Blog Posts

Construction Zone

3/4/2022

Earlier this year, I wrote about nationalism in history and today I want to expand on that topic to highlight its artificiality. In other words, there are not really any such things as nations, they are social constructs, cobbled together out of distorted traditions, bad genetics, and human desires to belong to a group. You don’t need Putin’s mythology of the essential unity of Great Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians), and White Russians (from Belarus) to see this or its impact in the real world. If nationalism hadn’t been such an essential concept in global political development with continuing repercussions, this artificiality wouldn’t be such a big deal. But this emperor has no clothes.

As I wrote last time, nationalism essentially arose in the 19C as a way-station on the road to globalization. As human societies became more interconnected, secular, and democratic, traditional local identities were being squeezed and regional elites leveraged this angst to regroup power structures on a larger scale. Nationalism was seen as a forward-thinking ideology.

And as is common in human societies, innovation becomes conventional and then reactionary (yeah, I know, a good historian shouldn’t spout such gross generalizations, but…) By the late 20C, those local elites—whether in the West or post-colonial contexts—were well entrenched in their larger zones of influence, but the onward push of technology and globalization increasingly shifted the scale and scope of economics and culture to a larger plane. Good burghers—members of the local textile guild—hated it when Bismarck consolidated Germany in the late 19C, as did, mutatis mutandis, zamindars (tax collectors) in pre-Raj India. Their descendants are now adherents of the Alternative fur Deutschland or the increasingly-intolerant Hindu-driven BJP in India; not too concerned about preserving local culture, but much more focused on preventing globalizing integration and assimilation and the dissolution of national culture.

All this nationalist clamoring is anthropological/historical nonsense. Ultimately, we all trace our lineage back to Africa (actually, east Africa, actually probably Kenya or Tanzania). At the same time that Trumpians are concerned about a few years of Salvadoreans migrating to the US, we should remember that it took humans several hundred thousand years to spread around the globe. (So much for human terroir!) A combination of contingency and environment created different cultures and languages. And the movement of peoples didn’t stop there. Waves of migration—voluntary or forced—have recurred ever since. These changes were sufficiently long ago and slow enough that we have to look closely to trace their components. Ethno-linguistics and anthropological DNA mapping can tell us a lot about what kinds of mongrels we all are.

The only difference in claims to “nationality” is timing. After all, according to the “birthers” (from the controversy 13 years ago), Obama was born in Kenya and came here in the ‘60s. Whereas, all us other “good, patriotic ‘Muricans’” actually came from Kenya in various stages over the past 150,000 years. Indeed, we are all African-Americans.

The thing about nationalists is that they have taken a snapshot of a group of people from a certain period and declared “WE are the [fill-in-the-blank] people!” Wherever you were when the photo was taken is what counts. It wouldn’t matter if “your people” lived on the banks of the Vistula or the Rhone for hundreds of years, if you moved to Bavaria before the 19C, you could count yourself as German from then on (Roma and Jews excepted).

Roman citizens from 2100 years ago fought against their brethren—for example, as French against the English--from 1000 years ago until 120 years ago. Scandinavian nobility shuffled kingdoms between Denmark, Norway, and Sweden for hundreds of years. The British have been ruled by Germans (The Houses of Hanover, Saxe-Coburg (until they took a friendlier, English name during WWI)). The hodge-podge of Hispano-indigenous blends in South America didn’t claim/discover/ invent nationality until they were throwing the Spanish out in the 19C. Most African chiefdoms didn’t understand or care about this European-imported ideology until they were forced into colonial administrative structures (of split in two by a line drawn by the British/French/German/Portuguese) in the late 19C. Most current African political crises are functions of disputes between such traditional groups being fought out within the forced framework of Eurocartography. The fact that few African polities fit the “nation” model is more an indictment of the model than of the peoples on whom it was imposed.

This “freeze-frame” mentality to nationality was reinforced in most cases by the construction of culture around the identity. Languages in the largest city in a “nation” leveraged the rise of the mass press to become standardized national tongues and local dialects, Breton, Gaelic, Bavarian, Cantonese, Tamil, etc. were pushed to the sidelines. New traditions were invented: national holidays and parades, symbols and ideas such as Scottish tartans (early 19C) and Bastille Day in France (invented in 1880 to solidify support for the 3d Republic in the aftermath of being beaten a few years earlier by the Germans). We can see the latest manifestation of all this in the differing Russian and Ukrainian perspectives on nationality and nationalism

[You can read about this process in these excellent history books: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities; Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition; and Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, among others.]

So, here in the 21C, nationalism morphs into a reactionary ideology in the face of a tide of globalization. We have shifted our identities broadly from the local to the regional/national and we cling to them as migration, trade, and instantly-communicated culture makes geography less relevant. Just as national elites emerged in the 19C to create or co-opt sensibilities, so do 21C cosmopolitan elites act, move, and think on a global plane (yes, the “jet set”). Despite the media chatter about the revival of nationalism, it seems difficult to imagine a relapse into autarky (but so, too, they thought just before WWI).

Still, nationalism retains a powerful sense of comfort of tribe and identity in the face of the cold, ineluctable momentum of modern capitalism. As with other stories, sometimes the facts get pushed to the side and mythology holds sway until, eventually, it is punctured and collapses.

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Ukraine

2/25/2022

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How can a historian of modern Europe not talk about Ukraine this week?

The developments (as of Friday morning) have been both shocking and (at least over the past few months) predictable. Europe (even if the Russo-Ukraine border is about as far southeast as one could go and still call it “Europe”) has not seen a major war since the Soviets and the Americans met at the Elbe River in Germany in May, 1945. People in the former Yugoslavia, of course, would hasten to point out that their vicious series of wars in the 1990s were certainly “major” to them. But other acts of violence were either highly localized (e.g. the “Troubles” of Northern Ireland (1970s-1990s) or very brief. Even the demise of Communism across Central and Eastern Europe brought with it remarkably little military action.

As it happens, in my class on 19C International History this week, I have been lecturing on the ramifications of the post-Napoleonic peace settlements, generally referred to as the “Congress of Vienna,” which started a period of similarly (if also similarly qualified) peaceful European existence which lasted almost a century until the cataclysm of WWI. There are certainly some parallels which will be drawn by historians and pundits once the current conflict ends. Of course, how it ends will determine which parallels are thence drawn.

One trope which has already appeared is the narrative of lapsed progress. In the run-up to WWI, many Europeans congratulated themselves on achieving the pinnacle of human development, both in terms of material life (i.e., standards of living and technology) and morality (i.e., culture and civilization). War was seen as receding into the rear-view mirror (the automotive version of which was invented in 1911). Globalization and integration made it seem that because disruption and autarky were economically foolish, that they were impossible. All this, in the event, proved to be wrong. Similarly in the 21C, the commentariat has been wringing hands over our version of this lapse, with variations on a theme of “Gee, I thought we were past all this sort of thing.” Well, wrong again. Human (moral) progress (if it exists at all) has to be considered on an evolutionary time-scale; not the blip of our own lives and memories. And “Europeans” (and by extension, the rest of us in the “West,”) need to get over the idea that we are uniquely civilized and special. This war shows, again, that “Europe” isn’t so different from the wars and pains of the rest of the world.

There are dozens of other frameworks of historical comparison that will be trotted out during and after this war. But Putin is not Hitler, nor Stalin, nor Bonaparte, nor Bismarck (nor, for that matter, Ghengiz Khan or Attila or Julius Caesar). Analogies to WWI, WWII, the original “blitzkrieg” (of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War), Napoleon, Louis XIV, etc. etc. are thrown around, but are more about displaying the speaker’s erudition and promoting their current policy stance than a guide to what is actually happening. Technology and geography and geopolitics make these and other comparisons of limited value. If, as Mark Twain apocryphally said: “History doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes,” then we still don’t know whether we’re seeing a sonnet or a haiku.

Historical analogies offered as the basis of the future course of events are worth even less.

It is worthwhile to observe Putin/Russia’s construction of a historical narrative has been used as a rationale for this invasion. Without taking the time here to puncture his ideas of the scope of the nation (coming soon to a blog near you!), the peculiar lens of his argument “we Russians and Ukrainians (and Byelorussians, for that matter) all actually one people” doesn’t begin to address why those in Moscow should be in charge. Since the modern polity of Russia originated in “Kievan Rus” (9-13C), then why shouldn’t the folks in Kiev still run the show? To run through all the specifics of his highly-selective and often-distorted view of history would require a book and, in the end, would merely demonstrate (again) the malleability of the historical imagination.

One of the most interesting global dimensions of the crisis is the stance of China. Putin was politic enough to wait until after the Olympics to start his war, so as not to rain on Xi’s parade. China has, so far, been pretty quiet on these events. Russia has to determine its position along the China-West axis, and China has to determine how to use Russia in terms of both materials/commodities and as a geopolitical offset to American dominance. Strictly on such terms, accommodating Putin’s land grab would make some sense. However, China is heavily constrained by the Taiwan analogy. Their comments on the war so far have made note of the importance of national territorial integrity (certainly not a Russia-friendly stance). If China argues that China and Taiwan alone should sort out their (intra-national) situation, then they should also endorse letting Ukraine and the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine sort things out for themselves without Russian intervention. In other words, Russian intervention provides a precedent for US involvement in support of Taiwan, which China cannot tolerate.

War planners in many capitals have developed dozens of different scenarios for how things will evolve over the next weeks and months. If one of these scenarios occurs, then a year from now, pundits will talk about how the outcome was “predictable” and will criticize their policy target of choice (Biden, Trump, etc.) for their failure to foresee and steer us towards a better result. In the meantime, gallons of ink (and their video and electronic equivalents) will be spilled chewing over the developments, but, it’s just as likely that surprises await.

It will be a dire and deadly time for Ukrainians and the Russians engaged in this war. Destruction and refugee crises are highly likely. We can be (must be) sad for all this—at multiple levels, even as we hope things do not spin further out of control. Most aggressors ultimately fail. In the meantime, however, there is much pain. Declining states are not known for rational thinking. None of us is as far from atavism as we would like to think.

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The Biggest Problem

2/18/2022

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The biggest problem with the constitution is not the 2d amendment or the uncertainty arising from the conflict between the rights of a pregnant woman and those of a fetus of a certain age. It is not the electoral college or the lack of term limits. These are all significant issues and there are many more defects in both the Constitution as written 235 years ago and as applied in the 21C (some of which I have addressed in prior postings).

No, the biggest problem in the Constitution is Article V.

What, pray tell, is Article V? I’m so glad you asked.

It’s kind of a lonely, little used part of the Constitution, rarely discussed at the Supreme Court or even the NY Times. It’s the part of the Constitution that provides for amendments, specifically authorizing Congress or a convention convened at the request of 2/3 of the states to propose amendments, which would then be ratified by ? of the states. (It also temporarily barred amendments banning the slave trade (which expired in 1808) and permanently barred amendments allowing proportional representation in the Senate (which is why Delaware has as many Senators as Texas)).

Yet, here we are, with an uninterrupted government stretching back almost a quarter of a millennium. During that time we have faced invasion and rebellion, fought in many wars (mostly on someone else’s territory), and expanded across North America and parts of the Pacific and Caribbean. However, with the exception of a batch of amendments immediately following initial ratification and a few more adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War, our Constitution has only been tweaked around the edges, and then only about a dozen times. It's not for want of trying. About 12,000 amendments have been proposed over the years since those proposed in the original Bill of Rights in 1789.

Meanwhile, the world in general (and our country as much as any) has moved from agriculture to manufacturing to services and information, incorporated new ways of seeing the world through science and rationalism, built great cities, grown dramatically in population, proclaimed the benefits of democracy, expanded expectations of government, and moved to lifestyle that is far faster-paced and a standard of living that is far higher than was ever imagined in the eighteenth century. Our ideas of who “We the People” are have changed, so too our notions of justice and our relationship to the rest of the world.

The problem is not that the Constitution hasn’t changed. It has been interpreted thousands of times by the federal courts. There are all sorts of things that aren’t mentioned in the original text or even imagined by the authors (e.g., in the original the President is designated as the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Navy, but what about the Air Force or the Space Force). But judicial interpretations, often contested, usually just fudge things over or nudge the lines a bit.

The first level of the problem is that Article V is, effectively, the only way to adapt the Constitution to a changing world. Even if our Congress weren’t sclerotic and dysfunctional, amending the original document is pretty darn difficult. The method of a state-convened convention has never been implemented (although much bandied-about). In the last 150 years, Congress has often taken decades to decide whether to propose a change and an amendment has only been successfully pushed by popular demand three times: women’s suffrage, Prohibition, and the repeal of Prohibition. The Equal Rights [for women] Amendment, famously proposed in the 1970s languished for years without getting enough state legislative ratification.

The second level of the problem is that this has left the Courts as the only effective means of keeping the law current. It’s not democratic and leaving the role of setting the basic parameters of our society and government to a bunch of old white guys (almost exclusively until twenty years ago) is not a recipe for keeping up with a changing society, much less imagination or innovation. In addition, as the doctrine of judicial review has evolved (since the Marbury case in 1803), the Constitution has taken on a far more legal than political tinge. It has become an almost Scriptural document; increasingly distant from a connection with the people.

This has led to the third level of the problem: an important part of the impoverishment of our civic culture. (In this context, the hacks in Congress are merely another symptom.) A constitution is supposed to be an expression of our beliefs, aspirations, and political judgments. The further it seems from the lives of ordinary folks, the less reason they have to engage in the political process. In other words, it doesn’t feel like it is ours any more. It belongs more to Madison and Hamilton. We don’t feel like we “own” it; instead, we’re its passive subjects. Even our current political debates at a national level are mostly about the practical, the technical, and the budgetary in such bureaucratic detail as to overwhelm any normal citizen. A constitution is, by nature, a document which wrestles with issues of principle, where the trade-offs are clearer and the technocrats have little sway. Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill runs to over 373,000 words. The original 1787 document was less than 4,500.

Given the parlous state of the American body politic these days, there are many who would shy away from a political debate on the state of the nation. I understand their fear. I also look at our current civic predicament as much as a result of lack of serious political discussion as a deterrent to re-engagement.

There are a variety of ways in which the amendment process could be streamlined; but, of course, doing so would require an amendment. At the least, we should start conversations on the nature of change we would like to see. Let’s stir up the debate about the shape of our core institutions. Those of a rational/liberal/progressive bent (all in the old sense of those terms) should relish a forward-looking discussion.

We’re not going to get where we want, without such an undertaking. And, even if Congress and the state legislatures cannot be cajoled into implementation, we can always start afresh. After all, that’s what they did in Philadelphia in 1787.

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Ungovernability

2/12/2022

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In the 1970s and 1980s, Europe was rocked by three types of terrorist violence: nationalist separatism, such as in Northern Ireland and the Basque country, radical Islamic terrorism, rooted in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and exported to Europe in the forms of hijackings of planes and the gruesome massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972, and a destructive form of anarchic terrorism, most prominent in Germany and Italy and exemplified by the murders of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro and DeutscheBank President Alfred Herrhausen.

More broadly, youth across Western Europe expressed a combination of ennui, nihilism, and Marxism arising from the unprecedented standards of living produced by the three-decade-long post-WWII economic recovery/miracle (known by its French name: “les trentes glorieuses”). On the continent, domestic politics were marked by a bizarre combination of split allegiances and partisan churn. Political analysts coined the term “ungovernability” to describe this state of affairs, wondering whether democratic processes could sufficiently stabilize and operate “normally” to produce policies to meet the changing demands of the times. The outlook was bleak and aimless.

By the 1990s, the shape of politics was only marginally better, but the collapse of Soviet empire reinvigorated attitudes and perspectives in Europe and a fair amount of the weariness and fear seemed to melt away. The Cold War was over and President Bush (41) talked about a “New World Order.” Well, other things came up and history took a few surprising turns.

I draw this historical picture not to compare it with the present-day US (after all, there are no such simple “lessons of history”), but merely to point out that we are likely no better at predicting the future and the shape of our future than they were.

Contemporary America bears witness to the erosion of democratic and communitarian norms, a wave of over-hyped rumblings about an upcoming “civil war,” an inability to address the existential climate disaster, and a struggle to come to terms with embedded racism/sexism. Our politics are turbid, melodramatic, and sterile. It seems we are having our own crisis of ungovernability; and the situation in many countries around the world is worse.

What is the way out? I wish I knew.

But it is something to know that we don’t know—one way or the other.

Not that we should assume that all will be well; far from it. But just as some cyclical revival is hard to envision; so, too, is further (and terminal) decline far from inevitable. We don’t know what angle of work will prove to do the trick, so we’d best try them all: community, climate, democracy, caring.

I would bet that in 2005, in the aftermath of the re-election of Bush 43, hardly any of the relatively literate and engaged readers of this blog had more than a vague awareness of the junior Senator from Illinois. Yet, three years later, a half-Black, Arab-named man was President and many things suddenly seemed possible.

It is striking that we live in a time when both “left” and “right” (whatever those terms mean anymore) think that the country is going to hell in a handbasket. One, both, or neither may be right. All we can agree on is that the future is murky.

Nor are the scare tactics (again, of both “left” and “right”), prominently trotted out in a spectrum of media outlets indicative of not much more than McLuhan’s famous comment about the media being “the message.” The knee-jerk/axon-twitching/stream of semi-consciousness sound bites that populate both the “social” media and traditional outlets tell us little of substance; certainly compared to their hunger for ad/click dollars to be extracted by activating various hormones and revving up our brain chemistry.

In an earlier (1867) version of all this, the English romantic poet Matthew Arnold wrote “Dover Beach.” The closing lines of the poem (which I had to memorize in 9th grade) are:

Ah, love, let us be true to one another,
For the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new;
Has neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help from pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Ah, the very essence of dark, rich, romantic emotion. Not much to psych yourself up for. Yet, England and Europe went on to decades of (what seemed to them) incredible progress, hope, and glory. Falling into the abyss of WWI was unseen; almost half a century ahead.

So, is the world ungovernable? Can any society get “on track” or are each of us doomed to find problems over which to angst? More fundamentally, can each of us figure out how to govern ourself? Buying into the hype de jour is certainly a recipe for despair. But it is not enough to ground ourselves in our own lives. Rather, let us try to repair the world as best we can—for our own sakes—even while being confident in our utter ignorance of what-the-hell is likely to happen a week or a decade from now.

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Elbridge's Progeny

2/4/2022

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Elbridge Gerry was a member of the Constitution Convention in 1787 (although he refused to sign the final document) and he went on to become an original member of the House of Representatives in 1789 and later Governor of Massachusetts from 1810 to 1812 and Madison’s Vice President from 1813 until his death at the age of 70 in 1814.

I guess this makes him a full-fledged “Founding Father” of these United States. Nonetheless, his principal legacy is derogatory, since he gave his name to an on-going abuse of democracy, specifically: the egregious configuration of electoral districts. While Governor of Massachusetts, it fell to Gerry to approve that state’s legislative district boundaries in 1811. One such state senate district in the Northeast corner of the state resembled (according to a newspaper at the time) a salamander; and thus the “gerry-mander” was born.

The practice of drawing electoral boundaries to favor the party in control of the process has a robust history in the US (and likely other countries as well). The problem was even worse before the Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds vs. Sims (1964) that legislative districts had to be equally sized (the so-called “one-man, one-vote” rule). Since then, what was a widely-practiced partisan art has turned, with the aid of computers, into a highly-refined (and even more extensive) science.

The best solution to the partisan problem has been the recent move in multiple states to establish independent citizens’ commissions to control the boundary-drawing process. We have it here in California and twenty other states. Similar methods are used in many countries around the world. Still, in a highly-partisan and contested environment, there is a lot of energy around what many would call abuses of democracy. It looks like several state legislatures “hi-jacked” their commissions this year to reinsert their political spin. To be sure, this is a bi-partisan issue, i.e., both parties are adept at abusing the process. It’s partially about helping your own team and partially about incumbents’ self-preservation.

As you might guess, I am no fan of letting politicians choose the terms under which they are to be re-elected. But my focus today is on a related practice: the construction of highly-contorted legislative districts to ensure the representation of designated ethnic groups. A recent piece in the Times highlighted this with maps of districts that make Gerry’s salamander look downright orthogonal. Here is the Maryland Third Congressional District.

This approach grew out of a plausible desire to rectify the lack of minority representation in government by designing districts likely to elect a BIPOC.1 The history of voting rights abuses against Blacks in particular is well-documented (and continuing), notwithstanding the Voting Rights legislation of the 1960s and there’s no doubt that gerrymandering has been used extensively to minimize the political power of such groups.

One might argue that “turnabout is fair play” as a justification for contemporary practice; even if it is difficult to justify on its own terms and opens the door to the kind of absurd results illustrated by Maryland. A good idea can easily be taken too far.

My deeper concern, however, is that this approach distorts our politics by insisting on a priority for racial classification. In this, political districting reflects our larger societal fixation on “race” and “national origin.” While there is much for US society to atone for in this regard, especially historically; there is no doubt that using a single frame of classification does a disservice to every person (each of whom is a complex of characteristics and interests). What would Congress or state legislatures look like if districts were drawn on the basis of occupation or age or “class”? In addition, this sort of practice all too easily lends itself to perpetuation and a sense of entitlement. For example, Florida’s current controversy pits the (Republican) Governor against the (Republican-controlled) State Senate, where the latter’s plan is designed to ensure that there is no “retrogression” (i.e. dilution of minority voting strength). Politics makes strange bedfellows, indeed.

The Dems have been wrestling with their version of this challenge in terms of voters of Hispanic heritage. Not only has there been a (problematic) tendency to lump together Cubans, Salvadoreans, Mexicans, and Bolivians; but Dems have too often assumed that as an “oppressed” people, Hispanics would vote Democratic in order to oppose discriminatory policies on immigration and civil rights. However, it appears that these people are, like people everywhere else, interested in social stability, education, jobs, etc., on which the official Democratic Party Line may not be the best on offer.

In a recent posting, I urged consideration of an electoral method—common in many democracies—in which proportional representation was used for at least part of the legislative selection process. This would provide another means of addressing the concern that certain groups were excluded from political power, but would have the advantage that people could pick their own groups and decide for themselves which interests/characteristics were most important to them.

Perhaps it is my legal training that leads me to an underlying belief that good process is a big help if you’re looking for good results. Partisan distortions of democracy not only make it harder to address the people’s actual concerns, but undermine their confidence in the method. “Racially”-based distortions do, too; even if they’re well intentioned. There is a price to be paid, eventually.

The final point to be made returns to poor Mr. Gerry. In fact, he refused to sign the Constitution because he thought the proposed federal government was too powerful and that deferring the recognition of individual rights was dangerous. He signed the “gerrymandering” legislation twenty-four years later even though he thought it too extreme in its partisanship. So much for being able to construct and control one’s legacy.

1 I have to say that I hate this acronym for both semantic and political reasons, but it has gained currency in the last few years. By the same token, I don’t like to use the word “minorities” since (as I have noted in earlier posts) at a global level, it is the “white” folks who are most definitely a minority.

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A Few Good SciFi Books

1/28/2022

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Last year, I offered a short list of history books that were thought-provoking and accessible to non-specialists. The only genre of which I have read more (and for a longer time) is science fiction. The two share an important function for me: when done well, they provide a useful perspective on life in the present from some distance (cosmological or temporal) away.

I read a lot as a kid. In high school, a few of us even persuaded a teacher to offer a special course on SciFi as literature. Since then I’ve amassed hundreds of titles. About 10 years ago, I cleared out about half of my collection (those deemed of lower quality); and should probably do another cull today. For the past ten years, I’ve been reading more on my Kindle than in hard copy, but I keep at it. My tastes run more to SciFi than fantasy and to the more cerebral than pulp-ish (although I am not above a good space opera from time to time). For me, SciFi is a literature of ideas and of understanding the nature of humanity.

So, here are a few of the best of what I have read (not in any order), offered (as Rod Serling used to say) “for your consideration”:

* Pretty much anything by Ursula Leguin, a writer of great insight and sensitivity. There are many riches in her shorter works and her fantasy (The Wizard of Earthsea) is also fine. Her novels of the Ekumen and, in particular, The Left Hand of Darkness, still resonate decades later.

* Neal Stephenson is of more recent vintage. His historical novels are great fun, but there are a fair number of flops. Snow Crash created the concept of the metaverse (in 1992) and is a great romp. SevenEves is filled with both action and stunning ideas.

*I cut my teeth on Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke (back when all were still alive). Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (far better than the recent TV adaptation) was a revelation when I read it (for the first time) in the ‘60s and is still so today. Nightfall and other stories are around in multiple anthologies. Bradbury was a lyrical writer, best known for The Martian Chronicles, among dozens of beautiful stories. Arthur Clarke helped develop radar during WWII and came up with the concept of geostationary satellites. 2001 was good, but the movie is better. He wrote dozens of short stories with provocative ideas, mostly technology-based.

* Ian Banks’ “Culture” is depicted in a series of novels (try “Look to Windward,” “Consider Phlebas,” or “Player of Games”) in which humans, AIs, and a few other species fill much of the galaxy. It’s sensitively written with a host of interesting social observations.

* N.K. Jemison is a brilliant recent stylist with genre-busting novels (start with the “Broken Earth Trilogy”) that take on human relationships and societal structures with insight and creativity. Her latest, The City We’ve Become, mixes SciFi and fantasy and twists around a New York City that you will hardly recognize.

* I’ve talked about Malka Older’s Infomacracy previously. I enjoyed the story, the characters, and the tech, but loved the geopolitics.

* In his four-volume set Europe at Midnight, Dave Hutchinson blends some SciFi and some fantasy and some espionage thriller. The story is pretty good, the setting is immensely creative and, as I have noted elsewhere, provocative in its construction of its geopolitical environment.

*Ted Chaing specializes in shorter pieces. His two collections, Exhalation and Stories of Your Life, are diverse, inventive, sensitive, and surprising.

* Orson Scott Card wrote a stunning novel called Ender’s Game in 1985 and since followed it up with a host of sequels (most recently this past year). As is often the case with SciFi books that get continued, it would be best if the author was more tightly edited as they go along. The original and the following two (Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide) are the best. The Ender movie should be skipped.

* Speaking of novels that should not have been carried on too long, Frank Herbert’s Dune is deservedly a classic, despite being extended for another two volumes and having been made into two bad movies and one (the latest) which is pretty good.
*
China Mieville’s alternative worlds are immersive and sufficiently weirdly speculative to be not projections of the future. Endlessly inventive in both substance and language, they are filled with different social structures. Start with Perdido Street Station.

* Kim Stanley Robinson writes thoughtful and well-researched books about possible futures, including terraforming Mars, and dealing with climate change, most recently in The Ministry for the Future.

* Paolo Bacigalupi writes about techno-dystopias. The Wind-up Girl and The Waterknife are both highly energetic and vastly more creative than the usual germs/climate/tech run amok stories.

* Qntm – I know, it’s a slightly affected nom de plume, but the author is creative and quirky. Cutting edge SciFi; start with There is No Antimimetics Division.

* Octavia Butler wrote some classic, poetic, and sobering stories, particularly the Parables.

* My friend Trevor, who tends more towards fantasy, will rightly insist that I include Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem. Not only is it remarkably inventive and finely satiric (writing in China, he has to be), but it challenges some of the premises of our entire view of space exploration. Liu is part of a surge in foreign language and non-Western SciFi in the last ten years, the best of which add a needed diversity of views, premises, and sensibilities to what has been a predominantly Anglo-American genre.

Almost by definition, the best SciFi (in my view) does not translate well to the screen. Much of what is put up there (theater, TV, or streaming) is the coarsest space opera, superhero nonsense, or superficial mysticism. Fortunately, e-tablets and paper are still available.

It’s a great way to stretch your mind; check some out!

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Nationalism

1/21/2022

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In many of my history classes, I spend a fair amount of time talking about nationalism. From a geopolitical perspective, it is one of the most important developments of the past 250 years; a concept whose history sheds light on how most people think of themselves and on essential choices for the future.

By “nationalism,” historians mean something a bit different from the usual media blather. For us, nationalism is different from patriotism (“I love my country”), chauvinism “(My country, right or wrong”), or a more generic populism; all of which usually get lumped together under the nationalistic rubric. Rather, we define nationalism as the desire on the part of a group of culturally coherent people (usually an ethno-linguistic group) to organize themselves politically as a formal state which encompasses all of that group (e.g., Poles, Tamils, Arabs) and which similarly excludes members of other groups. This is the concept of the “nation-state” which has been the touchstone of political debates across the world since the late 18C. Thus, for example, a group of Arabs have defined themselves as Palestinians and have aspired to a Palestinian state.

Nationalism has often emerged from empires, which are, by definition, multi-national states, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the 19-20C, the Soviet Empire of the 20C, and the British Empire of the 16-20C.

Nationalism has an intimate relationship with democracy and both were arguably rooted in the French Revolution of the late 18C. The shift of consciousness and power embodied in the recharacterization of the gathering of notables from the royally-ordained “Estates-General” into a self-defined “National Assembly” in 1789 represented claims by the “people” that “we are the nation” and that political power resides in us, not in the monarchy or aristocracy. Much of the story of Europe in the “long 19C” (i.e., from 1789 to the start of WWI in 1914) is a reflection of the spread of these twinned ideas, including the unification of Italy (1850s-60s) and Germany (1860s-70), and the independence of Christian components of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans (1870s-1910s).

The apogee of nationalism was likely the post-WWI settlements (usually referred to as the Treaty of Versailles) which sorted boundaries out of the carnage of that conflict which led to the destruction of the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman Empires and the creation of a bunch of new “national” states in Central Europe. While, initially, the empires of the winners (Britain, France) remained intact, eventually they, too, disintegrated (literally) with the decolonization wave of the mid-20C which was led by leaders in colonial contexts (e.g. India, Vietnam, Kenya) who demanded that Indians, Vietnamese, and Kenyans (respectively) should run their own countries, just as the Poles, Italians, and the French had argued earlier.

Through the course of the rest of the 20C and up to today, the concept of nationalism has served to inspire a variety of independence, separatist, and anti-colonial movements. It is inherent in the “League of Nations” and its scion, the UN.

Here in the US, nationalism is a problematic concept. Huge in size, long characterized as a “melting-pot” of ethnic groups (despite an early and continuing dominance by British culture), and lacking the sharp juxtapositions of others (Canada isn’t very “other” and Mexico has been far away for most of our history), the US certainly isn’t a “nation-state” in the classic sense. This is a large part of the reason why our common discourse conflates “nationalism” with patriotism.

There are other important angles to nationalism and its history, however, which might apply to us as well. In particular, if we look at how people have thought of themselves, the rise of nationalism in the 19C reflects a shift in the geographic scope of personal identity. Most people in traditional societies have identified themselves by kinship groups or clans, perhaps by villages or language/culture groups (largely regional in scope). Industrialization, capitalism, and technologies of communications and transportation made clear by the 19C that such groupings were inadequate to address the challenges of modernity. In other words, political structures had to adapt to the significant economies of scale then available. Nationalism became a means of progress, a mark of leaving behind pre-industrial localism, and a force for coherence and integration.

By the 20C, it was becoming increasingly clear that changes in these scale economies would have structural implications. Issues of trade, finance, peace, transportation, and communications now required at least regional/continental, if not global, management. At the same time, dis-economies of scale—fostered by greater economic efficiency and a sharper sense of local identity and culture—meant that the nation-state faced pressures to disaggregate at least some of its functions. Still, for most folks, the sense of personal identity (as a Scot, Thai, or Chilean) remained resolutely local.

Much of 19/early 20C nationalism was led by local elites, consolidating their economic and cultural hinterlands into political structures. Global elites (aka “cosmopolitans”) don’t yet seem to have the same power to move the mentalities of the masses. Global migration and inter-marriage will help some, but slowly. Perhaps greater awareness of genealogy and historical DNA analyses will convince more people that classifications such as “race” and “nation” are entirely human constructs of the past few hundred years.

Nation-states, particularly the more powerful among them, often resisted the development of global, supra-national, organizations. In this context, nationalism became associated not with progress and integration, as it had in the 19C, but with a discourse of independence and separatism, usually advanced by “populist” politicians who claimed that “essential” national rights (aka “sovereignty”) were being trampled upon. Such claims have usually been disingenuous; although there are plenty of examples of overstepping by (very) distant bureaucracies and expressions of power from foreign capitals). These debates have often arisen in the economic arena (e.g., World Trade Organization, European Union), but also have appeared with regard to human rights (e.g., foreign interventions, International Criminal Court), and will be central to the solution of the climate crisis (e.g., the COP process).

Last year, I addressed the broad sense of fragility and sclerosis in the modern world and it is useful to see the nation-state as an artifact of the 19C whose time is passing, but whose lingering promises to continue to be problematic.

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Age and Time Horizons

1/14/2022

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Does time go faster as we get older? It often seems that way, even without the distortions of the pandemic era. Do children inherently have a short time horizon in how they see the world? (Indeed, isn’t this the demarcation to maturity?)

I suspect that much of what passes for immaturity (among adults) and egotism is, in no small part, the inability to see very far down the road. If you don’t expect to live a long while or can’t even conceive of a life in some future decade, then instant gratification makes a great deal of sense. Ditto for near-term and long-term dangers. It’s probably something we inherited from our hominid/savannah-trained brains many thousands of years ago. Stated differently, it’s hard to hold complex thoughts clearly and modern science gives us lots of these to wrestle with. It can be painful and, so, desirable to avoid. This would explain some of the anti-vax sentiment and climate disaster denial.

Whether there are parallels between personal experience and broader social sensibilities is an interesting issue. I have a long-term interest in the question of whether increased human longevity has begun to affect how we, at the societal or at the species level, see the world: whether our perspective and values change as a result of having a longer runway ahead of us.

Part of this has to do with understanding the age of the Earth and cosmos. It was not until the 19C that science (first geology, then Darwinian evolution) provided a framework in which anything existed outside the biblical or other mythical (e.g. Mayan or Hindu) model. Archbishop Ussher’s famous mid-17C calculation that the world began on October 22, 4004 BC was widely influential in early modern Christian Europe and paired with an undetermined end date of the second coming of Jesus as the bookends of human life on earth. We now have “scientific” understanding that the universe is +/- 13.7 billion years old with some considerable number of billions of years lying ahead.

Another part has to do with human longevity or life expectancy. For the thousands of years of human development until the beginning of the 20C, life expectancy at birth was not more than 40 years. Current global averages are in the range of 72-74 years (with lots of regional and socio-economic variation). Even adjusting for the high rate of infant/child mortality, we're generally living a lot longer now; and we know it.

Finally, the nature of time has changed, too. By this I don’t just mean that we have atomic clocks. There is something different about projecting a life in which little changes or changes in repeated cycles (as was the case for most of the world until the modernity of the 18-19C) as compared with projecting a life marked not only by the normal rites of passage, but also news, technology, and other aspects of visible change. It’s been normal for many people to look at their children (and, increasingly, grandchildren) and see different and often improved standards of living (aka “progress”).

The extension of human longevity looks likely to continue, not only through the continued improvement in public health which has drastically reduced infant/child mortality, but through the inundation of new medical treatments and other aspects of human health. I would bet that the number of people in their 90s that you know is far higher than for your parents or grandparents. Population projections look to a major increase in “older” folks over the rest of the century.

So, the question is whether these broad social changes have led to a different outlook on the world; what we might call “modernity.”. In this regard, there is an interesting parallel to the idea of climate. Now, people have been talking about the weather for many millennia (though not actually doing anything about it). Various ancient Greek and Chinese scholars talked about climate, but usually as a function of planetary influences or basic geography. But awareness of more fundamental shifts in the climate, including temperature and precipitation looks like it dates to the Enlightenment, with a burgeoning of studies in the 19C where climatology as a more-or-less formal branch of science emerged.

In other words, a change in mentality--an awareness of climate change—had to precede the consideration of how climate was changing and what the implications might be. The same is broadly true of demographics; with Thomas Malthus (~1798) as the landmark of that branch of study. Similarly, an awareness of longevity changes has to precede a consideration of how those changes are altering our awareness of living longer and our resulting time horizons.

In the context of climate, it is only in the past fifty years that humans have moved from awareness to reflection to action. In the context of longevity and time horizons we are only beginning to digest the actual changes in human lifespans and figure out what that might mean.

The implications run far beyond the questions of the solvency of pension plans and Social Security or changes in the composition of the labor force. Will greater familiarity with one’s great-grandchildren (a pretty rare phenomenon well into the 20C) encourage longer term thinking about families and the worlds in which they will live (based on historical projections, a child born today will have a pretty good shot at living into the 22C)?

It is certainly arguable, on the other hand, that egocentric human nature (“It’s all about me.”) won’t be much altered by the prospect of future generations (historically, there’s not much evidence of that so far). Still, the prospect of present generations living longer might be more effective. A 35-year-old (born in 1987), aware that they have a good shot at another 50 years might give greater weight to infrastructure (i.e., long-term investment), climate change, and even retirement planning than a 35-year-old born in 1787 who had only a 20-30 year horizon.

One of the few useful “lessons of history” is that social change usually takes a long time and epistemological change takes even longer. The notable extension of human lifespans has only been happening for a hundred years and is still very much in progress. Our adaptation to this new shape of humanity is also evolving. Future historians will get to look for the signs of change in our lives and attitudes.

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Rights and Responsibilities

1/8/2022

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There are many reasons why the discourse of “rights” has become so prevalent over the past several decades. Some is due to the understandable and traceable jurisprudence here in the US around the idea of the protection of the individual. Some is due to the crystallization of the fight for social justice captured in the “civil rights” movement. Some is due to the amorphous concept of “human rights” which gained currency globally following WWII and as a lever to crack open the Russian empire in Central Europe in the ‘70s and ‘80s. More fundamentally, the term “rights” draws on the concept of “right-and-wrong” which has been deeply embedded in most global religious and other ethical systems for centuries and the increasing awareness of the continuing distance between moral standards and social practice.

When framed in this way, it’s hard not to want to be on the side of the angels and champion “right” and “rights.” So, while I aspire to sainthood myself, I won’t denigrate “rights;” but I will express concern with how the term has come to be used and some of the problems that have resulted.

The first point to be made is constitutional: the political philosophy which underlay the Founders’ ideas in Philadelphia in 1787 was to limit the scope and power of the federal government. The flip side of that perspective—the protection of individuals from governmental intrusion—was secondary. We can see this in the fact that the famous Bill of Rights (there is that word again!) was added to the original document as an additional constraint on federal governmental powers. For example, the 1st Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law….” Indeed, it wasn’t until the 14th Amendment (1867) was definitively determined by the Supreme Court to constrain states (Duncan (1968)) that most of the famous litigation of the 20C built the roster of “rights” (ranging from Miranda to Citizens United) with which we are familiar. Starting a revised US Constitution with an Article I centered on citizens would be attractive. Still, historically speaking, the original premise didn’t start with the individual.

Second, “rights” in fact come in all sorts of flavors. There were moral rights and legal rights (e.g. property and contract) long before there were constitutions and the rights they created. The first arise out of human relationships, the second from a set of social norms, and the third from a more formal agreement (i.e., a “social contract”) among a group of people to carry on a society and conduct a politics together.

What is frequently missing from most discussions of rights, especially of the legal/constitutional variety, is something that is logically fundamental and socially problematic: there can be no right without a responsibility; or, to preempt a semantic discussion: there can be no right/privilege/power/immunity without a corresponding duty/responsibility/liability/limitation. In practical terms, if I have a “right” to control my body, then you have a “duty” to avoid hitting me. If I order a burrito and give you $10, you have a duty to give it to me.

These are examples of ordinary legal rights which seem pretty obvious. Things become more complicated when political/constitutional rights are involved or, even more, when “human rights” are invoked.

This is because inherent in the duality of rights and responsibilities is the need for someone to weigh, evaluate, and enforce. Rights and breaches of rights must have consequences or they are just words. In social settings, such as families, clans, villages, communions, and countries, a parent, elders, or other group fulfill this function. In larger groupings, as we are familiar, an essential function of the state is to adjudicate and resolve disputes about rights. Both domestic legal and constitutional rights carry the implicit promise of respect, enforcement, and responsibility on the part of society as a whole. Constitutional rights, in particular, represent a duty on the part of the state (as the functioning crystallization of its society) to ensure such rights are protected by both action and limitation of state action. Even in non-legal settings, a religion or social norm may provide for some judgment and consequences. Indeed, defining characteristic of international society is the absence of a sovereign with enforcement powers over the constituent states.

“Human” rights have to exist logically prior to the establishment of states (which may create their own internal “civil” rights). As a result they are necessarily aspirational, propositions which some (most) endorse, but which don’t actually exist as rights since there is no one with a direct responsibility to fulfill such rights and no one to enforce them. Much of international law in the 20/21C has wrestled with this problem and various mechanisms (e.g., war crimes tribunals, formal international courts) have approximated these functions, at least insofar as there is direct or communal enforcement power behind them.

The problem of rights domestically is different. There are many examples of rights being abridged or trampled upon; and, to that degree, the difference from the international environment is only one of degree. But more fundamentally, the frame of the debate about “civil” rights (by which I mean more than those based on race/gender/etc.) has been about expanding and enforcing them without doing the necessary work of ensuring the broader societal consensus accepting the responsibility. Campaigns for the right to health care or education, for example, usually devolve into debates about governmental budgets and the conversation about the moral nature of society which endorses or elides such rights usually gets cursory treatment. Since the power (money) usually lies with those who thereby have access (e.g., to health and education) without the need for a formal legal claim of “rights,” there is a hole in the moral structure of society that doesn’t get talked about and which impedes the resolution of rights claims.

There are further issues, particularly the question of whether rights reside in the individual or in a group (defined, e.g., by nationality, race, or sex). Historically, it is unsurprising that many of the debates have been sponsored by particular groups and have sought status for that group (claiming a particular “right”), without embracing the larger question of the extent of societal responsibility. The stories of women’s suffrage and the ERA, as well as of the Black “Civil Rights” movement (in both the 1860s and 1960s) are complicated by their struggles to gain their own status and making the political judgments about their stances about similar rights for other groups. The result is a historical hodge-podge.

More focus on the social aspects (i.e., the inclusion and responsibilities for society as a whole) and less on the formal/legal aspects would likely get us to a better place.

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Pascal's Wager

12/31/2021

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Blaise Pascal, the 17C French thinker, suggested that everyone should choose to believe in God because...after all, what’s the downside? He challenged people to wager—i.e., to live their lives; to make a choice—that God exists. This was not an argument from faith or unknowable revelation, nor a “scientific” analysis of the existence of God based on evidence, it was an appeal to rationality. Being of a more secular bent, here in the 21C, my version isn’t tied to a deity (certainly not some old white guy in a beard), but rather to another facet perhaps of what God meant to Pascal and his fellow believers: I choose to be optimistic.

I have a friend who is considerably less so. They remind me that there is weakness/evil/darkness in everyone and don’t think it can be overcome. I agree with the first part and am unsure about the second part. At which point, my version of Pascal’s wager comes into play. I can’t know how the future will play out (being a historian is no help here); but I choose to believe that there’s some bright surprises ahead. After all, what’s the downside?

In taking this stance, I don’t pretend that utopia or redemption is around the corner. As I have written elsewhere, there is plenty of reason to be concerned about the country and the world. There are many ways in which things could become pretty dire. The parade of horribles—techno-enhanced versions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—is ready to march. Optimism can’t be based on analysis.

Nor do I claim an epiphany or some noble mantle of purity, heroism, or martyrdom. I have my own roster of deficiencies and weaknesses. I don’t live up to my own aspirations (on a pretty regular basis). The way I see the world isn’t driven by faith or passion. Pascal called for placing a bet on the side of God; making a rational choice even though there is no way to have any evidence one way or the other.

I’m reminded of a discussion I had with a colleague not too long ago. We were bemoaning the lack of attention/energy in our students and implicitly wondering whether it was worthwhile to be a teacher. I said that I couldn’t go into the teaching business with any expectation of having an effect on my students. Not only would I never hear from or about most of them, but that most wouldn’t consciously connect their approach to the rest of their lives to what they (might have) learned from my teaching. Indeed, they likely wouldn’t even know themselves that they were changed by something I might have said a year or thirty earlier. In any event, I would never know what effect I might have had, but I choose to believe that it would be beneficial.

In addition to this investment of time, and beyond being able to live in extremely comfortable style, I am able to support some good projects and organizations here in the Bay Area and globally. I suppose I could implement my optimism in more material ways and ratchet up our lifestyle. There are myriad examples of more luxurious living within a few blocks of where we live. But we are already so much closer to the “one percent” that it’s hard for me to justify. Besides, if I am optimistic about our species, it seems like there are better places to put the money. In the real world, the pragmatic foundations of that optimism still can use some help. Neither a faith in or choice for optimism will plant the trees, get out the votes, help those in need, or spread the wisdom. A choice for pessimism can easily lead to nihilism or nescience.

As many of you know, I have read a lot of science fiction; including a fair amount set in dystopian futures. Some are variants of horror stories; generating enough brain chemistry in the reader to be engrossing and to sell well. Some are salvation stories in which the dystopia is defeated (or, at least, the corner is turned (e.g., the Jedi, Terminator); generating their own mix of brain chemistry in the reader/viewer. Many are precatory, trying to get readers to be aware of current trends and dangers (nuclear, climatological, biological). There are a few that are optimistic and substantive (e.g., Robinson’s Ministry; Stephenson’s SevenEves). All of these appeal to hopes and dreams; they are romances of the future. Many are thought-provoking; but few, if any, have anything to say to Pascal.

I have another friend who is not so much pessimistic as fearful. They burn enormous amounts of energy imagining the risks and catastrophes of life and the world. (I have my own bouts of such despair, too.) Cassandra; not Pangloss. It can be a downer hanging around with them. But, more importantly, it doesn’t seem very helpful as a way to live. I’m all for prudence and planning; beyond that, however, pessimism as a state of mind doesn’t seem like much use (nor much fun).

In the end, I suppose, whatever God/the Cosmos/the “Force” might do, they will do. If faith in God (or the “Force) works for you, go for it! (I think it will get you to much the same place as me). For myself, I believe that to whatever extent I can construct the world in which I live, I might as well make choices—based on a hard look at myself.

I choose to be optimistic, not from analysis of the state of the world or of “human nature,” nor from faith, but because I get to choose how to live and this choice makes living easier and happier; after all, what’s the downside?

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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."

Construction Zone

Ukraine

The Biggest Problem

Ungovernability

Elbridge's Progeny

A Few Good SciFi Books

Nationalism

Age and Time Horizons

Rights and Responsibilities

Pascal's Wager

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

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