Academia

Economic Man vs. Primary Loyalties ?

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Recently, in the excellent Ikle review comment thread, James McCormick, had some very insightful (and erudite) remarks:

RE: “deep cultural” and “economic meta-” perspectives.

The two may seem very different however the Anglosphere discussion has often focused on the economic impacts of social behaviour. It’s not random chance that we still quote an 18th century lowland Scot (Adam Smith) on so many economic issues. Nor that he was first out of the gate. Nor that his good buddy Hume and inspiration Locke provided so much of the foundation for political science. And economic historians like Joel Mokyr and the duo that described the economic and social impact of Newton’s Principia specifically addressed why the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions (or in Mokyr’s view, an “Industrial Englightenment”) were so dependent on the unique social structure of England, and Scotland. Indeed, the work of Crosby on the momentous intellectual and economic changes of northern Italy directly sets the stage for trading republics in Holland and England. When we turn to economic historians like David Landes, or naval historians like N.A.M. Rodger, they help us put our finger directly on the nexus of culture and economics (or political “evolution”). Jim Bennett’s point is that the Anglosphere nation-state is manufactured out of non-zero sum deals — Burkean communities and Lockean contracts. The social habits to do this (and to slowly transform their political partners into thinking it a very good approach) run very deep. And take a long time to acquire. And surely deserve some reference when prognosticating on how America should deal with a turbulent and dangerous world.

The bone I pick with Iklé and Barnett is that many of their assumptions about political and economic structure (which underpin their geopolitical hypothesizing) depend on a one-size-fits-all model of development that is supported by neither cultural historians nor economists. In fact, they bear no resemblance to any America, current or past (cf. David Hackett-Fisher’s “Albion’s Seed” and Samuel Huntington’s “Who are We?”). When I, as a Canadian, read geopolitical recommendations that require large numbers of Americans of a kind I’ve never met (after 40 years of living, studying, and working amongst them) — my first question is always “how many suns in the sky over *your* planet?” Both authors have something very important to offer. And both suffer from end-state “think-tanqueray.” IMHO. Fortunately, as with so much else, near-term history is going to be dictated by the politically possible rather than the academically plausible.

Let me address McCormick’s second point first.

Setting aside Ikle for the moment, Thomas Barnett or any other thinker who attempts to put an intellectual template on a global system is required to engage in simplification of complexity. It is, as James correctly states, a ” one-size-fits-all” model and not the underlying reality in all its’ nuances and interconnections. At best, a valid model identifies common operating principles and provides a rough predictive capability, considering those principles acting in isolation. As reality is messy, policy makers being guided by any model need to exercise some degree of common sense. Pakistan is not India, much less Indiana, and while markets may exist in all three, the wise statesman makes wide allowances for local variation. The variations however, still have a common touchstone.

In his the first point, McCormick expounds on the symbiotic relationship between economics and social behavior in the historical development of the Anglosphere. That fusion is correct but the cultivation or endurance of particularist identities, what 4GW theorists refer to as “primary loyalties” provide points of friction with the collective maximizing behavior of Economic Man. The Western experience with nationalism and the erection of the Westphalian system after the Thirty Year’s War blunts the reemergence of primary loyalties here. Few Germans today think of themselves first as Prussians or Saxons or Protestants but the same cannot be said of Iraqis or Congolese where tribe, clan and sect affiliations resonate. David Ronfeldt, the influential defense intellectual at RAND, refers to tribalism as ” the first and forever form” underlying society.

Western or Anglospheric societies overcame tribalism (broadly understood) with secularization driven both by politics and economics, over a considerable period of time. Economic Man, rational man, slowly gained the upper hand over the atavistic warrior. Defusing psychological anxieties over identity, moving society beyond subsistence level to a point where risk-taking could be more safely entertained, helped transition Europeans into the abstract mental framework of the nation-state citizen, rather than that of a subject of a provincial nobleman. Outside of the West, some states like Singapore have made that same cognitive jump in the very brief period of de-colonization but most have not. That doesn’t mean they won’t or can’t.

In short, I think the caveats raised by James are significant and should be incorporated into any application of Barnett’s ideas. I’m not sure however, that Dr. Barnett would disagree as he is offering a grand strategy or a “blueprint for action” rather than attempting to supervise the every move of the construction crew.

On History

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“You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was. “
– Leopold von Ranke

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

History is less a science or an art than it is a craft; and like most craftsmen, historians have favored techniques that they tend to pass on to their students, rather than formulas. Moreover, what differentiates good history from bad is, to an extent, a matter of opinion. Even (or especially) among professional historians, there can be heated dispute on this point. Truly great history, though, tends to be like obscenity – we all recognize it when we see it.

In part, historians are like detectives because there is no substitute for a rigorous examination of archival sources with the intention of bringing something new about your subject to light. Finding the overlooked document is a coup but being an archive rat is not enough. To be useful to the larger society requires effectively communicating a meaningful analysis.

When historians produce great interpretations of historical events, narratives that have generational staying power, they begin with an implicit historicity, or at least an overarching theme, to act as a guide. Connecting small events to the largest picture gives a work of history great explanatory power, which is why that in 500 years from now, odds are that people will still be reading Gibbon, Herodotus and Thucydides but historians from the 20th century may be entirely forgotten (as the modern, doctorate-wielding, historical profession is only little over a century old, our best historians probably have yet to be born).

One of the great questions is whether to view history in a linear or cyclical fashion. Many of the ancients, like Polybius, tended to see history as a recurring pattern. This not as common today, though some historians, like the Vietnam era specialist David Kaiser, have embraced cyclicalism, an attractive concept intellectually, because it offers the hope of anticipating future events while mitigating the moral responsibility of causation. It is hard to make headway against the zeitgeist, after all.

Linear paradigms in history, while offering a tidy, chronological sequence that is familiar to anyone who, as a child, was required to draw a timeline in school, present their own analytical problems. On an ideological level, the view of history as unidirectional “progress” tends to breed a spirit of determinism that inclines the historian to ignore contrary evidence. Much has been made about leftist MESA scholars in academia who were blind to the rise of Islamism before 9/11; much the same could be said of conservative scholars in the West who ignored the potential barbarism of Fascism and National Socialism. It is possible for history to move backwards, metaphorically speaking. Or backwards and forwards at the same time, as in the case of the Nazis, who championed both atavistic racialism and modern technology.

The second problem with a rigidly linear approach, is that it is tempting to ascribe causation to prior events that are merely correlative in sequence but are weakly connected in substance.This fallacy appears glaringly among conspiracy theorists who offer seemingly impressive but isolated, data points that purport to show that “FDR knew about Pearl Harbor” or “the CIA killed Kennedy“. This tendency can easily affect legitimate works of history, if to a lesser degree though the process of robust, merciless and at times, gleeful, criticism that historians hurl at one another’s writings helps to keep this error in check.

Framing history is an analytical tool and like carpenters, historians are best served using a variety of tools instead approaching all historical questions with nothing but a hammer.

Biopoetics II

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In his argument for biopoetics and against the old guard, Brian Boyd begins with what may seem a truism, if not in some English departments: “We love stories, and we will continue to love them. But for more than 30 years. . . university literature departments in the English-speaking world have often done their best to stifle this thoroughly human emotion.” Our desire to form patterns, to weave a net that has a structure we can sense if not always see, is central to our human understanding. We love plots and characters, we love them in gossip and in great literature, in soppy romances and classic drama. We loved them as children in fairy tales and we love them as adults whether we read history or literature.

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Biopoetics: Brian Boyd Argues His Case

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Last June, Shannon Love began a post: “I am myself an agnostic and a rabid evolutionist,” moving on to describe how those beliefs help him structure his understanding in broad ways: “I am a free-market advocate and a Chicagoboy because I believe the free market is a Darwinian process that reaches better solutions quicker and less selfishly than political systems. In short, an evolutionary viewpoint forms the foundation of my entire world view.”

I thought of that when listening to Brian Boyd last fall; he gave a talk here and the small classroom that had been set aside couldn’t hold the audience, which spilled into the next room (the door was opened, so students could still peek at him) and into the hall. His literary criticism, like Joseph Carroll‘s, is best understood in the context of Pinker’s popular The Blank Slate. We listened to interpretations sensitive and wise. He described the bond of father and son as Odysseus held Telemachus to his chest (loving his child now a man, whom he had last seen suckling at his mother’s breast), the room was quiet: all recognized the power of a father’s love and of the art that communicates it. The biological informs & empowers the aesthetic – all lead to that breathless moment when we understand.

In his “Getting It All Wrong: Bioculture critiques Cultural Critique,” Boyd writes with a clarity and directed passion we are grateful for in literary criticism. Introduced in an earlier post, he teaches at the University of Auckland in New Zealand; his American Scholar essay was linked on Denis Dutton’s Arts & Letters Daily.

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Languages – What Extinction Can Mean

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John McWhorter, the linguist, is always a bit of a maverick. And he is also quite often right. In “Dying Languages”, he argues:

In the end, the proliferation of languages is an accident: a single original language morphed into 6,000 when different groups of people emerged. I hope that dying languages can be recorded and described. I hope that many persist as hobbies, taught in schools and given space in the press, as Irish, Welsh, and Hawaiian have.

However, the prospect we are taught to dread — that one day all the world’s people will speak one language — is one I would welcome. Surely easier communication, while no cure-all, would be a good thing worldwide. There’s a reason the Tower of Babel story is one of havoc rather than creation.

(Thanks to A&L, as usual.)

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