Why no Haitian terrorists?

Why isn't Haiti- failed state, miserably poor- an Al Qaida haven?

Amongst all the news from Haiti, one thing we never hear is that renegade groups of Haitians are bent on delivering suicide bombs to the US. Not only do they have ideal proximity, they have been shabbily treated by the US and other Western powers for hundreds of years. If poverty and "lack of opportunity", not to mention justified historical grievance, were sufficient for terrorism and suicide bombing, we'd be in far more trouble than we are. Why not?

Well, there is no denying the obvious, which is that Islam is the missing ingredient. Many other issues come into play, such as the generally friendly relations we have with Haiti despite all the burdens of history, to the point that the US hosts large expatriate communities with close ties to home, including remitting 15% of Haiti's GDP. ("For Haiti, one of the most affected LDC's- with close to 65% of its educated population found in the United States, the dislocation of much needed human resources is compelling.") And the overwhelming security unbrella/menace that the US represents, perhaps preventing any hanky panky in advance (hard to credit, really, knowing our capabilities, and considering Cuba next door).

No, it comes down basically to culture, and whether the bitter totalitarianism of Islam has touched down in Haiti. I am watching a bit of Spike Lee's Malcom X film biography, which is a classic example of such an ideology trying with all its might to establish itself on US soil, in the fertile and very justifiedly aggrieved black community. Separatism and militancy is the tenor, but the Nation of Islam did not take hold, nor Black Power more generally, and nor has generic Islam.

Perhaps we can thank Christianity for being a "commensal" or relatively benign religion, keeping away more virulent strains. Haitians are overwhelmingly Christian, 60% Catholic from their Spanish and French colonial history, and 25% or more Protestant with strong Pentacostal influence. Pentacostalism tends to be a striving religion, focusing on personal worldly success, virtuous living, and good business connections. This is quite distinct from the political focus of Islam, devoted as it is to authority, and political and social uniformity.

Pentacostalism (and Baptistm too) comes to society from the perspective that it is a small religion in a big society, striving to succeed in a pluralistic world dominated by others. Islam, no matter how marginal its community, comes at the question quite differently, insisting that not only its theology, but its sociopolitical program is perfect and absolute. Possibly in abeyance due to temporary weakness and existence as a minority, but the totalitarian goal is always clear and enshrined in scripture.

Most strongly fundamentalist cults will take a similar position, nurturing fervent dreams of toppling the reigning cultural paradigm. But few have armed jihad written right into their scriptural DNA, which makes all the difference here.

Catholicism in Haiti, as elsewhere in the Carribean and South America, has worn two faces- the static traditional form comfortable with ancient, not to say regressive, social hierarchies and personal, quasi-animistic devotions, and the other face exemplified by forcibly exiled Bertrand Aristide, termed liberation theology, which takes Christ as a revolutionary example, amenable to a communist, or at least socialist, social order. Haiti is strongly divided along these lines, as are many poorer countries, between the few rich and the many poor. As mentioned previously, this kind of divide is corrosive both to economic prospects and to the civil society. The rich have spared no effort, including calling in friendly US assistance numerous times, to suppress the socialist / populist movements in Haiti.

Fortunately, none of this has much to do with Islam. Islam can neither make unroads with the poor, who become even more oppressed in this religion, (women in particular), nor with the rich, who might like the additional social structure afforded by Islam, but not its strictures against hedonism and its relocation of cultural leadership to Arabia.

So, al Queda hasn't gotten serious footholds in some of the most promising areas in the hemisphere of their arch-foe for good reasons of history and culture which we can only hope will stay relevant as we continue (hopefully) to deepen and improve our relationships with Haiti during this time of catastrophe.

On the other hand, al Queda has been diversifying, now even taking up the standard of global warming. Next might be Keynesianism and progressive media diversification, not to mention internet neutrality(!), at which point Osama bin Laden may become a legitimate global leader of the poor and oppressed, yearning to breathe free. A sort of stateless Chompskyite counterpoint to the hyperpower head Barack Obama, who each moment seems to be regressing towards greater compromise with the vested interests. Who knows what the future of the global political scene might hold?

• Spending freeze is "Dingbat kabuki". The US government is not, and will never be, insolvent. If anyone were worried, it would be the Fed, and they would respond by raising interest rates to head off inflation. Are they? This policy buys into the defunct economics of the gold standard, which was replaced by Keynes only ... seventy years ago?
• How many Harberger triangles can you fit into one Okun Gap?
• Aussies have rednecks too.
• A conversion from atheism.
• Steve Jobs's megalomania knows no end.
• But the marketing has a few holes.
• When scientists don't know what they are doing.
• Contemplating the nuclear option.
• A. C. Grayling on the enlightenment.

Speciation in one country

How does sympatric speciation occur? New models clarify how species can diverge in place.

Despite Darwin's great work, the origin of species still remains something of a mystery, since beyond the depth of circumstantial evidence and the empirical demonstration of the details and mechanisms of evolution, speciation itself takes time- time that scientists don't have, as a rule, to stand around and watch. Traditional theories of speciation (Mayr and Dobzansky) demanded the geographic separation of two populations, giving them time to diverge by random processes without contaminating each other by interbreeding. But this is wholly insufficient to account for the facts of evolution. The Amazon is a hotbed of speciation, (or was, at any rate), and one can't possibly claim countless geographic barriers for so many speciation events. Sympatric speciation has to happen.

(Note that the terms "sympatric"- occurring in the same territory or "fatherland", and "allopatric"- occuring in different territories, were clearly devised in the patriarchial days of yore, possibly by German scientists!)

Allopatric speciation is clearly applicable to islands- the countless endemic species related to their mainland ancestors are clear evidence of such divergence. But how could 15 species of Darwin's finches diverge in place on the ~ten or so Galapagos islands? And how did the thousands of butterflies in the Amazon come about? They are mobile and can interbreed during their speciation.

The answer has got to be sympatric speciation. But evolutionary theory has had a hard time modelling that process, since any genetic divergence between two nascent species- two sub-populations of an existing species- is going to be swamped by interbreeding, exchanging genes that need to be kept separate if divergence is going to take place.

A recent paper by van Doorn et al. in Science takes a large step to resolving this dilemma by improving models of speciation to take sexual selection into account, finding that under realistic conditions, sexual selection synergizes with ecological selection to allow sympatric speciation. The situation they give themselves is an ecological setting where two modes of getting a living work well, such as a mix of large seeds and small seeds, (leading to Darwin's finches), or two differently structured plant flowers (leading to differentiated butterflies).

In this setting, organisms are favored which specialize on one of the two conditions, and disfavored if they express the average condition. Incidentally, this is one of many different evolutionary scenarios. Often a population benefits by the retention of diversity, such as in the case of human personalities and temperaments, such that all are better off when a variety of skills and attitudes are kept in the flock, as it were. But if ecological space presents a reason to diversify, then the question is whether organisms can follow suit to the point of speciation, even if they occupy the same physical territory.

The key to this new work is the realization that the occurrence of male ornaments that function both as marks of fitness and as female attractants allows females to select those males that do well in one of the two conditions. The marks do not have to be differentiated between the proto-species to start with, and nor do the female have to know which males are which, at least at first. Male ornamentation, like the colors of many birds or the dramatic designs of many butterflies, often acts as a sign of fitness- if the male is doing well, the colors are brilliant. If not, then not so brilliant, or perhaps in tatters. If females choose carefully, then they will reinforce the natural selection of males well-adapted to one or the other condition, even in the same territory.

After time, this process generates two sub-species that functionally specialize, even if they look identical, even to each other. When hybrids occur between well-adapted males of one specialization and females of the other, their offspring are less well-adapted, and especially in the case of males, less likely to propagate. I can't vouch for the math involved or all the assumptions, but the general idea makes sense. It would be quite difficult to put numbers on the various parameters, so the authors give ranges in some of their graphs:

Left- the relation between tendency to speciate (colors) vs migration rate between the proto-populations (Y-axis) and ecological specialization pressure (X-axis). Green represents the traditional modeling approach, where sympatric populations (migration of 1) only speciate with extreme selective pressures for specialization.

Yellow represents the addition of the theory of this paper, which adds female choosiness and male fitness signalling to the mix, allowing specialization to be amplified by sexual selection. On the right, relations are graphed between each of the above variables and time to speciation based on arbitrary modeled values and starting from a completely homogeneous population:

(B assumes migration quotient of 0.3, while C assumes a sigma/selection for specialization of 0.75. I'd note that these are rather permissive conditions for the theory presented, since I was really interested in fully sympatric speciation. On the other hand, there are other possible mechanisms at work that further contribute to speciation, like the ability of females to recognize one or the other male specialist, which is not part of the base theory presented here.)

What does sigma mean in this data? The authors state that it represents the (inverse of) intensity of "stabilizing selection within habitats". Which is to say- how strongly the ecological situation penalizes in-between hybrids versus pure-plays of either specialization. The left graph shows in proper fashion (lower right corner) that even if there is no selection of this kind, allopatric (island) populations will eventually speciate anyhow. On the other hand, sympatric species require some kind of push from their ecological setting to differentiate and speciate. In its absence, there is no reason to do so.

Biological traits involved in these models are:

x- the ecologically selected variation, such as bill size, which responds to the bimodal ecological issue at work.

t- investment in the male ornament, which is not differentiated with respect to x, but affects mating success.

p- female choosiness, which is what makes t useful.

The models also assumed a rate of mutation and evolution: mutations occur 1e-5 per allele per generation, and have effects on x, t, and p of 0.1, 0.1, and 0.05 respectively, in either direction at random. This is realistic for such issues as bill size, which are as likely to vary in one direction as the other.

So, in the end, this work provides one rationale whereby evolutionary theory can be fitted more closely to evolutionary reality, for speciation among organisms that make use of sexual selection (ornaments, female choice, etc.). This encompasses a large number of complex organisms (notably birds and mammals), and constitutes one theoretical explanation, among several others, for their particularly rapid speciation in the face of relatively low population numbers and long life-spans (relative to, say, bacteria).

• National Geographic has an excellent graphic of what is at stake in the status quo health care system of the US.
• On some of the rather byzantine ins and outs of Afghan politics.
• How long will we accept legislative prostitution?
• Do we torture/murder in cold blood?
• And have the terroists won?
• Graph of Haiti GDP related to Goldman Sachs bonuses and earnings. Good, or bad?
• The religion of the future.

Hate and Hope

I look back on Obama's first year, and compare the hate and the hope afoot.

For Christmas I received a wonderful book by Lady Bird Johnson- her White house diary, full of politeness and fine observations from her special station in life. One observation that struck me was of Harry Truman, who accompanied her to Greece for the burial of its King in 1964. (As an aside, her utter boredom on meeting the various royals of Europe, employed, unemployed, and pretending, spoke volumes). Lady Bird was truly happy around Truman, and observed that his cheer and kindness to everyone he met impressed her deeply, especially after the vilification he had gone through in office. I thought- what does she mean? Truman is very well-regarded in historical hindsight- what ever was the matter?

Looking into it more closely, it appears that the Republicans were the matter. Joseph McCarthy started his ugly career during Truman's administration, and Truman's firing of Douglas McArthur also caused a hail of criticism and hatred. On both counts, Truman has been thoroughly vindicated by history. These form classic examples of the susceptibility of the body politic to the fear-mongering and authoritarianism of Republicans. Which grand tradition continued this year in full flower, as Republicans trotted out "coddling terrorists", federal insolvency, Obama's "socialism", "missing" birth certificate, and "death panels", among many others.

Democrats are not immune to a bit of fear-mongering, such as Kennedy's "missile gap", LBJ's "daisy" ad, and the more recent (and more justified) responses to Bush's plans against Social Security. But it seems part of the DNA of Republicans to match their hatred for government in general with distain for civility and, in an odd way, for their constituents, who tend to be divided between the very poor (and uneducated) and the very rich (who need no education to influence policy). Something unconscious is going on here- deeply temperamental differences between the parties that divide our political spectrum:

These political temperament maps come from politicalcompass.org. They even have a map of famous composers.

One would imagine that people who temperamentally favor authoritarianism would have a basic respect for the government, (i.e. authority), whatever its composition. But that turns out not to be true. Such lack of respect propelled fascists to power in the last century, by totally undermining nascent democracies in favor of new hybrid religio-cult-totalitarian systems. The reason is that democracy is fundamentally a problem for the authoritarian mind-set, not a solution. The whole transaction whereby citizens deliberate on what they want as common goods and who might best render those common goods is problematic for an authoritarian, who instead seeks a stable order with a strong social hierarchy featuring strong leaders, based not on rational (and thus dynamic) utilitarian grounds, but on deeper connections ("religo"), such as Volk, religion, nation, blood, "traditional values", commune, or other quasi-religious ideology. A sort of patriarchial family writ large.

The amazing durability of the idea of nobility and royalty is a testament to this mind-set, deeply seated in everyone, but more so in some than in others. Just when the rationale of royalty had expired in the wake of the Enlightenment and the French revolution, Napoleon got right back on that horse, making himself an emperor and authoring yet another royal house in a Europe already infested with them.

Another manifestation of the authoritarian mindset is a problematic relationship to reason and truthfulness itself. For if the social order is supposed to be fundamentally staked on properties other than reason and utility as realized in a Lockean social contract, and instead on emotional buy-in to strong social hierarchy such as an aristocracy or royalty, undergirded by theological or ideological support, then getting there hardly involves reason, does it? It involves deeply emotional arguments that speak to what advertisers would call our "reptilian" brain.

But back to the "death panels". Republicans, having fallen so suddenly out of power, have understandably seized on any tactic that comes to hand. As with the Gingrich "revolution" before them, they have grasped at ways to de-legitimate the administration, with false scandals (remember Vince Foster?) and endless inuendo. Trained in the notorious Young Republicans, they don't fight fair, since their whole attitude towards the institutions they are dealing with is one of distain rather than respect.

The point, as Grover Norquist and many others of the hard right portray it, is to gain power for the sake of strangling the institution, thus creating a new dispensation of freedom and traditional values in the land, maintained by .. well, it is difficult to say, but since the democratic state may be construed as inherently a liberal institution, other institutions more amenable to authoritarianism, such as corporations, churches, and the military are the typical power centers in this desired world. Some segments look forward to total anarchy, of course, where society (or those "left behind") retreats to the hardy frontier ethic of every clan for itself.

Ugly as this is to witness, I understand it as a psychological issue. The structure of our centrist, two-party system dictates that there will always be two roughly equal sides to the great debate- sometimes aligned along the libertarian-authoritarian axes of the diagrams shown, sometimes more along the communism-neoliberalism axes, which is to say, between egalitarianism and economic differentiation. The Republican party, taken to ideological extremes in the last twenty years, has briefly fallen out of its position of ~half the electorate, (partly due to the disgracing of its ideology by reality), and will only find its way back once it recaptures some middle ground in temperamental terms.

But another option for Republicans is to successfully activate latent authoritarianism in enough of the electorate, bringing them over to their side instead of compromising with the middle. Thus the campaign of fear and hate. It is commonly observed that wars help the incumbant by activating unifying feelings / ideologies. George W. Bush shamelessly used fear and terror for political gain, going so far as to raise the terror alert level at politically convenient times. Though this kind of politics is the sort of thing we rue at leisure, (and in the long lens of history), it can be shockingly effective in the short term.

Here's me!

Sorry about the rant, but this is partly why I am so impressed by Barack Obama's first year. He campaigned on, and is carrying out, a huge agenda. He has been harrassed in ways large and small by a revanchist opposition that is poisoning the body politic through its rhetoric, amplified through its house organs (Sarah Palin: "I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News. It's wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news,").

With all the compromises, and the bizarre masochism of the Senate and its "rules"*, Obama has accomplished heroic tasks, especially in saving the economic system from freefall, and in making solid progress on health reform and climate mitigation. While I carp constantly that there is much more to do and better ways to do it, a great deal has been done. Obama's ability to maintain his moral composure and progressive aims amidst the relentless pressures and drains of office is deeply impressive. I only hope he can keep it up. Lady Bird recorded how the office was slowly killing her husband- a willing sacrifice to the country they both loved, yet painful to see, especially in another Democratic president with high aims and great skills.

* Obviously, the Senate at very least needs to reinstate the requirement for Senators to actually speak for the duration of a chosen filibuster, with cameras going.

~~~

My heart goes out to Haiti, whose suffering seems to know no end, despite a very high level of religious devotion. Haiti was also subject to a coup by the Bush administration in 2004. A News Hour report showed one woman lying on the street, babe in arms, with compound fractures in both of her lower legs- helpless, and likely hopeless as well.

• Podcast discussion about the Enlightenment and its authoritarian adversaries.
• Fascism and sociology, a somewhat dry view.
• A fellow puzzled pundit.
• A green view of Obama.
• A long view of economic rights and amelioration.

America's greatest alchemist

George Starkey: Harvard-educated alchemist and all-around crank.

It is hard to recapture the days before chemistry was a science, when the material of the world and our own bodies was a thorough mystery. All kinds of theories ran rampant, from organic models of metals "maturing" in the womb of the earth, to Democritus's theory of infinitesimal and diverse atoms in constant motion, separated by space. Total ignorance didn't keep people from making up theories, but it did make most theories dramatically psychological, involving sexual unions, wombs, sperma, and feces, comingled with the highest ideals of incorruptible matter and everlasting life.

Already from Greek and Islamic alchemists, the field had inherited a great deal of technology concerning the separation of metals from ores and from each other, dyes, fabric treatments, papers, inks, distillation, preparations of acids, sulphur, ammonias, explosives, etc. But alongside all this, and of far greater mystical attraction, was the "greater work"- quests for elixirs and something familiar to readers of Harry Potter- the philosopher's stone. This mythical beast, often sought in a "subtlized" marriage of mercury with small amounts of gold or silver (among many other possible ingredients) would stoutly resist the heat of any fire and transmute base metals such as lead into gold.

Image of the star regulus, a compound of antimony now called stibnite.

"Gehennical Fire" by William Newman, describes the career of one of the last great alchemists, George Starkey. Born in Bermuda in 1628, he attended Harvard in the 1640's, then pursued his career in London among the leading chemical lights of his age, before dying of the plague in 1665 in the midst of treating others with his alchemical "cures". Most remarkable to me was the primitiveness of chemistry at Harvard, not because it was not current with the latest ideas from the Old World, but because those ideas had hardly advanced beyond the opus received from the Islamic alchemists five hundred years before (especially, translations of Geber/Jabir by secular scholars Robert of Chester and Gerard of Cremona) and other ancients.

The degree process at Harvard sounds very much like a monastic disputation, long on direct debate, rhetoric, and scholarly citation, short on factual basis. They were still pursuing Aristotelian and Galenic ideas, combined with the newer Helmont-ism, among many other alchemical influences. Indeed, as late as 1771, a thesis at Harvard proposes: "Can real gold be made by the art of chemistry? Yes." In 1767: "Are all bodies (metals and stones not excepted) produced from seed? Yes." In 1761: "Is there a universal remedy? No." So Starkey was at the cutting edge, and became quite well-to-do as a New England doctor after graduating.

But he had caught the alchemical bug, preparing varied pharmaceuticals for his medical practice, but also experimenting on his own among the metals. He also began a fertile writing career, some in his own name, but far more successfully under the pseudonym Eirenaeus Philalethes. In 1650, he decamped to England with his young family, apparently to try his luck in the scientific center of the day. He had a long friendship with Robert Boyle, who, while a fellow alchemist and jack-of-all-sciences, was far less enamored of secrecy than was Starkey. Boyle was extremely rich, however, so Starkey engaged in a continual dance of disclosure with him to remain in his good graces, while hiding as much of his deepest secrets as possible.

Starkey was afflicted with drunkenness, a biting tongue, poor advertising skills, and a hopeless devotion to his art. In England, worked himself into destitution and isolation while seeking the philosopher's stone and other alchemical grails, as had so many others. Support came fitfully from Boyle, and from various sidelines in alchemical medicines/pills and perfumes/aromatherapy. Numerous ex-partners hounded him for fraud. He even tried political pamphleteering, which failed to gain him the royal preferment he sought from Charles II. Few who knew him seemed to like him, despite substantial respect for his (al)chemical chops. None suspected that he was the author Eirenaeus Philalethes, whose works led the field, becoming Newton's most valued alchemical references, and finding a second life among the Rosicrucians through the next two centuries. Some titles are:

The Marrow OF ALCHEMY Being an Experimental Treatise, Discovering The secret and most hidden Mystery OF THE Philosopher's Elixer.

SIR GEORGE RIPLYE'S EPISTLE TO King Edward unfolded. Chymical, Medicinal, and Chyrurgical ADDRESSES: Made to Samual Hartlib, Esquire.

SECRETS Reveal'd: OR An OPEN ENTRANCE TO THE Shut-Palace of the KING. Containing, The greatest TREASURE in CHYMISTRY, Never yet so plainly Discovered.

TRES TRACTATUS DE METALLORUM TRANSMUTIONE

Here is Starkey satirizing some of his alchemical competitors, adherents of Sendivogius

"Yet reason with them on their work, and they

Will tell you of a monstrous uncouth Sperm

Panspermion called, this without a nay

Must be called Chaos for to use their term,

Of this is made each thing that in the Earth,

Is found, out of it all things are brought forth

It hath no proper form, yet being hath

'Tis non-specificated, therefore apt

All things to procreate, such is their faith

That as if they were in a vision wrapt,

They see in fancy such a thing as this,

And yet alas they know not where it is."

But he had his own dalliance with wrapt-ness in visions:

"This Chaos is called our Arsenic, our air, our Luna, our Magnes, our Chalybs, but in diverse respect, because our matter undergoes various states before our Regal Diadem is extracted from the menstrual blood of our whore. So learn who the comrades of Cadmus are, and who the Serpent who ate them, what the hollow oak, on which Cadmus transfixed the Serpent. Learn what the Doves of Diana are, which conquer the Lion, I say, which is really the Babylonian Dragon, killing all by means of his venom."

Newman explicates this passage in detail, giving identities to each element involved in making an amalgam of antimony with silver, sulfur, and mercury. Yet time and again, Starkey also thanks God for giving him the final formula for one of the grails of alchemy:

"From the year 1647 up to this year and day [1658], I have exerted myself in the search for the liquor alchahest with many studies, vigils, labors, and costs. Today (first) is has been granted to me and conceded to my unworthy self by the highest Father of Lights, the best and greatest God, to attain complete knowledge of it, and to see its final end. To Him let there be eternal praise, both now and forever. Amen."

Newman is particularly concerned with deciphering the coded language of randy queens, noble kings, potent sperma, green lions, and endless other obfuscating, metaphorical, language (for a fine example, examine this text). Newman's view is that his ability to recover a good deal of sense out of this ouvre, encompassing many basic operations of alchemy as well as the more etheral aims of the ultimate elixirs, transmutations, etc., which were all expressed in highly coded, richly metaphorical language, disproves the idea held by Jungian scholars and others that the alchemists were engaging in psychological, more than chemical, exploration.

I would beg to differ. Newman's lengthy exegisis of these issues is quite heroic, not to say occasionally tedious. But alchemy was ultimately sterile with respect to its own aims- there was no elixir, transmuting stone, or universal dissolvant (i.e., the liquor alchahest, to which Starkey was particularly devoted). These were purely psychological projections- theories with little empirical input and much fervent imagination. Through its practical operations and its curiosity about the properties of matter, (and through more sober heads than Starkey's), alchemy ultimately led to modern chemistry. But that was only by virtue of shedding the countless projections and psychological encumbrances that characterized it for hundreds of years, whether expressed in allegorical codes for basic procedures, or in free-floating fantasy. (The modern new age community perpetuates many of these tropes.)

An interesting comparison can be made with shamanism, (and its modern remnant, theology), which offers medical cures and esoteric knowledge as does alchemy. Shamans tout their cures and powers, but, beyond than spinning elaborate myths, are tightly secretive about their ultimate nature and origin. Shamans engage in complex public as well as private rituals and preparations whose purpose is to motivate an extensive placebo effect, as well as a self-delusional system of putative knowledge and magical powers.

The richly psychological language of alchemy had similar effects, of both publicizing the knowledge and esotericism of the adept, while veiling its actual operations and origins. In both cases, real procedures are engaged (creating medical concoctions, assimilating vital forces from the inanimate world into the animate world, or from animals and plants) and described in flowery language.

But in neither case is the practitioner ultimately able to carry off the work, other than in the minds of his subjects. As soon as alchemy passed from the imaginary to the concrete science of chemistry, the veils fell, the language became specific and pointed, (and terse), and powers heretofore only hinted at were either set down and described for fame and profit, or else demonstrated as chimerical. Knowledge turns out to inhabit a different psychological landscape than the portents of knowledge.

• Complete idiot's guide to alchemy.
• Newman article for PBS, and his own school.
• Triumphal chariot of antimony.
• List of alchemical equipment, and ordering site.
• I have to re-recommend this economic analysis of the current crisis.. very insightful.
• And if you bank with a piggy bank, consider switching.
• Are we happy now?

Greed is bad

One would not think it needs saying, but apparently it does. Greed is bad.

One of the most dramatic changes in our culture over the last few decades has been increasing inequality. After the trauma of the Great Depression, New Deal, and World War II, the social contract included steep taxes on the rich and explicit care for the unemployed through fiscal support and monetary Keynesianism.

This led, as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich among others have portrayed it, to a sort of golden age of economic egalitarianism, where the rising tide really did lift all boats, through the staid and productive 50's and the incredibly hopeful 60's, doubling real incomes across the board. In contrast, the last decade's economic growth gave all of its dividends to the rich, with the lower 80% experiencing no increase in real income or living standards, rising debt and declining wealth.

Chapter and verse are given here, and I select a couple of graphs to illustrate:

Hourly production wages, 1960-2004 (left), real GDP per capita (right)

Share of Wealth Owned by Bottom 80% 1979-2003

We rank 95th out of 135 ranked countries in economic equality, measured by a broad statistic called the GINI index.

This is a bad thing. It is a bad thing in simple fairness terms, for it is highly unlikely that only the top 20% of the population has increased its productivity. And it is bad for the long-term health of the economy and the society. The decline of Rome seems to be largely due to extreme inequality, where large landholders (exemplified by Senators) gathered more and more wealth, pushing serfs and slaves deeper into penury, while exempting themselves from taxation through political corruption. The end result was that the Western empire, after hundreds of years of power and cosmopolitan intercourse, sank gradually into poverty and thence into history.

As Keynes pointed out, an economy composed of the rich alone is a poor economy. Luxury spending is fickle, wasteful, and insufficient, compared to spending by a broad middle class. It is all about private goods and fails to support public services like education and infrastructure, except inthe guise of philanthropy, where it is likewise fickle and idiosyncratic, rather than broadly rational. And needless to say, it multiplies human misery. So why have we been tilting the economy strongly towards the rich over the last few decades?

I will leave the religio-politics and ideological economics aside for the moment. It seems that the capitalist system, left to its own devices, tends in the direction of stark inequality. Organized crime is a case on point, where the more organized it is- the better the various resources, like territories and businesses, are shared out among various families- the more equal the results. But the more robust the competition, the fewer families survive to enjoy its dividends.

Free markets tend toward efficiency in many cases, but firstly, market failures are depressingly frequent (medical care being a glaring example, not to mention "high" finance), and secondly, we have long recognized (since at least the institution of the progressive income tax and similar mechanisms) that the public/state has a duty to ameliorate the natural ratchet of the market, both controlling the terms of corporate and market activity, and redistributing wealth to directly counteract its natural concentration in naked capitalism.

"Civil government, insofar as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, and for the defence of those who have property against those who have none." -Adam Smith

In field after field, whether acting, sports, agriculture, law, finance, management, etc., the rich get richer and the rest get poorer with time. Whoever is best in a field can attract a bidding war, while an excess of aspirants generates a corresponding ratchet down in pay for the also-rans.

This is simply the market at work. I am not sure whether it is an iron-clad Malthusian law, or something more contingent on the cultural moment, the corruption of government, etc., but it seems to be the trend of economic history, played out in ancient and modern times. Dramatic exceptions only prove the rule. One example is the period following the black plague in Europe, where, following a depopulation of approximately half, the amount of land did not decrease, leading to high demand for labor and high wages, leading in turn to a weakening of feudalism and other markers of increased power and income among the lower classes.

This also led to general cultural and economic progress. Scarcity of labor has historically been one of the most fertile inducements to economic progress, especially in terms of technology and productivity. Necessity is the mother of invention, and conversely, infinite labor supply is the mother of technological stasis. Today, US farmers claim they couldn't survive without hot and cold running illegal labor. Yet a century ago, they prospered through technological innovation. Innovation continues in agriculture, but the reliance on cheap labor is a very regressive aspect, both for agricultural communities, and for our agricultural practices and for productivity at large.

But this is just a small part of the general corrosiveness of large-scale inequality. As Bill Mitchell says:

"As an example, the most recent literature on economic growth and development is that more equal countries grow faster, other things equal. The strong empirical finding that emerges is that there is a positive relationship between equality and growth. More equal societies generate better educational outcomes and result in higher skill levels than highly unequal societies. The old neo-classical growth models could never conceive of this because they asserted Principles (such as the so-called law of diminishing returns) that denied it as a matter of logic. Never mind looking out the window.

...

The link between equality and growth is also developed in the public health and sociological literature. It is indisputable that poverty drives other social costs including poor health, increased crime, ghettos that create spillovers of disadvantage. Mainstream economists tend to ignore this literature."

So, not only has the last decade been a dead loss (Krugman), but the last several decades have been heading us in the wrong direction. Wrong morally, economically, and culturally. The work of the Obama administration has ironically been to re-feed the monster of finance, hardly attending to more basic dynamics. The political system remains hungover from the Reagan era, when greed was good, markets were king, and public service was spat upon.

For example, the inheritance tax is a prime fixation of the ideological right. The "death tax" is the final indignity administered by the state to the freedom and dignity of its citizens. But you can't take it with you, so a less hysterical representation might be that the tax stands in the way of a durable class structure, i.e. an aristocracy. The question is whether we should give the next generation, differentiated already by their various genetic and cultural endowments, a financially fair start in life, through the generous provision of public goods, or whether personal financial empires built by whatever means, fair or foul, be allowed to turn into enduring family empires.

"When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues."

... But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still." -John Maynard Keynes

Another example is the mantra of "motivation"- that executives require superlative pay to properly motivate them to execute the shareholder's interests. This has resulted in those managing the cookie jar helping themselves to cookies in the dark of night while telling others in the household that downsizing is needed since there aren't enough cookies to go around right now.

Needless to say, shareholder (i.e. public) interests are best served by keeping as much money in the jar as possible, rather that giving it to managers to "align" their interests with those of the institution. The agent problem is a difficult one, but such bribery, now exposed in the financial meltdown as more akin to embezzlement than "pay", is a highly dubious way to address it. Psychology tells us that people can be motivated in many ways and by miniscule rewards, so putting that genie back into its bottle, while difficult, is important and manageable.

“Regarded as a means, (the businessman) is tolerable; as an end, he is not so satisfactory.” -John Maynard Keynes

Markets are tools to further the public goods and private freedoms, not embodiments of them. Many goods arise out of corporations and markets, but these institutions are inherently amoral, as well as being fundamentally dependent on the state for existence. Government, in contrast, is our collective moral actor whose role is to control these amoral actors. Countless other organizations act for the common good- nonprofits, foundations, religious communities, and so forth. But only the government has (by common consent) the coercive power, among many others, to control what have become extremely powerful market institutions.

And these institutions have been generating increased inequality with little general good to show for it. So, quite simply, it is time to turn back the clock to a new new deal, where we collectively focus our efforts on taming private markets and providing more public goods. With that, I wish you a tentative happy new year and happy new decade.

Bill Mitchell's Saturday quiz question, 1/1/2010. Please answer True or False:

"As soon as adult individuals adopt social norms and start making decisions together which impact on each person in the group, mainstream economic theory becomes irrelevant and the competitive model of decision making and optimisation loses authority. It is only when individuals behave as psychopaths (according to the clinical diagnosis of psychologists) that the mainstream economic theory of choice has any traction at all."

• Keynes had it all figured out, really.
• Another good analysis on the current difficulties. Liquidity isn't enough- the banks remain insolvent.
• Macro view, same institute.
• Fascinating, though speculative, column on what's next in the housing implosion.
• But perhaps the decade has been pretty good, for the rest of the world.
• Bill Mitchell's cry into the wilderness of loanable funds.
• Topical, though very long, interview on inequality and class in America with Richard Sennett (esp. part 2).
• Money and the corrosion of society.
• Shalizi on what comes after the revolution.
• What's the word in green this week? Thorium.

A beneficial mutation

In pursuit of that mythical beast, the beneficial mutation.

I was in a brief discussion with another blogger recently about the possibility of human evolution, in light of the vanishingly small rate of beneficial mutation. Given the few million years involved, and the small population sizes, wouldn't it be simply impossible for apes to have accumulated beneficial mutations at the requisite rate to evolve into humans, which required roughly 170,000 such alterations, by one estimate? I will leave the details of that discussion there, but much turned on the probability of beneficial mutations, which I rated much higher than my friend did.

So, an interesting study popped up in Science recently that touches on this problem, and illustrates some of the concrete issues related to mutations in a natural setting.

Ciclid (sounds like "seek-lid") fish are famous in evolutionary biology for their rapid adaptation to new lakes and their diversification within existing habitats. This paper discusses a single mutation occuring in several species in Lake Malawi which borders Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. The OB (orange blotch) mutation occurs in the gene Pax7, not affecting the protein sequence of the Pax7 protein product, but occuring in its control region and increasing its expression, though the authors do not give a detailed analysis of where and when this expression takes place. This increased expression allows the OB allele to be dominant over the wild-type BB allele.

Cichlids of Lake Malawi, female (left), or male (right); wild-type (top), or carrying the OB allele of Pax7 (bottom).

Pax7 is known to regulate the development of pigment cells in fish, (its human counterpart also has developmental roles, though slightly different effects). Incidentally, its cousin Pax6 is famous for an evolutionarily conserved role in eye development. So this mutation makes a great deal of sense in view of the phenotype, which is that fish get a mottled coat (bottom) due to fewer but bigger melanophores, where before they had a relatively uniform coat (top).

For females of these species, the mottling is beneficial by being quite a bit more effective camouflage than their wild-type uniform dark color, in relatively light-colored, rocky settings. For males, however, the mottling is a catastrophe, destroying their day-glo coloring and beautiful striping. They go from disco kings to blotchy wallflowers. Much of the paper is devoted to figuring out the odd genetic system which reduces the number of affected males dramatically in these species (about 20 species share this mutation), while maintaining the OB females in high proportion (though the authors don't give population numbers).

But something needs to be said about the basic mutation- it affects a gene which has dramatic effects on development, without deranging that development completely. It is almost as though the developmental genetics of this organism (as is true for many others) is pre-positioned for evolvability, involving a lot of controlling genes with complex regulation, which can be tweeked by relatively minor mutations to alter some features of the organism while the rest of the program goes on with little detriment.

This illustrates (anecdotally, at least) how beneficial mutations may be reasonably frequent. Variation exists in all populations, and living conditions are changing all the time. So while most changes are detrimental versus the optimized mean of the ecological landscape, conditions favor change in many edge cases and novel conditions, creating room for novel phenotypes to take advantage. Ecological landscapes are also a great deal more ragged and chaotic than the smooth abstract surfaces often used to illustrate them. I see this frequently in daily life, where some disruption to my well-honed routine first makes me upset, but then reveals a new way of doing things that I adopt as a new routine. A beneficial mutation has occurred and been selected for, which happens with some regularity.

Getting back to the fish, our males were left with a serious problem- how to minimize their embarrassment while providing the females with these beneficial OB blotches? The evolutionary solution turns out to be to link the Pax7 OB allele with the female version of a novel sex determining locus (W), so that the mutation is tightly linked to the female W, and thus happens only in female fish. Remember that not all species use the X/Y chromosome system of sex determination, indeed there are a dizzying array of such systems.

Thus not only was the OB mutation beneficial, but it was beneficial enough to overcome the harm it does to males, and to induce the resolution of that harm by linking OB with the female W determiner- a gene which the authors claim is yet another beneficial mutation (or transposition, or novel gene) that arose after the OB mutation, over-riding the locus that determines gender in other species of cichlids in the region and resides on another chromosome. Indeed, it might be beneficial enough to switch the sex chromosomes of the species (or incipient species) with OB from the previous #5 chromosome to this new location, #3, illustrating how sex determination mechanisms can shift over time.

Such hugely beneficial mutations will be rare, but based on these observations of genomic, developmental, and ecologic plasticity, I'd suggest that beneficial mutations of more modest effect are more common than the vanishingly small rates that were assumed in the analysis cited above.

• Religion columnist at NYT on the horrors of pantheism in Avatar. Nature can go to heck...
• A closet Christian.
• Haven't the credit rating agencies done enough harm?
• Greenwald on our media ignoring torture.
• What Afghanistan really needs.

Deficit terrorism

An interesting blog makes the case for liberal economics

Second only to theoretical physicists, economists carry a professional mystique of abstruse knowledge in the service of vast power. Vaults full of gold, trillions on "balance sheets", jargon swirling, and schools like the Chicagoans, Austrians, and Keynesians at each other's throats. Those employed at the central bank can create money ex nihilo, with god-like powers! The current crisis has made us painfully aware that while economists may use mathematics (and hopefully arithmetic) for pedestrian activities, the heart of their profession is a kind of psychoanalysis, along with a bit of conjuring. Who will ever forget Gerald Ford's Whip Inflation Now program?

Understanding is a precious commodity, and for all the critique raining down on the current administration, very difficult to come by. We can take it as given that the Republican talking points are, as usual, self-serving idiocy. Yet even discounting that, the situation is murky. I've recently gotten interested in a blog by a liberal economist who takes even Paul Krugman to task for basic blunders of macroeconomics! Not an easy thing to do with a nobel prize winner, but as I said, economics ain't physics.

I am no expert, (as usual), so bear with me (if you like) while I work out below what is going on in our economy, with the guidance of Bill Mitchell (interview), of Australia's University of Newcastle. His blog is something of a firehose of solid economics, indifferent spelling, and tart sarcasm directed at the leading lights of the profession, particularly conservatives who have suddenly found deficit religion, after eight years when "deficits don't matter". Thus Mitchell refers to the "deficit terrorists" of the present day who are prolonging the agony of this economic ... repression? decession? You make the call.

Let's start at the beginning, when the government prints money. Sovereign governments that print their own money and demand that legal tender back for taxes and the like are in a quite special position, relative to those sad-sack organizations like households, businesses, and states, that have to balance their books. Governments can print more money to cover their spending, and indeed have to do so as the economy they are responsible for grows and demands more money at stable value.

The current crisis was a bit of an error by the banks, which have another role in printing money. They make loans on the basis of small reserves, (the fractional reserve system), creating money out of thin air when they make a loan, and destroying that money again when it is paid back, while keeping the interest. Normally, the central bank keeps close tabs on the reserves underlying bank activities, so that this creation is held in check, tracking economic growth. In normal times, (again), tweeks to the interest rate charged to banks for this reserve money controls interest rates throughout the economy, thus lending activity, and thus money creation, and thus inflation.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the current unpleasantness, which was that banks, non-banks, and quasi-banks got into a low-reserve (i.e. overleveraged) lending game through esoteric "instruments" (we wouldn't want to call them loans- loans have standards!). The Federal Reserve completely lost control of the fractional reserve lending system, and the various lending "innovators" blew up when the markets they were overleveraged into began to decline.

Why wasn't this inflation of the bubble accompanied by monetary inflation? Ungodly trillions were being minted by the "banking" system, causing an asset bubble, not money-value inflation. This is perhaps where the psychoanalysis part comes in. Those of us buying houses during this period would call it inflation pure and simple, and of a particularly painful kind. But the CPI was not paying attention, since rental rates were not going up in lock step (one sign of housing market imbalance, incidentally). Most of the economy also had spare capacity for production, and offshoring/importing kept wages low. So as long as most indicators were stable, few businesses were raising prices, and the Fed, keeping its eye on the CPI, wasn't raising rates, and all were happy, except for one or two corners of the economy that were going absolutely bonkers.

Doubtless there is more to the story, but that is as much as I understand. When all that money from "innovative" banking was extinguished out of the system, we were in great danger of spiralling deflation, which prompted the Fed to flood the banking system with extra reserve money, buy up hundreds of billions of questionable assets, and reduce interest rates to zero. The extra reserve money made the banks more secure, (except those saddled with the most toxic leveraged garbage who couldn't cop a bailout from the Goldman, er, Treasury overseers), but it didn't induce them to lend. Lending depends on the customer's future prospects, and prospects suddently turned rather sour, even while businesses were pounding on the doors for money to tide them over this difficult time.

This is where the government comes back into the picture, printing and spending money. Mitchell's basic point is that government occupies a free position versus the private economy, with outflows:

- Direct spending (fiscal)

- Loans of reserve funds to banks (monetary)

- Purchase of bonds, notes, etc. on the open market with printed money (monetary)

And inflows:

- Taxes

- Debt, which is money collected from the private economy in return for IOUs

- Banking reserves called in and liquidated.

What the government does with its money is entirely immaterial. It could burn all the money that comes in the door by way of taxes and debt issues, and print new money for whatever it wishes to spend. The only stricture is that, as the manager of the monetary system of the private sector, the government (encompassing the Fed, Treasury and all the rest) wants to provide net money to the system such that inflation stays low- i.e. the value of the issued money remains stable. One could adopt the motto- "real macroeconomists care about inflation, not debt".

(Incidentally, due to this fundamental connection between the fiscal and monetary arms of government, Mitchell advocates combining central banks into government treasuries, so that they can act in unitary fashion, as they did in the US in this crisis anyhow.)

As a liberal-left economist, Mitchell adds the extra monetary policy aim of generating full employment, which used to be front and center in the US, but has receeded with the ascendence of Reagan and Friedman. Are these aims at odds? That is a critical question, especially now. Mainstream economists believe in something called the NRU, or the natural rate of unemployment, where the economy is producing as many jobs as could be expected without generating excess inflation, considering the number of malingerers and others reporting to be interested in work, but not really worthy of private sector employment.

As you can tell, this is something of of moral, even theological, concept. Leftists tend to think of NRU as zero, since everyone willing to work should get a job, if only a state-supported minimum wage job. The mid-century in the US stands as a sort of golden age in this respect, where for a long period anyone who wanted to work could find a job, during the huge post-war economic expansion. Rightists tend to think, in contrast, that people need to be "motivated" by the specter (indeed, the reality) of joblessness to be in a properly craven postion vis-a-vis business.

But one point is not really in dispute- however one celebrates the "creative destruction" of capitalism, the destruction of families, life savings, and human capital is no one's ideal. The current bubble-destruction cycle has been deeply damaging, especially to those still desperate for work. Their labor is being wasted- flushed down the toilet due to business, government, and monetary policy mismanagement. And their spirits are being crushed.

So far, the Fed has staved off deflation with its trillions of monetary support. But can the Fed, and the government in general, do more? Here we come up against the deficit terrorists, who say that the government is already in hock up to its ears and simply can't do any more. Hogwash! say liberal-left economists such as Mitchell. Is inflation a threat? No- deflation remains the current threat. So not only should the government be spending more money to replace mismanaged and dried-up labor demand, it doesn't even have to issue more debt to do so, but should just spend outright, leaving inflation management as a bridge to cross when we get to it.

Indeed, with inflation in negative territory, the policy goal is to increase inflation, (the customary goal being ~2%), which would best be accomplished by net government spending, either by sending money into the long-term bond markets, (analysis mentioned below), or directly into jobs programs, especially for our crumbling infrastructure and alternative energy needs. As everyone points out, the Great Depression was finally fixed by the biggest and most spectacularly wasteful direct jobs program in history- World War 2.

Issuing debt into the private economy to "finance" government spending simply takes money out of one pocket of the private economy (the rich who buy bonds) to put it into another (fiscal spending by the administration and congress). In normal times, that is a useful tool for monetary stability and for facilitating saving by the private economy , but right now, a great deal of extra money needs to be added- to stave off deflation, to spur economic activity in general, and to reduce the existing loan burden through modest inflation.

The financial bubble, despite creating vast amounts of money through Alice-in-Wonderland mechanisms, created only pockets of inflation, not general inflation. The subsequent implosion was so severe that much more money needs to be pumped in- about two trillion more, by one analysis which recommends that the Fed buy that amount of debt from the Treasury, effectively printing that amount of money and putting into the bond market, lowering long-term rates. The point is not to resume the over-inflated ways of the top of the bubble, but to provide the right amount to counteract the whipsaw of private lending contraction, allow the resumption of normal economic activity, and ameliorate unemployment.

[ed.note- Deeper reading of Mitchell's blog informs me that the above prescription, of the Fed buying $2 trillion of treasuries on the open market, would not actually constitute printing money, since the bonds bought would represent private liquid assets that would be extinguished. The result of all this buying would actually be to slightly lower long interest rates, which may be helpful in an indirect way, though already-low rates are not a big spur to lending. Buying this debt from the Treasury would likewise not have any effect unless the Treasury turned around and spent that money fiscally into the economy, like on infrastructure, alt. energy, etc. programs, or through a tax holiday.]

The ~1.5 trillion dollar gap of GDP, due to wasted labor and other resources.

So, do deficits matter? Yes, but mostly from a monetary perspective. The government doesn't need to "finance" its spending with debt. If the monetary system is stable, such financing (or alternately, taxation) is advisable, to keep the net money flows between the government and the private economy stable. (It also may be forced to do so if it has formally separated the central bank from its fiscal adminstration, as we have, even if the central bank then turns around and purchases those debts with created money.)

But it doesn't have to, especially when deflation is the present danger. It can (and should) spend freely without corresponding taxation or debt issuance in a deflationary situation, when the private economy lacks enough money, whether due to trade imbalances, government running net surpluses, or a credit implosion. Interest payments on government debt are certainly an encumbrance on future government spending, and some countries have reneged on such obligations (though never the US). Today's low interest rates are, however, a signal that such debt is, in concrete terms, not a problem now.

Overall, the response of the Fed and the government in general has been better to this implosion/decession than it was to the Great Depression. But the unemployment rate (much higher when one includes the underemployed, discouraged, etc.) says empirically that not enough has been done. That the financial industry should lose jobs after its overexpansion goes without saying, as is true to some extent for the housing industry as well. But the rest of the economy (so-called Main Street) is innocent in this cataclysm, and its suffering is a mark of failure in monetary and fiscal policy. In the future, one can imagine that were this kind of financial implosion to happen again, (heaven forfend!), the government should take even more rapid and forceful steps to replace credit, money stocks, and economic demand so that citizens would not be facing such terrible disruption and chaos.

• One unemployed person.
• All that said, who is mostly responsible for our current debt?
• Frank Rich has a great column on the not-so-great Bernanke.
• Survivor, for those of you looking for morals.
• Santa and god- closer than you might imagine.
• Mr. platitude raises his game.
• The psychology of denial.
• Amazing maddening story of abortion in war.
• A great airline columnist keeps making the case against TSA.
• Religious zealots run amok in the middle east.

Who turned out the lights on the Dark Ages?

Review of Glubb's The Empire of the Arabs

A few weeks ago, I reviewed the first book of this pair, The Great Arab Conquests, by General and Sir John Glubb (1963). This week I conclude with its sequel (1966), which takes the story from the 680's, (the origin of Shiism in the Karballa massacre), 48 years after the death of Muhammed, to the mid-800's, covering both the Umayyad and early Abbasid dynasties of the early Muslim Empire.

Again, I can not praise Glubb's history highly enough. He writes with sweeping knowledge, genuine sympathy, and prenetrating insight, and with some verve as well. His main flaw is that as a thoroughly military product of the late British empire, he naturally concentrates on military affairs and high strategy, writing in a very traditional historical mode. Here is his reflection on the concept of political freedom:

The citizens of Britain and the United States claim today to be free men and to live in free countries, but their freedom is only relative. In practice they have agreed to a compromise. They have consented to surrender their freedom to a vague entity known as the majority, which can make laws which others must obey. In other words, men who live in settled communities are not personally free. In order to enjoy a limited amount of freedom under such circumstances, they agree to surrender the remainder.

The fact that, under this system, we still claim to be free, makes us fail to comprehend what freedom meant to a nomadic Arab. He knew nothing of the majority. He claimed the right to do as he wished, even if every other man on earth disapproved of such action. The nomad really was free, and the key to his perfect freedom was mobility. As soon as these men came to live in cities and acquired immovable property, they lost their mobility and therefore their perfect freedom. But they did not of course think the matter out in this manner. Personal freedom had become to them an instinct. Although living now in houses and in cities, they were not prepared to take anyone's orders. Those who were trying to organize and rule an empire with such subjects soon found the task impossible. p. 208

Westerners are typically unacquainted with the basics of the Muslim empire (I certainly wasn't, only learning the barest bones of Greek and Roman history in school). Yet the Muslim empire was larger than the Roman empire at its height, had a brilliant, if somewhat shorter, run, and is more of a living presence in our own world, as many of its former subjects still yearn (or even take up arms) for its re-establishment. No one wants to re-establish Rome, except in the most loosely metaphorical sense!

Before getting to Glubb's insights on the middle ages, I'll touch on a few themes from the rest of the book. The original impetus for Muslim imperialism was religious, uniting an age-old warrior raiding tradition and pan-Arab peace inspired by Muhammed's charisma and theology into a duty to spread the faith outwards by jihad. Almost on a lark, the newly minted Muslims, earlier content to harry each other and the empires on their frontiers while making a living conveying trade goods from the orient, marched on the Byzantine empire in the Levant, the Persian empire in Iraq, the Byzantine empire in Egypt, and the core of the Persian empire in Persia, in quick succession.

As luck would have it, these adversaries had exhausted themselves in prior wars with each other, leaving the way virtually open. The same situation repeated itself as the Muslims entered North Africa in the 690's to 700's, and Spain in the 710's. Only the Berbers in North Africa put up continuing resistance, ironically after adopting Islam, but then finding that the promise of social and political equality in Islam failed to materialize. It was an Arab aristocracy, as it remains today in the deep feud between Saudi Arabia and the Sunnis (dressed in white, in Umayyad tradition), and Shiite Iran (dressed in black, in Abbasid tradition, or green, in Shiite tradition).

The tenor of government gradually devolved, from the popular acclamation of the first two caliphs after Muhammed (who also followed the religious and ascetic traditions of early Islam), to the nepotism installed by the Umayyads (family of the Umaiya, who were ironically descended from Muhammed's bitterest opponents in Mecca) whose capitol was in Demascus, to the more Eastern-themed despotism of the Abbasids (family of Abbas, more closely related to Muhammed, but not descended from him). The Abbasids rose on the back of rebellion from Persia, using the name Ali to rally the Shia partisans against the family that killed both Muhammed's son-in-law Ali and his son Hussain, of Karbala fame. They also had engineered their rebellion through messianic propaganda, charismatic organizers, intrigue, and secret cells- techniques that would be familiar to any Bolshevik.

Imagine the disappointment when the "Ali" meant by the Abbasids turned out to be quite different from the Ali of Shia veneration. Related, yes, but it was a bait and switch, with the truth coming out only after the Abbasids had authored a Mafia-style bloodbath and seated themselves firmly in power. This remains as one example of the much abused messianism of Iranian muslims, who had thought (mistakenly) that a reign of peace, justice, and light would follow the Umayyad overthrow.

Another aspect of the decline from Muhammed's original vision was the increasing violation of his commandment that Muslims were not to kill each other. The first civil war, involving Ali and the Umayyads, produced profound shock among those familiar with the original traditions. But as the decades passed, the empire descended into a welter of civil wars, and the energies once devoted to expansion (which effectively ended by 715) turned inward. Glubb seems to get a rise out of punctiliously reporting the various severed heads transported great distances through the empire, usually to inform the caliph of some great news, whether good or ill. Few chapters pass without such a scene. One can almost sympathize with the recent extremists in Iraq who expressed their nostalgia for the long-lost caliphate with such beheadings.

~~~

Now let me focus on the most fascinating chapter of the book, about the European dark ages (entitled "The End of Mare Nostrum"). Glubb digresses to argue that Muslim sea power in the Mediterannean accounts for the sudden autarky of Europe after the long centuries of Roman rule and commerce. The Arabs were far from natural mariners, at first keeping from naval engagements entirely, then gingerly hiring Egyptian and Lebanese ships and crews and using them as platforms to engage hand-to-hand with the enemy. But after several more decades, the Muslims gained regular fleets and control of the Mediterranean, which was the highway of the Roman Empire, early and late. The Byzantine empire was essentially confined to Greece and the Adriatic by ~700.

Glubb observes in one example that papyrus by the boatload was used throughout Europe to keep records, such as at the Merovingian court in France. But that ground to a halt abruptly with the Muslim defeat of Egypt, and Europe was forced to use parchment instead. One can imagine how devastating this was to government, commerce, and learning in general. The Arabs eventually learned the art of paper making from the Chinese, and relayed this to Europe centuries later. In the mean time, the Muslim empire cut Europe off from virtually every trade route of the ancient world- to Africa, to Egypt, to India, and to China and points east. Only Russia, the Baltics, and Byzantium remained in contact, and the latter only tenuously, through a sea lane that made Venice so wealthy.

Likewise with gold:

In the same manner, the supply of gold was cut off. The Merovingians at first alloyed their gold coins with an increasing admixture of silver, but eventually even this became impossible. In Charlemagne's time, only silver coins were in use. When Charlemagne became the ruler of France and Germany in 771, he found himself at the head of an inland state with no external commerce. p. 143

This, despite the Muslim empire virtually swimming in gold and other fruits of their industry and trade with the orient in the days of the Abbasid dynasty.

The question Glubb fails to pose is why- why didn't the Muslim empire continue the trade that was so profitable previously? Why did the Muslim control of the Mediterranean take the form of piracy (up to the US's defeat of the Barbary pirates in 1815, indeed!). Long-distance trade lay at the heart of traditional Arab life, so this is quite puzzling. But traditional Arab life meant raiding and plunder as well, on a freelance basis, so perhaps the net result was anarchy on the sea lanes. Also, once the Muslim empire moved inland from Damascus to Baghdad and became more Persian-oriented during the Abbasid period, its interest in the Mediterranean declined. Much later in the book, he does offer this paragraph:

There was little or no trade between the Arab Empire and Europe, owing to the unending hostility between Islam and Christendom. The Mediterranean, in Roman times the greatest highway of trade in the world, had become a no-man's-land and only war fleets or pirates sailed on its blue waters. A commercial trickle passed from the Arab countries by the Black Sea to Byzantium, chiefly through the hands of the Khazars of the lower Volga.

The only "neutrals" between Islam and Christendom were the Jews, who were permitted to live and trade in the countries of both "blocs". They had the entry alike to France, Spain, Constantinople, Egypt, Syria, and India. Individual Jewish merchants even travelled from France to Suez and thence to India and back.

....

Such widespread commerce naturally required corresponding financial arrangements, and a system of banking, making use of letters of credit and cheques, was available to merchants. Indeed our English word cheque is derived from the Arabic sek. p. 324

While the decline of Rome is mostly due to endogenous economic factors (such as vast inequality of wealth, with few land-owners and many landless workers), the final blow to the old Roman commercial system was its maritime disappearance at the hands of the Muslims, plunging Europe into isolation, feudalism, and darkness. The Muslim empire would also decline from its heights in the early Abbasid era, and face its own dark age at the hands of the Tatars and Mongols, just in time to send some of its fleeing intellectuals to a re-awakening Europe.

But this kind of thing also didn't help, as noted on page 124:

The Goths who conquered Spain were few in number and constituted merely an aristocratic ruling class, who lorded it over the slaves and serfs, as their Roman predecessors had done. In 587, Reccared, King of the Goths, was converted to the Catholic faith, and in 616 began to persecute the Jews, who were extremely numerous and prosperous in Spain.

• An interesting analysis of oil price/efficiency sensitivity, arguing that we need to get to $300/barrel to approximate the efficiency incentives of the 70's oil shock.
• Could we have our masculinity back, pleeeez?
• PhD thesis on evangelical creationism.. you just can't make this up.
• The women will save us, continued ...
• What if the Victorians had had computers?
• Rick Warren hates in the nicest possible way.
• Dobzhansky's classic essay on evolution.

Truth is overrated

"Convictions are greater enemies of truth than lies" -Nietzsche

As the car talk guys say, do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?

As an exponent of the new atheism, I was intrigued by a recent piece by the pro-religion reporter at NPR, Barbara Hagarty, describing a "schism" in the atheist community (nudge nudge, wink wink). Apparently atheists are divided on how strident to be- whether to tell believers in religion, psychic phenomena, and all spiritualisms conventional and unconventional that they are wrong, wrong, wrong, or perhaps rather to stay in the closet, or else to suggest ecumenically that everyone has some "truth" to contribute to the "conversation".

I tend to be on the strident side, concluding after long exposure to religious claims, dabbling in various traditions, and scientific training, that, well, however well-meaning, it is all a load of bunk. But whether to tell everyone this good news is a matter of temperament, of political expediency, and also of basic philosophy- how valuable is truth, anyhow? Aren't lies sometimes better?

As a scientific type, I value truth above all things, by temperament and training. Yet how reasonable is that? Truth serves many useful functions, helping us survive, helping us know ourselves, others, and the world. But truth changes over time, and every person has his or her own version of it, sometimes diametrically opposed to that of others. In religion, this problem is particularly acute, with evangelicals as sure of their truth as atheists are of theirs. If each of us value only truth, then all will immolate each other in proselytizing fervor, particularly if the true message happens to include a dollop of evangelism, whether by insistently spreading the "good news" or by the sword as in Islam.

Another value has to take precedence, and that value is love, or at least communal regard for our fellow humans, however deluded. Truth has its place, but surely, no atheist wants to follow the example of the church in burning heretics for their own good in the hereafter, or Muslims in their early practice of killing infidels for sport and plunder, otherwise known as jihad. Nor do contemporary religionists in our fair land, excepting perhaps the far-out Major Hassans and left-behinders.

That is the essence of our cosmopolitan civilization- that while philosophy (love of truth) is an abiding pursuit and jewel of cultivation, the most important object of cultivation is our regard and love for each other, without which quests for truth can't happen. Thus cosmopolitanism (citizenship in the cosmos) seems a worthy successor to a long line of ethical traditions: Tribalism, Eye-for-an-eye-ism, Christianity, humanism, eco-ism et al.

~~~~~ Bonus post! ~~~~~~

"Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition." - Edmund Burke

I was deeply intrigued by this quote, and thought it might make a brief blog topic. Burke seems to be appealing to the golden mean, where too much freedom is anarchy, too little is servitude. All of which was so starkly demonstrated to him in the dramatic course of the French Revolution. In similar manner, religion is a little superstition, while atheism is none. This connects with other quotes of his, that "Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.", and conversely, "Man is by his constitution a religious animal; atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts."

The context of the top quote, in a speech about those upstart colonies across the Atlantic, is all about governance, not religion. So the simile of religion was a throwaway comparison in this instance. Yet it is surely a very common sentiment across all cultures. Catholicism, Islam, and other organized religions serve to domesticate and civilize the basic human superstitious impulses which suspect hidden powers at work behind every manifestation. Likewise, much of the horror of colonialization across the Americas and elsewhere involved the destruction of indiginous spiritual traditions, some of which declined to such sad depths as ghost dancing or drowning in a sea of alcoholism.

From an atheist perspective, indeed from most perspectives, superstition is not a good thing, no matter whether in small or large amounts, so Burke's basic comparison is not quite right. The golden mean between anarchy and totalitarianism surely is institutionalized self-government as exampled by the English parliamentary institutions. Whether that can be called "freedom" is another matter, but it seems the best practical approximation, affording as much freedom as possible, in addition to the necessity of well-regulated government.

On the other hand, where is the golden mean between superstition and no superstition? If man is indeed a religious, superstitous animal, then some accomodation may have to be a made, much as we accommodate our many other frailties, without holding them up as ideals. Eating is necessary, but we don't make it a matter of philosophical hairsplitting or organized belief with truth claims about its wonderfulness, sanctity, and relations with a divine gourmand.

That, perhaps, is the crux of the response to atheism, that it turns a supercilious eye on one of our most personal, unrepentant, and inexcusable weaknesses, which makes those under its gaze decry atheists for meanness, inability to experience great things and deep emotions, and the like.

• Topical interview with Frank Schaeffer on truth vs comity (towards the end).
• Wonderful article on the genetics, potentials, and risks of gifted children.
• Hot show on KCRW
• Nice meditation on being and seeking goodness. No need for theology at all, really, just an appreciation and cultivation of our better natures.
• But we don't want our brains to fall out, do we, Mr. Huckabee?
• Blog I am starting to follow.. on cranky, er, stimulating, contrarian, and liberal economics.