Monthly Archives: August 2018

Seven Things that Will Not Change

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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?

More Definitions

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(See my post of 23.2.2017)

Abortion: Evil, but better than the alternative, which is being forced to be born as an unwanted child.

A bullshitter: A bulshitter is not the same as a liar. A liar knows he is lying; a bullshitter does not In fact he is not even aware that a difference between truth and falsehood exists. The question is not what is true, but what works for him (and for her). Examples: Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump.

“America first:” A clear, perhaps even panicky, symptom of decline.

Conscience: An uncommon word, meaning that which prevents us from stealing a wallet even though there is no chance of getting caught.

A conspiracy: Often, what people imagine when they do not understand what is going on.

Courage: That which is shown by anyone who, having heard a joke being told about him, does not immediately expire of grief but demands compensation instead.

Creationism: Should be regarded as a particularly vicious form of stupidity, but unfortunately isn’t always.

Diversity: The best way to combat and destroy talent and merit.

Divorce: When it is bad it is bad When it is not so bad, it is still pretty bad.

“Does not cooperate with the police:” A person who, how wicked of him, refrains from incriminating himself and others.

Education: What we call the process by which adults unload their complexes on their unfortunate children.

Equality; A quality which, in nature, does not exist and cannot exist.

Feminism: Another word for penis envy.

Food: Almost entirely bad for our health, but unfortunately we cannot do without it.

Greens: People and organizations that put frogs ahead of humans.
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Humor: What I like best in a woman, besides intelligence.

Life: a dangerous disease, to be cured by dieting.

Male chauvinism: What used to be known as male pride (and much sought after).

Marriage: The gate to both heaven and hell.

“Me too:” A bunch of bitches (“snakes in the grass,” as I have called them elsewhere) who want their fifteen seconds of fame.

A plea bargain: Very often, a method used by prosecutors to increase their own power by blackmailing and punishing the innocent.

A racist: Anyone who does not believe black equals white, and the other way around.

Religion: the opium of the masses.

Sex: The opposite from divorce. When it is good, it is good. When it is not so good, it is also quite good.

Sexual harassment: whatever a woman chooses to call by that name.

A spokesman (or woman): the hack who does your lying for you.

Terrorism: Anything someone else does that people do not like.

A survivor: see under courage.

A troll: Someone who thinks on his own and believes, mistakenly, that he has the right to do so.

Vox populi: Vox porci (look it up), not vox dei.

The Things That Have Not Changed

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In the field of war studies today, nothing is more fashionable than pointing to the prevalence, inexorability and rapidity of change. Meaning, among other things, social change, organizational change, and doctrinal change. And, of course, technological change, the kind that is often perceived as the factor that drives all the rest in front of it the way a shepherd drives his flock.

In this post, I want to do the opposite: To wit, say a few words about the things that have not changed. And which, to quote the nineteenth-century English poet Alfred Tennyson, “far as human eye can see” are not going to change either.

1.War as the continuation of politics by other means. War has never been, nor can be, an independent thing in itself. A war that does not serve politics, here understood not simply as the political process but in the broadest sense as the objectives which the belligerent community sets itself, is, in Clausewitz’s words, “a senseless thing without an object.”

2. A fight between individuals is known as a duel. War, however, is not an individual activity but a collective one. As is well known, a collective can be more than the sum of its parts. However, under the wrong conditions it can also be less. That is why factors such as cohesion, discipline, leadership etc. are as important as they are.

3. War is a strategic activity. Meaning that it is waged by two or more belligerents, each of whom is free and able to pursue his own objectives while at the same time interfering with the other so as to prevent him from doing the same. It is the strategic character of war which is behind its so-called principles. Such as initiative, attack, defense, decision, attrition, concentration, maintenance of aim, maneuver, flexibility, intelligence, security, and all the rest.
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Particularly important in this respect is the relationship between offense and defense. As Clausewitz says, there are two reasons why the latter is the stronger form of war. First, there is the analogy of the bucket; the more successful the attacker, the further away from his bases he gets and the more vulnerable his communications. Second, there is the element of time; whatever does not take place favors the defense. The outcome is the culminating point, the one at which an offense, unless it has ended in victory, inevitably turns into a defense. All this was true when war first made its appearance on earth some twelve thousand years ago. And all this will continue to apply even if and when it is waged by spaceships flying in outer space and firing laser beams.

4. As well as being a strategic activity, war is a violent one. Where no violence is involved there can be no war, only metaphors; as, for example, in “diplomatic war,” “economic war,” “psychological war,” and the like. Coming on top of war’s strategic character, it is the ever-present violence that makes it the domain of hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, suffering, danger, pain, death, and, last not least, sorrow and regret. And that requires, on the part of those who wage it and fight in it, qualities such as fortitude, determination, and presence of mind needed in order to endure it and be successful at it.

5. Finally, violence in turn means that the possibility, even likelihood, of escalation is always there. Side A delivers a blow. Side B responds with a more powerful blow. And so on. If irrational factors such as hate and vengefulness were not present at the beginning, very soon they surface and make their impact felt. Escalation quickly follows. It threatens to burst right through the bands imposed by the very political controls that provide it with its raison d’etre.

To return to the beginning, all this is true regardless of organization, doctrine, technology, and what have you. At this time when new gadgets that supposedly bring about “fundamental” changes in the conduct of war have become a daily phenomenon, let those with ears to listen, listen.

Tainted

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As Mark Twain, who is supposed to have said everything, is supposed to have said, Germany is the most beautiful country in the world. Especially in summer, when my wife and I like to visit. From the Alps in the south to the Baltic in the north, from the flat, wide-open spaces in the north east to the more densely settled, often rolling, provinces in the southwest, no country has more variety. And no country is better tended by its citizens. The mountains. The “fairy tale woods.” The clean rivers and equally clean lakes. The infinitely numerous hiking trails that lead everywhere and nowhere. The tree-lined streets, including the one on which we live at the moment. The parks, the greenery that graces most cities.

As Nietzsche, himself a German (though he did not like Germans one bit), says, at bottom history is nothing but a list of atrocities. Such as have been pruned to suit the historian and his readers and chronologically arranged. That is as true of Germany as it is of all other nations; including, in a minor but certainly not negligible way, the on to which I myself belong. However, until 1933, on which more in a moment, the list of German atrocities was no worse than that of most other countries. There were even times when things German were held up as examples for others to follow. The rude, but honest and courageous, tribesmen and tribeswomen the Roman historian Tacitus wrote about. The flourishing cities of northern and southern Germany during the middle ages and the Renaissance. Luther and the Reformation first ridding the Church of much accumulated mumbo-jumbo and then forcing it to reform itself. The German Aufklaerung (Enlightenment) and its contribution to world literature. “Athens on the Spree” (Berlin from about 1800 on).

The list does not end there. It also includes the modern German university system, the house of whose founder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, my wife and I went to visit the other day. German science, and medicine (from about 1860 to 1933). The best organized, most efficient, and least dishonest civil service and judiciary (during the same period). For those who care about such things, the most powerful, army the world had ever seen (ditto). I happen to own a replica of a 1903 Sears and Roebuck catalogue containing descriptions and drawings of thousands of products. Leafing through it, one cannot escape the impression that anything German was considered best. Including something known as a Heidelberg belt; a battery-operated device into which one sticks one’s penis by a of a cure for impotence.

Enter the Nazis. They too had, as perhaps their most central objective, building eine heile Welt, a clean and healthy world. One cleansed of democracy, an imported system which was not only slow and cumbersome but, by putting quantity ahead of quality, went against what Hitler personally saw as the eternal laws of nature. One cleansed both of communism and of the harshest, most exploitative, forms of capitalism. One cleansed of all sorts of incurably diseased people who were to be given a Genadentodt (mercy-death). Once cleansed of “degenerate” art which, deliberately designed to weaken the human spirit, produced not masterpieces but unseemly monsters. One cleansed of feminism, the product of the twisted brains of “unnatural” women who did not or could have children and were effectively eugenic duds. And cleansed of Jews, the race whose members united in their own persons all these bad things and then some.

Years ago, visiting the former concentration camp at Dachau, I came across a sign, not far away. I paraphrase. Visitor, it said, do not forget that our town, Dachau existed a thousand years before anyone ever heard of Hitler, National Socialism, concentration camps, etc. So please do not judge us solely through the prism of those terrible twelve years. Fair enough, many people would say. Me included.
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The problem is that it does not work that way. To be sure, the Nazi years only took up a tiny part of German history. Arguably, given that until 1871 a political entity called Germany did not exist, it is not even the most important part. Yet it is this tiny part that has taken over, forming a kind of telescope through which both the past and the future are seen. Almost without exception, works originating in, or dealing with, the pre-1945 period raise the question as to whether A, B, C or D was or was not a forerunner of, or at least had some affinities with, the extreme evil that was National Socialism. Almost without exception, those originating in, or dealing with, the post-1945 period are judged by whether or not they show traces of that dread disease. Do I have to add that anything originating during the Nazi period itself is bad by definition? Outside Germany, the situation is even worse. Out of every ten works on German history that are published in English, perhaps nine deal with the Nazi period. As has been said, whenever two persons argue for more than a few minutes at least one of them is going to call the other a Nazi.

Living in Germany, even for a short period as I do, one sees the consequences all around. I do not mean just the countless museums, exhibitions, memory sites, day tours, and the like that focus on the years from 1933 to 1945. I mean the kind of day-to-day politics in which the Left, taking the high ground, accuses the Right of being Nazis and the Right is constantly forced to defend itself against that accusation. Fear of being considered Nazi also does much to explain German foreign policy. Starting with the relationship between Berlin and Europe’s other capitals and ending with the way refugees are treated. Aliis licet, non tibi; what others are allowed to do, you, for historical reasons so obvious that they do not have to be pointed out, cannot.

Of my own acquaintances, not one is old enough to have reached maturity during those terrible days. The oldest is 86; how old he was back in 1945 you can figure out for yourself. He is a former East German, retired professor of economics who loves cats, likes gardening, and has a good sense of humor. He is also a kind man with whom my wife and I have enjoyed the best of relationships for almost twenty years. Others are much younger. Often so much so that not only they but their parents and even grandparents too cannot have done anything wrong.

Thus the Nazi attempt to create a wholesome word resulted in the latter’s opposite. Not only are Germans tainted, but practically all of them who are adults realize it. And will likely remain tainted to the end of days.

Bogus

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When I was very young, I read story about a wanderer (zwerfer, in Dutch). He was an itinerant peddler with no fixed address. Dressed in rags, he made his miserable living by selling self-made mousetraps; briefly, the lowest of the low. One day he was caught in a terrible snowstorm. Desperate lest he freeze to death, he knocked on the gate of the nearest estate, begging for shelter.

The owner, a nobleman, was just giving a feast for his friends. There was a warm hall with a roaring fire going, laid tables, sparkling wine, music, and conviviality. Called by the porter to see what the stranger was all about, he mistook the man for a former army comrade. The peddler’s protests that it was a case of mistaken identity were to no avail; the owner of the house insisted that he should come in. Properly cleaned, for the first time in weeks he spent the night in bed, sleeping.

Next morning he was summoned to his host, who immediately understood what had happened. He grew very angry, accusing the peddler of fraud and threatening to call the police. At this point his daughter intervened, pointing out that the man had done no harm and suggesting that, by way of Christian charity—it was Christmas, hence the party—he be allowed to stay for a few more days. So it was decided. The guest gave no trouble, hardly showing himself and spending most of his time in bed. Early on the third day he slinked away, leaving behind a present—a mousetrap.

And why am I telling you this story? Because yesterday I visited, for the second time running, an exhibition here in Berlin called, Wanderlust. Housed in the venerable Alte Nationalgalerie, it focuses on the theme in question as it was presented by artists, most of them German but a few French and Swiss, from about 1780 to the very end of the nineteenth century. Among the paintings on show are works by Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Blechen, Carl Edouard Biermann, Johann Christian Dahl, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Adloph Menzel (a favorite of Hitler’s, incidentally), Gustave Le Courbet, and August Renoir. Enough to take an art lover’s mouth water, and then some.

The theme, I learnt, appeared at the very end of the eighteenth century. Landscapes, of course, had been painted before; just think of Frans Hals’ magnificent seventeenth-century views of Haarlem. But this collection was different. It emphasized not the civilized and the tame but the uncultivated and the wild. Including lonesome cloud-shrouded peaks, torrents, wind-swept fields, and the ruins of medieval abbeys. Instead of forming the background of civilization, as previously, nature, populated by simple, unpretentious folks, was presented as the latter’s opposite. It was to nature that people, escaping the stress and corruption of city life, went in order to recover their powers.

Many of the paintings were supposed to be allegorical. What they showed was not just a more or less innocuous trip into the countryside but “the wanderings of life.” One in particular caught my attention. Unfortunately I forgot to take down the painter’s name, so I cannot present it to you here. It shows a “resting wanderer.” Fatigued, he is sitting on a tree trunk. It reminded me of a song our music teacher made us schoolchildren learn by heart and sing about sixty years ago:

Hello littlish road signs

Whitish stones.

Good it is to wander along

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Without any fixed goal.

Between Ayelet and Metula [two settlements in the north of Israel]

I got tired and sat down.

A pretty flower I picked me

And a splinter pierced my heart.

At the time the song was composed Israel, newly established and flooded by new immigrants from all over the world, was desperately trying to create a new “national” culture such as other nations had long had. And this was a typical result. Even as a child of twelve or so I could not help but wonder about the words. If wandering about with a rucksack was so great, why didn’t anyone I knew do engage in it? And why “without any fixed goal”? Now the painting in front of which I was standing fitted the song, down to every detail. There was the wanderer. He had a rucksack—a rather nice one to be sure—he was sitting down to rest, and he was picking a flower.

The more time I spent at the exhibition, the more uncomfortable I felt. The wanderers I saw were not at all like the one in the story I told you. All without exception they were in the countryside because they wanted to, not because they had to. Almost to a man (and to a woman, but that is a different story) they were good bourgeois. More or less well off, well fed, well dressed in appropriate clothes. None was poor, none was old, none was freezing of shivering with cold, none was exhausted; at most they were pleasantly fatigued. Many did not “wander” at all. Without a doubt, they had been staying at comfortable—or what, in the nineteenth century, went for comfortable—inns to which they would return for dinner and a glass or two of wine after having spent a nice, if slightly exhausting, day in the open. Some were accompanied by servants who carried impedimenta such as pic-nick baskets, art supplies, scientific equipment with which to carry out measurements, and so on.

Magnificent as many of the paintings were, what they showed was not wanderers but people on excursions. They were, in other words, bogus. Romantic, to be sure, but bogus still. In the entire exhibition there was only one exception. That was Ernst Barlach’s 1934 wooden sculpture, Man in a Snowstorm. It shows the subject, shoulders hunched, collar raised, cape over his head, struggling against what is obviously a sharp wind. I thought I would show it here, but could not find a pic on the Net.

So I had to make do with the best-known of the bogus ones.