Monthly Archives: April 2021

12th Grade History/Civics: “To be, or not to be. . .”

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we continued with the Cold War in earnest and took a look at a few key issues and events:

England and America could see the Cold War coming as W.W. II ended.  The unfortunate Eastern European nations of Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria exchanged one conqueror for another.  Soviet dictatorship may not have been as bad as Nazi occupation, but that is hardly saying much.

Atomic weapons quickly became prominent, although not necessarily because we wanted it that way.  Free societies maintain themselves traditionally through a volunteer military, except in emergencies.  With the war over hundreds of thousands of soldiers looked forward to returning home and resuming normal civilian life.

But the Soviets did not disband their army.  They kept it active and occupied much of Eastern Europe.  How could we respond?  We could either:

  • Keep the draft going and maintain our military at W.W. II levels, which might also mean continuing the war-time command economy.

Or

  • Use atomic weapons as a kind of equalizer against the sheer volume of Soviet troops.

The latter option appealed to us for many reasons, but of course created other problems.  If the Soviets eventually got “the bomb,” how then do we maintain our advantage?  Do we make more atomic weapons?  Or do we make them more powerful?  The arms race was on, and one consequence of this was the proliferation of weapons able not to just win wars but wipe out civilization as we know it.

Another problem with nuclear weapons revolves around what exact purpose they serve.  Are they weapons?  This seems obvious on its face.  Of course they are weapons.  But can something be a weapon if you would never actually use it?  No — then it’s just a very expensive and very dangerous showpiece.  But could nuclear weapons actually be used?  For once used, Pandora’s box opens.  Could a nuclear war have a winner?

So, did nuclear weapons in reality function much like status symbols, reflecting the image of power rather than actually having power?  But then again, if everyone thinks they are just status symbols, they pose no threat.  And clearly, these weapons posed a huge threat.  We could not contemplate the consequences of using them, and we felt that we needed to have them ready to use at a moment’s notice. These were some of the terrible dilemmas the Cold War gave us.  The confusion between image and reality bore itself out in this Civil Defense video many elementary school children saw in the early 1950’s:

The idea that we may not have known exactly what we had on our hands gets reinforced from the Castle Bravo disaster in 1954.

At its core, the Cold War presented us with the dilemma of how to win a war without actually fighting the other side.  How could you win a boxing match if neither opponent could touch each other?  Much of our strategy revolved around the following premesis:

  • Communism can only survive as a parasite.  It cannot internally sustain itself, so the only way it can live is by feeding off of others.  Thus, it is imperative to deny them access to new territory, for each new piece of territory will artificially extend their life-span.
  • Since fighting the Soviet Union directly would have exceedingly dire consequences, we have took for non-traditional, or “asymmetrical” ways to fight.  Economic advantage, and our political image, among other things, would play key roles in this conflict.

The Korean War often gets ignored, sandwiched between World War II and Vietnam.  I myself usually breeze over it, but every so often the conflict makes itself very relevant.  The issues involved deal with many of problems discussed above.  Commentators could argue that we

  • Won the war, because after the invasion of the North we pushed the North out of South Korea.
  • Lost the war, because we failed to destroy North Korean forces, largely due to the intervention of China, and got pushed back out of North Korea
  • Tied, because the status quo was restored, but nothing more.

While we could not go through the entirety of the history of the war, the impact of our involvement would have large, though subtle ripple effects in our own society.

  • The Korean War was unquestionably a war, yet the Senate never declared war.  Obviously this was not the first time that we had used troops and not declared war formally, but the scale of the conflict and commitment exceeded previous undeclared wars.
  • After the Korean War we began to maintain a continuously large standing army, a break from the past.
  • The war also raised questions about executive power and the role of Congress.  As foreign policy came to dominate, the power of presidency inevitably increased, but for the most part, these questions have no resolution as of now.

A brief aside, every political commentator of which I am aware from the classical era down to the early modern age (Aristotle, our own founders, etc.) argued that a large standing army posed a dire threat to liberty.  That is, no militarized state could maintain political freedom indefinitely.  Whether they were wrong, or our exception proves the rule, or perhaps our political system has indeed suffered because of this is a point of great debate.

Many of these questions came to a head in October 1962 in the Cuban Missile Crisis, where under a cloak of deceit, the Soviets started building missile silos to house nuclear warheads capable of reaching at least 1/3 of the U.S. mainland.  We could either . . .

  • Ignore the problem.  Perhaps it would not be worth it to get them out, or perhaps we did not have the political will to stop them from installing them.  As parents we sometimes ignore things that we would rather not deal with at the moment.  We then file the incident away to be used later if we need to.
  • Acknowledge the presence of the silos/missiles, but do nothing about it, which would make us look terribly weak.
  • Insist that the missiles not be installed and prepare to take action to prevent it.  Easy to say, but hard to do, because it begs the question of how far we would go.  Would it be worth W.W. III to prevent it?  Would it be worth a global nuclear holocaust?  Maybe we would not actually launch nukes, but do we then bluff and claim we would?  Would that escalate or diffuse the crisis?

Records indicate that initially most favored an air strike against the silos.  Most agreed that we had a good chance of eliminating the silos via bombing, with minimal casualties.  But it would involve a military attack on one of Russia’s allies, and we could not be sure how they would respond.  Would they then take West Berlin?  What would we do then?

Perhaps these questions led Kennedy to decide on a naval quarantine which would prevent the installation of the missiles, and also give the two sides time to talk.  It forced the Soviets to back down or be the first to take aggressive action.

But none of this attempts to see the crisis from the Soviet perspective.  If the U.S. had concerns about missiles 90 miles from our shores, what about the fact that we had missiles 90 miles from the Soviet Union in Turkey?  What about the Bay of Pigs?  One could easily argue that the missiles in Cuba served peace, if you believed that strategic parity gave the best guarantee of avoiding conflict.

In the end the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles if we pledged never to invade Cuba and removed ours from Turkey, which we agreed to do, albeit secretly.  Many felt that we had won, and many praise Kennedy for his handling of the crisis.

But as time passed, we learned more about just how close we came to disaster.  In the documentary The Fog of War, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara discussed his meetings with Castro in 1992 below.

If these revelations are true, the air-strike we nearly decided upon would have led to disaster.  When one understands the possibilities inherent when human fallibility combines with enormous destructive power, we can only thank God that nuclear war did not happen in 1962.

Next week we move on to Vietnam.

Blessings,

Dave

Breathe In, Breathe Out

by Dave Mathwin

I have very fond feelings for Will Durant. His multi-volume series The Story of Civilization was an absolute lifeline for me in my early years of teaching, and reading those volumes propelled me to some wonderful primary sources. His insights were not as profound as those of his contemporary AJ Toynbee, but he wrote with a more whimsical touch.

In Durant’s The Lessons of History (co-authored by his wife Ariel) he includes an essay on the question of whether or not progress is real. In grand Thomistic fashion Durant begins by proposing a negative answer. Philosophy will never eclipse Plato, literature will not move beyond Shakespeare. Science heals but also has created new forms of death and accelerated our means to destroy each other.

But Durant then pivots, and affirms that we have progressed–not in happiness (we will always find ways to be unhappy)–but in command over the environment. Famine and other natural disasters no longer decimate millions each year, and Durant asks,

“Are we ready to scuttle the science that has so diminished superstition, obscurantism, and religious intolerance, or the technology that has spread food, home ownership, comfort, education, and leisure beyond any precedent?”

He continues and admires the expansion of education, stating that

“If education is the transmission of civilization, we are unquestionably progressing … our finest contemporary achievement is our unprecedented expenditure of wealth and toil in the provision of higher education for all … we have raised the average level of knowledge beyond any age in history.”

It is a fine argument, and as always, wonderfully written.

In 1845 Thomas Macaulay wrote eloquently in favor of the Progress narrative:

It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana.

We too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little used to dine without meat as they now are to eat rye bread; that sanitary police and medical discoveries may have added several more years to the average length of human life; that numerous comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty working man

But even Macaulay, amidst his rhapsody, at least gives a quick nod to the counter argument:

And yet it may then be the mode to assert that the increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited the few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendour of the rich.

Most ancient historians claim that things have gotten worse, that we progress from golden ages, to silver, to bronze and iron, a descent from heaven to earth. A middle position exists that I want to explore, one that questions the main arguments of the progress and decline narratives–though obviously certain kinds of progress and decline happen–and instead focus on the idea that “there is nothing new under the sun,” and be guided by St. Gregory of Nyssa’s treatise, On the Making of Man.*

Consider what follows speculative . . .

Humanity may progress in certain ways, and decline in others, but will always be limited by the circumstances of his creation. We are meant both to reflect God to world and to mediate the world to God. As such we have elements both of movement and stability in our nature. St. Gregory writes,

It may be, by a providential dispensation, so that the property of nature which constitutes its immutability and immobility might not, when viewed in any created object, cause the creature to be accounted as God; for that which may happen to move or change would cease to admit the conception of the Godhead.

Hence the earth is stable without being immutable, while the heavens, on the contrary, as it has no mutability, so has not stability either, that the Divine power, by weaving change in the stable nature and motion with that which is not subject to change, might by the interchange of attributes, at once join them both closely to each other, and make them alien from the conception of Deity.

That is, God makes us in such a way so that we can neither have the presumption to be God, but also see that we are more than the beasts. We have this duality within us, meant to exist in harmony.

St. Gregory makes many such connections between the rhythms and operations of nature and our own flourishing as human beings made by God. He comments that many creatures are larger, stronger, and faster than us, yet we have dominion over them–a seeming puzzle. He answers this disarmingly by stating that if we were to be the largest, fastest, and strongest of the creatures we would surely look rather funny–misshapen and unbalanced, “wild looking.” But as he stresses our dominion over creation, he does so again by establishing our connection with it.

. . . moreover, he would have neglected his rule over the other creatures if he had no need of the co-operation of his subjects.

St. Gregory establishes (so it seems to me) an irrevocable connection between God, man, and nature, writing elsewhere that,

The creation of man is related as coming last, as of one who took up into himself every single form of life, both that of plants and that which is seen in brutes.

So, although we are all always in a state of flux, we have stable elements, just as creation itself is both stable and fluid. We never step into the same river twice, and yet it is still the same river. And while some may see hints of evolutionary ideas in St. Gregory’s above comment, I think that he would say that creation reflects man more so than man reflects creation.

Given this, we can ask in regards to the question of progress–can creation “progress?” Certainly dirty water can become clean, but we might call this a “return” more than an “advance.”

We should think similarly in terms of human progress.

What I mean is that what we often call progress may be simply a reflection of how we breathe. We inhale, that is:

  • We draw things into ourselves
  • We concentrate our being, we focus, or in other words,
  • We centralize our being

And we exhale, meaning

  • We disperse things from our being
  • We separate the good and bad, the proper and improper
  • We get looser physically and mentally, we de-centralize**

We shouldn’t call inhalation or exhalation progress, but we often do. So, for example, many heralded the changes we made in the area of national intelligence in the wake of 9/11. We centralized our intelligence gathering–we inhaled. Surely this was correct? But in the wake of our intelligence failure after Pearl Harbor we determined that we needed to exhale and de-centralize intelligence agencies so we could have multiple views to consider. Both seemed like exactly the right thing to do given their respective contexts, and maybe both were correct actions to take, but neither can be termed “progress,” though it may feel like it at the time. What we might instead be doing is returning to a proper balance, or recalibrating temporarily.

Of course we usually want avoid dramatic inhalation and exhalation, which we only do as humans exerting ourselves or trying to de-escalate an emotional situation. We cannot continue for long in such a state.

We can take the state of education, so lauded by Durant, among others. Democratic education “inhales” a great deal by taking in everyone it can. But this has led to a kind of hyper-concentration in education, which can only lead to more centralization and standardization. So, naturally we see the rise of importance in standardized tests, which have the effect of getting teachers to “teach to the test.” In what sense has education truly improved in the last 100 years? What we can say for sure is that it has done some things at the expense of others.

Democracies possibly overvalue the “fluid” elements of our created selves, and trust in the free flow of people, goods, and information. The New York Times recently announced, for example, that it would “open up” its process of how it endorses presidential candidates and make it more transparent. Surely transparency means progress in any democracy? But as Alex Tabbarok pointed out, this will likely make all of the candidates far less candid than they might have otherwise been when talking with the Times. Certain stances they might have explained as a kind of horse-trading off the record they would never reveal in a more public forum. When the scale tips too far in the “fluid” direction, the natural reaction brings us to excessive solidity. “Progress,” so called, seems impossible in either direction, and that by design. The structure of creation, our bodies, etc. makes utopias impossible.

Perhaps the most striking form of progress surely is the application of science to food production and the eradication of disease. We live healthier and longer than in the past. Infant mortality has decreased dramatically. Unquestionably, the argument goes, this is progress that all can champion without qualification.

This certainly strongly challenges my argument–and most every argument has its limits. Still, perhaps these significant improvements do have a hidden cost of separation from the very creation that nurtures us and with whom our identity is inextricably linked. Here, I will admit, however, that it is hard to argue against progress of this kind.

Maybe . . . certain kinds of progress are possible.

But I think the larger point still remains, one that we do well to consider as we head towards another election cycle. Some may feel that Trump has lurched us too far in one direction, so that the solution is go hard in the opposite direction. This will exhaust us quickly. Rather, as St. Gregory taught us, we need to be a nation that takes calm and measured breaths.

Dave

*I should state at the outset that I do not find St. Gregory an easy read, and I make no certain claim to interpreting him correctly, though hopefully I have at least applied his words in the right spirit.

**This process of gathering in and pushing out is reflected in almost every icon of Christ, as He blesses with His right hand (drawing in) and separates with his left (in the form of a scroll, the Book of Life, which makes distinctions between people, etc.), further testimony to this pattern at the very Head of Humanity itself.

In the Byzantine icon below, the blessing/”drawing in” motif is more explicit, as His right hand almost seems to draw one towards Him:

A more modern icon, “Christ of the Isles” (Celtic style), that abides by the traditional pattern . . .

11th/12th Grade: Ending the War Justly(?)

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we wrapped up World War II by focusing on two key issues: our use of the atomic bomb, and the Nuremberg Trials.

We discussed before how war in general can have a terrible kind of osmosis for the combatants.  So in W.W. I the Germans first used chemical warfare and all cried foul, but soon the Allies followed suit.  All were outraged when the Germans bombed London, but as the war went on the British and Americans killed far more civilians with their bombings than the Axis powers.  Herman Goering called the conflict, “the great racial war,” and Americans as well as the British adopted some similar attitudes to their enemies as the Axis powers did to us.  This proved especially towards our Japanese opponents.  This picture, for example, of a young woman admiring the skull of a dead Japanese soldier her boyfriend sent her, appeared prominently in Life Magazine.  

A few issues regarding the bombings need discussed:

1. Is it the primary job of the commanding officer primarily to abide by a a Christian ethic of human life even if it puts his troops at relative disadvantage, or do we want him to instead seek to have his men accomplish their mission with as few casualties as possible?  What about the President?  It is worth noting that Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who led many of the bombing runs that killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese, thought that he would be tried as a war criminal should the Allies lose the war.

The divide here may be seen this way. . .

  • On the one hand, you have the view that “war is hell,” and exists essentially outside normal ethical standards.  Killing someone, for example, is never the “kind” thing to do.  The main goal, therefore, is to end war as soon as possible, and then resume “normal” life.
  • On the other, you have the view that war is not primarily about victory, but about our sanctification as individuals and as a nation.  If fighting “morally” means we suffer, so be it.  Just as individuals should never do wrong to benefit themselves, so nations should not either.

Granted, this divide may be altogether too simplistic. but it touches on another issue.  What are nations?  When a nations acts should it be held to the same standards as individuals, or are nations in fact artificial, impersonal creations that therefore are not subject to the same standards as individuals?

These questions have no easy answers.

2. Should the ethics of war depend in part on the nature of conflict itself? For example, conflicts in the past involved armies of aristocratic warriors, and rarely involved the general population.  In the 20th century however, war between whole nations became the standard.  If nations fight, can the whole nation, civilian or otherwise, become the target?  I hope the students will consider some difficult questions.  Is there a difference between bombing cities from the sky, and going from house to house shooting those inside?  Can you target areas if civilians are likely to be unintended collateral damage?

Our decision to use the atomic bomb had many factors involved:

  • We wanted to avoid a mainland invasion of Japan, which would likely have cost us at least 100,000 casualties, with some estimates being much higher.
  • We wanted to end the war before the Soviets could get involved and take Japan for themselves.
  • While we could have bombed Hiroshima conventionally with a comparable destructive impact, the atomic weapon had much greater potential for psychologically impacting them.

Our use of the two atomic weapons, “Fat Man,” and “Little Boy” did have the desired effect.  Japan did surrender without us needing to invade.  But nearly all Japanese that died in these attacks were civilians.  For the first time in my teaching career, almost all of the students thought that the decision to use the bomb could not be justified.

Germany’s surrender left us with a variety of post-war dilemmas.  The magnitude of the evil perpetrated in the Holocaust numbs the mind.  Never before in history had such a thing happened on such a scale.

But what should we do with Nazi leaders that surrendered?  Should they be released into civilian life again, as if nothing happened?  Or should they be shot out of hand?  Neither option seems to satisfy.  Putting them on trial had many advantages to it.  We would give them legal counsel.  They would have a fair chance to prove their innocence or at least mitigate their guilt.  This was the “civilized” option.

But that too posed problems.  What right did we have to put Germans on trial?  They were not American citizens and had broken no American laws.  To what kind of law can we hold them accountable?  We can argue for international law, but the Germans had withdrawn from international agreements and oversight before the war began.  Thus, they were not accountable directly to international laws they never pledged to obey.  What legal procedures should even govern the trial?

Furthermore, how could the trials be fair if all the judges were Allies?  Should the Germans have the right to a trial of their peers?  But would that eliminate the possibility of guilty verdicts?  Could the trials be fair if the Soviets participated in the prosecutions?  But how could we exclude them, considering that the Soviet Union suffered far, far more casualties than the U.S. and England combined?

The trials raise many perplexing legal questions, but also difficult moral ones.  How far should the “I was just following orders defense,” be allowed to go?  How far down the chain of command should we prosecute?

Eichmann served in the S.S. and played a role in the Holocaust.  He ended up escaping from Germany, and was captured by Israeli’s 15 years after the end of the war and put on trial.  Many remarked on how ordinary a man Eichmann was.  Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase “the banality of evil” fit him perfectly.

Many thanks,

Dave

The White Stag

by Dave Mathwin

In medieval legend and folklore, the White Stag appeared to beckon knights to adventure. At times they served as harbingers of change, or perhaps represented an important yet ultimately elusive quest. Perhaps one would not call the appearance of the White Stag an unqualified blessing, but it laid a call upon people they could not ignore.

Ideally, a historian chooses to hunt the White Stag of a grand unified theory of all things. But few choose to do this. Some fail nobly, but helpfully, like Toynbee. Some fail badly and with destructive consequences, like Marx. But–failure seems to be part of the equation of aiming so high. Still, one should make the attempt, for even the failures can serve as signposts along the way.

Should the historian stay shy of the hunt, their next job involves jolting people out of the present and making other times and places strange in some way. Of course a uniformity of human nature exists–history as a discipline could not exist without this. But in making other times “strange” the historian performs the service of helping others realize that our world is not the only one that has ever existed. Our values, mores, and habits may not represent the pinnacle of human achievement. Our beliefs and practices today may actually be “the wrong side of history.” I do not say that the historian should invite skeptical cynicism. Rather–they should help dislodge people from their own societies at least a bit so that they might seek another Kingdom.

I credit Philippe Erlanger for noticing things others miss in his The Age of Courts and Kings: Mannerans and Morals 1558-1715. He sees the distinctions, not just between past and present, but even unusual elements within the societies he examines. He avoids the lazy habits many fall into of using the past merely to confirm our current beliefs.

For example . . .

  • Most moderns who look at 16th century Spain focus on the prevalence of religious persecution there. But he notes that–contemporaneous with the “narrow” religiosity of Philip II–education exploded. Dozens of colleges and universities opened up, forming a golden age of sorts of Spanish culture.

He points out that this educational expansion involved a lot more than people studying theology:

There were some 30 Spanish universities: the one at Salamanca had no less than 7800 pupils; at Alcala 2000 students studied medicine. In the scientific field the results were remarkable. In metallurgy, mining, astronomy, and ophthalmology, Spain was in the vanguard of progress.

  • He puts on full display what we at least would call the ridiculous fopperies of the French aristocracy of the early 17th century. We get plenty of exposure to the sumptuous dress and other extravagances of court life. But he also shows us that many of these dandies (actually called “minions” to denote their service to the king) died young. They possessed great courage. He writes,

And yet the Minions (or Mignons, as they were called), were avid duelists, prodigal with their blood, fighting with a laugh or a leer of contempt. Nearly all of them gave their lives for the King before they were 30, and their heroic end should have spared them the ignominious meaning which history attached to the once common title of His Majesty’s Minions [the word meant ‘servant’–common in use at the time].

Good for Erlanger. Most just notice the obvious things–the crazy dress, the religious persecution–the things that would offend modern sensibilities. Most do not take a second look. I am grateful for Erlanger taking these second looks and discovering the other side of the coin.

What almost shocks me is that, noticing such things, he didn’t stop and ponder their meaning.

For example, everything about our society tells us that religious fundamentalism and an expansion of education-especially scientific education–shouldn’t mix. The 19th-early 20th century American experience with some fundamentalist Christians bears this out. But this example from Spain should make us wonder–maybe our modern experience is the exception to the general rule? The Puritans, for example, could justifiably fall into the “religious dogmatism” category but stressed education enormously, founding Harvard University seven years after coming to the continent. Christians in late antiquity through the high Middle Ages would not necessarily fit the “religiously dogmatic” bill in the same way as 17th century Puritans. Neither did this period display a joyous and progressive exchange of ideas with other faiths. But any student of the medieval era knows that the Church provided the only means of education during this era, and that various advances in science and architecture took place in this time.

And what of the silly aristocrats and their silly dress? Everything about our democratic mind tells us that such people should be wastes of space, with their lives consumed by the trivial. And yet, as Erlanger indicates, many of these same dandies displayed high courage and most spent their lives before the age of 30. Again–an aberration, or so it seems at least.

But maybe . . . ages of intense religious belief are periods of great conviction, and perhaps this conviction gives one confidence to explore various disciplines. We see the confidence of the Athenians in the 5th century B.C. give rise to many advances in science, as one example.

And maybe . . . the grand style of the Mignons simply served as an accompaniment to their grandeur of spirit. Maybe their detachment from normal life led then to great and heroic action. Maybe the stagnation of spirit we feel today mirrors our bland fashion sense.

I say, “maybe” in earnest–these are just suggestions. But Erlanger has to wonder, has to at least spur us on to wonder, and in this he fails, though the book has real virtues.

Among his other observations, two stand out to me:

  • In England in the 17th century, fathers were prohibited from caring for their illegitimate children for too long in their own house. They could provide for them, certainly, but could not keep them at home for too long. And,
  • In various places a prohibition existed against the excess selling of goods–not prohibited goods, mind you, but perfectly legal goods.

Odd laws and practices tangential to the prevalent culture exist everywhere. But in general I think that disparate mores have a common root of belief or perception. We should attempt to tie these items together, despite their strange appearance to the modern mentality.

The words “open” and “closed” will likely produce subtle but important reactions for most of us. We probably have a positive reaction towards “open” and a negative one towards “closed.” In general, modern western societies build on the preference towards openness–open communication, open sourcing, open markets, much more open and fluid sexual practices, more open immigration, and so on. We want to be “open minded,” and not its opposite.*

But “open” and “closed” are descriptive, not moral categories. Surely, for example, we can’t possibly be open to everything–many things would harm or even kill us. We should not be open to every idea or possibility, every food, or every possible person living in our house. We want to be “closed” to bad things, open to good things. How we define good and bad will differ, obviously, and whether we lean towards “open” or “closed.”

Let us filter the observations above through this grid.

With the laws about illegitimacy, we see a more “closed” approach to the family unit. Laws against “excessive” harboring of illegitimates protected the identity of the family centered on marriage and “common blood.” Thus, the extended family could have more weight in such a culture. The idea, for example, that an aristocrat’s body servant would be “part of the family,” is a modern conceit.

We see this same principle at work with the prohibition of selling “excessive” goods.** A preference towards “closed” leads to a desire to limit the general fluidity of things. Flooding the market one week could lead to drying it up the next, perhaps. I suppose also–a society with an aristocracy needs to strongly rely on tradition. Relying on tradition requires stability. One might counter that economic fluidity would not endanger political stability. This rings false–we know very well how economics, politics, and culture interrelate. Seen in this light such seemingly aberrant data points Erlanger notes actually make sense.

Erlanger includes enough nuggets to make us gawk, but we can’t stay there. We have to wonder, and follow the trail where it leads.

Dave

*This centuries long preference for “open” resides in our cultural DNA, and this makes turning back the fluid concepts of sexuality and gender prevalent in our culture very difficult. One needs a strongreference point outside of our culture in order to try and swim in the other direction. Appealing to our traditions, the Constitution, and so on will have zero impact.

**Perhaps this is not so strange to us, as we have similar practices with farmers today.

The Psychology of Encounters

by Dave Mathwin

As an author A.J. Toynbee could be controversial and intimidating.  His grand theories of the scope of history naturally had adherents and skeptics.  Toynbee repeated himself numerous times over the scope of his 12 volume magnum opus.  At times too, Toynbee’s “insights” seem like little more than average common sense, such as his observation that geography must present a challenge to encourage the development of a civilization.

But sometimes his insights, even if not earth-shattering, are nonetheless important to contemplate, and show their worth because of their applicability in different circumstances.  I have always thought that the book The World and the West a great entry point for those interested in Toynbee’s work.  My favorite chapter (the book is a collection of speeches given on a theme) is “The Psychology of Encounters” (available here for those interested).

His main point deals with how cultures interact with one another.  One of his arguments entails showing how when a culture gets transplanted into “non-native” soil, it may not “take” in the way it did so where originally planted.  He uses the rise of nationalism from the mid 19th-early 20th centuries.  The idea of nationalism grew up slowly and organically in England and France, and perhaps to a lesser extent in Russia.  But the exportation of this idea to other areas could have unintended and dangerous consequences.  I quote at length,

We can see why the same institution has had these strikingly different effects in these two different social environments. The institution of ‘national states’ has been comparatively harmless in western Europe for the same reason that accounts for its having originated there; and that is because, in western Europe, it corresponds to the local relation between the distribution of languages and the alignment of political frontiers. In western Europe, people speaking the same language happen, in most cases, to be huddled together in a single continuous and compact block of territory with a fairly well defined boundary separating it from the similarly compact domains of other languages; and, in a region where, as here, the languages are thus distributed in the pattern of a patchwork quilt, the language map provides a convenient basis for the political map, and ‘national states’ are therefore natural products of the social milieu. Most of the domains of the historic states of Western Europe do, in fact, coincide approximately with homogeneous patches of the language map; and this coincidence has come about, for the most part, undesignedly. The west European peoples have not been acutely conscious of the process by which their political containers have been moulded on linguistic lasts; and, accordingly, the spirit of nationalism has been, on the whole, easy-going in its west European homeland. In west European national states, linguistic minorities who have found themselves on the wrong side of a political frontier have in most cases shown loyalty, and been treated with consideration, because their coexistence with the majority speaking ‘the national language’ as fellow-citizens of the same commonwealth has been a historical fact which has therefore been taken for granted by everyone.

But now consider what has happened when this west European institution of ‘national states’, which in its birthplace has been a natural product of the local linguistic map, has been radiated abroad into regions in which the local language map is On a quite different pattern. When we look at a language map, not just of Western Europe, but of the world, we see that the local west European pattern, in which the languages are distributed in fairly clear-cut, compact, and homogeneous blocks, is something rather peculiar and exceptional. In the vastly larger area stretching south-eastward from Danzig and Trieste to Calcutta and Singapore, the pattern of the language map is not like a patchwork quilt; it is like a shot-silk robe. In eastern Europe, south-west Asia, India, and Malaya the speakers of different languages are not neatly sorted out from one another, as they are in western Europe; they are geographically intermingled in alternate houses on the same streets of the same towns and villages; and, in this different, and more normal, social setting, the language map—in which the threads of different colours are interwoven with each other—provides a convenient basis, not for the drawing of frontiers between states, but for the allocation of occupations and trades among individuals.

I thought of Toynbee’s insight when reading Ivan Morris’ excellent The Nobility of Failure.  In his book Morris examines the idea of the Japanese hero through mythology, folklore, and history.  By comparing various stories over two millennia a consistent picture emerges.

  • The hero must be sincerely dedicated and have a purity of devotion.
  • Japanese heroes often dedicate themselves to hopeless, or nearly hopeless causes.  The fact that the cause is relatively hopeless demonstrates his purity and sincerity.  That is, the cause itself is not particularly important — rather, the character of the hero takes center stage.
  • The Japanese hero invariably ends his life in a noble death, one that he himself controls and determines.  This death validates the purity of his cause.  We might assume that the method was always sepiku, the ritual disembowlment.  Not so, Morris explains.  Originally, ritual suicide was performed by slicing the carotid artery on the neck.  Sepiku probably became part of the samurai tradition because it is a much more painful form of death, one that allows for a greater demonstration of suffering and courage.

The last chapter naturally deals with the kamikaze attacks at the end of W.W. II.  Previous to W. W. II heroic status could only be attained by the aristocratic class & samurai class.  But Toynbee’s theory of the unpredictability of cultural transference applies in this case.  This transference on a cultural level can have the same kind of unpredictable detrimental effect as it can on the ecological level.  Think of the kudzu plant, which serves a good purpose in Japan’s unusual geography.  Transplant it to the southeastern U.S., however, and it will take over entire forests. Beginning in the mid-19th century Japan got exposed to western ideology, including obviously the idea of equality.  But what equality meant for Japan in this case became a horrifying kind of parody — now everyone can kill themselves and attain heroic status.

Hence the kamikaze pilots.  As Morris points out, the Japanese did not carry out these attacks primarily because they believed it would lead to victory.  No one really believed in victory by the end of 1944.  Such attacks, however, would certainly lead to the pilots achieving hero status in Japan.  They mimicked almost exactly the form and pattern laid down in Japan’s past.

Below I include various excerpts from Morris’ book.  Another quote from Toynbee illustrates the tragedy of Japan in W.W. II.

Since our discovery of the trick of splitting the atom, we have learned to our cost that the particles composing an atom of some inoffensive element cease to be innocuous and become dangerously corrosive so soon as they have been split off from the orderly society of particles of which an atom is constituted, and have been sent flying by themselves on independent careers of their own.

Excerpts from The Nobility of Failure

Testimonies of Kamikaze Pilots, 1944-45

If only we might fall

Like cherry blossoms in the Spring —

So pure and radiant!

  • Haiku by a kamikaze pilot in the ‘Seven Lives’ Unit, died Feb. 22, 1945, age 22. Kamikaze planes were called “Oka” bombs.  “Oka” is the Japanese word for “Cherry Blossom.”

“The purity of youth will issue in the divine wind.” [i.e., the “shimpu,” or “kamikaze.”]

  • Admiral Onishi, the probable originator of the “kamikaze” attacks.   He said to his officers, “Even if we are defeated, the noble spirit of the kamikaze attack corp will keep our homeland from ruin.  Without this spirit, ruin would surely follow defeat.  [The pilots] are already gods, without earthly desires.”

Beckoned to a chair, the young man [Lt. Seki] sat down facing us.  Commander Tamai patted him on the shoulder.  “Seki, Admiral Onishi himself has visited the 201st air group to present a plan of the greatest importance to Japan.  The plan is to crash-dive our Zero fighters, loaded with 250 kilogram bombs, into the ships of the enemy.  You are being considered to lead such an attack.  How do you feel about it?

There were tears in Tamai’s eyes as he spoke.

For a moment there was no answer.  Seki sat motionless, eyes closed, in deep thought.  Then calmly, raising his head, he said, “You absolutely must let me do it.”  There was not the slightest falter in his voice.

  • Lt. Seki was the first to lead a kamikaze squadron, and he successfully sank an escort carrier.

When it was clear that they understood my message [about forming a kamikaze squadron], I turned and said, “Anyone who wishes to volunteer for today’s sortie will raise his hand.”

The words were hardly spoken before every man raised his hand.  Several of them left their seats and pressed up against me, pleading, “Send me!  Please send me!”

I wheeled about and shouted, “Everyone wants to go.  Don’t be so selfish!”

[As the planes moved to the runway for takeoff] Lt. Nakano raised himself in the cockpit and shouted, “Commander Nakajima!”

Fearing that I had done something wrong I rushed over.  His face was wreathed in smiles as he called, “Thank you Commander!  Thank you very much for choosing me!”  I flagged him on with a vigorous wave of my arm, and other pilots shouted the same thing.  “Thank you!” they shouted.  I pretended not to hear these words, but they tore at my heart.

  • Official log of Capt. Nakajima

It is of no avail to express it now, but  in my 23 years of life I have worked out my own philosophy.  It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I think of the deceits of the wily politicians upon the innocent population.  But I am willing to take orders from the high-command . . . because I believe in the beautiful polity of Japan.  

The Japanese way of life is indeed beautiful, and I am proud of it, as I am of Japanese history and mythology, which reflect the purity of our ancestors and our past.   And the living embodiment of all wonderful things in our past is the Imperial Family which, too, is the crystallization of the splendour and beauty of Japan and its people.  It is an honor to give my life for such beautiful and lofty things.

  • Last letter of Lt. Yamaguchi Teruo

Dear Parents:

Please congratulate me.  I have been given a splendid opportunity to die.  This destiny of our homeland hinges on the decisive battle in the seas to the south where I shall fall like a blossom from a radiant cherry tree.

How I appreciate this chance to die like a man!  . . . Thank you, my parents, for the years during which you have cared for me and inspired me.  I hope that in some small way this deed will repay you for what you have done.

  • From the last letter of Lt. Matsuo Isao

Never think of winning!

Thoughts of victory will only bring defeat.

When we lose, let us press forward, ever forward!

  • A popular kamikaze song

Cease your optimism,

Open your eyes,

People of Japan!

Japan is bound to be defeated.

It is then that we Japanese

Muse infuse into this land

A new life

A new road to restoration

Will be ours* to carve.

  • Last poem of a kamikaze pilot.  The “ours*” refers to the kamikaze pilots, whose death will plant the seeds of “new life.”

If by some strange chance, Japan should suddenly win this war, it would be a fatal misfortune for the future of the nation.  It will be better for our nation and people if they are tempered through real ordeals, which will serve to strengthen.

  • Sub. Lt. Okabe [?]

Listen carefully!  Imagine you have nothing in your hand but a pebble, and you need to take down a tree.  What is the best method?  To throw the pebble, or to take the pebble in your hand and strike it against the tree yourself?

  • Lt. Nagatsuka, last message to his parents.

Probably the most fearsome of all scenes took place on Saipan in 1944.  When organized military resistance became impossible soldiers  — some 3000 of them — armed with nothing but sticks came charging at the American concentrated machine-gun fire.   They were mowed down to the last man.   A particularly macabre note was provided by wounded Japanese soldiers who limped forward, bandages and all, to the slaughter.

Subsequently, entire units of Japanese soldiers knelt down in rows to be decapitated by their commanders, who then in turn committed ritual suicide.  Hundreds of others shot themselves in the head or, more commonly, exploded themselves with hand grenades.  As the marines advanced through the island they witnessed one mass suicide after another, culminating in the last terrible scene when Japanese civilians, including large numbers of women with children in their arms, hurled themselves off cliffs or rushed out into the sea to drown rather than risk capture.  

  • From Ivan Morris’ The Nobility of Failure

Traditional Strengths

by Dave Mathwin

About a month ago Jordan Peterson returned to the public eye after a long period of dealing with his own personal and family medical issues. Controversy followed him in his earlier rise to prominence, and sure enough, controversy picked up where it left off with his first major interview in years with the Sunday Times. It appears that the published interview, and the unpublished edited transcript, show that the Times performed something of a hit piece. Given the mainstream media’s general dislike of Peterson (I also am critical of certain aspects of his message, and appreciative of others), some called into question why he would give the interview at all. One could easily assume that it came from weakness–a desire to correct the “embarrassment” of his departure from the public eye and subsequent issues with medication. Others questioned why he would, even with the best of motives, open himself up to the “jackals” of leftist media.

Peterson acknowledged the issues and explained some of his motivation on his website, writing,

So, what would a wise man do?

Learn my lesson, and avoid the press at all cost? But I don’t know how to distinguish that from turning my tail and hiding, and I think that would be worse for me, even in my currently compromised state, than continuing to engage as I have.

Only choose to make myself available to outlets that will produce positive coverage? First, how do I know which outlets are trustworthy. I could only talk to people with whom I have become friendly, such as David Rubin and Joe Rogan. But I don’t think it’s right to stay inside what risks becoming a mere echo chamber.

Was it a mistake for me to conduct the now-infamous Channel Four interview with Cathy Newman? Or the almost equally-viewed GQ interview with Helen Lewis? Both of those were markedly hostile. Were they failures, or successes? I don’t think it is unreasonable to note that they are markedly of our time, and perhaps indicate something important–whatever that might be–about our time. Both have garnered some 25 million views. There’s something of broad public interest about the tension that characterizes both conversations….

GQ, motivated by the success (?) of the Helen Lewis interview, plans to produce a profile on me in the near future. I have been asked to make myself available for an interview. Should I do it? I haven’t decided. If it goes badly, will I only have myself to blame? Should I therefore avoid it?

I hope to be judicious in my decisions about when and where to speak. I hope that I can stick to the truth when I do so, and believe that there is no better defense (and, indeed, no better offense) than that? Do I trust myself to tell the truth? Will my ego invariably get in the way? Has that already happened?

As the man says: You pays your money and you takes your chances.

I have no idea if Peterson should continue to give such interviews. But his “staying the course” I feel shows at least some strength. He gave such interviews before, which people interpreted in different ways. He can continue to give such interviews, with likely the same result–people will continue to disagree about him, perhaps even sharply so. But if he chooses the path of more mainstream interviews I will not condemn him. The temptation invariably will tend, however, towards seeing that choice as a weakness–as a love of attention, as an attempt to cover over his illness, etc. We love to break down narratives and deconstruct.

Within the Pseudepigrapha there exists a delightful story called “Joseph and Aseneth,” which details the marriage between the biblical Joseph and the daughter of the priest of On (Gen. 41:45). Essentially, Aseneth has great beauty and is much desired throughout the land of Egypt, but refuses to consider marriage to the great Joseph. Joseph, for his part, wants nothing to do with someone devoted to idols. But Aseneth repents, forsakes her gods, and marries Joseph, all the while preventing a clash between Joseph’s brothers and the Pharoah’s eldest son.

What struck me in particular the means whereby the editor (someone named C. Burchard) of the text framed the story. First, we have the insinuation that the story is designed to cover over an embarrassment–“How could Joseph–the model of chastity, piety, and statesmanship, marry a foreign Hamitic girl, daughter of an idolatrous priest?”* Rather–should we not see the story in terms of the triumph of the whole biblical narrative? If we read the Old Testament from Christ backwards, we should expect to see marriages to foreigners as a foreshadowing of Christ “wooing” the Gentiles into the Kingdom of God.

Second, despite the clear statement that, “The book is an author’s work, not a folk tale which has no progenitor,” the editor seeks here and there for textual origins of the story. I apologize, for I have little stomach for the minutiae of scholars on such questions, though I admit the minutiae has its place at times. I feel, however, that often we make things too complicated. He sees the origin of the story’s framework in various kinds of Greek literature, writing, “More helpful is hellenistic romance [most agree that the story was originally written in Greek], especially the erotic variety as represented by the Great Five, “Chariton’s ‘Chaereas and Calirrrhoe,’ Xenophon of Ephesus . . . [etc.]” I confess I have no idea who these authors are, but again–might we not be trying too hard for the sake of trying too hard? Isn’t there plenty of “origin” within the Old Testament itself, i.e., the Song of Songs, Hosea and Gomer, or the Book of Ruth for such romantic tales?

Though I lack all of the technical knowledge possessed by the editor, and therefore perhaps should not judge–yet–what bothers me is

  • The idea that tales such as “Joseph and Aseneth” present themselves to cover gaps, to explain away embarrassments, etc. rather than expand/magnify the existing tradition.
  • The idea that traditions are inherently weak, that they must constantly fill from the outside in

Essentially, the problem I encounter at times (though perhaps I judge the editor C. Burchard too harshly) involves focusing so much on the bark of one tree that no one sees the forest.^

Rachel Hallote’s Death, Burial, and Afterlife in the Biblical World suffers from a similar problem. Her main thesis involves showing that the burial practices she uncovered show that the Israelites borrowed heavily from pagan practices in other peoples, and therefore failed to follow Mosaic law in their attitude towards the dead. Well, given the many denuniciations found in the prophets and elsewhere, the fact that Israel broke various commandments should not surprise us. We do not need an archaeologist to tell us this, though some of the burial details could illumine how they broke biblical law and whom they might have borrowed from. But, hearkening back to my earlier point, many scholars see themselves in the role of breaking down traditions by finding smoking guns in the historical record. When they do so, they sometimes miss the forest, as I think Rachel Hallote has in her book.

Hallote’s central point revolves around her observations that, while the Mosaic Law seems to mandate a definitive break between the living and dead, and that Israelite burial practices show a much more fluid relationship between them. Her main observations include:

  • Evidence of family members buried in agricultural fields, and not strictly formal graves. While at first glance this may seem disrespectful, Hallote and others speculate that the dead were to function as sentinels, in a sense, of fields laying fallow. Israel practiced this, as did other Middle Bronze Age cultures.
  • Iron and Bronze age burials of family members also took place under houses, indicating a continued relationship with the departed. The members buried under houses might be those still thought in need of care in some way, such as children or the elderly–not those in between, who might be buried in fields.
  • A strong suggestion that alternate forms of burial, such as placing a body under a stone mound, likely indicated that such a person was to receive no offerings, prayers, etc. It was a way of marking that person as ‘cursed’ in some way (i.e., Josh. 8:29, 10:27).

I see her chapter “The Cult of the Dead in Ancient Israel ” as central to her thesis. She cites various proscriptions about not participating in “sacrifices” to the dead, common among the Canaanites. She then goes on to point out that various Old Testament texts show that Israelites participated in such practices, such as Ps. 106:28. Certain particular archaeological finds certainly can illumine these texts for us. But she puts all of her eggs into the archaeology basket–everything similar from the Israelites and the Canaanites regarding their dead for her must mean an unbiblical syncretism. She cites a variety of passages from 1 Samuel to show that Israelites conducted yearly worship service families for their dead (1 Sm. 1:21, 2:19, 20:6, 20:29), which apparently the Canaanites also held. Yet no condemnation exists that I am aware of for such services (one of the references involves the soon to be crowned David and the family of Jesse).

Where Hallote sees embarrassment, I see strength. Some time ago my wife knew a lady that attended a particular church with a distinct fundamentalist leaning. Our friends’ skirts were inevitably the length of her shins. Obviously, skirts too short would be immodest. But at that time, long flowing skirts were very much in fashion. Thus, to avoid “worldliness” one had to wear modest skirts that out of fashion–to wear something modest but “fashionable” would not cut it. Should shin length skirts shoot up in popularity, her church would switch to those of a longer length. When one tacks so much to the world around them, “strength” is not the word most would use. Ideally one has such confidence in their way of life, that the world around them fades as a reference point. So in Deut. 26:13-14, Hallote sees evidence of Mosaic law making a concession to existing practices that Israelite leaders cannot control, rather than establishing a clear delineation between having a relationship with the dead and offering them sacrifices. She sees weakness where she should see strength.

So, not every Canaanite practice is “wrong,” just as not every fashion choice the “world” makes Christians need to avoid. A further distinction Hallote misses shows the limits of what archaeology can prove. To praise the dead is not worship. To remember the dead is not worship. To pray for them is not to worship them (i.e, 2 Macc. 12). To ask them to pray for us is not worshiping them. To offer sacrifices to them–that is worship, and that the Law and the Prophets condemns.

Archaeology deals with “facts,” with observational, physical data. So when Hallote observes practices that allow for a narrowly “physical” meaning, that is what she puts forth. So the Israelites used spices for the dead because of the smell of decomposition in the hot weather. Or, they buried people under trees to provide a kind of fertilization. To her credit, when such a narrow interpretation would lead into absurdity, she backs off (as in the above cited examples about burials in fields, for example). But why not apply that same symbolic understanding to all of what she sees? Surely, a trees at least have a great deal of rich layers of meaning attached to them. Surely death itself is a great mystery and only the barest minority of us deals with it in a strictly physical manner.

Archaeology can give wonderful insights into particular matters, and the strengths of Hallote’s work share in the strengths of that field. But trees can never show you the forest.

Dave

*After writing this, upon reflection and a re-read, I may have read the editor’s intro to the story (C. Burchard, found in Charlesworth’s collection of the Pseudepigrapha, p. 177 ff.) too critically. A week later I am not as confident in my interpretation above–the idea of the editor that the story meant to cover an embarrassment. I still think it likely given the tone and content of the intro, but I may be over-sensitive. If anyone else reads it for themselves and wants to offer a correction, my ears are open. Of course, this initial reading of the Burchard’s intro formed the basis of this haphazard post, so naturally I cannot question my initial reading too substantially.

**The story may be of Christian or Jewish origin. Either way, there is the fascinating renaming of Aseneth to “City of Refuge.” If the story is of Jewish origin, it shows that Marian typology, i.e., Mary as the “City of God” has its roots within Jewish tradition. If the story is of Christian origin, it shows us how to read back into stories “types of Mary” just as we can read back “types of Christ.”

^I find it perfectly natural that western scholars should seek to deconstruct traditions, for they would naturally view traditions as weak. Modern western civilization is built on a rejection of tradition. It is in our cultural DNA to assume that traditions are weak because we naturally assume a kind of unreality about them. Thus, it seems we must continually find underdogs to keep our culture moving at all.