Links to Consider, 5/4
Cynthia Haven on Girard; Louise Perry on girl culture; Rob Henderson on growing gender differences; Aaron Renn on Emmanuel Todd's new book
Girard did not live to see the rise of a profession that epitomizes his theory—that is, the social media “influencer,” whose sole purpose is to provoke mimetic desire in others.
But that desire is just part one of his theory. Part two is what our imitative cravings inspire: covetousness and competition as we come to desire what others cannot or will not share. This creates conflict. Even as we insist that we are ineradicably different, we become more alike as we fight—using the same weapons, trading the same insults, inflicting the same injuries against the demonized “other.”
Girard comes across as immersed in the dark side of human nature.
He wrote, “More than ever, I am convinced that history has meaning, and that its meaning is terrifying.”
When it comes to most of the major psychological sex differences, I am typical of my sex. I am more agreeable, risk averse, and neurotic than the average man, and I also have a restricted sociosexual orientation (or, colloquially, I like being monogamous and vanilla). I’m generally more interested in people than in things. I regard spending time with my children as more important than my career, and have turned down a lot of professional opportunities as a result (one of the causes of the gender pay gap). I cry easily, particularly in response to the suffering of vulnerable people and animals. I enjoy sewing, interior design magazines, and cooking. I have no interest in watching sports.
But on one crucial point, I am abnormal. When behavioural scientist Cory Clark appeared on my podcast earlier this year, she spoke of the tendency for women to prioritise being kind over being truthful – a tendency that I don’t share. A tendency that I regard, in fact, as very bad and very stupid, which apparently makes me unusual for a woman.
Pointer from Ed West, who quotes more from Perry:
the cultural changes we’ve seen in academia over the last few decades are primarily a consequence of the influx of women into the profession, bringing with them their female-typical preferences and perspectives. Some of those effects are good, like the fact that male academics are now less likely to get away with exploitative behaviour like offering students good marks in return for sexual favours. Other effects are bad, like the persecution of heterodox thinking within academia.
Long-time readers will recall that a few years ago I speculated about cultural change using Joyce Benenson’s Warriors and Worriers model.
On another topic, West speculates that
conservatives will lose the argument over immigration, for reasons of path dependency and class interests, but win on crime/disorder, and most societies will move towards a more Singapore model of law enforcement.
In the U.S., immigration is a crime/disorder issue. There are a lot of people who are in favor of immigration but who don’t like illegal border-crossing.
I think that President Biden’s problem is that he and his party are perceived as weak. Mass illegal immigration feeds that perception. The disruptive pro-Palestinian demonstrations feed that perception. The wars that have broken out under his watch feed that perception. West is correct to point out that many people yearn for a strong leader. Perhaps they are wise to do so, or perhaps they will end up getting what they want “good and hard,” in Mencken’s phrase.
Back to gender. Rob Henderson writes,
The [gender-equality] paradox is straightforward: Societies with higher levels of wealth, political equality, and women in the workforce show larger personal, social, and political differences between men and women. In other words, the wealthier and more egalitarian the country, the larger the gender differences.
Henderson now has a monthly column in the Boston Globe, where this essay appears. It is mildly gated (you can get six months’ access for $1). The essay includes:
In an interview in The Times of London, the psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams succinctly summarized the paradox: “Treating men and women the same makes them different, and treating them differently makes them the same.”
There are a variety of possible explanations for the gender-equality paradox, but one prevailing view is that as societies become relatively more prosperous and equal, people more fully express their underlying traits and preferences.
…The freer people are and the more fairly they are treated, the more differences tend to grow rather than shrink. Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised that Gen Z men and women are diverging along political lines to a greater extent than earlier generations did.
There’s a copious amount of discussion about family structures in this book, but Todd adds to that an overlay of religion. He sees Protestantism, rather than the market, industry, or technology as the heart of the modern West. Its most critical impact was a drive for universal literacy, so that all the people could read the Bible in their own language. It also created the famed Protestant work ethic. An educated, industrious populous led to the takeoff of economic growth in Protestant countries. Indeed, Protestant countries were the most advanced industrial economies in Europe and basically remain the leaders. (Todd believes France benefitted from being adjacent to a band of Protestant nations).
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Renn’s book review regarding Protestantism by an author claiming to be a student of Weber is of particular interest as in the past couple of weeks I have dusted off and reread Medieval Cities (95c price on the cover) by Henri Pirenne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Pirenne), Borough and Town – A Study of Urban Origins (1933 first edition discarded by a university library having been checked out only 3 times between 1974 and 1986) by Carl Stephenson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Stephenson_(historian) ), The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350 (1971) by Robert S. Lopez (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Lopez ), Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (1983) by Harold J. Berman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_J._Berman ) as well as having done some poking about in a lovely two volume edition of Weber’s Economy and Society I recently acquired at a book sale for $2. (I provide the provenance of these books and information on their authors, all deceased, as a sort of argument against being bullish on the US: important books like these no longer seem to be being written and seem widely ignored, and where are the professors alive today whom one might objectively regard as the peers of scholars like these?) And I also have pulled down off the shelf from last year, Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden’s Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000 to 1800. I will attempt to draw from these sources some observations that may complement Renn’s observations.
Starting with Weber, one might consider exactly where he is coming from philosophically, which might perhaps be best summed up in this quotation:
“The ‘free’ market, that is, the market which is not bound by ethical norms, with its exploitation of constellations of interests and monopoly positions and its dickering, is an abomination to every system of fraternal ethics. In sharp contrast to all other groups which always presuppose some measure of personal fraternization of even blood kinship, the market is fundamentally alien to any type of fraternal relationship.”
I am sure that every one of Dr. Kling’s faithful readers, or at least those who appreciate Cicero, will recognize this as absolute balderdash but it might be kept in mind that this is where Weber is coming from when considering claims regarding the historical centrality of Protestantism. In this regard it may be worth pondering the oddity of the second chapter of the The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism entitled “The Spirit of Capitalism” that Weber would rely upon Benjamin Franklin and a lengthy quote from him to encapsulate the spirit of capitalism. Weber acknowledges that Franklin was a professed deist and not even really Christian although raised in a Puritan household. And surely that upbringing contributed greatly to Franklin’s greatness, but it is hard to concede the notion that Franklin was ascetic given his claim that happiness consists “in the small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day.”
In the posthumously published Economy and Society, in a chapter entitled “The Plebeian City” Weber looks back to the autonomy of the medieval cities, observing:
“The right to hold market; autonomous trade and craft regulation and monopolistic powers of exclusion. -- The market was part of every medieval city, and the supervision over the market had everywhere in considerable measure been taken out of the hands of the city lord by the council. In later periods, the regulation of trade and production was concentrated either in the hands of municipal authorities or in those of craft associations, depending upon the local power structure; the city lord continued to be largely excluded.”
However important Protestant asceticism may have been to history, it is the history of this trade with its origins in the “liberties” granted to the cities, which led to general prosperity and constrained and reduced the power and influence of the Roman Catholic church in the economy, that it seems to me to be most essential to the stream of progress up to the present day. I will now draw from the sources listed above some supporting evidence.
H. Pirenne helpfully provides the background:
“The Roman Empire at the end of the third century, had one outstanding general charactaristic: it was an essentially Mediterranean commonwealth. … …The Mediterranean, was, without question, the bulwark of both its political and economic unity. Its very existence depended on mastery of the sea. Without that great trade route, neither the government, nor the defense, nor the administration of the orbis romanus would have been possible. … ...Population decreased, the spirit of enterprise waned, barbarian hordes commenced to threaten the frontiers, and the increasing expenses of the government, fighting for its very life, brought in their train a fiscal system which more and more enslaved men to the State. Nevertheless, the general deterioration does not seem to have appreciably affected the maritime commerce of the Mediterranean. … ...The appearance of the Germanic tribes on the shore of the Mediterranean was by no means a critical point marking the advent of a new era … … The aim of the invaders was not to destroy the Roman Empire but to occupy and enjoy it. … … The importance of the Mediterranean did not grow less after the period of the invasions. The sea remained for the Germanic tribes what it had been before their arrival – the very center of Europe…. ...The continued commercial after the disappearance of the Empire, and, likewise, the survival of the towns that were the centers thereof and the merchants who were its instruments, is explained by the continuation of the Mediterranean trade. In all the chief characteristics it was the same, from the fifth to the eight centuries… ...The world-order which had survived the Germanic invasions was not able to survive the invasion of Islam.”
So in the 9th century, Islam came to dominate the eastern, southern, and western shores of the Mediterranean sea. And with this conquest, the Mediterranean trade died and merchants abandoned the cities in which they had once been able to do business, and the political and economic power and influence of the Catholic bishops grew less constrained and took measures to keep the cities alive. But this allowed the Catholic antipathy to merchants (to St Jerome in the 5th century is attributed the quote “The merchant can please God only with difficulty,” as well as credit, and business generally to wax.
The great commercial revolution that reached full swing in the 11th century Lopez sees rooted in population growth fueled by agricultural innovation:
“The ensuing agricultural redevelopment did not merely reconstruct the classic agricultural landscape, but modified it in many ways and brought under culture much ground that had seemed too swampy or too steep to the Romans. To encourage resettlement and stimulate improvements, whoever owned the land had to meet the peasants half way. There were long leases, sharecropping arrangements, premiums of various kinds for anyone who would plant vines and olive or chestnut trees. Peasant communities argued endlessly with a bishop, an abbot, a count about their rights, their dues, their share in the common pastures, the borders of individual plots. In amny cases, however, there could be no argument because the peasants had a written title in their hands. Literacy, it not literature, contributed to the recovery in another way: Latin manuals of agriculture were copied in monasteries and served as primers of husbandry in the land for which they had originally be written. Freedom was less full than in the Scandinavian outposts, but it was more clearly defined; and no peasant had to fend for himself in loneliness, none forgot that if he did not like his lot he could usually look for another lord or a town that would welcome his services. Indeed, rural and urban growth were at all times closely interdependent.”
Stephenson explores the nature of the freedoms from serfdom in the towns and boroughs to great extent and roots this in commerce itself:
“In the course of our investigation we have thus been led through the subjects of borough taxation and borough service back to the conclusion of the previous chapter, that the germ of the later municipality is to be found rather in the mercantile than the judicial organization of the borough. The prevalence throughout England of the gild merchant during an age when formal self-government was denied most towns is a striking fact which immediately suggests that the one was a substitute for the other. And when it is realized that the chief interest of the borough community was trade, the significance of this substitution is at once apparent. Thanks to the gild organization, the men of the average borough really enjoyed considerable local autonomy.”
Berman builds upon the importance of trends of this nature to the development of the law and his book deserves far much more attention than I can give it here.
Prak and Van Zanden provide useful obervations on the difference in literacy rates between Catholic and Protestant provinces in the Netherlands “capitalism in tandem with republicanism had brought about numerous changes, but that those changes did but also not necessarily lead to an erosion of civil society, not to a deterioration in the living conditions of ordinary people. “ They further provide evidence that it was commerce that contributed to the rise of religious toleration that allowed the Netherlands to survive despite divisions among the population along religious lines.
Thus, I suggest that some examining the effects of various policies on the promulgation of successful merchants through the centuries and the accompanying social changes that they rendered to be of a more fruitful line of inquiry than the Weberian notions of Protestantism.
Arnold wrote..."many people yearn for a strong leader. Perhaps they are wise to do so, or perhaps they will end up getting what they want “good and hard,” in Mencken’s phrase." Any leader who is merely competent and honest would these days be considered to be and attacked as being an authoritarian strong man, never mind how legally compliant and legitimately elected. Notice the treatment of Hungarian leader Victor Orban, whose administration is routinely criticized as authoritarian and undemocratic, even though overwhelmingly re-elected. Any leader not in the pocket of the ruling globalist Left will be called "far-right" and persecuted by all means fair or foul no matter what his actual policies are.