Steve Harris
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Western Civ

11/26/2021

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I was recently reading a review of a new book which focused on how the concept of “civilization” was central to the efforts to reconstruct Europe in the aftermath of World War II. It’s a plausible and interesting thesis for the exploration of this aspect of modern European history. I was struck, however, by the comment of one of the reviewers that the modern idea of “civilization” was problematic; since it is often associated with arrogance and an artificial distinction between the “civilized” and the “uncivilized,” to the derogation of the latter. As someone who has spent some time studying overseas European empires (Spain, Portugal, England, France, Netherlands, Russia) and their spin-offs (US, Japan), I have to acknowledge that there is plenty of historical evidence to support this view. Still, I am wary of throwing the “civilization” baby out with the “abuse of power” bathwater.

 A similar problem has arisen in the course offerings of many universities, where “Western Civ” courses, have been receding lately, usually in favor of “world history” courses. This is a reflection in the relative decline of the importance of Europe in US culture, evidenced by a geopolitical “pivot to Asia,” an increase in students who look to Latin America, Africa, or various parts of Asia for their cultural heritage, and a recognition (guilt?) that several centuries of triumphalist European civilizational claims is more than enough.

At SF State, Western Civ is only offered as an introductory survey course, on a par with World History or US History. This special status for a non-“home” region is rooted in a tradition of US pedagogy that privileges Europe. Comparable courses covering China or East Asia, Islam, or Africa are all upper-division courses. I can’t justify this special status, so I don’t offer the course any more.

In the early 20C, within a world-view of the “American Century,” with the US being seen as the “Rome” to Europe’s “Greece,” such a course made more sense. If History asks “How did we get here?” and the “we” were white Americans predominantly Christian and of European descent, then “Western Civ” offered a plausible answer. Sweeping aside the presence and contributions of  cultures from the ancient Middle East, India, and Egypt enabled us to put the Parthenon on an altar (as it were). Forgetting that Jesus and his Apostles were Semitic sanitized a European Christianity. Downplaying the fact that the writings of Classical Greece were reintroduced to Europe only because medieval Islamic cultures preserved them draws a neat, if inaccurate, line around the “Continent” (actually a large peninsula on the northwestern corner of Afro-Eurasia).  

And that’s only the foundations. By the time we get to the “modern” (i.e., since ~1500) era, a Euro-centric focus enabled a characterization in which Europeans were the active force in history to which everyone else just responded or submitted. Inventions, conquests, and economic growth all fell into place. The antecedents of Modernity are elegantly found in 1-2-3 combination: the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment. Europe’s calamitous early 20C is presented as a temporary interruption in Western “progress,” with the torch carried on by the US through the late 20C.

These are all important developments and are included in my Modern World History Survey, Europeans play a larger role than their numbers alone would dictate. More recent versions of Western Civ in the past several decades have expanded the scope of historical forces and individuals who affected/contributed to European culture, including recognizing the impact of European empires on their subjects (and vice-versa).

All well-and-good in terms of the evolution of historical course offerings. More broadly, there is much to be said for ridding ourselves of claims of moral superiority (aka Eurocentrism or the US version) when the evidence shows Europeans’ good fortune in terms of geography (access to coal, continental topology, climate) seems to be the critical difference. There’s no question but that Europeans used the term “civilization” to demarcate their own culture from those of other (lesser/barbarian) groups.

But it’s another matter to dispose of the idea of civilization itself as the first-mentioned reviewer seemed to think was an appropriate consequence of this ‘re-think.’ The European flavor of “civilization” has to bear the burden of having leveraged unprecedented (technological and material) power to the (unprecedented) detriment of other groups. However, I rather doubt that they (we?) are any worse in a moral sense than any other “civilization” (e.g., Chinese, Hindu, Mayan) or groups of humans whose social organization did not last as long or encompass as many people or cultural components. Even if we were much more impactful.

Similarly, without taking on the question of whether the human move from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists (another way of defining “civilization”) was a good move morally or otherwise (paleo diet, anyone?), I’m not sure there’s much point in criticizing “civilization” as a general human social form as seems to be implicit in the reviewer’s reference. Establishing a culture implies some degree of social cohesion which, per se, leads to a world-view built on “us and them.” Denigration of the “other” seems to be a pretty consistent human response, historically speaking: “My gods (music, food, laws, football team) are better than yours.” Again, modern Europeans saw themselves as “civilized” and others as “barbarians; but so did the Chinese and the ancient Greeks, among others.

Indeed, as we look at Europe after WWII, it’s hard to see an alternative to “civilization” as an organizing principle. There was challenge enough in finding food and housing, in establishing some form of social order, in ratcheting down the oppressive psychic stresses of the War (and the immediately preceding Great Depression and less immediately preceding First World War). “Civilization,” at least at a generic level, seemed like a necessary predicate to living and, in its many attractive attributes (social cohesion, music, cafes, improved standards of living), more than desirable.

So, there is much to be said for “civilization,” both generally and in the particular case of 20C Europe. That particular versions had considerable shortcomings shows a need for cultural improvement (something civilizations can be good at), but is not a basis for going back to foraging and nomadry.
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Going Postal

11/19/2021

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Call me usmail. (really sorry to all you Moby Dick fans for that one, but I couldn’t resist).

Our mail slot is in our garage. I recently had it moved so that its only about three feet from our garbage/recycling bins. It’s quite efficient that way, since fully 90% of what we receive goes directly out (usually unopened) and much of the rest contains extra packaging or extraneous material (official disclaimers and notices, etc.).

As I was working on last week’s posting on Fragility and Sclerosis, it struck me that the U.S. Mail was as fine an example as we are likely to find of a deeply embedded institution that is unable to/not allowed to change. This applies to both the US Postal Service as well as the general process of using dead trees and lots of labor to move information from one place to another.

I cannot speak based on any sort of scientific survey of residential communications/information patterns, but in one reasonably tech-savvy, economically well-off household, using the US mail is pretty much of a waste of time and money. Almost all our bills are sent electronically and paid directly from the bank. Financial statements, ditto. We get a smattering of catalogs (cringe) and the bulk of the mail is bulk mail. A bit over half consists of requests for donations, about 20% (seasonally-adjusted) is from various political organizations (again seeking money), and there is some straight commercial mail including real estate agents and stores which we went to twice about a dozen years ago. Occasionally, there is something worth looking at from the government or some investment deal. Magazines and newspapers are mostly on-line. Once in a blue moon, there is an actual piece of correspondence from another human being!

From whatever source, much of the mail is driven by mailing lists that are, to put it mildly, uncurated. We still get mail for the woman who lived here before we bought the house (1994). When my dad died a few years ago, we forwarded his mail to our house here and he is a regular recipient of charitable and political requests. I am offended both in my general sense of order and efficiency and especially in environmental terms. There is part of me that would like to cut all these off, but I can’t build up the resolve to spend 10-15 minutes chasing down the right spot (website or customer service agent) to terminate the flow from each of these.

I have a particular problem with the mass mail from groups (either charitable or political) whose goals I support. It’s a rare month we don’t get a dozen fancy brochures addressed to members of the “Leadership Council” or some-such. I like these groups. I support their cause. I just wish they wouldn’t waste my donated money in this way. The environmental groups particularly should know better. They could probably boost their support by making “You’ll get 50% less mail” as a benefit of donations at a higher level. (By the same token, I am delighted that the various Republican groups my dad supported are still throwing their money after him!)

The whole thing reminds me of King Canute.

At the macro, USPS, level, the continuation of daily residential mail delivery shows the power of the relevant labor unions and the inability of Congress to get out of the way of rational economies. Package delivery or express services excepted, I can’t think of anything we get that couldn’t wait a few days for delivery. Once a week would probably do it. And even if we try to gradually lower the workload so that no USPS worker gets fired, we could easily start with dividing up the current residential routes into a MWF delivery group and a TTS delivery group.

Historically speaking, there is much to be said for the role of the postal service in weaving the country together. From the days of Benj. Franklin as the (pre-independence) Postmaster General to the Pony Express, the mail is the stuff of national myth. There’s even a (not bad) sci-fi novel by David Brin in which a postman helps the restoration of a post-apocalyptic USA (made into a bad movie starring Kevin Costner).

Overall, it’s a large national service run by the government; reasonably effective considering the constraints under which it operates. That’s enough for some notoriety on its own. Even in this electronic and ‘Amazoned’ age, it’s hard to see the USPS withering away entirely; but some change would be good, for both the organization and major users alike. It is thus a fine example of the sclerosis of the modern age: too tangled up by political management, captured by unions on one side and boxed in by private competitors’ lobbying efforts on the other, and therefore unable to recast itself in light of changing demographics and technologies. If GM is ready to ditch the internal combustion engine, then we can see that substantial change is possible, if only Congress can get out of the way. Perhaps we could even start with ending discount rates for bulk mail.

Perhaps the romance of the slogan (“Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet…”) and the mythology of the role of paper in national formation will prevail, despite the mounting costs (eventually to be borne by taxpayers). More likely, inertia will triumph. Unlike other fields of government inaction, this will not cause the end of the world; but it would make living a little simpler.

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Fragility and Sclerosis

11/12/2021

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Between global supply chain snafus and teetering democracies, we don’t need much more evidence of the fragility of modern society. The power of the modernist narrative, including a deeply embedded belief in human progress (at least in material/technological terms), has obscured the precarious nature of human societies. This overconfidence is paralleled by a lack of widespread energy/passion for change (“if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”). The combination of fragility and social and political sclerosis is particularly problematic.  

By fragility I mean something different than risk or danger.  I mean 1) the volatility of risk, the cascading implications of systemic breaks and the height of the cliffs along the edges of which modern society is dancing, and 2) the ease and speed with which “normal” can turn into chaos.

Problems in the global supply chain have gotten a lot of media attention lately and they sharply illustrate the interconnected nature of modern systems. Global competition has sharpened performance and productivity  in many industries. “Just-in-time” inventory management has reduced the carrying costs of dozens of industries. However, as with other manifestations of short-term thinking, such ruthless efficiency can be effective only if nothing goes wrong. And, when a ship gets stuck in the Suez Canal for a week, or labor issues (not enough truck drivers) slow down delivery times for the imported goods on which the British depend, things can spin out of control easily and turn into hoarding, price spikes and the like.

Democracy as a political art form is similarly fragile. There’s an interesting argument that its success from the 18-20C was due to changing socio-economic conditions rather than philosophical superiority or moral worth. What has been clear is that as a mode of socio-political organization, it depends on a level of social cohesion that is hard to achieve and requires constant maintenance. The Trumpian lust for power, manifested in the January 6 Insurrection is only the most dramatic evidence in a country where democratic politics has gone stale.

Beyond plausible theories of climate change and accelerating human disasters, environmentalists are justly concerned with human impacts on nature in terms of species extinction. In addition, industrialized agriculture limits the range of our sources of food, thus putting food supplies at risk, which climate change and ordinary disease can easily tip over into crisis (enjoy your Cavendish bananas now, and don’t be surprised if they cost $2 a piece in a few years if they are available).

The fact that “advanced countries have been growing “fat-and-happy” for a few hundred years and even the widespread human poverty of the 20C had become significantly abated made it hard to see  (and hard to care about) Where the risks were. Overconfidence in technology, the accessibility of the vast torrents of the “information age,” and the general “march of progress” has led us to a certain smugness: an illusion of knowledge and expertise, which may be the only clothes our 21C “emperor” is wearing. All of this uneasily reminiscent of Europe on the eve of WWI or the US between the end of the Cold War and 9/11.

A few months ago, I wrote about the complexity of modern society and about the price of short-term thinking. The interconnection of so many aspects of our lives (or, at least, our increased awareness of that interconnection) makes it hard to understand the apparently distant ramifications of, e.g., supply chain disruption or climate  effects. Short-term thinking and over-simplification make it easy for us to claim surprise when problems snowball.

Institutional sclerosis is another aspect of modern societal fragility. By institutions I mean not just formal organizations, like Congress or the Red Cross or your local public schools, but also the embedded sets of rules and practices by which our society operates, from “driving on the left” (in most countries) to tipping in restaurants to the way academic disciplinary boundaries drive university structures  and the very way we help young people understand the world. Thomas Jefferson called for rewriting the Constitution every generation; but we haven’t had any meaningful change in ours since the Civil War. Deeply embedded bureaucracies and governance structures slow the pace of institutional changes precisely when we need more dexterity.

From a historical perspective, the huge (revolutionary) changes in social organization and mentality which began in the 18C constructed a modern society, rules and practices were established and were institutionalized, i.e., they were made difficult to change. From one perspective this was an unsurprising reaction to the extent of change that had gone on—a desire to catch our collective breaths by locking in what had been done and giving us security that we knew the new rules of the road. From another perspective, such institutionalization, including the difficulty of amending the Constitution, political parties, and other extra-market practices and organizations have made adapting to incremental change more difficult. What Schumpeter called the ”creative destruction” of capitalism has actually made the corporate sector more agile than the public sector.

To the extent we think of ourselves (proudly) as modern, it can be disorienting to imagine a life lived under different mindset. This is one reason I like to read science fiction—to get my brain out of its 20C rut. This is not a posting in which to propose substantive solutions, but it it does call for an awareness that we are mentally stuck in many ways and that the incremental change of the world will require larger and more radical reframings as an eventual response.

The essence of modernity is change—increasingly accelerating change. We have, to a large extent, papered over our struggling adaptation to this change with our vastly increased wealth/standard of living. Indeed, some portion of that apparent wealth has come from extracting resources for consumption instead of ensuring resilience and long-term stability (think deferring maintenance enables increasing short-term profits or deferring taxes). When we don’t build in resilience or some “cushion,” fragility results. When we defer maintenance on our institutions, they become stuck and outdated, and increasingly unable to resolve issues. Unsurprisingly, when a fragile society is managed by sclerotic institutions, there is reason for concern. This is what we face now.

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America as an Empire

11/5/2021

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In one of my classes recently, I gave students the assignment of writing a short (800-1000 word) research paper on “America as an Empire.” This is not a search for new information or interpretations of this well-covered topic, but an exercise in looking at a couple of books and articles and constructing an argument (pro or con) on this issue. Most did pretty well, even if there were few efforts at showing the negative.

I might have guessed as much after a situation a couple of years ago in which my colleague Trevor Getz and I were asked to debate this topic before a high school history club (just to give them the (enjoyable?) experience of watching a couple of historians argue with each other and demonstrating that history was far more than the simple narratives most high school history texts offer).

In that debate, I drew the “short straw,” and argued that the US was not an empire. It’s a tough case and depends mostly on semantics and the difference between the US experience and that of the “classic” empires of conquest and territorial expansion (e.g. Rome, Mongols, Spain, Portugal, England, France, etc.). With the exception of the notable but relatively insignificant seizure of the Spanish possessions (Philippines, Cuba, and a few other islands) at the end of the 19C, and the less visible but more extensive and brutal ejecting of indigenous peoples across the continent from the 16C through 20C, the US has not set up a network of overseas colonies in the European style.

Rather, since the US only developed the ability to project power across long distances at the end of the 19C and Europeans had already begun losing faith in their “new imperialism” model by that time, the nature of imperialism globally since then has been of the “informal” variety. Instead of running up flags and establishing local governments directed from metropolitan capitals (London, Paris, Washington), “informal” empires save much of the cost of administration and military defense in favor of the exercise of economic and cultural power by imperial governments, companies, banks, and other institutions.

From the home country (the “metropole”) this sort of operation looks a lot less like an empire than the old-style European model. This shift also fit the US self-image of being anti-imperialist (we did throw off the British yoke back in the 18C, after all) and our national mythology of less government and being the global champion of  “freedom.”

In the first part of the 19C, the British led a campaign to open up national/imperial economies, under the battle cry of “free trade.” It was a fitting effort by what was becoming the dominant global economy to ensure that all markets were open to British intervention; a self-serving ideology of “freedom.” So, too, the US in the 20C opposed European (& Japanese) imperialism (see, e.g., Wilson’s efforts at the post-WWI Peace Conference and Roosevelt’s parallel effort as WWII was winding up). In both cases, “openness” meant opportunity for the merchants and financiers and the religious and other cultural entrepreneurs of the rising global power to establish themselves to the disadvantage of local and imperial competitors.

The “home” empires of the US and Russia consisted of seizing and incorporating land and indigenous peoples into an expanding metropole. This was larger in scope but along the same lines as what England did to Wales/Scotland/Ireland or Paris did to Aquitaine and Burgundy in earlier centuries.

The “new style” of empire, pioneered by the British in Latin America in the early 19C (and, arguably, in India even earlier) eschewed formal control. Funding, trade contracts, an occasional gunship, and a comment or two from an “advisor” to the local elites would suffice. These empires were not “state-to-state,” but “society/economy-to-society/economy.” Barclay’s Bank presaged Coca-Cola as the vehicle of power and profit. Commercial and cultural empires also avoided messy issues of national coherence and whether to include large colonial populations into the metropolitan polity (only white “Frenchmen” from Algeria could vote in France’s elections, even if Algeria had been formally part of France since 1830; and no one could contemplate hundreds of millions of Indians voting for Gladstone or Disraeli or Churchill). Companies viewed governmental empires as only occasionally useful tools.

By the mid-20C, military technology reduced the need to hold (and need to defend!) vast swaths of distant territories at considerable cost. A few air force and navy bases would do the job. Companies and non-governmental organizations could be paid (sometimes even openly) to advance the interests of the distant power center: the IMF could manage the budgets of entire countries, local groups could be subsidized to promote “democratic” values?

Perspectives from “colonized” peoples were not so different from one style to another. Geopolitical power is pretty hard to disguise after a while. It’s clear when you’re not even running your own country, despite the presence of local parties and Western-certified elections. Similarly, for Americans overseas, expat colonies, widespread use of English, Holiday Inn’s in Tibet and McDonald’s franchises in Java made it seem an “all-American” world, regardless of whose flag was flying.

It's good to remember all this, even in an age when US world-wide dominance is waning. There is no inherent reason China should not be a bigger global power than the US. They are 3-1/2 times more populous after all. Furthermore, the track record of prior hegemons shows that incumbents, sooner-or-later, get too fat-and-happy to stay at the top of their game. Finally, no one should confuse any of this with what is “right” or other morality claims/self-justifications.

So, other than the sharp variance from the Spanish/British model, the case for the US being an imperial power is pretty strong, regardless of our self-proclaimed ideology/mythology. We still project an awful lot of power around the world—from aircraft carriers to Facebook to financial infrastructure. It’s far from the whole story of the US in the world, but this power does polarize the perspectives of both the subjects of that power and our own.
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    Condemned to Repeat It --
    Musings on history, society, and the world.

    I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

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