“…your merry heart goes all the way, your sad one tires in a mile.” – Emerson
Month: May 2006
The Anglosphere and the Economic Historians
[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]
The success of Europe, and especially the Anglosphere, in the last few centuries has kept historians busy, pondering just why and when the Europeans made such an impact on the world.
Not surprisingly, the theories of causality often mirror their times. Way back when, European success was seen as religious and cultural vindication. Later, it was seen as a genetic or perhaps geographic predisposition. At the dawn of the 20th century, as non-Europeans and radical philosophers got an opportunity to make suggestions, earlier “gifts” were turned on their heads and proclaimed as intrinsic “evils.” Thus Europeans, and by extension, the Anglosphere, were successful specifically because they were monstrous in comparison to other human beings — more cruel, more greedy, more lacking in humanity (specializing in anarchy, greed, and heresy … to quote one witty Amazon.com reviewer). European destruction was therefore a solemn obligation and no doubt ordained by higher powers, real soon now.
As the wheels of history ground on during the 20th century, and people (both European and non-European) had a chance to ride the hobbyhorses of fascism, communism (and perhaps socialism) into political and economic oblivion, a more intellectually useful historical theory was needed. Europe and the Anglosphere was showing a distressing tendency toward further prosperity. The intellectual solution, particularly with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and orthodox communism in China, was to claim that the entire question of European success was based on a false premise. The truth was … Europe was never the centre of anything much. And if it was, it was only a relatively recent event that is passing quickly now from the historical stage. Eurocentrism was therefore obscuring both the global achievements of other peoples and cultures and its own transitory significance.
In a nutshell, three views of Europe: (1) Good, (2) Bad, or (3) Indifferent.
Apron Strings
I noticed last year that most of the people I encountered through my self defense class wanted to ask about methods to protect their children or grandchildren from the Internet. At first I thought they were concerned about shielding underage people from adult content, and I started to carry around info that I had downloaded which explained about blocking software like Netnanny.
It turns out that wasn’t what they wanted at all. News reports had started to appear that breathlessly hyped the dangers lying in wait for children that use the Internet as a social medium. Kids that set up a Livejournal account, so the talking heads said, were waving a red flag in front of a bull. And the bull in this case are pedophiles that obsessively surfed the ‘Net in search of their prey.
Reports of this nature have gotten pretty prevalent of late, maybe even routine. Most local law enforcement agencies, always sensitive to charges of lacking positive action, have set up little task forces to try and catch adults who search online for teen victims. The conclusion that any reasonable person would reach is that a child who visits the Internet is just a few mouse clicks away from being singled out for a kidnapping.
(As an aside, most of the websites look annoyingly similar because they got started from a grant from the US Department of Justice, and I suppose they just put up a modified version of DOJ’s template. The most interesting webpage of this variety I’ve come across is the one for Idaho, which also has a great deal of useful child-friendly links at the bottom. Kudos to Idaho!)
Going Towards the Sound of the Guns
The cable news networks are all abuzz about a reported shooting at The Rayburn House Office Building, one of the complex of buildings that house US government offices around the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
According to the talking heads sitting at their desks in the TV studios, someone called the Capitol Police and reported the sound of gunfire on the underground garage level. The police reportedly didn’t find anything, but they did sniff the distinctive odor of cordite (modern gunpowder). The cops locked down the building, refusing to allow anyone to leave, and now they are making a room-to-room search.
This is the proper response, of course. Footage shot by reporters being escorted out of the building by way of the parking area show it to be really huge, taking up more than one level and stretching for some distance. If somone ripped off a few rounds from an autoloader, it will take a fair amount of time to find the spent shell casings. They could have used a revolver, though.
There would be shell casings only if some shots were fired in the first place. I routinely hear distant sounds that I could swear are gunshots while I walk my dogs in the wee hours of the night. It turns out that it is only garbage trucks emptying dumpsters.
This could be a false alarm. We will see.
I have decided to watch the Fox News Channel. The reporters are able to phone elected officials trapped in their offices by the lockdown to get their impressions. Pretty neat.
There is going to be a press conference in 20 minutes.