At Six after the Corona Crisis

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Martin van Creveld

An old/new game has emerged and is being played by millions from Norway to New Zealand. It is called guess as you can, and it is played on paper, in the aether, and every kind of screen from the smallest to the largest. Its objective? To divine what the world will be like once the current corona crisis is gone (for gone, and even more or less forgotten, it will be). At six after the war, as the good soldier Švejk put it long ago. Having spent much of the last eighteen months or so researching the methods people use in their attempts to look into the future, I cannot say I am impressed by their efforts. Almost all of which appear to be ill-supported, superficial, and biased—very often, without the authors even being aware that they are.

Such being the case, probably at least as useful, and certainly far easier, to list some of the things which, unless I am badly mistaken, almost certainly will not change. Not in the short- or medium term, whatever those much-abused expressions may mean. And not in the long one either.

So here goes.

Religion

* For those who believe that God exists, His ways will remain as mysterious as they have been since He spoke to Job out of the whirlwind. For those who don’t, the most important questions of all—whether the world has always existed, who or what was responsible for our appearance on earth, where we are going, how we are supposed to live, and what the point of all of it may be—will stay open.

History

* The main reason the corona outbreak will not push history off its rails is because, as I said, it will be almost entirely forgotten. The reason why it will be almost entirely forgotten is because it will be displaced by other events; whatever is happening today is always considered the most important of all. Not necessarily because it is, but because that is the way people’s minds work.

* Furthermore loose talk about pandemics notwithstanding, the number of those who die of coronavirus will hardly make a dent in global demographics. In that sense, at any rate, life seems to be stronger than death. Ergo, history will not come to an end any more than it did in 1347-51 when people thought that the Day of Judgement had come. And in 1991, when Francis Fukuyama published his famous article by that title. Instead it will continue to work as it has always done and as Hegel wrote: namely, by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, And so on, by fits and starts, towards a millennium which, as he did not write, will never arrive.

Politics, International Relations, and War

* As if to prove that nothing ever changes, the world will continue to function in exactly the way Thucydides, Kautilya, Machiavelli and Hobbes said it does. Rivalry between communities, governments and states, specifically including the one between the U.S and China but also between various regional actors, will continue and be as intensive as it has always been.

* Pace the American psychologist Steven Pinker and the political scientists from whom he took his figures, wars will still be there. Most, but probably not all, civil ones in what is euphemistically known as the “developing” world. While I am willing to bet that there will be no nuclear world war, some of the wars in question will continue to be very bloody; but not nearly enough so as to destroy “civilization as we know it,” as Cold-War era people used to say. All technological progress notwithstanding, the vast majority of wars will continue to be fought on land, not at sea or in outer space. And they will be won, not by the belligerent with the most sophisticated technology but by the one that is most determined and, often enough, most brutal.

Social and Economic Affairs

* Emerging from the crisis, some people will go on working from home. But not those who matter. Why? Because the principle, les absents ont toujours tort (those who are absent are always wrong) will continue to apply.

* Contrary to the vision of a few people who foresee greater equality, the contrast between what Plato called plutos, wealth, and penia, want, will continue just as it always has. Here and there the outcome will be insurrections and civil wars. However, even the most successful of those efforts will only be effective for more than a few decades at most. The majority will only produce greater misery for almost everyone involved.

This also acts as a natural stress reliever and you generic vs viagra have got chosen a Texas driver ed course, the next major choice you have to make is whether or not to require that course on-line or to require that course face to face domestically. These generic tadalafil india are the most known process that you have to fill up. If ED oral overnight generic viagra medications doesn’t work and other risk factors such as hypertension, physical inactivity, or diabetes, with a risk serious chronic illness and death is huge. If the pill doesn’t produce the results you are levitra canada exactly looking for, let your doctor know everything do not feel embarrassed to discuss your sexual problem with your doctor. * Regardless of whether the world stays capitalist or inclines more towards some form of socialism, large fish will go on taking every opportunity to swallow smaller ones. Governments, as the largest fish of all, will continue to generate vast deficits and look for new ways to defraud their citizens so as to pay for them.

* Though some restrictions on travel will remain in force, globalization will continue. And masses of refugees, both real and fake, will continue to do whatever they can to cross national borders in search of a better life. A great many of them will succeed, causing all kinds of cultural, social, economic, legal and political problems.

Surveillance

* From my former student, the famous Yuval Harari, down, many people believe that the present crisis will accelerate the trend towards greater state surveillance and interference in our lives. Probably so; but this very trend will also accelerate the development of countermeasures such as quantum-based passwords, certain kinds of glasses and makeup, and the like. Even now, some apps will show drivers the location of mobile disease-testing stations so as to enable drivers to avoid them in case that’s what they want. In the end, surveillance is likely to be neither more nor less tight, more or less able to prevent dissension and even revolution, than it has ever been. Long-time Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu thought he had it made. Yet in the end, so oppressive was his regime that all it took to topple him was a few hostile catcalls rising from a crowd he himself had summoned to celebrate his rule. Xi Jinping, be warned.

Human Development

* Corona having gone, and further advances in computer- and brain science notwithstanding, we still won’t have the foggiest idea how dead matter can produce a mind capable of thought, emotion, and, last not least, such mysterious states as dreaming, hypnosis and comma. Nor how mind, i.e the will, can cause the body to act. Meanwhile every single human quality, starting with affection and ending with zeal, will continue to do as much as to shape our lives as it has always done. And our understanding of ourselves will remain as limited as it has always been.

* The most important social problems, meaning those associated with birth, marriage, death, and health (both physiological and mental) will persist. So will those arising out of envy and hatred as well as justice and its opposite, injustice. People will continue to earn their bread with the sweat of their brows, just as they have always done. They will also go on enjoying love, ex, company, leisure, sport, festivities of every kind, music, literature, art, etc. As a result of all this, the post-corona world will be neither more nor less happy than the one we have always inhabited.

* Finally, environmentalists, vegans and any number of other spoilsports will continue to blame mankind (themselves only excepted) for breathing, eating, drinking, farting, excreting, consuming, traveling, and having children; in short, for daring to exist on this earth.

Sex and Gender

* Sex is one of the most powerful—Freud thought, the most powerful of all—forces shaping society. It is also the method by which we humans produce offspring. As a result, no society has ever ceased thinking about it and interfering with it. As by telling people with whom they are allowed to have it, under what circumstances, and what they are and are not allowed to do while engaging in it. And that will remain the case in the future too.

* Women will continue to conceive, bear children, labor and give birth, whereas men will not. Partly for that reason, partly because they are stronger, physically, by and large men will continue to act as the defenders and feeders (qawwamun, as the Koran puts it) of women rather than the other way around. After corona as before it, a man who lays down his life to save a woman will be praised. After corona as before it, a man who allows a woman to lay down her life for him will be dishonored.

* Notwithstanding these and other privileges women enjoy, feminists, claiming to represent half of the population, will continue to complain about the other half. And the more they complain, the more their penis envy will show through.

Looking into the Future

A great many people devote much of their working lives to trying to look into the future. In the past, doing so was the province of prophets, soothsayers, magicians, and astrologists. Today we are as likely to turn to physicists, astronomers, evolutionists, physicians, economists, sociologists and futurologists of every kind. Nevertheless, our ability to understand, let alone control, our destiny will remain as feeble as it was when the first homo sapiens wondered whether or not he would still be alive on the next day.

Seven Things that Will Not Change

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Martin van Creveld

Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution during the last decades of the eighteenth century, humanity has become obsessed with change. First in Europe, where the revolution originated. Then in Europe’s overseas offshoots, and finally in other places as well. By the middle of the nineteenth century, at the latest, it was clear that the world was being transformed at an unprecedented pace and would continue to do so in the future. As change accelerated there appeared a whole genre of visionaries who made it their job to try and look into that future—starting with Jules Verne and passing through H. G. Wells all the way to Ray Kurzweil and Yuval Harari.

Today it pleases me to try to put the idea on its head. Meaning, I am going to focus on some of the things I think are not going to change. Certainly not any time soon. Perhaps, not ever.

1. A world without war, meaning politically motivated and organized violence, is not in the cards. To be sure, starting in 1945 much of the planet has enjoyed what is sometimes known as the Long Peace. Meaning that, relative to the size of the earth’s population, fewer people have died in war than was the case during any other period from which figures are available. But let there be no illusions: the most important, if not the only, reason behind the decline is not the kind of sudden wish for peace (“the better angels of our nature”) some authors have postulated. It is nuclear deterrence, which has prevented the most important countries from fighting each other in earnest.

Unfortunately experience has shown that, under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, there is still plenty of room left for smaller but no less bloody conflicts. Especially, but certainly not exclusively, of the intrastate, or nontrinitarian, kind as opposed to the interstate, trinitarian one. Such being the case, a world without war would require two things. First, a situation where every person and every collective is always sufficiently happy with his/or its lot to refrain from resorting to violence. Second, a world government capable of identifying and deterring those who would resort to it from doing so. Since war is to a large extent a product of the emotions, moreover, such a government would have to pry into the hearts of every single person on earth. For good or ill, though, there is no indication that either of those conditions, let alone both, are anywhere close to being met.

2. Poverty will not be eradicated. Taking 1800 as their starting point, economic historians have estimated that, world-wide, real per capital product has risen thirtyfold. Based on this, there have been countless confident predictions concerning a golden future in which everyone will be, if not exactly as rich as Jeff Bezos, at any rate comfortably off. However, these predictions have failed to tqake into account two factors. First, wealth, poverty and of course comfort itself are not absolute but relative. In many ways, what was once seen as fit for a king is now not considered suitable even for a beggar. Second, though the production of material goods has in fact increased, the way those good are distributed has not become more equal. If anything, taking 1970 as our starting point, to the contrary.

3. We shall not gain immortality. It is true that, starting in late eighteenth-century France and Sweden and spreading to other countries, global life expectancy has more than doubled. Moreover, the pace at which years are being added to our lives has been accelrating. This has led some people to reason that, if only we could increase it fast enough (meaning, by more than a year every year), death would be postponed to the point where we shall become immortal. The first person to live for a thousand years, it has been claimed, has already been born or is about to be born soon enough. However, the calculation is flawed on two counts First, most of the increase in longevity has resulted from a decline in the mortality of the very young. Second, while the percentage of old people has been growing rapidly, there is no indication that the life span granted to us by nature has been increasing or is capable of being increased.
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4. There is no reason to think the world in which we live is happier than previous ones. Not only is happiness the product of many different interacting factors, but its presence or absence depends on circumstances. Does it presuppose a minimum of physical comfort? Yes, of course, but the extent of that comfort, and even what counts as comfort, is largely dictated by what we expect and do not expect. Does it require a belief in God? Possibly so, but there is no proof that religious people are happier than unbelievers. Does it require leisure? Yes, of course, but the fact that, in Rome during the second century CE, almost half of the year consisted of feast days does not mean that the contemporaries of Marcus Aurelius were happier than their ancestors or their successors. Does it require good interaction with at least some other people? Yes, of course, but there is no reason to believe that such interaction was less common and less satisfying in previous generations than in our own. Does it require purposeful activity? Yes of course, but then what does and does not count as purposeful is almost entirely up to the individual.

5. Whatever feminists may say, men and women will not play the same role in society, let alone become the same That is partly because they are not the same—witness the biologically-determined differences between them in respect to size, physical strength, and the reproductive functions (some experts would add a tendency towards risk-taking, aggression, dominance, and a penchant for mathematical science, but that is moot). And partly because they do not want to be. “The more like us you become, mes dames,” said that incorrigible skirt chaser, Jean Jacques Rousseau, “the less we shall like you.” Conversely, the worst thing one can say about a man is that he is like a woman. It is the differences between men and women, as much as the similarities, that attract them to each other. So it has been, and so it will remain,

6. The question how consciousness could have arisen will not be answered. Starting at least as long ago as the Old Testament, people have always wondered how dead material could ever give birth to a living, sentient being. Especially to the brain as the most important organ in which thought, emotion and, not least, dreaming take place. To answer the question, they invented a God who, to speak with Genesis, blew “the spirit of life” into man’s nostrils. Recent advances in neurology, made possible by the most sophisticated modern techniques, are indeed astonishing. However, they cannot tell us how objective chemical and electric signals translate into subjective experiences; no more than our ancestors knew why certain substances led to increased awareness and others, to torpor. To that extent, the advances in question have not really got us any closer to solving the problem.

7. Our ability to predict the future, let alone control it, has not improved and will not improve one iota. There used to be a time when looking into the future was the province of shamans, prophets, oracles, and Sibyls, and even the dead who were raised specially for the purpose. Other people tried their luck with astrology, palmistry, augury (watching the flight of birds), haruspicy (interpreting the entrails of sacrificial animals), yarrow sticks, crystal balls, tarot cards, tea leaves, and patterns left by coffee in near-empty cups. Starting around 1800, at any rate among the better educated in Western countries, two techniques have dominated the field. One is extrapolating from history, i.e. the belief that what has been going up will continue to go up (until it doesn’t) and that what has gone down will continue to go down (ditto). The other is mathematical modelling, which consists of an attempt to identify the most important factors and link them together by means of algorithms. Of the two the second, especially as applied to very large numbers of people, has been the most successful. But only as long as conditions do not change in a radical way; and only at the cost of ignoring what to most people is the most important question of all, i.e. what will happen to them.

Is that enough to put change, that keynote of modernity about which everyone is talking all the time, into perspective?