Encounter With Aristotle

Leading Western cultures encountered Aristotle at critical times. What was the result?

This is a continuation of last week's appreciation of Norman Cantor's "The Civilization of the Middle Ages", which devotes a great deal of space to the renaissance of the twelfth century. This was when most of the extant writings of Aristotle- an enormous corpus- reached Europe, from various sources, including translations from Arabic and then later, translations from the original Greek, which had remained on file in Christian Byzantium.

I can not claim any expertise on Aristotle whatsoever; it is a mountain I have yet to climb. But his central position in both ancient and later philosophy is clear. This episode of recovery and rediscovery by Western Europeans after their long intellectual darkness is particularly interesting and momentous in many ways, not just to philosophy.

Aristotle.

Aristotle was the proto-scientist, to Plato's idealist. Christian thought had developed as a fusion of Judaism and Platonism. Ideals such as god, categories, spheres, were to Plato not only real, but the only real things at all, with particular, empirical manifestations being of far less interest, merely the deficient instantiations of ideals and inferences which an intensely abstract intellectual would find the only compelling things. Imagine that you had just discovered gravity. The examples of it in everyday life are interesting, but the universal idea of it is vastly more powerful and conceptually deep.

On the other hand, Aristotle, while not dismissing Platonic idealism, matched it with a regard for empirical complexity and existence. His biology is a good example, where actual observations and even dissection support a classification scheme without a lot of idealistic baggage. Aristotle believed in god, but in a sort of deistic version- the prime mover. Nor did he think we have immortal souls, but that all life forms have souls in various gradations that are just our vital motive forces, and which, at best, reunite with a universal soul at death, but in most instances die with the body. One can portray Aristotle as a stage in humanity's maturation, from childish magical thinking, where all concepts have to revolve around the self, to an ability to deal with reality forthrightly, with fewer mythical crutches, and more humility.

His huge and advanced corpus was clearly far beyond what the local philosophers and scientists of the Muslim, Jewish, or Western European worlds had achieved. Naturally, it challenged them in fundamantal ways. The greatest intellects of each tradition grappled with Aristotle and wrote commentaries: Averroes, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas. Cantor writes:

"In both Moslem and Jewish thought, the attempts of great thinkers to deal with the relationship of revelation and the new Aristotelian science thus ended in defeat and disaster at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Islam turned away from science because it was considered heretical by religious leaders who were able to obtain the assistance of fanatical princes to destroy rational speculation. The general decline of vigor in Islamic civilization undoubtedly also played a part in the termination of the great scientific and philosophical movement in the Arabic world. Judaism at the same time turned its back on science and secular thought, partly again because of the hostility of orthodox leaders and partly because of the ghettoization of European Jewry which began in the twelfth century."

The result here was that, for all the heroic efforts of Averroes and Maimonides (and their followers and colleagues) to blaze a compatibalist path that shoehorned the two systems together, the larger community was not having it. Any shoehorning of elements of the faith, especially of the Koran, was unacceptable. One can surmise that the social functions of the respective faiths were recognized as such, and as more important than free searches for truth that were clearly sowing the seeds of heresy if not total obliteration of the faith.

Saint Thomas Aquinas.

On the other hand, the European scholastics such as Aquinas, in their innocence, had such faith in the truth of their faith that they did not even consider that another truth, whatever its source, could threaten it. Heresy was untrue, but true things necessarily had to be consistent with the Gospel and church. So Aquinas adopted Artitotelianism in large part, and insisted on compatibalist solutions- on the soul, on natural morality, on sensory empiricism. This took quite a bit of interpretive effort, but was rewarded by everlasting fame and sainthood- quite a different result than in the other religious traditions. Aquinas is still a bedrock of Catholic theology.

"It was his Aristotelian epistemology that allowed Aquinas to work his way to his conclusion. His whole system rests on the principle that knowledge comes not from the illuminating participation of the mind in pure and divine ideas, as was held by Augustinian Platonism, but that it is primarily built up out of sensory experience. As an Aristotelian he could not accept that Platonic theory of forms; to him it was not scientific, and any Christian philosophy that was based on a false epistemology would fail, as the twelfth-century realists had failed, in the face of nominalist attack. ... He admitted that  there are certain ultimate areas of the Christian faith to which reason cannot penetrate: it is impossible to prove the miracle of the Incarnation or the Trinity. But it is possible to prove rationally the existence and many of the attributes of God. Aquinas presented five proofs for the existence of God, all of which were based on the Aristotelian argument for the existence of a first cause. ... He proceeded to argue, with a validity that was doubted by many, that from this premise could be derived the Christian attributes of God as perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, and free.... Similarly, he proceeded from Aristotelian causality by way of logical argument to prove creation ex nihilo, and similarly from Aristotelian psychology to the human soul, and from Aristotelian ethics to Christian virtue."

Yet acceptance of the innovations of Aristotle, of natural theology and rational ethics, etc., obviously also sowed the seeds of theological destruction, since if god is read in his or her works- the book of nature- the more carefully you read, the less you may find, if that god does not actually exist there, and faith was the key ingredient all along. First the Protestants insisted in reading the books of nature and scripture for themselves, and then scientists discarded scripture entirely. Now here we are in the post-Newtonian and post-Darwinian epoch, shorn of any (natural) rationale for god other than Aristotle's wan prime mover, though even that remains only as an unknown possibility rather than a necessity.

Lastly, what of the status of Aristotle in the culture where his writings were originally preserved- Eastern Rome, or Byzantium? Obviously, despite their wealth and institutional stability, they had no more of a scientific or philosophical revolution in the first millenium than the Western Europeans had. They were just as, and perhaps more, besotted with Christian theology, in characteristically "byzantine" disputes over iconography in particular, such that free thought seems to have been in very short supply. There was evidently just enough attention paid to the classics to keep them in print, but little more.

The endless and exceedingly complex ruminations about the nature of the soul through all this time were especially remarkable and saddening in their vacuity. They expressed little more than a profound ignorance of biology, which is understandable, as we still are some ways from understanding how it all works. The vegetable, animal, and rational souls of the Aristotelian system were reasonable stabs at classifying the levels of consciousness / biological being. Nor did they, in Aristotle's hands, appear to be immortal, with all due respect to Aquinas's efforts, but at best universal as "forms" by way of Plato's idealism / realism about such things, not individually. Death, is, after all, such an obvious and final fact of life. The centrality of the afterlife- the promises on which the whole Christian corpus and attraction is based- led to the very unfortunate dominance of intuition and magical thinking over simple reasoning, which haunts us to this day.

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Why Were the Dark Ages so Dark?

Review of "The Civilization of the Middle Ages", by Norman Cantor.

Everyone thinks they are living in the modern age, at the cusp of technological and social development. At least till they get older, and realize that everything is, instead, going to pot. While we are always at the edge of time, we also live within the institutions and ideas of the past. That became painfully apparent with the recent election, when the electoral college went one way, and the popular vote went dramatically the other way, by a 2% margin.

Our culture and its institutions have been under development for thousands of years, and while the events of much of that time were not very well documented, that doesn't mean they weren't important. Norman Cantor's not terribly scholarly, but highly opinionated and readable overview of the Middle Ages (~500 to 1500) is one of the best sources I have read to understand this period. He takes an analytical view of why institutions developed the way they did, and offers frank views on what was helpful and what was not, in the cause of overall Western progress. No wonder this book is still in print, after over two decades.

His major theme seems to be the establishment of large, competent states as the endpoint of successful social progress. Each epoch is judged by the coherence of its political institutions, from the height of Rome, to the depths of post-German invasion Europe. Cantor is dismissive of the Germanic institutions of government, which were little more than tribal councils and endless warfare. Thus the tension between the new invaders and the inheritance they were so close to, from Rome proper, and from the rump Eastern Roman empire, aka Byzantium.

The invaders (apparently pushed by other invaders to their rear, like the Huns) didn't mean to destroy Rome, really- they just wanted to share in the bounty as well as in its institutions. But Rome didn't have a very welcoming immigration policy, and ended up fighting itself into oblivion. There are many interesting elements to the subsequent story, but I will focus on just a couple- the role of the church, and nature of law.

Once we get into the 500's and beyond, as Rome let go of England and other territories, and was sacked separately by the Visigoths, Vandals, and Ostrogoths, and then was reconquered for good measure by the Byzantines, things had really fallen apart. Various Germanic tribes were in charge of most parts of what was previously the Western Roman Empire, with little institutional memory descended from the Roman epoch. What was the one functional institution? The church. But it was a very long time before the church realized that it had a role to play in the general organization of society.

10th century depiction of St. Gregory, d. 604 at work in his scriptorium, with the help of the dove of the holy spirit.

The Benedictine order is by far the oldest form of Western monasticism, originating around 530 with the innovative communal organization, as opposed to the lonely ascetic hermit mode of the East. It was the Rule which organized each house, and gave it a strong, independent, and self-sufficient government. This was in marked contrast to the ambient governments outside its walls, which rose and fell with each dynastic squabble, and whose legal and bureaucratic concepts were virtually non-existent. Only after three hundred more years did the Franks under Charlemagne briefly raise the level of governance, with a Europe-wide kingdom that began a significant alliance with the papacy and developed rudimentary bureaucratic forms to keep the ship running in the personal absence of the king.

While that empire promptly fizzled within a generation or two, the seeds for greater alliance between the educated class (i.e. monks from the Benedictine houses) and the various Germanic rulers had been sown, and as we get into the later 900's and 1000's, monks are the standard administrators for governments across Germany and France. This enabled the Pope to gain power over the kings, whose ministerial staffs were at least partly loyal to the Pope. But the general effect was to raise the level of bureaucracy over the most basic to non-existent level it was at before, and give each state some institutional memory as well as a pan-European perspective (the language was Latin, after all).

By the time of the Cluniacs, (~1100) monks were really riding high on the hog, living well, in great demand, and running affairs all over Europe. In parallel, Cantor emphasizes the enormous innovations conducted by William the Bastard, conqueror of Britain in 1066. He set up a government of unprecedented thoroughness and durability that offered order at the cost of relentless taxation, not to mention the reduction of the previous Anglo-Saxon nobility to serfdom. This renovation of Germanic institutions of law and government was to serve as the springboard for English power for centuries to come.

Cantor also mentions the discovery of the Code of Justinian as an epochal event in Europe, around this same period. This finding did not have much influence in England, but elsewhere on the continent, it quickly provided a whole new view of law and the legal profession. For a newly urbanizing culture, it provided a newly relevant and exceedingly detailed template of jurisprudence from the urban cultures of Rome and Byzantium. And for kings, it provided a ruler-centric vision of law, as the extension of the will of the emperor. Thus the distinction that still exists between English law, with its juries of commoners, and continental law, where judges run the whole show. For the urban elite, it provided a new profession- that of lawyer, which together with the university system, slowly propagated bureaucratic, legal, and scholarly skills beyond the abbey.

What is important in all of this is that our institutions are precious achievements. Government may be the casual target of unending grumbling, abuse and criticism. But virtually any government is better than none at all. Freedom is not the absence of government, but quite the opposite, given that we are each other's primary predators and irritators. The union of justice with power has been the principal achievement of great civilizations, and is what has allowed all the other benefits, advancements, technologies, arts, and sciences to grow like a garden of flowers from a secure and prosperous populace.

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• "The bottom half of the income distribution in the United States has been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s"
• "For babies born in 1980 — today’s 36-year-olds — the index of the American dream has fallen to 50 percent: Only half of them make as much money as their parents did."
• Trauma and stuttering.
• Post-truth ... say it ain't so!

The Lineage History of India

India is a complex mixture of humanity, but genetics can tease out the main themes.

Humans have been migrating all over the place for thousands of years, yet there are still distinct geographic differences in human phenotypes, and now visible with molecular technology, genotypes. This allows us to look back in time to infer large migrations that happened long before the historical periods, like late and post-Roman times where many migrations in and around Europe are documented, if scantily.

Out of Africa. A process that started about 70,000 years ago.

India is a particularly interesting subject for this kind of analysis, because it has been a crossroads for tens of thousands of years, first for the migration out of Africa that led to the peopling of Australia, and then other influxes from all directions, most recently from the north, with the Indo-Europeans and then the Arab invasion. Secondly, India has also had an unusual degree of stasis since these migrations, embodied in its caste system, which may have frozen some of these genetic signals in static communities.

A recent paper continues a body of work that looks at these issues, and concludes that there are four different population signatures detectable in the mainland Indian population, and that the caste system has been in genetic terms a relatively recent development- in the last thousand years or so.

They sample hundreds of thousands of variable genetic markers (snps) from 367 people of 18 recognized ethnic groups of India. This data is put through a traditional statistical analysis of related-ness to come up with 69 sub-populations, and four principal components: those differences in the data that most efficiently explain the most differentiation into the least number of large groups. The main graph is below:

The green elipse identifies Indo-European populations, such as Brahmins from Gujarat and West Bengal, Khatri, and Maratha. The red elipse identifies Dravidian-speaking tribal populations. The turquise elipse identifies South-East Asian-influenced populations, such as Korwa, Birhor and Gond which are a Dravidian mixture. Lastly, the blue elipse identifies Tibeto-Burman originating populations such as Jamatia, Tripuri, and Manipuri, living in the northeast.

None of this is very surprising, given the clear ethnic diversity and the local neighborhood of India. More interesting are their reflections of the stability of these groups. There is very low mixture, though the sampling was modest, with an average of 20 people per ethnic group and 5 per inferred sub-population. The hypothesis, drawn from literary and historical sources, is that there was originally substantial mixing between the North and South Indian populations, but that this ceased with the gradual establishment of the caste system. The researchers use haplotypes to track how much mixture there has been, and how long it has been going on, or been in abeyance. (Though there are other views.)

"We estimated that all upper-caste populations, except MPB from Northeast India, started to practice endogamy about 70 generations ago. The length distributions of the AAA blocks and the ASI blocks within any one of these populations (GBR, WBR, IYR) were very similar. The most parsimonious explanation of this is that the practice of gene flow between ancestries in India came to an abrupt end about 1,575 y ago (assuming 22.5 y to a generation). This time estimate belongs to the latter half of the period when the Gupta emperors ruled large tracts of India (Gupta Empire, 319–550 CE)."

Thus the golden age of India, which happened during this time, seems to correspond with a hardening of the social order. What effect the latter had on the former, or the decline of the former, is perhaps food for thought.

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• One of whom was Jimmy Carter.
• A sad day.
• De-industrialization has been devastating.
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• Some problems with Democrats.

Euhemerization

People making gods, as usual- and the mythical nature of Jesus.

All aspects of the existence and nature of Jesus are a matter of theory, not fact. So much of the early literature about him is forged, made-up, laced by myth and parable, and templated by religious traditions, philosophical preconceptions and political exigencies, that the nature of (or existence of) the actual, historical Jesus is a matter of speculation and inference at best.

Bart Ehrman wrote an exasperated book about the evidence for the historical Jesus, affirming, despite his own lack of conventional faith, and through his dedicated scholarship in the field, that the consensus position of Christians and scholars is correct. The problem of the thin-ness of the evidence remains, however, since all the evidence comes from internal (Christian) and late (not contemporaneous) sources. This is not unusual or unexpected for any Roman of this time, other than the very highest levels of emperors and writers, but hardly allows a solid case either pro or con. A great deal turns, for instance, on one's interpretation of the word "brother", since Paul, in letters that are widely agreed to be reasonably authentic, refers to James as a brother of Jesus. If this means a biological brother, it means that Jesus, by this chain of evidence, really existed biologically. Whether his mother was a perpetual virgin is another matter, of course! Or was James a spiritual brother, as is the common usage has been for many religious communities? Ehrman, as an expert, comes down clearly on the biological side.

Myth, or just mythic?

Both cases, for and against the historicity of Jesus, are thus circumstantial, based on the credibility of scraps of evidence, or the credibility of a counter-story elaborated by the mythicists, where Jesus begins as a deity who is brought down to earth (euhemerized) for a variety of motives that are quite understandable, and precedented by similar gods and god-men before and since. Casting one's god as a real person makes the provenance and stability of his teachings more secure than that of a deity that communicates through revelation, and could do so again at any time. And stories are easy to make up and write down. A recent talk by Richard Carrier makes this case with gusto.

I am not going rehash the arguments here. But only say that the pro-historical case, while certainly traditional, popular, and even likely, is, even by Bart Ehrman's telling, hung on very thin threads of internal evidence, on texts whose transmission to us is an endless story of copying, re-copying, correction, obfuscation, politics, and forgery. The early Christian times are a fascinating period of political and archetypal turmoil. No path is straight, least of all the texts that purport to tell the story. Take for instance, the case of Marcion, who supposedly collected letters of Paul and devised the first Christian cannon. Marcion is thought to have written a good bit of it himself, and founded a theology that was very popular in its day, only to ripen into heresy later on at the hands of what comes down to us as orthodoxy.

The project of making Christianity's hodge-podge of scriptures fit the orthodox story as it evolved through the centuries is mind-bogglingly complicated and obviously ongoing, given the many versions of the Bible and of Christianity that are still running around. The process is reminiscent of the paradox of Islam, where those who take its origins and scripture most seriously are the most righteous and violent, whereas those who merge into more mature traditions, as they ripened through time into human, and typically humane, institutions, are much more resistant to the fundamentalist call.

Getting back to the foundations, what is the precedent for euhemerization such as what happened to the person or entity we call Jesus? And for its complement, apotheosis? These days, the traffic between heaven and earth has hit some kind of traffic jam. But in antiquity, it was far more common for people such as kings and emperors to become gods, and also for gods to come down to earth, in tales such as the Homeric epics. Divinity was assumed to exist, and divine beings were pretty much formed in the image of ourselves, at our most powerful. Both the Jewish god(s) and the Greek gods were distinguished by their power much more than their knowledge, let alone their emotional wisdom or kindness.

Even farther back, the template is of course the family, and the trauma of death. The death of any person, let alone a powerful, archetypal person like a parent, is unimaginable. How can life stop cold, how can existence simply end? Impossible. We have thus come up with a rich set of rationalizations and theologies of additional existence. They typically involve the movement of people (souls) from this world to some other invisible world, where they look back with fondness to what is still the important place, our world.

But then comes the important question of whether and how this spritual world, if it is to have any ongoing function for us, interacts with ours. Our souls clearly have some modus operandi by which they co-function with our living bodies, mortal though they are. Likewise, spirits and gods must have some way back into the world if we wish to involve them in our dramas. Thus we end up with a rich literature of heroic journeys to heaven (or the underworld) and back, gods taking up disguises as women or men (or animals), throwing thunderbolts, causing natural cataclysms, etc.

It is only the higher psychological and philosophical sophistication of our age that has slowed down this traffic, though it peeks out of our unconscious in the endless array of super-hero movies, not to mention a majority of the country that still holds fast to some version of the traditional theological stories.

Let us close with a couple of quotes from Thomas Paine speaking of the Christian believer, vs a true deist, from his deist book, "The Age of Reason":

"Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the govemment of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say -- thou knowest not so well as I."

"The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy -- for gratitude, as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly, and every house of devotion a school of science."

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Odysseus Among the Stars

Star Trek as an Odyssey retold.

Star Trek is one of the great narratives of our time, burrowing into the cultural unconscious with its optimism, classic storylines, inexhaustable fund of aliens, and dash of humor. What other story is equally classic, with a hero who commands his ship through a long series of adventures, who meets aliens of many descriptions, and gets out of one bizarre scrape after another? Why Odysseus, of course!

Realizing this clarified to me the staying power and deep resonance of this new myth. Odysseus wasn't big on preaching the benefits of a peaceful Federation, (though that may have been an implicit lesson to its original listeners, binding together a Greek world constantly at war), but on the other hand, he had heard of most of the monsters and gods he meets, getting more of a head start than Kirk has. Like Odysseus, Kirk is a winner, happy to seduce a woman if that will save his ship, using deception and every wile to get what he wants. Or to go in with guns blazing if that is needed. While Odysseus had a home to go back to, Star Trek dispenses with that bit of plot, concentrating on the voyage exclusively, the far more engaging part of the story.

One big difference is the role of Spock. Odysseus has no significantly characterized companions from what I recall, none whom one would call a number two. While a soldier and coming back from war, the military organization of his ships is hardly mentioned and seems rather lax. Odysseus keeps his own counsel and gets little help from his sailors, who die right and left in various misadventures. Nor are aliens brought along on his voyage. Time after time, he flees as fast as he can from each monster in turn.

A medical officer with a shamanic touch, like McCoy, might not have been unknown to the Greek world, but Spock is another matter. He exemplifies the classical philosophical position of Stoicism, but this hardly had much place in the original tale, outside of mundane forbearance of disasters which rain down constantly. Odysseus doesn't involve himself in much philosophical discussion, or introspection, which becomes such an important part of Greek culture only later. The Odyssey is a tale of action, not thought. Spock introduces both an element of diversity and philosophical perspective, (especially an occasional check on senseless violence), which is sorely needed in what is also, among its other themes, a pean to what was at the time a growing US federation of democratic and peaceful planets, er nations.

Modern, contemporary, retro, or classic?

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Epic Genetics

Lineage, nobility, destiny in the Shahnameh

Traditionally, people have had great respect for genetics. Traits run in families, and every culture has had its class system of assortive mating that segregated the nobility from the other classes down the line to peasants. The modern world is unusual in its insistence on equality and democracy, which arose when the old nobility system had so absurdly overreached its original justification (if indeed there was any) and put such mediocre people at the head of affairs that the whole thing naturally collapsed. Now we value diversity and, to put it in genetic terms, hybrid vigor over pure blood lines. Echos still resound at the Westminster Kennel club, but for humans, purity seems out.

As recently as in the novels of Marcel Proust, the importance of lineage is paramount, as endless pages go by of the narrator besotting himself over the faded charms of count this, baron that, or princesse whatever. The class system has had a long, lingering death in Europe. Here in the US, we are re-inventing class relations on a business model, which is a thinly veiled feudalism with lords of the manor in suits, whose most successful exemplars shine forth in all their condescension in the foundational funding announcements on NPR, not to mention running the political system by buying all that "free" speech.

But at least they don't (to my knowledge) have harems of women to flood the next generation with. Bill Gates has not (yet) devised a way to clone himself into shrink-wrapped copies with which to win the genetic race for the future.

But the rulers of old certainly did. I have been reading the Shahnameh, which is the lengthy epic of Persia, recounting the reigns of its Kings from the mythical to the Muslim conquest. The themes of linage are a constant refrain, telling how handsome, strong, wise, and just each prince and king in turn is. How beautiful and modest the women in his harem. One infant is even sent down the Tigris in a box and raised by humble peasants, only, Harry Potter-like, to instinctively take up fighting, horse riding, and other knightly pursuits in defiance of his guardian and in clear sign of his royal lineage.

It really is one of our oldest and most perennial themes- the Cindarella or foundling-prince in the rough, not only recognized eventually by merit, but documented to have royal blood all along. But obviously, the actual differences are typically vanishingly small, when education and culture are accounted for. But we focus and thrive on minor differences, defining (and "othering") tribal groups in arbitrary ways, and judging each other with the greatest subtlety in the race for status and mates. The fiercest battles are typically of brother against brother; French and German, Russian and Ukrainian, Jewish and Arab, and so on.

What did all this harem-keeping and status seeking accomplish, anyhow? Well, beauty was one object, duly attained, I think. Each nationality has its distinctive look of nobility, from Japan to England. But in terms of temperament, I think much less was accomplished, indeed negative results were attained. The most successful leaders were typically mad with ambition, so we have ended up with a lot of Shakesperean plots and palace intrigue at the head of affairs. No wonder the good king was such a rare and precious find! Power may corrupt, but assortive mating can corrupt as well, when the standards for selection are so contrary to what societies most need. And when taken to extremes of inbreeding, as in Egypt and Europe, the results have been disastrous on any level one cares to consider.

Thus the madness for lineage accomplished far more in terms of public relations than it ever did in genetics. The PR value of the Shahnameh was inestimable, training generations of Iranians in the celebrity culture of their day and thus stabilizing the feudal hierarchy / patriarchy. While the overall competition for status and success has probably been an engine for beneficial genetic selection, its manifestation at the very top of the hierarchy is another story entirely.

• On Ashkenazi genetics.
• Those damn Anglo-Saxons.
• ... became the arch capitalists of modernity.
• What you inherit is luck anyhow.
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• A lot of uncomfortable dancing around texts of terror, and not facing up to them at all.
• Integrated fiscal / monetary policy just makes sense.
• What does education do to you?
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• Inequality due to cronyism and rent collection, not from education, productivity, or justice. " ... all the big gains are going to a tiny group of individuals holding strategic positions in corporate suites or astride the crossroads of finance."
• Bob Cringely on the jobs shortage and the STEM non-shortage. But he doesn't wade into macroeconomics. "Same for the banking and mortgage crisis of 2008 where the bankers took more and more until the host they were sucking dry — the American homeowner — could no longer both pay and survive. Tony Soprano was smarter than the bankers."
• Things just keep getting worse for active stock pickers and personal wealth parasites.
• Staying at optimal growth and prosperity is hard.

Nihilism, Elitism, and Moralism in Nietzsche

Review of "Living with Nietzsche", taking a positive view of Nietzsche.

Nietzsche gets rapped as a Wagnerian proto-Nazi and nihilist, not only declaring god to be dead, but engaging in a revaluation of all morals from which he appeared to arrive at an elitist, devil-take-the-hindmost stance with the Übermensch. But according to Robert Solomon, this view tends to mistake the bluster for the substance.

First, take nihilism. Solomon provides an extended exposition about how that term is routinely applied to any morality one disagrees with.

"It often functions as a kind of accusation, a bit of abuse. Some traditional but much in-the-news Christians use the term as a more of less crude synonym for 'secular humanism,' on the false assumption that a person without God must be a person without Christian values as well. ... But note that I say 'Christian' values, for the accuser might well allow, indeed insist, tha the nihilist does have values, subjective, self-serving,and securely narrow-minded though they be. ... Similarly, an orthodox Jewish friend of mine calls 'nihilists' any people without a self-conscious sense of tradition, assuming that others must lack in their experience what he finds so essential in his own. Marxists use the term (sometimes but not always along with 'bourgeois individualism') to indict those who do not share their class-conscious values. Aesthetes use it to knock the philistines, and my academic colleagues use it to chastise anyone with 'looser' grading standards and higher grading averages than themselves." 

"In the pseudo-book of Nietzsche's collected notes, 'The Will to Power', there are many indications about the scope and nature of the nihilism he describes. But perhaps the most important point is this one: for the most part, Nietzsche describes nihilism as a concrete cultural phenomenon rather than *endorsing it as a philosophy. So I want to bracket the above uses of nihilism ('push what is falling', and the urge to promote 'a complete nihilims') as more Nietzschean hyperbole, for as his texts make perfectly clear, Nietzsche's aim is to overcome nihilism, not promote it."

Obviously, Nietzsche was for something, filling his books with declarations and "shoulds" and "musts" of various sorts, the more florid the better. But what was this morality that he was striving for? Firstly, it was not based on tradition or on an objective source. It was fundamentally subjective. He had only bad things to say about Christianity, for example, though Solomon notes an implicit dedication to rather bourgeios values in terms of truth, duty, and artistic value. He thought Kant and most other philosophers fundamentally mistaken in their attempts to make up absolute moral rules, based on some rational treatment of the human condition. What could be more contradictory?

He was also far more congenial to Aristotle than is generally realized, being a thorough classicist, even if of a more Dionysian than Apollonian stripe. Aristotle was a product of his time, and promoted a typical virtue ethics, focusing on good character that achieves the mean between excesses that can turn any virtue into a vice. Be neither too brave (reckless) nor cowardly, neither too abstemious nor too hedonistic, and so on through all possible virtues. These did not have to be (and were not) based on any objective condition of the cosmos, on deities, etc., but rather simply upon the wisdom of what promotes happiness personally and generally. This justification is ultimately utilitarian, (and subjective), taking happiness in the broadest (terrestrial) sense as the condition that needs to be satisfied, even optimized.

One wrinkle in the classic system, however, is that it isn't the happiness of everyone that matters, but the happiness of the system as a whole, and especially of those who are its leading lights- who both raise the cultural level, and run the society, including writing its philosophy. Slaves certainly were of little account, and Aristotle and his class hardly thought much more about women or other lesser classes. They vied to tell the rulers what to do, Aristotle personally tutoring Alexander the Great, for example, in a tradition that reaches down to Machiavelli.

Nietzsche, despite his choleric and bombastic nature, was fundamentally pushing the same elitist program, seeking to free people from the resentful, leveling, "slave" ethos of Christianity. Nietzsche urged his Übermensch to excellence and competition, even war, though never crass bigotry or bad taste. It is a fundamental and interesting question in moral philosophy- even if you grant a utilitarian / subjective justification to the whole edifice, and even if you make its justification empathetically broad-based in the modern sense, what is the better system- ethical democracy, or ethical elitism?

On the one hand, recognizing the fundamental value and talents of each person seems like an all-around good thing, a bedrock of modern moral and political theory. It is the right thing to do. On the other hand, we have to recognize that people are not created equal, and that society gains far more from the cultivation of some than of others. Moreover, we retain in many spheres a relentlessly, even mortally, competitive system that gives hardly a glance to egalitarianism- the corporation, sports, economics, the marriage market. We are very confused in this respect, with our natures and institutions tugging in all directions.

Looking at our politics in particular, the conflict reaches absurdly affecting dimensions, with highly egoistic and talented individuals yearning for vast power power while vowing fealty to the basest prejudices, vanity, and superior judgement of the mass of voters, while at the same time promising unwavering attention to the upper crust- the moneyed class which funds their campaigns. One might call it checks and balances, but it is also a little schizoid.

Democracy is supposed to combine the benefits of both ethical systems, harnessing the cultural elite to do the bidding of the society at large. But it can also combine the worst of both ethical systems, weakening the power of (if it does not sicken and turn away entirely) the most talented leaders and institutions, while also exposing the state to mob rule when emotions run high.

Nietzsche took a rather one-sided approach, at least rhetorically, favoring the elitist, competitive side of the equation. This was in line with the tenor of his time, saturated with German romanticism, sentimentalism and nationalism, and was the kind of thing that did indeed lead straight into world war 1 and all its ensuing miseries. This ethic even rubbed off oddly onto the socialist strain of German romanticism, leading to the even more shocking horrors of communism- an ethical fox in sheep's clothing if ever there was one. While his affections may have been with Greece, his ethical model seems quite a bit more like Rome, which ran for so long on blood and conquest. So, while Nietzsche may be more subtle than his worst bluster makes him appear, and diagnosed significant ills of the philosophy and atmosphere of his time, his degree of overall wisdom remains highly questionable.

Aristotle is a much surer guide, (if transposed into a modern ethical setting), counseling moderation and balance. In the present time, the elite have once again gained the upper hand, and are threatening our political, cultural, and economic fabric with a neo-feudalism that coursens and degrades so much that we have achieved through communal action. A competitive landscape that benefits society can only happen when everyone has a fair start in life, with fair rules as it goes on, and where the many other features of our society that require common action and investment are respected, well-managed and not hobbled by the self-serving ideology of what passes as our current elite.

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Governance in Venice

Good governance gave Venice a thousand years of prosperity and renown.

The idea that the US is the oldest democracy in the world is far from the truth. Even if you qualify it as  "existing" or "continuously existing", the Swiss have one far older, (making allowances for a brief Napoleonic regime), as do the Icelanders. But more important is that forms of government are very plastic. What we call a democracy in the US is a far cry from actual self-rule, given the vastly greater influence of the moneyed classes and the advertising arts over who gets elected, than anyone in the demos. Oligarchy would be more like it. Republic it may be, but democracy it is not.

But oligarchies aren't all bad. Just think of the Catholic church, which has functioned continuously (give or take a few anti-popes) for about a thousand years, and with less historical certainty for another thousand back to the time of the first bishops of Rome. Its organizational stability has been impressive, even as it has gone through vast changes in theology, morals, and power.

Venice in its heyday was a somewhat similar republic / oligarchy, and an extremely well-ruled one. A wonderful history of Venice tells a story that I had never learned in school, of the long and proud reign of Venice over a commercial empire that grew across the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond. From its extremely humble origins in the 568 in a malarial lagoon, Venice developed a communal government as well as an adavanced (and state-run) ship manufacturing system which, combined with skillful seamanship, diplomacy, a dedication to business, and occasional military prowess, earned her a durable mercantile empire. This was centered on the India trade, which ran through several routes, such as the silk road, the Byzantine ports, and the Arab caravans. Venice was the home of the Polo family, which famously followed these routes to the ends of the earth.

Symbol of Venice, the winged lion of St. Mark.

In 1204, its power was such that, as a particularly horrific and misguided part of the fourth Crusade, Venice led her allies to attack and sack Constantinople, a theretofore unimaginable feat, given the reputation of its walls and military. This was, for the Eastern Empire, a disaster it never recovered from, after which it limped along till its final defeat under the scimitars of the Turks in 1453. Venice, too, was eventually boxed in by the Ottomans, who in their own prime ran a highly capable fleet and threatened Venice in the Adriatic and even its own lagoon, while relieving it of its Greek and other far-flung possessions.

What finally sent Venice into decline (well before being crushed by Napoleon and then assimilated into the modern state of Italy) was the Northern European revolution in navigation and trade, as the Portugese and then Dutch overtook the India trade directly by way of the horn of Africa. Thereafter, Venice became poorer, and more embroiled on its landward side with the complexities of Italian feudal feuds, including with various Popes.

Through it all, Venice had a remarkable system of government. "Byzantine" doesn't do it justice, as there were ten layers of elections to go through among various bodies before the supreme leader, the Doge (a variant of "Duke"), was elected. Each Doge was constitutionally restricted in his scope of independent action, and also given a specific document of restrictions, usually the fruit of past excesses or corruptions that the community had learned from. The civil service was very efficient, and many times over her history, when Venice found herself in a tight spot, she put out the call for various special taxes, donations, and forced loans, which were typically met with great generosity. Each Doge set an example by distributing vast amounts of his own wealth when elected, and many followed that up with other gifts to the city during their rule and in their bequests. The degree of civic committment at all levels is striking, especially in this day when some parties cry about the most infinitesimal increment of taxation.

At the base of the state was the Grand Council, whose membership of about 1500 was originally elected among the population at large, but by 1296 became hereditary to the Venetian nobility, i.e. the rich. Thereafter, new families were allowed in very sporadically, when the state was under stress, and for large payments, but generally, membership was tightly closed and formed the core of the oligarchy, and the voting base insofar as it was a republic. Various more select bodies such as the ministers to the Doge, the Senate, (sixty members), Zonta (sixty more members), and Venice's own Inquisition / Star chamber / NSC- the Council of Ten- were chosen from this Great Council.

One might note that the early Roman republican system was hardly less complex, and also led to hundreds of years of good, if, again relatively oligarchical, government. Universal sufferage was extremely uncommon in large bodies before modern times, partly for technical and ideological reasons, but also because universal education was equally uncommon. But given an oligarchy, the complexity of these great examples such as Venice seem to reflect relatively little cost, and provide an extensive filter of checks and balances that so frequently succeeded in putting the best people in charge.

The effect of this good governance was to provide durable prosperity and promote human values, even in the midst of terrible times, such as several severe bouts of the plague. Its commitment to great art and architecture was legendary. And while Venice was not an intellectual leader in the Renaissance, its enthusiastic and free printing establishments were the largest in Italy and played a central role in transmitting knowledge from the Byzantine archives to the scholars of Europe. In time of our own when political ideologues dream of drowing their own governments in bathtubs, and refuse to govern countries they themselves have conquered, it is important to remember what a blessing (and a lesson) good government is.

"The more one studies the domestic history of Venice, the more inescapable does the conclusion become: by whatever political standards she is judged, she compares favorably with any nation in Christendom- except, arguably, in the days of her final dotage. Nowhere did men live more happily, nowhere did they enjoy more freedom from fear. The Venetians were fortunate indeed. Disenfranchised they might be; they were never downtrodden. Although, being human, they might occasionally complain of their government, not once in all their history did they ever rise up against it; such few attempts as there were at rebellion were inspired by discontented nobles, never by the populace." 

"Alone of all the states of Catholic Europe, it had never burnt a heretic."

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The American dream comes true.

From Weed to Maize

A large-scale investigation on the evolution of corn finds lots of regulatory change.

When Darwin wrote his book on the origin of species, his strongest examples came from pigeons, which at the time were very popular domesticated animals. Just like dogs and cats, pigeons displayed a profusion of breeds and characteristics, all quite clearly descended from a single progenitor species, by way of artificial selection. The speed of artificial selection is amazing, but its relentless focus on desired, superficial traits can lead to problems in temperament, disease susceptibility, and subtle congenital defects.

As mentioned in a recent post, most evolutionary change takes place in regulatory relationships within the genome, rather than as structural changes in encoded proteins. Fine-tuning the binding site of some transcriptional regulator, or moving its site nearer or farther from a gene, tends to have smaller, graded effects on the organism than a change, for example, to that same transciption regulator's own protein sequence, which may affect its interaction with to thousands of sites all over the genome.

A recent paper took a deep dive into the changes that happened in the maize genome on its way to our tables as the king of American agriculture. They reiterate the power of small scale change in a gene's regulatory elements, which they term the cis elements, which is to say, mutations in the DNA local to the gene, typically in upstream sites that bind various regulatory proteins which promote or repress transcription.

"Changes in the cis regulatory elements (CREs) of genes with functionally conserved proteins have been considered a key mechanism, if not the primary mechanism, by which the diverse forms of multicellular eukaryotic organisms evolved. Variation in CREs allows for the deployment of tissue specific patterning of gene expression, differences in developmental timing of expression, and variation in the quantitative levels of gene expression. Furthermore, modification of CREs, as opposed to coding sequence changes, are assumed to have less pleiotropy and consequently have a lower risk of unintended deleterious effects in secondary tissues. The importance of CREs for the development of novel morphologies is supported by the growing catalog of examples for which differences in gene specific CREs between closely related species contributed to the evolution of diversity in form."

The authors sequenced a large crop of RNAs from the tissues of maize and from its ancestor teosinte, to see how their genes are expressed, and, in combination with knowing the genomic DNA that had been sequenced previously, whether changes in gene expression could be tied to specific genome mutations that happened during domestication. The maize genome has more genes than that of humans, 39,423, and 17,579 of them had sufficient expression in these tissues (the RNAs came from the immature ear, the seedling leaf, and the seedling stem) to be analyzed. To give an idea of the scale of current technology, they gathered roughly four billion sequence reads from their RNA libraries.

The majority of the genes they analyzed (82%) were expressed in each of three tissues, while about three percent each were specific to only one or two tissues. The main point of the paper was to attempt to figure out which genes had changed in expression between teosinte and maize, and further, what had caused this, either mutations local to the altered gene, (acting in "cis"), or mutations to DNA far away (acting in "trans") that encodes regulatory proteins whose alteration would affect many other genes as well.

To do that, they used hybrids between teosinte and maize, sampling their RNA as well. In these hybrids, versions of the same gene (alleles) from each parent co-habit in the same cell. So if their expression remained different, it could be chalked up to local effects on each allele's DNA. Conversely, if their expression became similar, (while being different in the parental strains), then the parental difference is likely to be due to regulators that are encoded elsewhere and affect the sampled gene similarly, whatever its origin and local sequence. A very clever scheme, one has to say.

Master graph of genes (dots) assigned to categories of regulatory change, either local to the gene sequence (cis, in black), or due to changes in a non-local regulator (trans, in red). The conclusion is based on the gene's respective behavior when co-housed in the same plant, i.e. the hybrid progeny of a maize X teosinte cross. The logs on each axis refer to logs of the ratio between maize and teosinte, in either the parents (X axis) or in the hybrids (Y axis).

The identity / parentage of the alleles in the hybrids could be kept straight by way of minor DNA variations sprinkled throughout the sequences of their expressed RNA. Teosinte and maize have been separated by about eight thousand years, enough time for quite a few (mostly silent) mutations to accumulate in each genome. But the interesting differences between them would be those that were specifically selected in maize to make it into the dramatically different plant it is today- stalk branching, ear size, ear morphology, growing speed, hardness of the seed, etc. What were those mutations and how can they be found? This paper unfortunately does not get to that detail. They note that 70% of all the genes showed significant changes in expression, and that the sets of differently expressed genes were ~70% different in each of the three tissues. All of which is quite remarkable.

What they are more interested in is defining large sets of genes that might be interesting as ingredients of the special properties of maize. To start, they assume that genes under selection pressure would have had local changes to their regulatory DNA. This is not entirely correct, though. Some far-away change might have been selected for if it had strong effects regulating some target gene / trait, without having too many side effects. While this is difficult to imagine and likely rare, it is by no means impossible or without precedent. Nevertheless, they bundle up all the genes with local or local + distant changes, and call them their "CCT" set (for cis and cis+trans changes in regulation profile). These are the black and purple dots on the graph above, and amounted to about 5500 genes.

They further filtered that set by asking for high consistency and high expression over all their samples, (or different parental and hybrid cross strains), and came up with sets of varying stringency, from very few (69) genes to a much less stringent set (~2326) genes. This had the defect of discounting genes whose expression was very low, either before (in teosinte), or after (in maize). Anyhow, it was a rough-and-ready method to whittle down their data to some interesting candidate genes, depending on how stringently they set the dials. One problem was that gene expression is naturally more variable in teosinte, being a genetically diverse and wild plant, (despite their using inbred strains, which must not have been quite as inbred as they thought), than it is in maize, being heavily in-bred and virtually clonal.

The larger the expression difference of a gene between teosinte and maize (X axis), the more likely that difference is due to local "cis" regulatory effects (Y axis). This is reflected also in the previous graph of genes with higher expression differences on the higher slope lines.

The rest of the paper, unfortunately, is a litany of woe, as they find that their sets of specially selected genes do not agree very well with those that other researchers have isolated using other methods. For instance, one group used a micro-chip based method with fixed DNA samples detect RNAs that are expressed differentially between modern maize and teosinte, and found their own list of such genes:

"However, the absolute level of correspondence between the two studies is rather low. For example, of the 350 leaf genes identified as DE [differentially expressed] by RNAseq [the current paper's method], only 24 (7%) were also identified by the microarray study [the other paper's method]. Thus, while the overlap between our two studies is statistically significant, the two methodologies resulted in largely different lists of DE genes."

It is somewhat depressing that this many years into the genomic age, the large-scale technologies being touted and used to gather presumably quantitative gene expression data of this sort can generate such divergent results. Technically, I believe this is due to their need to have high expression under all conditions, which is contrary to most of the other methods used, which prize very high contrast, i.e. very low expression in one sample vs higher expression in another, to identify candidate genes. Nevertheless, each collection of genes must have some gold amongst the placer and thus this paper is surely the career-building effort of some post-doc who will give job interviews on the ambition of panning through these genes to find ones that have individually significant effects on the unique properties of maize.

"This study shows cis and trans regulatory differences account for ~45% and ~55% of regulatory divergence between maize and teosinte, respectively (Table S1). These values suggest relatively equal contributions of these two mechanisms to regulatory divergence. However, this ignores the contribution of cis effects to large expression differences where cis accounts for nearly 80% of the expression divergence."

A final interesting point is that roughly half the expression differences were traceable to the "trans", or non-local, mechanism. This might seem to go against the assumption outlined above that local mutations in gene regulatory sequences should predominate, but it may take only a few individual changes in regulators or their networks to cause changes in the expression of many of the genes assayed here, while each expression change classified as "cis" or local requires a separate change to that gene's sequence. So the overall number of local regulatory changes in this data set will vastly outnumber individual changes elsewhere, and the authors note additionally that the expression changes that were quantitatively highest were virtually all due to local mutations.

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"Cochrane admits in the final paragraph that one of the “secrets of prosperity” is a well-functioning “rule of law.” He doesn’t tell you that his institution, the University of Chicago’s law, finance/business, and law faculty, have led the systematic attack for the last 40 years that successfully eviscerated that rule of law and allowed the banksters to lead the fraud epidemics that Cochrane admits drive our recurrent, intensifying financial crises."

Islam is Not a Religion of Peace

Nor is it a religion of war. A review of the Quran.

Muhammed is the Apostle
Of God; and those who are
With him are strong
Against Unbelievers, (but)
Compassionate amongst each other.
 (48:29)

As scripture, the Quran stands head and shoulders above its relatives in some respects. It is clear, (if tediously long and repetitive), not given to parables and riddles. Nor is it given to obscure genologies and mythical tales (other than a few retold from the Jewish and Christian traditions). It is explicit on many points, giving rules for behavior and hammering home its points about who and what are good and bad. Its general world view is also refreshingly simple. The world's beauty and gifts, especially the wonders of biology, are clear signs of the one god, and one would have to be an idiot or worse to doubt them and thus the Apostle's message, which comes directly from god.

And among His Signs
Is the creation of the heavens
And the earth, and the variations
In your languages
And your colors: verily
In that are Signs
For those who know.
 (30:22)

(The version I am using dates from sixty-eight years ago, well before the political correctness that beset the field since 2001. It is also a version that reads very well and is abundantly annotated. The text runs to 1800 pages.)

The Quran's provinance is also far more secure than those of the other scriptures, being assembled within twenty years of Muhammed's death by order of the rulers of the community. The ancillary Hadith is less secure, but that is another matter. Muhammed's existence is also far better attested than that of the other prophets, from Jesus back to Moses, Abraham, Noah, Adam, and into the mists of time, many of whom, if not all, are mythical, or very heavily mythicised. Muhammed had a very active and well-recorded life, full of commerce, revelation, warfare, and preaching. Indeed, he took special exception to the deification of Jesus, making it a tenet of Islam that Jesus as one of the prior apostles was a normal man with (some) divine inspiration. One might note in passing, however, that the seemingly universal practice of Muslims to never refer to Muhammed without wishing peace be upon him amounts to a furtive deification / sanctification of the apostle. He is most certainly in the finest possible position of heaven by this doctrine, and hardly needs assistance of any kind from the sinners here below.

The Muslim doctrine, aside from a few defects that I will get to, is also a highly moral one, which repeatedly invokes a very simple formula for community membership- belief in god and obedience to his apostle, virtuous moral action, modesty and circumspection in all affairs, and charitable giving to the poor. There are other incidental tasks, such as praying, food restrictions, and the hajj, (incidentally, Islam is about the only modern religion still employing animal sacrifice, which takes place during the hajj), but the basics are admirably simple and doubtless contribute to the attraction of this religion to so many people, and to their self-understanding that it is an almost self-evident doctrine. The Quran also enjoins believers to give charity with open arms and a positive attitude- something that our current Republicans might do well to emulate, our tax system being, in essence, precisely the kind of alms and charity distribution system (plus a little jihad) that Islam envisions.

But some of the desert Arabs
Believe in God and the Last Day,
And look on their payments
As pious gifts bringing them
Nearer to God, and obtaining
The prayers of the apostle.
Aye, indeed they bring them
Nearer (to Him): soon will God
Admit them to His Mercy:
For God is Oft-Forgiving,
Most Merciful
 (9:99)

Unfortunately, Muhammed was faced with a lot of disbelievers in his time, as is reiterated on virtually every page. They are assigned to hell in innumerable ways, sometimes mild, sometimes excruciating. But the repetition of this theme is striking, seeming to signify some insecurity about the clarity and confidence otherwise expressed. Its endless repetition also functions as a sort of hypnotic mantra. Sometimes he takes the mild approach, assuring listeners that, despite the apparent success of unbelievers in this life, with riches and sons, god will mete our their just deserts in the afterlife. But frequently, hatred gets the better of him, and unbelievers are reviled where they are, threatened with various horrible fates in this world, and subject to terror by the (always virtuous) believers. He recurs frequently to the tales of Noah, Moses, Lot, et al. to make clear that unbelievers stand a very good chance of being struck down in this life, en masse, God-willing.

Those who reject
Our Signs, We shall soon
Cast into the Fire;
As often as their skins
Are roasted through,
We shall change them
For fresh skins,
That they may taste
The Penalty: for God
Is Exalted in Power, Wise.
 (4:56)

There is also an odd lack of certainty sometimes, as though the speaker, though being god, isn't entirely sure of some facts or events events. He recounts (18:22) an old Christian story of boys who happened upon a cave and fell asleep there, for a few centuries, only to find on waking that the Christianity that was reviled by the Roman authorities before is now the state religion. Only, the teller of the tale isn't sure whether there were three boys, or five, or seven. It doesn't inspire confidence, frankly. Likewise, he retells the immaculate conception story of Mary having been impregnated by god, but later claims that Jesus was a normal man like all others, not in any way a deity. And that nor did god ever have a son. Logically, it doesn't quite make sense, especially as told by an omniscient being, but makes more sense as a sop to tradition.

Have We not created
You from a fluid
(Held) despicable? 

The which We placed
In a place of rest,
Firmly fixed, 

For a period (of gestation),
Determined (According to need)? 

For We do determine
(According to need); for We
Are the Best to determine (things). 

Ah woe, that Day!
To the Rejectors of Truth!
 (77:20-24)

More generally, the book claims to be full of truths, but the information communicated is meagre. Belief is extolled ad nauseum, as is truth, but no scintilla of knowledge not commonly known at the time is related. This is especially notable in its celebration of biology and the heavens, which are given repeatedly as strong signs of god and his beneficence. Where is the knowledge of breeding, of evolution, of development, and of genetics? (Hey, how about a funny biology song?) The author claims simply that god has made everyone, and can make or unmake people at will. Where is the knowledge of the history of biology and scale the universe? The birth of Adam is recounted as the origin of humanity, in the story of the garden of Eden. As a source of knowledge, the Quran comes off poorly indeed. Imagine how mind-blowing it would have been for an ancient scripture to tell the true story of our origins and nature, taking it as a lesson on the great preciousness and rarity of our existence, and the momentous stewardship we have been granted.

Praise be to God,
Who hath sent to His Servant
The Book, and hath allowed
Therein no Crookedness: 

(He hath made it) Straight
(And Clear) in order that
He may warn (the godless)
Of a terrible Punishment
From Him, and that He
May give Glad Tidings
To the Believers who work
Righteous deeds, that they
Shall have a goodly Reward, 

Wherein they shall
Remain forever:
 (18:1-3)

There are also some theological confusions. God is free of all wants (14:8, and elsewhere), but at the same time wants all kinds of adulation and submission, wants unbelievers to spend eternity in Hell, wants moral behavior in peace and martial behavior in war, indeed, has transmitted a book full of wants.

Pagans and unbelievers are assigned to hell on virtually every page. But they also are promised ill fortune in this life, though sometimes they might do just fine, as god is just staying his hand till some more convenient moment. Indeed, sometimes they are so rich with money and sons that it drives believers positively apoplectic, and to doubt that they are on the right side after all. The Quran tries its best to quiet such doubts, asserting time and again that whatever the current situation, (and however detestable the unbelievers, and whether they may be crushed and destroyed in this world as many other whole tribes have been before by earthquake, flood, or fire, or the sword, or ...), god sees all and will send them to the fire when they die. If not before.

The Santa Claus nature of all this is unmistakable. Charming in its simplicity, but intellectually not at a very high level. God sees all, and will balance all accounts in the final judgement. All the good actions of this life will be rewarded. Except that unbelief seems to cancel them all out. Unbelievers in the Quran can never be good. They are perverse, lying, deceitful, blind, arrogant, mocking ... the list is endless. So the doctrine never has to grapple with the problem of positive moral behavior among non-Muslims. This applies apparently both to the time of death, and to a final judgement, which is mentioned, along with bodily resurrection of the believers, as an evident bow to the Christian system, but is not very well fleshed out, if you will excuse the pun. I could never tell whether I, for example, would go to hell immediately upon death, or whether that would await a general judgement day. The whole thing is, theologically, a jumbled mishmash of past beliefs, and looks much more like a psycho-mechanical contrivance for belief propagation than it is a search for, or convincing explanation of, truth.

O ye who believe!
Ask not questions
About things which,
If made plain to you,
May cause you trouble.
But if ye ask about things
When the Quran is being Revealed,
They will be made plain to you,
 For God is Oft-forgiving,
 Most forbearing.

 Some people before you
 Did ask such questions,
 And on that account
 Lost their faith.
  (5:104-105)

This god is also the most passive-aggressive character in all literature. The signs of his existence are no more than the mundane / glorious / mysterious conditions of nature, which admittedly in Muhammed's day, merited virtually unlimited awe. But if you don't believe in him, (and, notably, obey his humble Apostle), he will get you when you are least aware, and haul you off to everlasting hell fire. On the one hand, the whole Apostle thing comes off as a ego trip without parallel, while on the other, if god were so merciful and powerful, why would Satan (Iblis) be given leave to mislead so many hearts for so much time- why would anyone listen to him and not to god? It makes little sense, other than as a mapping of psychological archetypes onto an imaginary cosmic drama.

This brings up a significant moral point, which is that one would think that with such a fate in store, unbelievers would merit more compassion than they seem to get in the Quran. Why indulge in so much hatred if their fate is so sure and terrible- if they are building in this world their furnace in the next, by all their immoral deeds, unbelief, and mockery? Again, one gets the distinct sense that the theology is not really all that secure, and that the hatred is a very this-world phenomenon oriented to the oldest trick in the book, convincing people to believe in invisible beings, unbelievable doctrines, and the goodness and success of one's own group, led & ruled by God's representative on earth. All for the most admirable reasons, of course, but in a contemporary world that is so dense with other beliefs, yet at the same time contains a billion and half Muslims typically in communities with no contact with unbelievers at all, such attitudes are unhealthy, to say the least. Muhammed himself practiced precisely what he preached and lived a blood-soaked life, killing his enemies right and left, in Medina (expelling all the Jews along the way), Mecca, and in the larger conquests through the Arabian peninsula up to the end of his life.

Which brings us to jihad. This struggle against unbelief is fundamental to the message of the Quran (indeed, one wonders about some influence from Zoroastrianism, with its relentless black-white outlook) and one question is whether it is formulated in military terms in the text itself, or only in the ancillary Hadith. There are many sections about war, usually focused historically on the early battles of Muhammed which are plainly life or death struggles for the faith. War is definitely the answer, and the pagans are reviled and attacked in the most absolute terms. God expresses himself through the success of his believers in arms.

But the Quran also claims to be a very general text, being the last and final revelation, so its lessons are not simply confined to their historical moment, but apply to all the faithful still today. This makes for a messy theology. The practice of going out hunting for unbelievers to forcibly convert is not explicitly promoted, as far as I could read, despite all the hatred directed at them. Indeed, Muslims are instructed to live in community with each other and to leave areas where they are a minority (i.e. Mecca during the exile in Medina). At the same time, the struggle against unbelief is to be unremitting, so the more explicit directive to military jihad that one finds in the Hadith is very consonant with the Quran in this respect. And of course the historical record of Muhammed's career and the ensuing centuries, when Muslim armies swept the known world, makes the point more eloquently still. Overall, it supports the idea that jihad is properly understood in the original sense, to be a military conquest of unbelievers until the whole world takes up the one true faith.

Be not weary and
Faint-hearted, crying for peace,
When ye should be
Uppermost: for God is
With you, and will never
Put you at a loss
For your (good) deeds.
 (47:35)

The Quran, for instance, promotes terrorization of unbelievers, as though the theology of hell were not already disquieting enough. It also allows polygamy, which, in my opinion, leads inexorably, if indirectly, to war by the excess males of a society. Females captured on battle were, and, if one is to believe reports about ISIS, remain, fair game to jihadists. In Muhammed's day, one can put a somewhat more generous construction on this policy, as a way to provide for widows in a violent, militaristic age. But then his marriage to Aisha (one of his thirteen wives) suggests something quite different ... a Koreshean zeal for a more youthful additional wife.

If ye fear that ye shall not
Be able to deal justly
With the orphans,
Marry women of your choice,
Two, or three, or four;
But if you fear that ye shall not
Be able to deal justly (with them),
Then only one, or (a captive)
That your right hands possess.
That will be more suitable,
To prevent you
From doing injustice.
 (4:3)

Incidentally, married life was not without its problems. In one chapter, he complains about wifely insubordination and threatens to divorce them all:

It may be if he [Muhammed]
Divorced you (all),
That God will give him
In exchange Consorts
Better than you,-
Who submit (their wills),
Who believe, who are devout,
Who turn to God in repentence,
Who worship in (humility),
Who travel (for Fiath) and fast,-
Previously married or virgins.
 (66:5)

But back to the main theme of what to do about unbelievers:

Therefore, when ye meet
The Unbelievers (in fight),
Smite at their necks;
At length, when ye have subdued them,
Bind a bond
Firmly (on them); thereafter
(Is the time for) either
Generosity or ransom:
Until the war lays down
Its burdens. Thus (are ye
Commanded): but if it
had been God's Will,
He could certainly have exacted
Retribution from them (Himself);
But (He lets you fight)
In order to test you,
Some with others.
But those who are slain
In the way of God,-
He will never let
Their deeds be lost.
 (47:4)

There are various mercies and controls put on war against unbelievers, such as the acceptance of conversion on its face, and the directive to not be vindictive in victory, and to attack only in defense, not in offense. But the plastic nature of victimization narratives is such that, as we observe all over world, groups can always construct some way in which they are under attack and thus justify attack. Christians in the US moan constantly how victimized they are by those arrogant atheists, etc. Indeed the insufferable arrogance of the unbelievers is a constant (and rather ironic) theme in the Quran.

Your God is One God:
As to those who believe not
In the Hereafter, their hearts
Refuse to know, and they are arrogant. 

Undoubtedly God doth know
What they conceal,
And what they reveal;
Verily He loveth not the arrogant. 

When it is said to them,
"What is it that your Lord
Has revealed?" they say,
"Tales of the ancients!" 

Let them bear, on the Day
Of Judgement, their own burdens
In full, and also (something)
Of the burdens of those
Without Knowledge, whom they
Misled. Alas, how grievous
The burdens they will bear!
 (41:22-25)

The Quran is an interesting blend of Jewish and Christian theology (Mostly Jewish, however, which accords with Muhammed's principal influences). Muhammed comes off as something of a Paul-like character, reshaping the somewhat foreign theology of Judaism for a new audience, language, and age with forceful, confident, and ceaseless proselytizing. The schizophrenic, two-faced nature of god is extreme, as he is called terrible, awful, and judgemental in the same breath as he is the most merciful. Clearly the audience for this message was intensely tribal, and the transposition of the old family & tent tribalism into a new religious tribalism of believer vs unbeliever was as historically momentous as it was psychologically astute and intellectually vacuous. In our own day, it continues to be the nail upon which multitudes of Muslims, disaffected as they routinely are by their own defective systems of civil society and government, hang their hopes and hatreds.

But there was one enormous oversight in all of Muhammed's hundreds of pages of detailed directives and repetitive trash talk, which was the matter of succession. Muhammed never revealed the identity of, or method of choosing, the next leader, let alone all the successive leaders of the community. This despite the huge significance he placed on the community, its coherence, and its leadership. This failure has haunted Islam from the day of his death, when the wrangles and ultimately civil wars over Ali, Abu Bakr, and Shiism began. The founders of the United States, in contrast, stand head and shoulders over Muhammed in that they authored a durable mechanism of peaceful succession and of government in general. A beneficent god could surely have managed as much for Muslims.

"The Kharijites argued a true believer would have trusted his fate not to diplomacy but to ongoing warfare and God will decide." .. from a Western commentary.

Unfortunately, Islam has vacillated between legitimacy by blood and legitimacy by battle, per the most ancient template. It is incidentally odd that the theocratic model we find in Iran has been so rarely employed, in light of Muhammed's example. In any case, this continues to be a glaring weakness of the Muslim world and especially of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, and other fringe groups that send up fatwas and set up caliphates that get nothing but scorn from mainstream Muslims (unless they succeed ... nothing succeeds like success!). The charisma of the moment, yoked to fanaticism, fundamentalism, and terror, may be able to scatter a dysfunctional and totally corrupt government as found in Iraq or Syria, but its staying power against well-functioning, legitimate, (not to mention open, truth-seeking, and democratic) societies is going to be extremely modest.

They will recline on Carpets,
Whose rich inner linings
Will be of rich brocade: the Fruit
Of the Gardens will be
Near (and easy of reach). 

Then which of the favors
Of your lord will ye deny? 

In them will be (Maidens),
Chaste, restraining their glances,
Whom no man or Jinn
Before them has touched; 

Then which of the favors
Of your Lord will ye deny?
 (55:54-57)

In the end, we have to ask how much Islam per se is responsible for the features of the Muslim world that keeps it in the news on such a regular basis. Many argue that religion has no significant effect, for it can and is interpreted quite flexibly depending on the material circumstances of the society. We would have to look to our own actions from the Crusades, colonialism, and recent US foreign policy to locate the reasons why some Muslims are so bitter about modernity and ready to take up arms anywhere they can fight infidels or set up fly-by-night caliphates.

Obviously, there is some truth to that view. The spectrum of Islamic interpretation is vast, from the Sufis to the Salafists. The Quran supports numerous views, and offers some compassion in amongst the rest. But I think that ideology is also critically important. We do not absolve the Nazis by accusing the Versailles treaty of driving Germans to  world war and genocide. Ideology drives world affairs, as the narrative force that shapes our responses to material conditions. No ideology, no Inquisition, no cold war, no racism in the US, no Crusades, no "holy land", no patriarchy, etc. ad infinitum. As the Quran exemplifies, people will find ideologies to suit them, (or have them forced down their throats), but if those ideologies claim to be rational, yet are not rational, the seeds of their own critique, if not destruction, can be sown. At least one can hope.

Fighting is prescribed
For you, and ye dislike it.
But it is possible
That ye dislike a thing
Which is good for you,
and that ye love a thing
Which is bad for you.
But God knoweth
And ye know not.
 (2:216)

For instance, one of the momentous issues in Islamic ideology is its stance towards the modern world. Which is not easily compatible with traditional Islam. Globalism breaks down cultural borders, infecting everyone with consumerism, liberal political philosophies, women's liberation, and religious skepticism. The commerce and especially the oil-addiction of modernity has made some Muslim nations unimaginably wealthy, while more generally, the advent of colonialism, interacting with the technological and intellectual power of the West, has put Islamic culture in a poor, embattled, even subservient, position. The Egyptian philosopher Qutb came to a shocked and fundamentalist conclusion- that modernity is the mortal enemy of Islam. Quran and Sharia must be the sole answer to all of mankind's problems.

"The concept of the imperceptible is a decisive factor in distinguishing man from animal. Materialist thinking, ancient as well as modern, has tended to drag man back to an irrational existence, with no room for the spiritual, where everything is determined by sensory means alone. What is peddled as 'progressive thought' is no more than dismal regression."

Let not the Unbelievers
Think that they can
Get the better (of the godly):
They will never frustrate (them). 

Against them make ready
Your strength to the utmost
Of your power, including
Steeds of war, to strike terror
Into (the hearts of) the enemies,
Of God and your enemies,
And others besides, whom
Ye may not know, but whom
God doth know. Whatever
Ye shall spend on the Cause
Of God, shall be repaid
Unto you, and ye shall not
Be treated  unjustly.
 (8:59-60)

The Saudi rulers in particular have blended this ideology with their wealth and Wahhabist religious structure into a globe-straddling ideological machinery of fundamentalist madrassas that groom the cannon fodder of jihad. Yet Attaturk, a generation before, came to the opposite conclusion, frog-marching Turkey into a quasi-secular, modernizing state. What is it to be? A great deal depends on the fairness and decency the rest of the world can bring to the table. But more depends on the readings that Muslims give themselves of their central text, history and traditions. The war for the ideological / theological soul of the Muslim world is highly consequential. And the core text is not, on the face of it, particularly helpful towards a tolerant, cosmopolitan, and peaceful reading.

It may be that God
Will grant love (and friendship)
Between you and those whom
Ye (now) hold as enemies.
For God has power
(Over all things); And God is
Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. 

God forbids you not,
With regard to those who Fight you not for (your) Faith
Nor drive you out
Of your homes,
From dealing kindly and justly
With them: For God loveth
Those who are just.
 (60:7-8)

• An Islamic theologian on the value of theology and the fundamentalist turn. "Islamic theology is based on an ethical rather than speculative imperative. Many Qur’anic verses and hadiths show that iman or “true faith” is obligatory and rewarded by paradise, and that kufr or “unbelief” is wrong and punished by hell." This shows, unsurprisingly, that a search for truth is not really part of the program.
• An advanced discussion of ISIS and the Muslim world, on POI.
• Shiite cleric sentenced to crucifixion in Saudi Arabia.
• Christianity ... can be taken several ways as well.
• Maher on Islam. And more, more, more, more, more.
• What do regular Muslims think?
• Is the Quran an example of "derp"?
• And now some very peaceful news, from Indonesia.
• The unending irony that is Pakistan: "An anonymous senior Pakistani security official stated: 'It is a worrying development that the TTP is regrouping close to the border right under the nose of the Afghan security forces.'"
• Wesley Clark on policy: "We just can’t believe that we were responsible for creating it. We weren’t. The money that went into ISIS came from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and it came particularly from the work of the Saudi leadership trying to find an opposition to Bashar Assad in Syria."
• Fear is a political act, and a media goldmine.
• Gosh- what happened to the middle class?
• GOP heads to new lows. Suppression or outreach, that is the question.
• What is the nature of our current form of capitalism? And of our political economy?
• And what's the problem with Europe? "The Eurozone’s current problem arises because one country - Germany - allowed nominal wage growth well below the Eurozone average, which undercut everyone else.... Within a currency union, this is a beggar my neighbour policy."
• Krugman on Japan- now is no time for false fiscal responsibility.
• Notes and data on inequality.
• The Fed can set long as well as short rates.
• Economic graph of the week. Our economic prospects continue to decline.