopia. It is a mutual disarmament treaty among people who hate each other.
(And in the United States, where all such groupings are subsumed into two differently coloured coalitions, one coalition has decided to renounce the treaty. In years to come we may get to see how that works out in a country with a large nuclear arsenal.)
Classical liberalism isn’t some kind of invented utopia. It is a mutual disarmament treaty among people who hate each other.
Most if not all successful liberal democracies have been countries with high levels of social trust. If your country is full of people who hate and want to kill each other, history suggests your best bet is an authoritarian autocracy of some description.
{blockquote}That’s why I made sure to mention deaths of despair, as well. When we have people self-reporting feeling more miserable and mentally unwell, combined with increased of numbers drinking themselves to death, overdosing, or outright committing suicide, by far the simplest explanation is that people aren’t feeling as happy as they used to.{/blockquote}
Counterpoint, no they aren’t. Suicide rates have decreased in every country since 1900, alcohol consumption is either constant or decreasing, and overdosing has solely increased since the opioid crisis, which A. Has a discrete medical cause, namely the increasing potency of opioids, and B. Has a discrete social cause, namely the malfeasance of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma generally.
Overall these assertions rely on a combination of damned lies and manipulations.
{blockquote}Firstly, citation needed for the idea that women feel safer and happier, because all the statistics I’ve come across, as well as the overall tenor of discourse nowadays, rather suggests the opposite.{/blockquote}
There’s not much data on feelings of safety pre 1960, but there are three points to be made.
(US data used, maybe Britain is a dystopian hell, but this’ll counter that it’s an issue with liberal democracy)
First, actual safety is more important by far than perception. As far as actual safety goes women are safer now than they have ever been. You need to perform some basic analysis, accounting for domestic violence not being consistently illegal prior to 1960, but once you do it’s clear that not only has crime been down since the 60’s, domestic assault has decreased massively.
Second, from what data I can find, perception of safety was actually lowest in the 80’s.
Three, people have said they think there’s been more crime than last year every year since 1989. Crime peaked in ’82. The majorities perception on crime has been empirically wrong since Pew started asking. Of course people have apparently felt more safe while thinking {em}more crime has been happening{/em}. They think crime is up… somewhere else. Across the country.
This is a {em}media problem{/em} caused by manipulative coverage with no consequences for fraud or lying. That’s arguably a liberal problem, but it’s not a safety one.
Counterpoint, no they aren’t. Suicide rates have decreased in every country since 1900, alcohol consumption is either constant or decreasing, and overdosing has solely increased since the opioid crisis, which A. Has a discrete medical cause, namely the increasing potency of opioids, and B. Has a discrete social cause, namely the malfeasance of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma generally.
That’s not what the sources I’ve seen suggest, e.g.,
“The new numbers also speak to the acute mental health crisis that’s run parallel to the pandemic: Deaths from drug overdoses reached over 106,000 last year — another major factor reducing life expectancy, according to the second CDC analysis released on Thursday.
Deaths by suicide and from liver disease, or cirrhosis, caused by alcohol also increased — shortening the average American life span.” https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/22/1144864971/american-life-expectancy-is-now-at-its-lowest-in-nearly-two-decades
First, actual safety is more important by far than perception. As far as actual safety goes women are safer now than they have ever been. You need to perform some basic analysis, accounting for domestic violence not being consistently illegal prior to 1960, but once you do it’s clear that not only has crime been down since the 60’s, domestic assault has decreased massively.
The comment I was responding to explicitly talked about women “feeling” safer, so that was what I replied to.
For one, those states have often devolved into internal violence, to the point where it is the default state. Liberalism is one of the primary things that ended this, along with industrialization.
In the long run, all states devolve into internal violence. But plenty of empires have lasted longer than, say, the US has.
For another, this is what I mean above-theocrats wouldn’t care about this, it isn’t a positive or negative to them. Liberal societies can fail to live up to their standards, but you’re assuming their standards are valid.
Firstly, who said anything about “theocrats”? I was talking about “states managing large, diverse societies”, most of which have not been theocracies in any meaningful sense of the term.
Secondly, this is a complete and bizarre reading of history. No, historical empires did not like internal violence! In fact, ending violence was often one of the main justifications they used for their rule, just like it’s one of the main justifications liberals use today. Go read the Aeneid if you don’t believe me; “The Roman Empire, and Augustus’ rule in particular, are good things because they bring peace to the world” is a major theme.
There’s a couple minor issues here, but the core one is that liberalism wasn’t hostile towards diversity because nationalism is a consequence of it’s value system, liberalism has been historically hostile to diversity because nationalism occurred simultaneously and states could either successfully tame it or oppress it, and oppression is illiberal.
Liberalism was hostile to diversity because of its belief in democracy. Under a monarchy, you can have all sorts of diverse customs, because the people are united by their common alliegance to a monarch; under a democracy, you need an at least somewhat coherent demos to rule, and that means stamping out competing loyalties and identities.
(This is, of course, why modern countries are so keen to outsource governmental functions to supranational entities like the UN or EU, or to appointed bureaucratic regulators. The more society becomes diverse, the less the electorate are trusted to vote on important issues.)
Liberalism has self determination as a core value. What other ideological philosophy would value that? Certainly not conservatism, theocracy, fascism…liberal nations may be failures at implementing it, but still.
Tying back neatly to the OP, towns and cities in feudal Europe put a very big importance on running themselves and resisting central encroachment on their traditional liberties. The Swiss canton system is the last survival of that.
Well that’s simply a complete lie, or possibly a vivid delusion. You were not more free to choose want to say or who to associate with in 1950’s Britain, are you crazy? Alan Turing was tortured to death by the state for being gay, you could be arrested for publishing obscene works and routinely were, Blasphemy was still illegal…What are you talking about?
Cool, now try starting a business and announcing that you’ll hire and serve whomever you want, Equalities Act be damned.
*sigh* I think my post is still understandable.
The sources you’re citing are from lockdown specifically. I admit there was a spike, but there’s an obvious confounding variable in that everyone was locked down.
People were noticing the trend before COVID came along.
Also Fentanyl specifically has been increasing in use, and is just outright more deadly without being different in use pattern.
The source I quoted also said that alcohol poisoning and suicide were up.
That’s basically a version of the anthropic fallacy. Of course liberal democracy hasn’t lasted as long as, say monarchy, it’s younger.
I never spoke about “monarchy” as an abstract governing principle, I spoke about specific monarchies. The Ottoman Empire, for example, lasted for almost three times as long as the US has managed. Will the US end up lasting longer than the Ottomans managed? Maybe. But until it does, I think it would be premature to declare that obviously the US Founding Fathers managed to hit upon the one true way of organising a diverse country.
Except this doesn’t follow my point. If an illiberal state can establish peace for the elites at the expense of horrific institutional violence and oppression it will do so, but we’d call that a dystopia if there was an alternative.
Firstly, you call other people conspiratorial, and then claim that the whole of human history before 1776 was rife with “horrific institutional violence and oppression”!
Secondly, as previous posts on this blog have shown, being caught up in a war was often extremely unpleasant for ordinary people. The pax Romana (pax Sinica, pax Persica, etc.) was absolutely beneficial to society as a whole, not just the elites.
Plus, Rome was unusually liberal for historical empires. That’s a broad statement, and subject to huge flaws, but it works.
Firstly, no, it doesn’t work. Calling any state “liberal” before the 18th century is hugely anachronistic, and betrays a lack of understanding of history, political philosophy, or both.
Secondly, Rome is only one example. You can find almost identical sentiments expressed by various Chinese dynasties, the Achaemenids, various Mesopotamian kings…
A. That’s not historical. Monarchies very, very often favor ethnic elites more than liberal democracies as a matter of historical record.
And yet, it was the liberal democracies of Europe that engaged in state-mandated programmes to quash local diversity, not the monarchies they replaced.
B. No you don’t. This is an unproven assertion and such a critical one I’m just going to reject it until you explain. Why is collective self interest and legal equality insufficient to create a consensus?
I’m not entirely clear what you’re asking. A consensus for what, exactly?
And that’s a conspiratorial and false view of government regulations and internationalism.
Meanwhile the British government is planning to make it mandatory for ministers to consult the Office for Budget Responsibility before announcing major new tax or spending bills.
Scalability. Also, city state democracies are the precedent for liberal democracies, this supports liberalism.
Firstly, liberal democracy derives more from (in practice) the English Parliament and common law, and (in theory) an imaginary state of nature that existed at some vague point in prehistory.
Secondly, even if city-state democracies were the precedent for liberal democracies, you still need several steps before you can declare that “this [whatever ‘this’ is meant to be] supports liberalism”.
Why the actual fuck would my desire to hire or serve who I please conflict with the equality act? And why do I have to tolerate someone elses racism, homophobia, or sectarianism to be free? If they’re bigoted it’s a fair bet they want to oppress me, them getting crushed under the boot of the government actually makes me more free.
“Some people want to use their freedom to do bad things, therefore we need to use government force to crush them.” Great, welcome to the authoritarian side.
People were noticing the trend before COVID came along.
The source I quoted also said that alcohol poisoning and suicide were up.
Source. Your first one handles one year, you’re stating there’s a general trend and that it predates that year.
Your source also doesn’t clarify that, so I need actual proof it predates COVID.
I never spoke about “monarchy” as an abstract governing principle, I spoke about specific monarchies. The Ottoman Empire, for example, lasted for almost three times as long as the US has managed. Will the US end up lasting longer than the Ottomans managed? Maybe. But until it does, I think it would be premature to declare that obviously the US Founding Fathers managed to hit upon the one true way of organising a diverse country.
For one you don’t get to later argue liberalism is new and also argue it’s unproven as both being reasons it’s not to be trusted; that’s idiocy.
For two, the world has changed.
Firstly, you call other people conspiratorial, and then claim that the whole of human history before 1776 was rife with “horrific institutional violence and oppression”!
No shit? You keep saying things that are self-evident like they’re weird, of course history is full of oppression and institutional violence.
Secondly, as previous posts on this blog have shown, being caught up in a war was often extremely unpleasant for ordinary people. The pax Romana (pax Sinica, pax Persica, etc.) was absolutely beneficial to society as a whole, not just the elites.
Firstly, no, it doesn’t work. Calling any state “liberal” before the 18th century is hugely anachronistic, and betrays a lack of understanding of history, political philosophy, or both.
Pick a lane. You can’t argue liberalism is too young to test and that nothing prior is useful for understanding liberalism. It’s hypocritical and reduces your point to “this is too new”! For something that’s 300 years old in conception.
To throw it back at you; modern monarchism has a tenuous at best link to historical empires. How can we say it’s stable when the current iteration of monarchy isn’t, say, three millenia old?
Also, it’s just not statistically true; Rome was at war more than you’re pretending, it was just low level conflict. Same with the other nations.
Secondly, Rome is only one example. You can find almost identical sentiments expressed by various Chinese dynasties, the Achaemenids, various Mesopotamian kings…
Re: above.
And yet, it was the liberal democracies of Europe that engaged in state-mandated programmes to quash local diversity, not the monarchies they replaced.
No, both did as a matter of historical record. This is simply a lie.
I’m not entirely clear what you’re asking. A consensus for what, exactly? Governance. You’re asserting you need a uniting identity for a democratic state. Why doesn’t legal identity suffice?
Meanwhile the British government is planning to make it mandatory for ministers to consult the Office for Budget Responsibility before announcing major new tax or spending bills.
Oh no, your politicians have to consult someone else before spending money, how horrible.
Sarcasm aside, this isn’t evidence of a conspiracy. It’s evidence they’re not idiots.
Firstly, liberal democracy derives more from (in practice) the English Parliament and common law, and (in theory) an imaginary state of nature that existed at some vague point in prehistory.
Secondly, even if city-state democracies were the precedent for liberal democracies, you still need several steps before you can declare that “this [whatever ‘this’ is meant to be] supports liberalism”.
City states precede parliament and are cited more than it by many liberal democracies. The format of democracies is also split between them. And Parliament is not immune to liberal influence in it’s formatting either.
This, in context, is your own point. Liberalism is the source of self-determination as a philosophy->city states were pro self determination->city states were proto liberalism.
There’s nothing wrong with this logic, but I understand if you missed it in the quote formatting.
“Some people want to use their freedom to do bad things, therefore we need to use government force to crush them.” Great, welcome to the authoritarian side.
Unironically yes, because that’s not authoritarian. Your position makes no allowance for the possibility that other people want to oppress you, or kill you. You are rejecting the role of the government to protect you from someone breaking into your home and dragging you off in chains.
Everyone agrees that there’s some line where the government must engage in use of force except absolutist anarchists, and they’re nutjobs.
Your actual statement is that this line should between castrating gay men until they kill themselves and telling bigots they can’t discriminate against people, on the side of castrating gay men being okay, which is incoherent because the first is more extreme than the second.
If you were arguing for a coherent line demarking the use of force that precluded both I’d disagree but concede it’s a real belief, but this is just nonsense.
Somehow it’s just failed to quote anything now. Joy.
Unironically yes, because that’s not authoritarian. Your position makes no allowance for the possibility that other people want to oppress you, or kill you. You are rejecting the role of the government to protect you from someone breaking into your home and dragging you off in chains.
I find it amusing that this subthread started with Russ talking about how freedom of association is such a sacred, inviolable right that it’s worth accepting society-wide isolation and alienation to preserve it, and has now ended with you ranting about how people who don’t want to associate with you are obviously trying to kill you and you’re entirely justified in using the full might of the state to crush them.
Again, if you want to take the principled stand that the state should have no authority to enforce hiring standards you can, but to be consistent you must be *horrified* by what the British government has done in the past. The current extent of state oversight is extraordinary limited compared to the past. It’s indefensible to assert otherwise.
That’s also not a fair assessment of my position. First, my statements on actual slavery aren’t in relation to the current law, but a defense of nuance. Two, denial of service isn’t an unimportant as association; denial of service includes medical, legal, charity, housing, banking and other essential services. Three, association is obviously not a valid way to frame hiring, which is a wee bit more socially and economically important than knowing someone.
Of course I still believe it matters regardless and support the law, because the bigotry you’re defending has historically been used as part of a system of oppression in the past. Jim crow laws aren’t some hypothetical, they existed and the “right” to discriminate was a key component. People weren’t *safe* until the entire system was broken down with force, as a matter of empirical fact.
You can assert it’s authoritarian all you want, but a black man in 1950’s Georgia would have a very different perspective on what a bank refusing service to him meant, and what the government forcing them to hear him represented. I’m fairly certain Britain has similar stories, but ours are at least evidence as to how essential such laws are.
w/ reg. the discussion between The original Mr. X and Dan:
I’m broadly in agreement with Dan.
To reuse our host’s words, liberalism says that the claim of *society* on the individual should be limited. That is a much broader and clearly distinct statement from saying that the claim of *the State* on the individual should be limited. Increasing the role of the State in society can be a liberal action if it is done to reduce the claim that *other, non-state actors in society* have on individuals.
Racism, sexism, and indeed all forms of discrimination, are society making a claim on people’s dignity and humanity. Legislation to free people from this claim, even if it expands the scope of the State, is a liberal action.
The state is a limited subsection of society. What society has no right to do, the state has no right to do.
@ Dan:
Of course I still believe it matters regardless and support the law, because the bigotry you’re defending has historically been used as part of a system of oppression in the past. Jim crow laws aren’t some hypothetical, they existed and the “right” to discriminate was a key component. People weren’t *safe* until the entire system was broken down with force, as a matter of empirical fact.
The Jim Crow Laws weren’t about a *right* to discriminate, they were about a *legally-mandated duty* to discriminate. They therefore aren’t a valid counter-argument against freedom of association — if anything, they’re an argument *for* freedom of association, since without them, black people would almost certainly have had more options about where to go and what businesses to use.
@ Russ:
To reuse our host’s words, liberalism says that the claim of *society* on the individual should be limited. That is a much broader and clearly distinct statement from saying that the claim of *the State* on the individual should be limited. Increasing the role of the State in society can be a liberal action if it is done to reduce the claim that *other, non-state actors in society* have on individuals.
False dichotomy; the state is part of society, not some separate alternative to it.
Racism, sexism, and indeed all forms of discrimination, are society making a claim on people’s dignity and humanity. Legislation to free people from this claim, even if it expands the scope of the State, is a liberal action.
So what is the principled reason for saying that it’s OK to use state power to force someone to associate with some categories of people they don’t want to (women, or men, or members of a certain race), but not with others (people who fail to convince others that they would be good companions, or who develop lifestyles that don’t involve hanging out in crowded places)? Do introverts and socially awkward people not have dignity and humanity too?
They were both, and they didn’t end until discrimination on the basis of race was made illegal by enforcement of the civil rights act. Like it or not you are manifestly defending a decade of Jim Crow.
Your view on the options black people would have had under “freedom of association” is also ahistorical for that reason. Mandated desegregation was being phased out in the mid 1950’s, it took until the late 1960’s for black people to have access to even the basic opportunities that white people had, and it took decades of civil rights enforcement for open discrimination to become even uncommon.
For an instance of how this worked, sundown towns (and racially motivated mortgage rates) weren’t illegal until 1968, and uneven sale of real estate to black people is *still* the primary source of the generational wealth gap between black and white families even today. This isn’t some hypothetical, “freedom of association” means minorities aren’t free, don’t have economic opportunities, and face significantly increased rates of violence and oppression, as a matter of empirical fact.
I also take it you’ve just completely abandoned defending the concept that your nostalgic vision of Britain is true? It’s not like this actually matters to the point at hand-society is certainly more free than it was in the past, and anti-discrimination laws aren’t more authoritarian than state mandated torture, even talking narrowly about Britain.
“False dichotomy; the state is part of society, not some separate alternative to it.”
You are enlightened? That’s precisely the point. Government oppression is not separate from other forms of oppression.
More basically this speaks to a cognitive failure you’ve displayed repeatedly, and which speaks to the intellectual failure of your idealogy; the state is not the only source of oppression. For one, the state isn’t even the only government people are subject to. If London legalizes slavery, and Parliament responds by disbanding the city government, that’s not authoritarian. The state increased its use of power and liberty increased too.
Likewise, if a company enslaves it’s workers, and Parliament decrees and enforces that this is illegal, oppression decreases.
Companies, local governments, provincial government, utopian communities, etc. down the line of all social organizations can oppress people. The violence of a representative government forcing them to stop is freeing, not oppressing.
Even individuals can oppress you. We call stopping them “law enforcement”.
Skepticism of actual specific incidents of government violence meant to protect you is rational. Denying that it’s warranted in theory isn’t.
@ Dan:
I ask you the same question I asked Russ: what is the principled reason for saying that it’s OK to use state power to force someone to associate with some categories of people they don’t want to (women, or men, or members of a certain race), but not with others (people who fail to convince others that they would be good companions, or who develop lifestyles that don’t involve hanging out in crowded places)? Do introverts and socially awkward people not have dignity and humanity too?
First, the question isn’t that useful to conveying anything. That isn’t a thing that is happening, so we have to construct a hypothetical. It’s not a thing that happened, so we can’t use history to fill in the gaps. We’re left with a question where every specific detail of it’s framing matters.
What do you mean associate? Is that providing business services? What about government services or public services the government has outsourced? Are you intentionally falsely conflating private interactions like dating and business interactions, or is that a mistake of wording? What precisely are the categories of people you’ve defined-socially awkward how?
Without precise definitions and clarifications the question cannot be answered fully. If I attempt it you could simply shift the definition to claim I’m saying something I’m not, something you’ve done already in this conversation.
It is also a leading question; you’re presuming there is a distinction, which is unclear with the flaws above. It’s also presuming id agree with forcing “association”, however you’ve defined it, in the first cases stated.
The part I can answer is that social awkwardness isn’t an inherent characteristic but a series of behaviors. People are men, women, transgender, black, white, gay, straight…those are characteristics that are either immutable or deeply personal expressions of self identity. Socially awkward behavior isn’t, it’s a thing a person does. You can’t really walk into a room and be turned away for being socially awkward, that’s not something the person denying service could know.
This isn’t an answer, because that doesn’t mean forced or unforced “association” are just by itself, as that term remains useless without clarification, but that is a concrete and real difference.
First, the question isn’t that useful to conveying anything. That isn’t a thing that is happening, so we have to construct a hypothetical. It’s not a thing that happened, so we can’t use history to fill in the gaps. We’re left with a question where every specific detail of it’s framing matters.
Anti-discrimination laws have been a feature of western legal systems for over fifty years now, so no, this isn’t a hypothetical.
What do you mean associate? Is that providing business services? What about government services or public services the government has outsourced? Are you intentionally falsely conflating private interactions like dating and business interactions, or is that a mistake of wording?
I have yet to encounter a clear distinction between “public” and “private” activities, beyond “If we want to regulate anything, we’ll call it ‘public’, so we can regulate it whilst still claiming to respect people’s freedom.”
The part I can answer is that social awkwardness isn’t an inherent characteristic but a series of behaviors. People are men, women, transgender, black, white, gay, straight…those are characteristics that are either immutable or deeply personal expressions of self identity. Socially awkward behavior isn’t, it’s a thing a person does.
Being socially awkward is normally a mixture of inborn propensities and upbringing, just like being gay or being transgender is. Maybe it’s not “deeply personal”, whatever that’s supposed to mean, but somebody on the autism spectrum certainly doesn’t choose to be awkward when interacting with other people.
Anti-discrimination laws have been a feature of western legal systems for over fifty years now, so no, this isn’t a hypothetical.
To quote you:
Yes, and pretending not to understand a claim is often a way of passive-aggressively disagreeing with it.
I’m not talking about anti-discrimination laws in general, I’m talking about discriminating against people for being socially awkward. Obviously. You’re trying to conflate a real thing that is happening with a hypothetical. You can *construct* a hypothetical, but you need to actually define the terms of it much better for it to be meaningful.
Being socially awkward is normally a mixture of inborn propensities and upbringing, just like being gay or being transgender is. Maybe it’s not “deeply personal”, whatever that’s supposed to mean, but somebody on the autism spectrum certainly doesn’t choose to be awkward when interacting with other people.
Exhibit A. Autism, a medical condition, is different from merely being socially awkward.
Which is why I’m very close to calling you several flavors of lying bastard and declaring victory. You’re not engaging honestly here, refusing to clarify and then using the fact you didn’t clarify to freely change the parameters of your hypothetical. Which I said you’d do.
I have yet to encounter a clear distinction between “public” and “private” activities, beyond “If we want to regulate anything, we’ll call it ‘public’, so we can regulate it whilst still claiming to respect people’s freedom.
Okay, so the reason you can’t clarify *that* point is that you’re ignorant, stupid, or crazy. I can help with the first.
Public activities means “engaging with the people on the whole”. But to define that we first need to engage with the concept that gives rises to it, the concept of the public and private space.
The concept of public spaces and public forums is a core component of society from at least the time of early Grecian civilization, and probably earlier; the earliest archeological settlements seem to have this distinction. Within modern contexts this is typically defined as a space which is set aside by either the government of businesses for the general public-a very good rule of thumb is that if you don’t need to be invited because the invitation is strongly presumed (or stated; “Open” signs) it’s a public place.
A private space, by contrast, is simply one which is not public. That’s not very useful, so to clarify what it’s not: It is not “owned by a private individual or business”, although most are, because many businesses choose to be open to the public. Those businesses choose to be public spaces. A private space is simply a space set aside for a subset of the population. Most types of spaces *can* be private spaces, although we’ve made certain decisions as a society that places like hospitals cannot discriminate in offering emergency care. Typically, a private space cannot advertise that it’s “open”, because by implication it’s a public space if it does.
There’s some grey area where people can be removed from public storefronts or other public spaces if they are violating certain rules or laws, and where certain parts of a public facing institution can be closed to the public (like private offices) but the exceptions aren’t actually relevant at this stage of the discussion. There are also some grey areas with virtual spaces and free speech that are *incredibly* not relevant to this discussion.
Within the context of this discussion, a private space might be a members only club, or a persons home. A public space might be a storefront, a library, or a theatre.
I am thus using private activities versus public activities (or business activities) to clarify the activities of individuals, in contrast to their activities within and in service of a business or organization operating a public space.
Because you’ve failed to define “association” it’s unclear if you’re trying to construct a hypothetical where people’s private time and spaces are made open to others. That’s definitionally not relevant to the laws that currently exist, but you’re making shit up so who knows what you’re saying.
Does this enlighten you? It’s rather astounding you didn’t know this, given that it’s foundational to every modernized society and every historical society with writing that *I* know of, including the ones that are the primary focus of this blog. Have you been completely perplexed this entire time?
Autism, a medical condition, is different from merely being socially awkward.
On the contrary, I have heard from autistic people that if you actually want to support them, you shouldn’t have to require them to give you their diagnosis before you stop treating them badly. They openly stated that this would require treating many oddly behaving people well even if they aren’t actually autistic, and if you minded, well you shouldn’t require a reason to not treat people badly.
They would know better than you.
@ Dan:
Formatting is your friend, you know.
I’m not talking about anti-discrimination laws in general, I’m talking about discriminating against people for being socially awkward. Obviously. You’re trying to conflate a real thing that is happening with a hypothetical. You can *construct* a hypothetical, but you need to actually define the terms of it much better for it to be meaningful.
Firstly, maybe you should have made it clear what exactly you were talking about, instead of messing around playing the pronoun game.
Secondly, if you, say, go to a job interview and don’t make eye contact with the interviewer, that’s going to be considered a black mark against you.
Thirdly, the whole of society is arranged such that it supports a certain kind of facile, changeable, shallow existence. At the age of 18, it’s expected that you’ll uproot from your home town and go to university, then uproot again three or four years later to go somewhere else for work, then uproot again a few years later to find work somewhere else, and so on. Now, some people — the sort who love novelty, who like constantly making new friends, who get to know people quickly, who don’t get too attached to particular people and places — are fine with this. Others aren’t, and are, to coin a phrase, structurally discriminated against by the way we’ve set up society. We tell them to suck it up because that’s the price of freedom of association (ignoring that it isn’t just a matter of people spontaneously choosing whom to associate with, but also in large part the result of deliberate policy choices, laws, media projects, etc.), and if they feel bad that social and economic forces beyond their control prevent them from having a stable life, well, hard cheese, freedom requires you to be miserable, you don’t have a right to anyone else’s friendship, etc. Of course, this pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps attitude isn’t applied universally; if members of a more favoured group report feeling unhappy, we must all move heaven and earth to give them what they want.
Exhibit A. Autism, a medical condition, is different from merely being socially awkward.
Being on the midler end of the autism spectrum tends to manifest as socially-awkward behaviour.
The concept of public spaces and public forums is a core component of society from at least the time of early Grecian civilization, and probably earlier; the earliest archeological settlements seem to have this distinction.
The earliest archaeological settlements have public and private spaces, yes, but this doesn’t mean they had the modern public vs. private dichotomy.
A private space is simply a space set aside for a subset of the population. Most types of spaces *can* be private spaces, although we’ve made certain decisions as a society that places like hospitals cannot discriminate in offering emergency care.
“Most types of spaces can be private spaces” is a dubious statement. For example, if I wanted to start a hotel that only accommodated heterosexual married couples, I wouldn’t be allowed to. Even though “heterosexual married couples” is a subset of the population, and therefore my hotel, being set aside for them, would be a private space under your definition, the law would pronounce it a public space anyway and force me to accept other types of guests. Same for most other businesses. As I said above, when governments want to regulate something, they declare it a public space to give themselves the authority to do so.
I am truly confused by the formatting now, as I know its registered that I’m putting it in because there aren’t sections of text showing the unformatted text there, yet it’s still showing them. I’ll hedge my bets I guess.
The issue is with what your definitions are, not with what my responses are. It’s not possible for me to be clear because I’m answering an unclear question. I explained that *in my answer while giving it*, which is why I am so unamused by this.
(skipped until later)
Okay, this is something of an explanation.
I’ll…Choose to ignore that this sounds like a personal rant. I can assume this is your lived experience, or the lived experience of someone close, but it’s not relevant to this-I suspect you’d just get defensive and deny it if I was right anyway.
The basic answer is that this person does deserve some sympathy, in that you’re right-policy choices have hurt them.
This does not mean that they either deserve, need, or could be helped by the state saying they can’t be discriminated against. That’s not the source of their problems, so within the context of the conversation, it has no relevance to the proposed solution. They aren’t being hurt by discrimination, but by a lack of preparedness or capability to handle society.
The basic cause of their problems is that they are a damaged, flawed person who has been failed at a developmental level, but who, in their current state, is a boiling bog of grievance that’s incapable of fixing themselves. They need to fix *that*, and the way to do that is to get them therapy and psychological care. Society can help with that, but forcing people to “associate” with them (still poorly defined) won’t help.
In a very real sense the reason they don’t get the same consideration is that they don’t need it. It wouldn’t help them. The issues they’re facing and the forces that made society this way are bigger. I’d go to blaming capitalism and the economic forces pushing the atomization of society, but we’re too personal to really say.
And to stop ignoring that this sounds like a personal grievance filled rant for just a second-if you think minorities are a more favored group you have no understanding of society or the lived experiences of others.
Minorities aren’t unserved by society because of a lack of abilities, tools, or characteristics society thinks they should have and is unsympathetic to them lacking, they’re unserved by society because bigoted people hate them and want them to suffer and manipulative elites want to scapegoat them to distract bigots from social problems.
With a medical cause. That matters, because there are concrete strategies to help them or make society friendlier to them.
And to address Mary’s point: Yes, it would be great if people could get targeted help without a diagnosis, but that’s oxymoronic. It’s not obvious that this is what’s being asked by them here, but it is-if they want society to react to their condition in a specific way, then society needs to know that their condition exists. Choosing to not advertise their condition is a choice, and I support them, but they can’t expect a reaction from society specifically.
To backtrack-
On the other hand some things can be done to reorder society in general, like trying to make hiring more objective. That would make also things easier for Autistic people because there’s no reason their diagnosis should matter for most jobs, despite that it does.
There’s some evidence they did; for one, there are doors and entryways where they don’t serve an objective purpose like ventilation, suggesting a formal separation of spaces. That’s part of what makes it a dichotomy. If there were just interiors of buildings and streets then you’d be right, but we see an intentional effort to separate out spaces so there really is something more going on here.
Or maybe I’m wrong and there’s a material use for all those doorways and you’re right. It’s archeology, we’re shooting in the dark.
Does the hotel advertise publicly and can anyone enter or call the hotel to book a room? Then it’s not a private space.
Part of the price of being public facing is that *you’re public facing*. On the other hand not all economic activity is such-there are plenty of places that can be formally described as private hotels for heterosexual married couples, including, not to get racy, the homes of friends engaging in certain lifestyles. They don’t put up signs that advertise vacancy.
Being a publicly advertised business has implications, and amongst those is that you’re governed by laws about how you can interact with the public. If you don’t do that then you aren’t subject the those laws. Profit seeking enterprises as an institution long ago made the decision to accept this trade off because the potential profits are so much greater. They don’t and didn’t need to, but they did.
Also, the law has definitions on what is an isn’t a private space, and this is only partially because the government wants to regulate them (which might be true, but isn’t relevant). It’s also necessary for other legal processes, and contract law, and simply because it’s a historical definition that has meaning because it’s used.
“The basic cause of their problems is that they are a damaged, flawed person who has been failed at a developmental level, but who, in their current state, is a boiling bog of grievance that’s incapable of fixing themselves. ”
Except that everyone knows of people who fit that exact description whom you WOULD insist merit protection.
@ Dan:
The basic cause of their problems is that they are a damaged, flawed person who has been failed at a developmental level, but who, in their current state, is a boiling bog of grievance that’s incapable of fixing themselves. They need to fix *that*, and the way to do that is to get them therapy and psychological care. Society can help with that, but forcing people to “associate” with them (still poorly defined) won’t help.
Firstly, humans have lived in close, personal communities for virtually all our developmental history, so it’s no wonder we’d be hardwired to thrive best in that environment. Modern anonymous living is, in evolutionary terms, a very unnatural state of affairs. If you take an animal — and humans are, after all, a kind of animal — out of the type of environment it evolved for and put it into a completely different one, then of course many of those animals will fail to thrive. The flaw doesn’t lie in the animals, it lies in the people who put them in that environment in the first place.
Secondly, the number of “damanged, flawed people who have been failed at a developmental level” is apparently very high:
“If you feel lonely, you’re actually in good company: Nearly 1 in 4 adults across the world have reported feeling very or fairly lonely, a new Meta-Gallup survey has found.
The new survey, taken across 142 countries, found 24% of people age 15 and older self-reported feeling very or fairly lonely in response to the question, “How lonely do you feel?”
The survey also found that the rates of loneliness were highest in young adults, with 27% of young adults ages 19 to 29 reporting feeling very or fairly lonely. The lowest rates were found in older adults. Only 17% of people age 65 and older reported feeling lonely.
Over half of adults age 45 and older reported not feeling lonely at all, while the majority of those younger than 45 answered that they felt at least a little lonely, if not very or fairly lonely.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/24/health/lonely-adults-gallup-poll-wellness/index.html
If liberal societies really are turning out 1/4 of their members as “boiling bogs of grievances who are incapable of fixing themselves”, then that seems like a pretty damning indictment of liberalism’s ability to maintain a functioning society, all things considered.
Thirdly, this whole attitude of declaring anyone who doesn’t like your preferred model of society mentally ill is one I find deeply sinister.
There’s some evidence they did; for one, there are doors and entryways where they don’t serve an objective purpose like ventilation, suggesting a formal separation of spaces. That’s part of what makes it a dichotomy. If there were just interiors of buildings and streets then you’d be right, but we see an intentional effort to separate out spaces so there really is something more going on here.
Just because they had separate private spaces, it doesn’t follow that they conceived of the public-private distinction in the same way modern liberalism does. In particular, many of the things modern liberals consider private (such as whom you sleep with, or how you choose to spend your own money) were frequently regulated by custom or even by law.
Mary, they merit protection from discrimination for reasons other than their flaws, including that they’re discriminated against. Their flaws need to be helped, but protecting them from discrimination on account of something they aren’t being discriminated on is completely incoherent. These laws don’t prevent, as an example of real behavior that would result in expulsion, someone who is screaming hysterically while stripping from being thrown out of a business, even if they’re black. They prevent black people from being turned away for being black.
Mr x. Humans are adaptive animals, humans incapable of adapting to modern society aren’t functioning correctly. That’s reductive, yes, but the ways people aren’t functioning that are hurting them in material ways that could even *possibly* get them treated poorly against aren’t merely evolutionary maladaptive behavior.
It’s possible that society is producing people whom are non evolutionarily maladapted through it’s developmental systems, and that’s excellent reason to look at those systems, but once they are out of childhood and independently responsible it has to be dealt with as a part of them. This means that, yes, an adult who can’t exist in public spaces might have trouble finding a job, but forcing people to hire them isn’t going to *fix* that.
It’s not sinister to say that people whom are incapable of adapting to society need help from experts trained to help them improve as human beings. You’re the one claiming there is a scourge of mental pathology that invalidates our social order, if I want that diagnosed and treated I’m not the bad guy.
More generally, and this shows up every time you zoom out from the individual points here, there’s no connection between your point and thesis. Your logic basically goes as such; 1. People are lonely, 2. Society is failing them, 3. We should make society less liberal.
The connection between 2 and 3 is completely absent. You’ve never sufficiently explained why loneliness is the fault of liberal policies and never attempted to explain why making society less liberal would help, or provided a vision of a modern, illiberal society that lacks these flaws. From my position it’s obvious your weakly defined illiberal society would have *more* problems with these issues, because you’re not correctly identifying their causes and hence are just as likely to make them worse as accomplish nothing with your solutions.
This is the sort of reasoning that shows up when you underwrite the final line, liberalism is bad, then try to find reasons. Just because society is liberal doesn’t mean it’s flaws are because it’s liberal, nor would not being liberal fix them. Society is many things, including global, capitalistic, statist, religious, racist, militant, etc., that are unrelated to liberalism or tenuously related at best. When you force lines back to liberalism you miss the possibility that there’s just no relationship and you’re very real problem has a meaningless or counterproductive solution.
First come up with a definition of “discrimination” as used in that sentence. One that applies only in the cases you argue for.
“Just because they had separate private spaces, it doesn’t follow that they conceived of the public-private distinction in the same way modern liberalism does. In particular, many of the things modern liberals consider private (such as whom you sleep with, or how you choose to spend your own money) were frequently regulated by custom or even by law.”
To address this specifically, they obviously have different distinctions even if they had them. For instance in some of these settlements *roofs* are public, and acted as another street level; I imagine this meant many forms of conversation were audible to outsiders and privacy was largely an illusion. Still, private spaces likely existed.
The conception of modern private rights is influenced by the concept of human rights which in turn is based on the ideas of rationalism.
There’s good reasons why these rights have been separated out specifically, based on either historical abuse or pretty sound logic running from first principles such as “other humans are capable of thought and reason”, but these were explicitly fought for because the alternative is horrifying to the sensibilities.
“First come up with a definition of “discrimination” as used in that sentence. One that applies only in the cases you argue for.”
No, go read the laws or a law textbook if you’re really curious, it’s all comprehensively explained there.
The laws don’t agree with each other. Which one are you using in your argument?
You’re late to this conversation where the topic was specifically framed and I know you don’t engage in debate or discussion honestly. I’m not spending time on this with you.
One notes that the very laws you cite will also prevent the expropriation of wealth that you demand. Citing them is therefore the instance of bad faith in this thread.
And the “fascist rhetoric” that you so deplore.
Okay boomer. Go back to reading tabloids and falling for blatant hoaxes please.
And you can’t even get my age right. This casts still more doubt on your ability to remold society as you wish, when you flub the basics.
Okay child.
And again.
In particular, laws that define it in terms of groups can hardly be used as a defense of limiting it to those groups. Otherwise, you would have to flipflop to saying that discriminating by race is fine, but not by social awkwardness, if the law changed.
@ Dan:
It’s not sinister to say that people whom are incapable of adapting to society need help from experts trained to help them improve as human beings.
You’re exactly the sort of person who’d support sending dissidents to psychiatric hospitals in the Soviet Union, aren’t you?
More generally, and this shows up every time you zoom out from the individual points here, there’s no connection between your point and thesis. Your logic basically goes as such; 1. People are lonely, 2. Society is failing them, 3. We should make society less liberal.
The connection between 2 and 3 is completely absent. You’ve never sufficiently explained why loneliness is the fault of liberal policies and never attempted to explain why making society less liberal would help, or provided a vision of a modern, illiberal society that lacks these flaws.
Russ Kaunelainen has an extended explanation of the link, if you don’t understand it I suggest you go and read his post again.
You’re exactly the sort of person who’d support sending dissidents to psychiatric hospitals in the Soviet Union, aren’t you?
…I hated the soviet union, what the actual holy fuck are you talking about? The leap from “I want people to get treatment” to “You want people to be involuntarily incarcerated by the state” is sheer madness. It suggests a view of reality devoid of all distinction between extremes.
Like-If I were an ass, I could be making accusations that you support literally arranging for women to be raped so men feel socially comfortable. That’s a *real position* on the right, that forced marriage is the way to deal with social isolation. It’s far less of a leap than you just made to link your own statements to that.
Surely you understand that if that accusation on my part is simply a gross smear that your own statement is as well?
Russ Kaunelainen has an extended explanation of the link, if you don’t understand it I suggest you go and read his post again.
You don’t agree with his points basically anywhere, so I assumed you were ignoring him.
If I’m arguing against his link, the basic answer to that is this-he’s asserting a lot of things about how pre-liberal communities had more control over people, which is true, and then saying that this means those communities can be strengthened by illiberal policies to force people to cohere more. He then states he doesn’t agree with this because freedom is better than collectivization, but I’m uninterested in that.
The problem is that’s not a given. That assertion does not, in fact, make any sense, because there’s no clear way a society without liberal values would empower communities, nor is it clear that his thesis that liberalism represents the erosion of community ownership over people is true, as it’s not clear liberalism is actually responsible for that. Pre-liberal communities had more command of peoples time-but pre-liberal communities were different from ours in dozens of ways.
The best example of why it almost *can’t* be liberalism is that illiberal countries *have the same problem*. China is an illiberal country, and it has incredibly high, even shockingly high, loneliness rates. India, another country that frequently gets called an illiberal or flawed democracy, has a loneliness epidemic. *Every modern economy* has a loneliness epidemic. Liberalism *has nothing to do with loneliness*. If anything, these examples suggest authoritarianism, or illiberalism, does-the rates I’m seeing online appear to be higher than in liberal economies.
This isn’t a new conclusion. Hannah Arendt in Origins of Totalitarianism points out that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union preyed on the loneliness and alienation of the population. Hell, the Nazi’s operated what were effectively state breeding facilities in the Lebensborn, because the modern far-right are just Nazis and their policies are just Nazi policies-it all rhymes.
But they also encouraged the isolation and loneliness of the population, not opposed it-it was *useful* to them for the people to feel unmoored. They manipulated society to make people miserable so they could manipulate that misery. Because of course they would, without liberty you have no power to oppose that abuse.
Illiberalism doesn’t offer a real escape. Authoritarians will tell you liberalism is causing isolation and they can fix it, but it’s an obvious lie because they’ve never actually delivered on the alternative.
This isn’t a liberalism thing. It’s a modern world thing.
Why that is requires scientific analysis that I am not an expert in (and I doubt anyone here is), but to summarize my own thoughts…
We’ve made engaging with others a commercial enterprise, and allowed the commodification of systems which were freely engaged in, in the past. It’s not that people are free to make choices and that therefore they can choose isolation, it’s that they have to pay to make these choices and thus poor people-*who are more lonely statistically*-are unable to actually exercise real freedom.
Jointly, because modern societies don’t focus on walking distance communities people aren’t forced to interact because of physical association, nor do they have to work with people all day long in many fields. We commute using cars, seeing lots of people-and more people also exist in concentration-that we don’t know. This means people spend more time seeing strangers, and working in isolation while knowing other people are nearby.
To bring this together, I suspect feeling lonely is actually a product of not feeling connected to people you engage with or see, *not* merely not engaging with people or not seeing them. Loneliness isn’t simply “I have no friends”, it’s “I *should* have friends, and don’t.”
We see a lot of people, know there are opportunities to meet people, and yet are surrounded by a constant buzz of strangers, which is *worse* than being truly isolated. We’re pushed to not reach out by the financial price of doing so, and our ability to see the signs of success and engagement while knowing we lack those signs is isolating. We spend hours each day doing nothing but driving, alone, to our workplaces, where we will work alone.
The internet obviously doesn’t help.
None of that would be fixed by removing liberalism. *Capitalism* is causing it. *City Design* is causing it. *Office Culture* causes it. *Industrial Economies* cause it. Authoritarian countries have those systems as well. Of those, only Capitalism is even related to Liberalism-and it’s not clear at all that your proposed illiberal society would eliminate Capitalism.
If I’m right it’s much more likely that you make things worse by not solving the root cause. If I’m not right I’m still confident that you’ve misidentified the cause, so if your vision of society is implemented it’ll also likely make things worse.
I see y’all had a long and fruitful discussion over the weekend.
If the State forces a banker to provide loans on equal terms to customers of all ethnicities, which was one of the examples raised above, that is of course an infringement on the banker’s freedom. I don’t deny that. But to be denied the financial services which one needs to maintain a dignified life in a capitalist society due to the circumstances of their birth is an infringement on the minority’s freedom – and in my opinion the relatively greater infringement.
So, to reiterate my earlier point, I do not tend to interpret liberalism as meaning minimising the *State’s* repression of individual freedoms, but rather as minimising the repressiveness of *society in general* on individual freedoms – and the State is but one element, albeit an important element, of society (Dan interpreted my earlier statement here correctly; that is indeed what I meant). The end object of liberalism is not anarchy, but allowing *individual human beings* to live their own human lives as unconstrained as possible by the opinions of other people.
It is not as simple as saying that the exercise of State power is always or is never a liberal action. The many possible oppressions that the many different actors of society can place on an individual must be weighted against each other.
*How* do you weigh them against each other, how do you quantify such a subjective and inherently qualitative matter? Good question. That’s why liberalism is such a broad ideology with so many competing sub-branches. ;p
Except of course that the question is how to prove it was the ethnicities. As Thomas Sowell has clearly shown, different ethnic groups tend to have different cultures, which may tend to make them better or worse credit risks.
When the State presumes it’s the ethnicity, credit markets get thrown seriously out of whack, to the harm of everyone including the people who receive loans they would not have received otherwise.
Thomas Sowell’s writings couldn’t prove that the earth is made of earth, Mary. His central thesis is nonsense; if it’s a “cultural” difference responsible for all economic disparity (which, to be clear, is what Sowell has always grifted) then why do the same deracinated peoples show different success rates in different countries and even regions of the same country? If the unique national or regional expressions of a culture are responsible, then why did they develop differently in such a relatively short time?
You end up coming back to the historical bigotry against that “culture” as the only cause, either by creating those distinctive regional cultures or because it’s also more or less widespread across a region. And to be clear, culture means race here, because race is the basis of bigotry and there isn’t a monolithic black culture to begin with.
It’s also just, you know, unempirical, which is deeply ironic considered that this is his primary complaint against critical theory, whatever he understands that to be. Yes, let’s throw out these clear and documented historical examples of bigotry that have made black people poorer with weaker credit ratings, yes let’s ignore the clear examples of modern bigotry that show this is a modern phenomenon, yes let’s ignore the bigoted conservative policies that have *created* the cultural distinctions he’s so eager to rely on, and instead pontificate broadly about the role of leftist government intervention and black culture.
Don’t rely on your One Black Source Mary. He’s not respected in black communities because he’s wrong on a level so deep it’s astounding white people keep falling for it. You might as well have cited a random white dude arguing black people are genetically inferior, it’d be about as compelling.
“Deracinated” begs the question.
Then, considering that you are lying about what I said in this very thread, and racist about Dr. Sowell, that’s unsurprising.
No, Mary, you’re just subliterate. Point proven, moving on.
And off to ad hominem, again.
Mary, I don’t like you because you’re a fascistic liar, but you’re wrong for reasons that are different than me not liking you. In this case, you just don’t understand what words mean, or are intentionally misusing them.
And again.
I just want to say that I think your observation that alienation is an inevitable risk of liberalism (and that this isn’t a bad thing, because the other benefits we get from it far outweigh that negative).
One could hypothesise that the folks who are staunchly anti-liberal on a ‘death of the community’ grounds are those who are not very good at the whole game of getting people to like you and perhaps prefer to blame the system than engage in honest self-reflection. For them, it genuinely is a bad thing that people aren’t forced to engage with them.
Note that I don’t necessarily think this thought pattern is restricted just to people who are catastrophically bad at social interaction, but also all the way up to people who are actually fairly good but end up comparing themselves to people who are more successful at it.
Also note that I said it was an inevitable riskwithin liberalism, and not mutually exclusive with preserving the benefits we gain through it. Is it harder to solve than it would have been otherwise? Possibly (we need to weigh up the vastly increased capacity to tackle issues that comes from having a well-functioning liberal democratic economy). Is it so hard of a problem to solve that we need to scrap the whole way society functions? Hell no.
One important clarifying point is that it’s possible to have liberal values and not a liberal economy. The thing is, the alienation that is being cited is partially a result of certain types of people being deeply unpleasant, but also because of how capitalist economies function.
Capitalists have no use for horizontal social ties except as they can monetize them or offload costs to them, and the vertical social ties of society are actively harmful to the goal of replacing personal interaction with impersonal monetary transaction.
This naturally means that capitalist economies will alienate people, something that can be easily seen in what aspects of society are alienating-modern society is increasingly monetized and leveraged in terms of dating, home design, food preparation, grocery shopping, etc., and those are some of the main sterilized interactions that make people feel isolated.
This isn’t a product of liberal values, in fact the cause is incompatible with them too. Bret locked the comments to his rant on liberalism, but what Bret fails to realize is that equality and freedom aren’t in tension, they are absolutely required for each other. If you believe they are in tension you are just willing to sacrifice one for the other-one “wins out”-and in any situation where this seems to be called for sacrificing one just means sacrificing both.
The inconsistency in liberal democracies, the core failing, is capitalism, because capitalism makes us less equal, and being less equal makes us less free.
w/ resp. Ynneadwraith’s response:
Certainly, we can and should seek to alleviate the damage that alienation does to our civic institutions and to the happiness of the alienated people themselves, but I don’t think alienation itself is a solvable problem within the framework of liberalism.
Rather, I think we should find a way *through*, with *more* liberalism, rather than trying to put the gear into reverse. Provide people with *more* security by punting *more* aspects of life away from shared spaces into the personal space of individual conscience.
A person who can be secure and confident in their own human dignity even when alone is a person who will bring a healthy attitude to shared spaces when not alone.
w/ resp. dcmorinmorinmorin:
I… disagree.
Like I said above, my take on liberalism is that it achieves peace by taking the important parts of life out of shared spaces that might be fought over.
From that perspective, it is certainly undesirable that people’s livelihood be dependent on the market. That much I agree with; what liberty is had by a person who is hungry and cannot find a job?
But that’s not the fault of *capitalism* per se, only certain forms of it. It’s perfectly possible to have capitalism and free markets while still insulating human dignity from it. See: social democracy, welfare systems.
Leaving all of that aside, from a broader perspective thinking about human freedom in general rather than liberalism in particular, prosperity has a freeing effect on people. Market economies are good at delivering that.
Let’s try this again!
I think you’re conflating market economies with capitalism, which is normal given that A. The ruling class has spent a hundred and fifty years pushing that narrative, and B. Most market economies are capitalistic.
Social democracies and their welfare systems work by removing certain aspects of the economy from the market. Broadly, these are the necessities; food, housing, security, often electricity, transit, and some others, sometimes while instituting some broad basic public redistribution of wealth. This is done through the democratic state, rather than redistribution of productive wealth directly.
This corresponds well to the Marxist concept of the Means of Production, but emphasizes those means that create living standards versus those that create wealth. These are largely the same, but not perfectly so.
The great flaw here is that social democracies are vulnerable to the same hierarchical media control, wealth concentration, and public-private collaboration/conspiracy that threatens purely capitalistic economies too.
This can be seen most clearly in the fact that most social democracies are dealing with a similar rise in the far right at the moment.
Most of them went through a period of austerity at some point between 1970-1980, and almost all of them went through severe austerity and privatization from 2008~2015.
The result has been a contraction in the public welfare and privitization of services resulting in inequality. Inequality driven grievance has been targeted towards the establishment by far right propaganda. This feedback between destructive policies made by the right and manipulations of the media enabled by these policies has led to openly fascistic parties, which promise to remove immigrants and thereby magically fix everything.
They will, of course, fail, but they’ll increase their media and education control and break more things. Either they manage to kill democracy or just create enough strife that their funders can basically loot the economy.
This is basically a microcosm of the central flaw in capitalism. Social democracy fails to correct for it because the government is subject to redirection and thus misdirection, and because the popular welfare and public ownership projects are good for living standards but not for reducing the economic control of the elite.
These are *correctable* flaws, but that correction requires being willing to lean into a more modern Marxist understanding of how societies function. Perhaps a rebranding of the “means of production” to the “means of control” is in order.
w/ resp. Dan’s point:
It’s a valid critique, yes, but at the same time we shouldn’t let the idea of perfect be an enemy of the good.
Capitalism has its faults and modern social democracies only do an imperfect job of restraining its inhuman impulses, yes. I agree. They have also been unstable because of their vulnerability to state capture by economic elites, that is also true. But what’s the *alternative*?
Communal property? See my above point w/ reg. the tremendous oppression generated by communities. Planned economies? How’d that work out for the Communists in Eastern Europe? Traditional manorialism? Ahahahaha.
If it wasn’t obvious already, I’m a leftist. I hate capitalism and I’m offended by inequality. But there’s just no denying that compared to all the other alternatives out there, capitalism, suitably moderated, is the single best economic system currently on the table in terms of both enshrining the values of liberalism and promoting human freedom more broadly.
The quality of life is hard to measure. But as far as the *standard* of living is concerned, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the exact same set of a half-dozen or so countries top most of the relevant ranking tables and they’re all progressive, capitalist democracies of one stripe or another.
Communal Property, yes. I think your thesis about the oppression of communities is massively overblown. It’s not strictly wrong, but the level of oppression generated isn’t comparable to elite capture. I just don’t see unions, co-ops, local governments, or communes as inevitable sources of oppression, and those are the owners of communal property I’m talking about. There are bad ones (of each type), primarily because of a cultish association, but it’s still largely propaganda.
The other alternative is to gradually reform the state, but part of this is going to be an acknowledgement that elites are just the enemy, outright. If you’re going to have a market economy with broad trade in goods you can’t have commodification of goods which are used to compel or control people. Decommodifying those goods is going to involve massive redistribution, nationalization, and/or obviation of the wealth of elites, which is only going to be accomplished through compulsion, the threatened or actual use of force.
It’s best that this compulsion be done legally, with the backing of law, government, and democracy, because then they won’t dare *fight back*, but it’ll still be compulsion.
It’s just that the alternative is a fascist dystopia. Capitalism has no brakes here and we can’t keep fighting the same war every 60 years, we’ll eventually *lose* and then we (almost) all either die in nuclear fire or suffer a complete social collapse and starve.
I truly believe fascism is just that destructive and that it’s that inevitable as a result of capitalistic economic conditions, in no small part because socialists have been saying that for a hundred years and they keep being right.
Planned economies? How’d that work out for the Communists in Eastern Europe?
Ask the Hungarians- more than half of them think their country was better off in the days of the planned economy. (It was 70% in 2010, right after the Great Recession discredited capitalism, it’s lower today but still under 50%).
Two caveats you could raise are:
1) the Hungarian economy was not fully planned and had semi-market pricing in many sectors, which is one reason they didn’t have the shortages other planned economies did. This is correct, but then I don’t think a fully planned economy is desirable anyway, and also this demonstrates that a planned economy can learn from its mistake and improve over time (as many of them did, and probably more would have if they’d lasted longer).
2) The Hungarian regime collapsed because of high debt loads that were used to pay for consumer goods. This is a better criticism, but for the reasons I’ve raised before, not a decisive one (Hungary’s debt to GDP ratio then was a lot lower than America’s today, for example, so why doesn’t that criticism discredit American capitalism too?)
In any case, you’re still conflating capitalism with markets, they’re two separate things. Market pricing is completely compatible with state owned firms, local-level publically owned firms, or worker owned firms.
“I suspect, because their audience is flattered by the historical narrative being advanced, which almost invariably hinges on the ‘greatness’ of something called ‘western civilization,’ the bounds of which are intentionally left conveniently vague and undefined, to which the speaker and the listener belong, but not those scary others.”
Well, if I, personally, wanted to talk about the greatness of Western Civilization, I would not give the Middle Ages as its high point.
Your typical “Western Civ” meme creator kind of mixes and matches. He’ll call the modern period of “Western Civ” great because the ‘the West’ is prosperous. And he’ll say 1800s and early 1900s were great because ‘the West’ ruled the world. And he’ll say the Age of Discovery was great because ‘the West’ had an expansive, entrepreneurial spirit. And he’ll say the medieval period was great because ‘the West’ was pious, and the Roman Empire was ‘great’ because it was (notionally) white guys being glorious or something like that.
As Umberto Eco points out, one of the hallmarks of the fascist is that they like to play mix-and-match games with historical content, occult topics, and philosophy. They are fundamentally unserious about intellectual pursuits, so they grab whatever seems available.
Western civ means atheism, apostasy, and the right to call the national leader a traitorous shitheel in public and get away with it. :p
In the ordinary use of the English language, a polity may be “great” if it is rich, powerful, or both.
Depending on exactly how you define “western civilization” you could call it “great” at any of those times *except* the medieval period.
According to Maddison (2007), Western Europe had an average GDP per capita of $427 in 1000, rising to $771 by 1500. Meanwhile in China the figures were $450 and $600 respectively, in India $450 and $550, and in the Middle East, $621 and $590. By contemporary standards, medieval Europe was in fact pretty rich.
That depends entirely on what aspects of “western civilization” you value: if you’re definition of “greatness” is spiritual greatness, i.e. piety, and if you consider piety to be embodied very specifically within the broadly “catholic” Christian tradition, then you might totally reasonably consider the Middle Ages to be the high point of western civilization (not in spite of stuff like religious persecution, but because of it).
Question: This may be off topic but your expertise is on point maybe. Why did the Iliad and the Odyssey survive and the rest of the “Epic Cycle” did not? It is strange that the Iliad does not contain most of the events we hear about in the Trojan war. Trojan Horse, Death of Achilles, actual Fall of Troy etc. How do we know these things? Seems like those are pretty cool stories. Why didn’t they survive in their original form?
Wikipedia on “Trojan Horse” etc. lists various sources. Like the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and the Posthomerica.
“It is strange that the Iliad does not contain most of the events we hear about in the Trojan war. Trojan Horse, Death of Achilles, actual Fall of Troy etc. How do we know these things?”
From other epics which survived – the Iliad and the Odyssey are not the only accounts of the Trojan war, just the most famous.
In fact a lot of the Troy mythos doesn’t have anything to do with Homer directly, because – amazingly – the Iliad and the Odyssey were unknown to the mediaeval European poets who wrote their own versions of the story. They had to depend on other sources, mostly in Latin.
Off topic ut interesting to most of you. A new tv miniseries will drop later this week. “Those About to Die” staring Anthony Hopkins as Vespasian. It is set in Rome in the 7th decade on the 1st century C.E. Articles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/arts/television/anthony-hopkins-those-about-to-die.html
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/jul/13/those-about-to-die-roman-epic-anthony-hopkins-prime-video
I am hoping Bret will watch and review for us.
Given the context of last week’s post, I feel the need to observe that this is an example of how “the marketplace of ideas” often fails.
There’s something innately appealing about a simple narrative. Still more if it reinforces ideas that we’re already invested in. In a marketplace of ideas, it will sell better than anything with nuance.
I don’t believe there’s a miracle cure, but some of the obvious candidates for improving the situation are opposed by classical liberals precisely because they are seen as unnecessary state interference and therefore bad.
Just as reducing the scope of state power has done a lot of good, but removing it entirely would simply allow other, less liberal states to establish themselves – so reducing obstruction to the free flow of ideas has done a lot of good, but leaving free rein to the loudest voices hands the world to the demagogues.
I don’t think there is a marketplace of ideas. In politics, it is more like an old battleground, littered with rhetorical weapons left over from previous generations of combatants, ready to be picked up and used by anyone to whom they might prove useful. And every time one of those weapons is used, it becomes more powerful.
If you want to persuade someone, you need to appeal to what that person wants, or what he wants to be seen to want. What does he want to be seen to want? The same thing that the people around him want to be seen to want.
For example, in view of last week’s essay, a question from Frederick Douglass: What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth of July?
Douglass presumably objected to slavery because he and his family and friends were slaves, not because of the Declaration of Independence. But he was not trying to persuade himself to oppose slavery. He was trying to persuade un-enslaved Americans who didn’t care about slavery. Perhaps they cared about their country. But even the ones that didn’t care about the country could be expected to care about being seen to care about it, especially on the 4th of July. Tie Emancipation to the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, and American supporters of slavery would find it hard to oppose him.
Maybe Douglass didn’t believe a word he said about the injustices the revolutionary generation had inflicted on them by the British. But he certainly believed that if he presented his cause as a part of the Patriot cause, it would be hard to Americans who wished to be seen to support the Patriots to object to it.
Every time someone calls upon their audience to support his cause in the name of X, he forces his audience to reaffirm their devotion to X. And by doing so, he makes X a better rhetorical device for future people to exploit in their own causes.
X doesn’t have to be provably true. It might even be provably false. Just as long as there is some group of people, somewhere, whose members want to be seen to support it.
X doesn’t even have to support your cause, by a logically valid argument. If enough people shout that X supports the cause of Y, then opponents of Y will be presumed to be opponents of X, and be ostentatiously attacked by anyone who wants to demonstrate his loyalty to X.
As for shaping the battleground to minimise the casualty figures, I’d say it is probably best to maintain a bunch of factions, none of which can dominate by itself, but all of which fears domination by a conspiracy of others. The worst case would be a pure two-party system, when every competition is zero-sum, and one factions gain can only be the others loss.
AIUI, the world’s most rigid two-party system is in the United States, a system that might have been designed to turn a dispute over nothing at all into a civil war in the worlds foremost nuclear power.
More proof that my enemies are evil and need to be dead.
@Hector, you’re genocidal as well and just as bad as I am. I will *not* take your advice to seek help.
If I can harm you, you apartheid-lover, I will, Hector.
The whole reason I use a pseudonym here is so that people like you *can’t* harm me.
Is “Highestsun” somebody doing a parody?
[blockquote]I… disagree.
Like I said above, my take on liberalism is that it achieves peace by taking the important parts of life out of shared spaces that might be fought over.
From that perspective, it is certainly undesirable that people’s livelihood be dependent on the market. That much I agree with; what liberty is had by a person who is hungry and cannot find a job?
But that’s not the fault of *capitalism* per se, only certain forms of it. It’s perfectly possible to have capitalism and free markets while still insulating human dignity from it. See: social democracy, welfare systems.
Leaving all of that aside, from a broader perspective thinking about human freedom in general rather than liberalism in particular, prosperity has a freeing effect on people. Market economies are good at delivering that.[/blockquote]
I think you’re conflating market economies with capitalism, which is normal given that A. The ruling class has spent a hundred and fifty years pushing that narrative, and B. Most market economies are capitalistic.
Social democracies and their welfare systems work by removing certain aspects of the economy from the market. Broadly, these are the necessities; food, housing, security, often electricity, transit, and some others, sometimes while instituting some broad basic public redistribution of wealth. This is done through the democratic state, rather than redistribution of productive wealth directly.
This corresponds well to the Marxist concept of the Means of Production, but emphasizes those means that create living standards versus those that create wealth. These are largely the same, but not perfectly so.
The great flaw here is that social democracies are vulnerable to the same hierarchical media control, wealth concentration, and public-private collaboration/conspiracy that threatens purely capitalistic economies too.
This can be seen most clearly in the fact that most social democracies are dealing with a similar rise in the far right at the moment.
Most of them went through a period of austerity at some point between 1970-1980, and almost all of them went through severe austerity and privatization from 2008~2015.
The result has been a contraction in the public welfare and privitization of services resulting in inequality. Inequality driven grievance has been targeted towards the establishment by far right propaganda. This feedback between destructive policies made by the right and manipulations of the media enabled by these policies has led to openly fascistic parties, which promise to remove immigrants and thereby magically fix everything.
They will, of course, fail, but they’ll increase their media and education control and break more things. Either they manage to kill democracy or just create enough strife that their funders can basically loot the economy.
This is basically a microcosm of the central flaw in capitalism. Social democracy fails to correct for it because the government is subject to redirection and thus misdirection, and because the popular welfare and public ownership projects are good for living standards but not for reducing the economic control of the elite.
These are *correctable* flaws, but that correction requires being willing to lean into a more modern Marxist understanding of how societies function. Perhaps a rebranding of the “means of production” to the “means of control” is in order.
Oh For fucks sake. This is why I don’t use the mail functions.
I hate you personally. I hate Pro-Malay Apartheid policies in Malaysia (your country, right?) too.
Malaysia is not my country, whatever would make you think that?
You are bringing in racial and innately genocidal hatred and it must be responded to violently.
I don’t think you’ve ever really explained WHY the posts you reply to are some kind of evil mega-genocide that demands a violent response and has you coyly making violent threats. What, exactly, precisely, in detail, is even the problem here?
Don’t engage- these types of people go away if you ignore them.
As Hector says, this is just a jerk trying to demand attention.
Ignore him and he might not go away, but at least you won’t be wasting your time.
I don’t know if it’s about attention, it might be a totally reasonable strategy on his part that if he threatens me I’ll get scared and stop commenting (and maybe change my views too).
Unfortunately for him, these are not the first threats of harm (or other threats) that i’ve gotten in two decades of political discussion and they won’t be the last, so I’m used to it.
There are issues where I would, and have, changed my views in response to social pressure, this isn’t going to be one of them.
I absolutely loathe those history meme accounts (happily expanded to all meme accounts if you like). I’d previously ascribed it to the realisation that it’s just the same tired and unoriginal joke being regurgitated ad-infinitum by a billion people with only the barest semblance of creativity, but now I realise there might be another thing that rubs me up the wrong way about them.
Not only are they boring and uncreative, but they’re just flat-out misinformation with the thinnest of possible veneers over transparent societal value judgements. They hit both the ‘boring’ and ‘offensive because they peddle mistruths’ buttons I have!
My personal impression of the feudal system is of a complex tangle of benefits and obligations that were the subject of constant rangling either with ‘little wars’ or in the courts or quite often both! See the Paston Letters. Stable is not the word I’d use for the Feudal system or even manorialism as those wrangles were usually about land and ranged from peasants quarreling over field boundaries to great lords attacking each other over large estates or rights to hunting.
Yes, and my personal impression is that the constant wrangling was not only between persons, but also about the core of the system: at a vassal’s death, did the monarch have the right to enfeof somebody of his choice, or was the fief hereditary? If hereditary, the monarch slowly, but constantly lost his power over time.
This perspective may be particularly relevant to German history.
(Sorry, I accidentally submitted a comment here instead of to the most recent blog post.)