In the last posting, this blog left the reader with a bit of
a mystery: what caused the Western world
to turn its economic fate by developing a system of production and distribution
that in turn upgraded its populations’ wellbeing to unprecedented heights? This began during the 1700s. The writer, Jonah Goldberg, describes this
turn as a Miracle.[1] What does he mean?
He begins by
further pointing out that up until the 1700s, humans, worldwide, lived on a daily
income of about one to three dollars. Since,
as the reader can observe around him or her, that amount has changed
drastically for vast amounts of people throughout the Western world and many
other places as well. Goldberg calls
this turn in human existence as “the most important ‘hockey stick’ chart in all
of human history.”[2]
Today, there
seems to be more concern over abundance than scarcity. And the elements of this development are
telling; they give one an understanding of why the Miracle took place. Of course, the scientific revolution – a new
procedural regime of how to determine reality – and accumulation of private
property played their parts in the Miracle, but more was involved. According to Goldberg it was ideas that spurred
the big change. He calls the sum of
these ideas the Lockean Revolution.
The followers
of this blog might sense a critique emerging as to this view. It has been critical of ascribing a purely
Lockean interpretation of, for example, the emergence of American democracy and
with it, its economy; but for the sake of giving Goldberg his due, this posting
will play along with his interpretation.
And that includes the argument that
Locke’s sense of individual sovereignty took hold in the late 1700s and that
that led to a sense that rights come from God (or nature) and not from
governments. This has, in turn, certain
consequences.
One, people
began to see that each person has a right to own the fruits of his/her
labor. Two, each person should be held
as an equal before the law and such factors as one’s faith (one should remember
that in those years, Europe was experiencing extended religious conflict) or
one’s class (nobility in Europe was also under attack) should have no effect. All in all, people in general were or were becoming
susceptible to accepting these newer ideas.
A lot more needed to happen before general acceptance took hold, but
that process had started.
With that
context, Goldberg then gives a general explanation of how governments operated
up to those years. First, governments
were instituted to protect and advance the interests of the “top 1%.” Back during the Roman Empire, one can find
St. Augustine writing in this vein:
Justice being taken away, then, what
are kingdoms but great robberies? For
what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is
ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the
confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this
evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes
possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name
of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the
removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which
was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he
meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride,
“What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty
ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art
styled emperor.”[3]
Yes, common people were fed different rationalizations to
allow them to accept this basic, exploitive relationship between them and the
ruling class.
Goldberg totally agrees with St.
Augustine and he shares how the prince (government leaders) have sold a
justification of their rule so as to tamper any umbrage by the citizenry. It is through these rationalizations that
they hold power. One such explanation
was the divine rights of kings explanation.
Bottom line to these constructs were to justify placing the interests of
the ruling class above – way above – the interests of the commoners.
Goldberg inserts, at this point, that
one can see how this is allowed to work – there is something about human nature
that leads to a general acceptance to these rationalizations. Normal people, for centuries, accepted (and accept
in various countries today) tyranny, monarchy, or other forms of
authoritarianism. He bases this belief
on a biological fact: humans, among the
various populations of the world, share the same basic genetic makeup and have
done so during all of the relevant history in which these realities have taken
place.
In other words, current people are
genetically the same as those who ushered in the Lockean Revolution. They are the same as those who ushered in
civilization in Mesopotamia or today live in preliterate societies. Point is:
genetic differences do not explain the Miracle or the thinking that led
to it.
And that genetic framework does have
certain biases built in that, if known and understood, leads one to see why
this acceptance of unequal treatment – the rationalizations – are acceptable in
a nuanced way. And this in turn, allows
one to see the role tribalism plays.
First, humans have a strong
“coalition instinct.” They want to form
and keep alliances that can be readily justified by feelings of loyalty and acceptance
of reciprocal arrangements. Second, there
is an important limitation to this bias. Nature limits this instinct to the immediate environment,
to those who are familiar, to those who look like they do. That is, it is tribal. Here, the work of the American
neuroendocrinologist, Robert Sapolski, supports Goldberg. As this blog has previously shared Sapolski’s
view (through a third source), here is a summary:
We
have evolved to support our immediate social groups, a tendency that can be
easily manipulated into discriminatory behavior, especially at younger
ages. The good news, according to
Sapolsky, is that there are always
individuals who resist the temptation to discriminate and won’t conform to
harmful acts based on othering or hierarchy.[4]
So, the support for Goldberg is nuanced – more on this later.
The point here
is that this “us-them” tendency helps those who want to establish exploitive
rule; they are given a powerful point of political leverage. In the extreme, one can note this leverage was
used by the Nazis to take over the German government in the early 1930s. There have been other examples.
Goldberg
agrees with humans’ ability to hold in check this tribal tendency and that that
ability and its exercise allowed the Miracle to take place. This posting will end with what Goldberg
points out in terms of this check:
The secret of the Miracle – and of modernity
itself – stems from our ability to hold this tendency [us-them thinking] in
check. It is natural to give preferences
to family and friends – members of the tribe – and to see strangers as the
Enemy, the dangerous Other. Nearly all
higher forms of social organization expand the definition of “us” to permit
larger forms of cooperation. Religion
teaches that coreligionists are allies, even when they are strangers. The nation-state tells us that fellow
citizens are part of the glorious us.
Even modern racism plays this role, as does communism, fascism, and
nearly every other modern-ism.[5]
Citing fascism indicates the complexity here, the check can
be targeted for political reasons and/or for mangled ideological reasoning.
Those in power or vying for power can
be very imaginative in their strategies to attain and hold power. The rationalizations can run the gamut of
possibilities. The next posting will
continue this report of Goldberg’s interpretation.
[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide
of the West: How the Rebirth of
Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American
Democracy (New York, NY: Crown
Forum, 2018).
[2] Ibid., 7
(Kindle edition).
[3] “St. Augustine States That Kingdoms without Justice
Are Mere Robberies, and Robberies Are Like Small Kingdoms; but Large Empires
Are Piracy Writ Large (5th C),” Online Library of Liberty, n.
d., accessed June 3, 2019, https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/200 .
[4] C. Brandon Ogbunu, “Why Do People Do Bad Things?,” Greater Good Magazine, December 1, 2017,
accessed March 14, 2019, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_do_people_do_bad_things . Emphasis
added. Of note is Robert Sapolski’s
book, Robert
M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
(New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2017). This writer highly recommends this book.
[5] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide
of the West: How the Rebirth of
Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American
Democracy, 10 (Kindle edition).
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