Dionne on Obama & Realism

E.J. Dionne, on the website Truthdig (quite a good site, with Chris Hedges weekly) offers his take on the Obama speech and realism. Dionne makes some good points. Worth reading: "Squaring Idealism with Realism".

Ostrem Nobel Acceptance

The political scientist who shared the Nobel Prize for Economics this year was Eleanor Ostrem. I viewed her talk. What a gas! This lady sounds like (and probably is) someone's grandma. She seems jolly, nice, and very hard working. She does what anyone ought to do: think, test, and think some more! Unlike arm-chair economists, she apparently goes out into the field in search of real world examples of problems (the commons, property and resources) and sees how things really work. She then refines her theory. How novel! Well, anyway, I enjoyed her talk.

Obama’s Nobel Speech

If you have not done so, I highly recommend reading or viewing President Obama's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. While reading Doonesbury that last couple of days, I get the sense that some found it shockingly bellicose, a paean in favor war and not a song of peace. (Of course, I suspect that Doonesbury mocks those thoughts, but in any event, some must hold them.) Didn't anyone pay attention to Obama during the campaign when he reported that Reinhold Niebuhr was a favorite "philosopher"? (BTW, John McCain said the same thing; however, having heard McCain, I have some doubt that he actually read Niebuhr, and certainly he did not grasp Niebuhr's message.) Obama obviously had read his Niebuhr, perhaps even some of the fountainhead of Niebuhr's Christian realism, St. Augustine. In any event, what Obama set forth seems very Niebuhr-esque to me.

To get a further sense of Obama's thinking, read David Brooks on Obama and Niebuhr. As usual, he has insightful things to say about the two. His most recent column on this subjec calls Obama's speech the most important of Obama's life. In an earlier column (in 2007), Brooks asked Obama if Obama had read Niebuhr, and Obama enthusiastically replied that Niebuhr "was one of his favorite philosophers." Brooks goes on to report that Obama provided a succinct summary of Niebuhr's thought that Brooks identified as pretty much the thesis of Niebuhr's The Irony of American History (1952). This sent me back to read this book, as I've owned it for years but I had never read it. Shame on me! It proved vintage Niebuhr, and given that Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)is one of my favorites, this should not surprise me. I highly recommend both, and more to come on Irony.

Two quick points while doing some of the research for this post:

1. Brooks, and others, often mention George Kennan when discussing Niebuhr, and I see a strong connection. I also consider Kennan a hero.
   
2. The late John Patrick Diggins, one of my favorite historians, nearly had completed a work on Niebuhr before his death. I hope it gets published, as Diggins would prove as good a commentator on Niebuhr as anyone that I can imagine.

Churchill Quote

I came across this quote from WSC today doing some professional reading. It's about life as a journey:

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there may stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."

Quoted in Zaltman & Zaltman, Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Mind of Consumers (2008), p. 94. (For anyone wondering how this amounts to "professional reading" by a lawyer, replace "consumers" with "jurors", and you'll see. The book was recommended by a continuing legal education speaker.)

Historians of the Middle Ages

Just before Thanksgiving, I finished Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century by Norman Cantor (1991). Why I pick up a particular book at some particular time quite often puzzles me, but this book, which I've owned since buying it second-hand in 2006, got its call in November, and it proved quite a fascinating read. I picked up my pace reading through it like in order to finish before Thanksgiving (it's hard cover and wouldn't travel easily). Now why on earth would I find such a work fascinating? Several reasons. First, Cantor writes well, and he's covering two topics at once: twentieth century writers, as well as medieval history. For instance, the English legal theorist Frederick Maitland was a member of the Bloomsbury group, consisting of such persons as Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes. Interesting company for him (Maitland), as well as the reader. Cantor handles both subjects quite well. The intrigues, interests, biases, and obstacles of twentieth century historians of the medieval period prove quite interesting in themselves (there's more than just a little academic gossip here). Indeed, one of the intriguing aspects of the books addresses how the needs and interests of the present effect researches into the past. For instance, two German scholars who began during the Weimar Period were interested in German leadership. One, Kantorwicz, a Jew, was forced to flee Germany because of a "strong" German leader, while the other, Schramm, was close to Hitler as historian of the Wehrmacht.

The two most famous medievalists considered made their names outside of their scholarly area, but their scholarly interest in the Middle Ages shown through much of the popular work. C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien allowed their sense of this lost world to shine through their very popular works.

These are only of few of the historians discussed, and even those whom we'd never heard of before become quite fascinating in Cantor's consideration. In addition, I realize that I was quite fortunate as an undergraduate to have been exposed to medieval and Renaissance history from some capable teachers. My first semester as an undergraduate, taking a course in Western Civ, introduced me to Phillip the Fair and Boniface VIII. A course in Medieval History from John Bell Henneman gave me a wide-ranging introduction to this strange world, and one can't appreciate the Renaissance without some sense of it roots.

I'm now casually working my way through Cantor's Civilization of the Middle Ages (1994), a comprehensive survey. Cantor provides good bibliographies and his book has prompted me to go back and explore some of these historians as well as this period. I've also started Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages. (Note: not The Waning of the Middle Ages—a different translation—but more on that later.)

Wills and Obama & Afghanistan

I just read a new NYRB blog entry by Garry Wills really laying into President Obama for Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/265874686/afghanistan-the-betrayal. The piece is painful to read. I fear greatly that Wills is correct in thinking that further efforts in Afghanistan will remain futile, wasting lives and resources. However, most troubling, is the sense of betrayal. To some extent I'm not sympathetic, in that Obama emphasized the need to take care of business in Afghanistan during the campaign. Yet, the situation only looks worse and worse. Worse yet, Wills reaction—and he's certainly not alone in this— looks like a reaction that could divide Obama supporters and give an opening to the Right—and the only Right remaining is the kooky right. Thoughts of LBJ and Viet Nam haunt me and many like me. This is not good. I will give Obama the benefit of the doubt, hoping that my fears will not be realized and that we will be on track to leave sooner rather than later, with a minimal loss of life. At this point, I can only hope. I cannot pull the plug on supporting Obama, his intentions and abilities are not those of Bush, but I do fear. I do fear.

Wills: Confessions of a Conservative

A couple of weekends ago, on a lark, I picked up my copy of Garry Wills's Confessions of a Conservative (1979). As it turns out, the 30^th anniversary of its publication. It was, again, a delight to read. Wills talks about how Bill Buckley plucked him from obscurity and gave him a position at the relatively new National Review as a cultural and book reviewer. During this time, Wills also learned a lot about politics and reporting. Coming out of a Jesuit seminary, Wills described his politics as "distributist" (a la Chesterton) and appropriately Catholic anti-Communist. He'd only read Plato's Republic and St. Augustine's The City of God for reasons other than their political theories. He recounts reading in the traditional works of political theory under the tutelage of some of the NR staff. However, perhaps more interestingly—and he claims more significantly—he also received guidance in his political thinking from Samuel Johnson, Newman, Ruskin, and Chesterton, among others. This made for a very interesting (and heretical) conservative. His take on "conservative" offers a very different perspective on the topic. Indeed, it ended up with him thrown overboard from the NR world, but he expanded thereby to a much wider audience. 


The other fascinating thing about this book is his insight into the political process. His appreciation of politicians, bureaucrats, elites, prophets, elections, and other political phenomena truly enlightens. He quotes the likes of Duncan Black and Kenneth Arrow, who provide the formal analysis of what Wills apparently grasped intuitively: that elections don't give us "the best man" (or woman), and the compromise will inevitably result in our system. Thus, he critiques "liberal" political theory (or what I think is more a "good government" theory of politics). 


The final part of the book includes an appreciation of St. Augustine and Homer, reminding us that Wills brings a classicist's eye to his perspective on our political world today. 


Finally, a quote that reminds me of that "reactionary" that I've been reading, John Lukacs: 


    "Insofar as we steer rationally toward the future, we do so by our rear-view mirror. There is no windshield, because there is nothing to "see" up ahead. We go forward by seeing backward. By tracing the trajectory of past events we extrapolate to future positions. But if we trace only one trend, the chances of steering well are slim; too many other things will jostle and interact with the simple arc we are imagining. That is why so many simple reforms or five-year plans or platform pledges are bound to go awry, even with the best of wills. The best guides to the future are those whose knowledge of the past is broadest and deepest, who are the most cautions and aware of complexity, least confidant that they can "see" something up ahead." (216-217).


How absolutely true!

Lukacs Quoting William James & On History

The following quote could be broken in two, as I think that each could stand alone. However, I'm taking directly from Lukacs's text. This is a part of a larger argument that he is making. In this mode, Lukacs is a thinker who takes flight high above the landscape, and therefore can move his eagle eye from one point to the next with little need for transition. Also, I might note that he begins by quoting the great William James (The best book on James, IMHO, is by Lukacs's friend, Jacques Barzun: A Stroll with William James.)

William James wrote: "You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught by reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to whom these sciences woe their being. Not taught thus, literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures" [William James, Memories and Studies, 1911, pp. 312-313]

    In sum, the history of anything amounts to that thinking itself. History is not a social science but an unavoidable form of thought. That "we live forward but we can only think backward" is true not only of the present (which is always a fleeting illusion) but of our entire view of the future: for even when we think of the future we do this by remembering it. But history cannot tell us anything about the future with certainty. Intelligent research, together with a measure of psychological understanding, may enable us to reconstruct something from the past; still it cannot help us predict the future. There are many reasons for this unpredictability (for believing Christians let me say that Providence is one); but another (God-ordained) element is that no two human beings have ever been the same. History is real; but it cannot be made to "work" because of its unpredictability.

At the End of an Age (2002), pp. 53-54.

I think another way to formulate Lukacs's insight comes from complexity theory: History (as the history of everything and everyone) is a very complex system in which sometimes seemingly trivial changes can have momentous effects. Society is not mechanical; it is complex. I think that Lukacs's interest in quantum physics should be updated by complexity theory. Thomas Homer-Dixon has written about his belief that ecology will replace physics as the master science. But in the end, the unpredictability of history (as the future) remains the same.

Lukacs Comparing Science & History

    All living beings have their own evolution and their own life-span. But human beings are the only living beings who know that they live while they live—who know, and not only instinctively feel, that they are going to die. Other living beings have an often extraordinary and accurate sense of time. But we have a sense of our history, which amounts to something else. "The question of scientific knowledge" is the title and subject of my next chapter; the presence of historical thinking is the title and subject of this one. Scientific knowledge, dependent as it is on scientific method, is by its nature open to question. The existence of historical knowledge, the inevitable presence of the past in our minds, is not. We are all historians by nature, while we are scientists only by choice.

At the End of an Age (2002), p. 50

Lukacs the “Reactionary”

I've just re-read John Lukac's Confessions of an Original Sinner (1990), his "auto-history". This second journey through his book and life proved as interesting—perhaps more interesting—than the first, simply because (slowly) I'm beginning to get a handle on this man. He thinks of himself first and foremost as "a writer", and I find his style, his voice, quite engaging. Of course, I don't know that I agree with all of his perspectives, but I know that whatever his perspective, it will prove interesting and thought-provoking, if not downright entertaining. Thus, when dealing with someone who writes so well, I think that the best thing to do is to quote him, and so here begins what I hope will be a series of quotes from Confessions.

    "A reactionary considers character but distrusts publicity; he is a patriot but not a nationalist; he favors conservation rather than conservatism; he defends the ancient blessings of the land and is dubious about the results of technology; he believes in history, not in Evolution. To be a reactionary in the second half of the twentieth century has every possible professional and social disadvantage. Yet it has a few advantages that are divine gifts during this dreary decline of Western civilization. A reactionary will recognize how, contrary to Victor Hugo's hoary nineteenth-century cliché, A Idea Whose Time Has Come may not be any good. This kind of skepticism is, of course, a reaction to the largely mechanical propagation of ideas in the twentieth century, to their management and marketing through the crude machinery of publicity." (3-4)

 

 

 

Garry Wills Noted, Along with More Ostrem

Garry Wills adds further voice to the anti-Obama phenomena. As usual, his sense of history provides much-needed perspective. Read it (and perhaps weep!). “The New American Hysteria”.

I wrote the following before the previous post:
On the award of the Nobel Prize for Economics today, I note that one of the co-recipients was a political scientist. Here’s a quick synopsis of her work from Marginal Revolution blog, “Elinor Ostrom and the well-governed commons”. Here’s Tyler Cowen’s take, also from Marginal Revolution, “What this Nobel prize means”. Finally, Robert Shiller’s comments in the NYT bear mentioning in their brief piece on the award.

The more that I think about this award, and learn what this lady has done, the more impressed I have become. She's working on one of the most vexing, and often ideologically charged issues: the commons. The management of the global commons, in my opinion, is the most important issue facing humans today. By this I mean primarily global climate change and pollution.

Elinor Ostrem, Nobel Prize winning political scientist

The more I read about Elinor Ostrem, the political science prof @ IU and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, the more that I like her. This comment by Paul Romer, “Skyhooks versus Cranes: The Nobel Prize for Elinor Ostrom
and this talk by Professor Ostrem herself give me a good sense of her projects. Seems very earthy (and happily so) to me.

Back to the Archives: 2006 Reading Summary

History
    I didn't get a history major for nothing, and this year proved to be a good one. I began the year reading a fascinating and challenging historian on a seemingly inexhaustible subject. John Lukacs's Churchill: Historian, Visionary, Statesman. First, Lukacs: he writes in three modes, the particular, the panoramic, and the visionary. In this book, he displays his panoramic view. Later, I listened (again) to his Five Days in London: May 1940, where he describes Churchill's assent to power against the backdrop of those who in Britain who would have cut a deal with Hitler. This is Lukacs, who can write like a good novelist, showing his "particular" mode. You learn that history (as always) could have taken a very different turn. 

    Continuing a bit a Churchill theme taken up from last year (and that goes back to at least the 6^th grade), I listened to Dr. John Ramsden's Winston Churchill audio lectures presented by The Modern Scholar (trying to muscle-in on the well-established pioneer in this market, The Teaching Company). Here I give the nod to Ramsden's work over that of Rufus Jones for the Teaching Company that I listened to last year. Ramsden provides a good concise summary of Churchill's career and the issues it raises. 

    Another foray back into my past was to Lawrence Lafore's The Long Fuse. Professor Lafore was my professor for "Modern England: 1850-Present", but his forte was 20^th century diplomatic history, and The Long Fuse was assigned to me twice by another history prof as an undergraduate. As the coming of the First World War must be seen as a tragedy of the highest magnitude—at once inevitable and painfully wrong—it bears constant consideration and reconsideration, as indeed it has received. Interest in this topic led me to the excellent short consideration of the subject recently published by David Fromkin, Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War and Why? Fromkin does an excellent job of recounting the build-up to the Great War, how decisions, fears, alliances, and human fallibility created the slow motion train wreck of Western civilization that lasted—as some will argue—to the Treaty of Paris in 1991. 

    A regular on my reading list is Garry Wills. In the history category, I read his Henry Adams and the Making of America. The first section is a consideration of Henry Adams, one of our great earlier historians who has often been dismissed as "gloomy". Wills argues persuasively that this is not the case, at least not for this work (unlike his autobiography, written toward the end of his life). In the latter part of the book, Wills then takes his readers through Adams's great work of American history, A History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Wills adds his insights to the glory of Adams work to show how dramatically the nation changed and formed in those 16 years from a rag-tag uncertainty to a solid national identity and government. Wills is a master of taking the familiar and finding the new or unusual take on a person or event. 

    While Wills has been a staple in my reading since 1976, when C and I read his Bare Ruined Choirs while commuting to Muscatine, and I read his brilliant portrait of Richard Nixon, Nixon Agonistes, there are happy new additions the favored historians list. One new historian on my high priority list is Niall Ferguson. Ferguson is a British historian who was at Oxford and now serves on the faculty at Harvard. Yeah, he's good. I read Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. Ferguson, who's written on the First World War (The Pity of War) and the British Empire, takes a look at American history in light of the British experience. Ranging over American forays into formal imperialism (e.g., the Philippines) and informal (U.S. domination of Latin America), Ferguson shows that the U.S. tries to evade the fact of our dominance and our quandary of how to square our anti-colonial heritage with the fact of our predominance on the world stage. This ambivalence complicates issues of how to engage in places like Viet Nam and Iraq. By the way, expect to see Ferguson on next year's list, as he's just published The War of World: The Descent of the West and the Rise of Asia, where he takes a panoramic look at our calamitous century. 

    To round out this History list for this year, Jon Meachum's audio of Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of a Friendship. I think that R read this. Two more complex and important men have rarely met in such a crucial time and under such amazing circumstances. Meachum does a fine job of mixing the human element seen in private with the public personas acting on the stage of world history. In the end, I think that Winston comes out as the more attractive figure, great as FDR was in the pantheon of American history. 

    As a sneak preview of next year, I've begun reading Churchill's The Gathering Storm, the first volume in his seven volume memoir of the Second World War. (The memoir starts about 1930, as Churchill picks up on the breakdown of the Versailles Treaty.) This is no chore: recall that Churchill won a Nobel Prize for literature. He claims that while the "cleverer boys" were learning Greek and Latin, he was forced to focus on the basic English sentence.

 
Fiction
    Anne chastised me earlier this year for not reading enough fiction, following a theme that C had trumpeted for many years without success. While this charge is not wholly fair, it has some truth to it, so I decided to take up some novels. 

    The first was a listen: P.D. James's The Murder Room. I cite this as Exhibit A, as I am a regular listener to P.D. James, the "Queen of Crime". She and her enduring character, Adam Dagleish, the poet-detective superintendent, make for great listening. James is not a drawing room mystery writer, as she is strong in her stationhouse rivalries and the forensics of the morgue, as well as in dealing with the complex motives of a host of suspects. Here she adds the spice of 1920's memorabilia to her tale. Good stuff. 

    Jeb Rudenfeld is a Yale law prof that I'd heard of, so I paid some early interest in his The Interpretation of Murder, an early 20^th century setting that uses Freud's only trip to America to allow sleuthing in New York. Digressions on Hamlet and the growing conflict with Jung (a travel companion at this time) makes of an interesting story. Not bad for a first try. 

    Ward Just's Forgetfulness proved an excellent choice. I'd earlier read his The American Ambassador (Exhibit B for Steve as fiction reader), so I gave this a try, as it was just published, and I'm glad that I did. Just's writing captures the surfaces of things in a way that says a lot by not commenting much. In this story, an American expatriate in France must deal with death and the rough ways of trying to reach some sense of justice. Excellent. 

    Quite independent of President Bush's choice of authors, I picked up Albert Camus's The Plague. Actually, I did so on the much stronger authority of recommendations from both daughters (and besides, I'd read The Stranger in both high school and college). The Plague was an excellent novel, and not just because Dr. Rieux is a lot more sympathetic character than Mersualt, although that doesn't hurt it any, for sure. The quiet way that Camus provides his account of the North African port city's growing peril and the efforts of residents to deal with it make for a compelling story.

 
Philosophy & Religion

    Garry Wills offered two new books this year that both provide succinct and insightful account of the two most important figures in Christianity: What Jesus Meant and What Paul Meant. What Jesus Meant provides the more unique, yet quite orthodox, account. Both books provide new insights based on Biblical scholarship, but the emphasis in both is upon the meaning of their subjects. In both cases Wills seeks to scrub away the varnish of tradition and misunderstanding that has been coated both figures and led us to distorted perspectives. Wills rarely touches upon a subject without giving you a new and unforeseen perspective upon them, and these two books prove no exception.

    I delved this year into Paul Ricouer's The Symbolism of Evil, one of those books that have stared at me for years, begging to be read. I picked it up in part because Ricouer died this past year, and it seemed appropriate to explore. He is not an easy read—his erudition in Biblical, classical, and philosophical texts is mind-boggling. Here is explores the concepts of defilement, sin, and guilt. Fun, eh? Well worth if you're willing to swim into deep water. 

    Another lion of post-war European philosophy is Jurgen Habermas, and I read Jurgen Habermas: A Very Brief Introduction, one of a serious on a wide variety of topics published by Oxford University Press. Habermas is someone that I'd read in college, but coming out of the Frankfurt School and steeped in the German intellectual tradition, he's not easy. But this book made his thought seem easy. This guy is the living embodiment of the European Enlightenment tradition and the intellectual godfather of much of contemporary German political thinking. A well-done effort here gets to the essentials in a most effective manner.

    Thank goodness for the Teaching Company! They've helped make drives long and short, as well as mowing the lawn or time on the cardio machines go much faster. This year I listened to two programs by a favorite philosopher, Robert Solomon, who teaches at UT-Austin. The first, The Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of the Emotions picks up a favorite topic of his and mine: the emotions. Solomon argues that emotions are not simply feral reactions, but are—at least in part—cognitive strategies to deal with the environment. (For a contrary few, check out Columbia prof Jon Elster's Alchemies of the Mind. But I digress.) Solomon gives the listener a tour of the emotions and then reflects in the second half of the course upon various aspects of emotional life. Whether talking about Aristotle or Sartre (favorites of his), or contemporary practices, he's always makes sound arguments and astute observations. No bombast, just solid thinking. 

    The other Solomon course this year was The Will to Power: Nietzsche's Philosophy. Here Solomon is joined by his wife and Nietzsche scholar, Kathleen Higgins (UT-Austin) to discuss this most complex of philosophers. Nietzsche is unique in many ways, and Solomon and Higgins explore his work from a number of different angles, dispelling myths and providing perspective. Highly recommended. 

    Mathew Stewart's The Courier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World provided entertaining and enlightening. Spinoza has gained my attention and admiration over the last several years. I've been weak as a student of early modern history, but I see Spinoza, perhaps much more than his much more famous contemporary, Descartes, as a pivotal figure in modern thinking (although his Euclidian form of argument is off-putting). Spinoza's insights in the emotions rates very high with me, as he tracks, to some extent, Stoic thinking. However, in this book we learn about Leibniz, the eccentric and brilliant co-founder of calculus and the mondonology (that I've never been able to penetrate) and his meeting with the quiet Dutch heretic. Good reading laced with insight from these two great philosophers. 

    Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth proved to me again why I value her work. She traces the story of myth and myths from the earliest times to the present in this slim but valuable volume. She shows myth as historical construct and as world-informing narrative that provides meaning to lives (even if it shows a shattered world, such as found in Elliot's The Wasteland). Recommended. 

    I'm not sure where it belongs, but I'm going to put Alan de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life into this category. Not philosophy in a traditional sense, but an extended, thoughtful essay based upon an appreciation of one of the greatest and most eccentric writers in the 20^th century. Fun and thoughtful. 

    In a light, funny, but moving effort, Anne Lamot's Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith provided to be a fun read aloud for C and I. Lamont takes her own foibles, those of her teenage son, her family, and about everything else in reality, and looks at in a humorous and touching way. 

    Finally, in the fun and thoughtful mode, Richard Watson's The Philosopher's Diet. If, like me, you decide its time to shed some pounds, start with Watson as your guide. Food, running, sex, and death are among his subjects. This guy was born and raised and educated in Iowa (Bedford, Iowa State undergrad, Iowa grad school), so it's easy to tune into his references. He now teaches philosophy at Wash U in St. Louis and specializes in Cartesian studies. Trust him to lead you if you feel the urge to go for it in the weight control field.
    
Social Sciences
    
    First, a word in defense of reading social science. Too much of it can be dry as sawdust, but when it's good, it can be very good. Not beautiful prose, but if not gummed up with jargon, it can make us see things that are right before our eyes but that we can routinely miss. If you find the good stuff, it can be very good. 

Steven Johnson: Emergence, Mind Wide Open, and Everything Bad for You is Good for You. Johnson is a journalist of science and social science (where do we draw the line?) much like Malcolm Gladwell. In Emergence, Johnson traces the ways of ants, cities, and computers. Yes, you read that correctly, and he does so in a convincing manner. In Mind Wide Open, he explores the workings of the mind, using his own experiences as a guide. Finally, in Everything Bad for You is Good for You, he takes a counter-intuitive approach of video games and popular entertainment, suggesting that these games, whatever their violence or sexual innuendo, are very mentally challenging. Ditto with popular TV: plots and narrative are much more demanding than yesteryear. Good. Fun stuff. 

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki. This audio book made for great listening. It explains, among other things, the workings of the Iowa Electronic Markets, and a host of other phenomena. I argue that it shows the value of widespread and de-centralized decision-making. Of course, you will argue, if decentralized and mass decision-making are so good, then how do we account for the election of . . . .? Well, I think that raises some specifics that need addressing; however, the Iowa Electronic Markets are very good a predicting who will (fact) as opposed to who should win (value judgment). Indeed, your author addresses issues lie groupthink, as well. Very good.

 
An academic heavyweight this year for me was Jared Diamond. His Guns, Germs, and Steel (a Pulitzer Prize-winner) and Collapse, published in the last year or so, were both intriguing. How the Europeans got the jump on the rest of the world, and even more so, how Eurasia has developed so much more than Australia, the Americas, and other parts of the world is examined and considered in a very through and convincing manner, considering everything from plagues to the geographic axis of the continents (the Americas and Africa on a more north-south axis, Eurasia on an east-west axis). In Collapse, Diamond looks at societies that failed (including the Mayans, where we've been now several times). It's a sobering consideration of what happens when societies fail to adopt. 

    Butterfly Economics: A New General Theory of Social and Economic Behavior by Paul Omerod. How the dismal science can learn to overcome the many paradoxes the classical accounts fail to satisfactorily explain. In sum, Omerod argues that economic behaviors show the same patters that we see in chaos theory, the seeming randomness of behavior coalescing in patterns that ants exhibit in their seeming randomness. Ants for Omerod, like Steven Johnson, provide an amazing guide to how individual decisions create a social world. 

    Animals in Translation, by Terry Grandlin. Social science? Well, sort of. Grandlin is an autistic woman with a Ph.D. in animal behavior, and she's a bit of a savant of animal behavior. This is an intriguing account of the animal world and how we and they interact in a social world. Quite fascinating. 

    The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt is a psychologist of the Margin Seligman sort (Learned Helplessness). He investigates modern findings from psychology (and not just the pathological sorts that were the focus of so much older work) and compares them to ancient wisdom. Guess what? The ancients (Buddhists, Stoics, etc.) fair pretty darn well when issues of what makes us happy and how to avoid suffering are investigated by contemporary psychologists. A thoughtful use of social science at its best. Recommended. 

        Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea could have gone under philosophy, and perhaps under science, but as it addresses the development of life and society though the building blocks of Darwin, which is based on population, we'll call it social science. Dennett is an engaging writer, whether or not you agree with him. He argues that Darwin (and his successors in evolutionary thought) explain it all. He's quite thorough. In depth, but it never drags, and it doesn't go anywhere an interested reader can't follow. 

    Last but not least, in more humanistic essay than social science, I must include James Hillman's Kinds of Power and The Soul's Code. Hillman trained with C.G. Jung, and he's developed his own brand of psychology (archetypal). Regardless of whether you buy his whole scheme, he is an absolutely engaging writer, speaking with familiarity and command over Greek and Renaissance culture, as well as the contemporary world, throwing out insights left and right as he goes. He never fails to engage and provoke thought. His Kinds of Power is a meditation on power in all sorts of situations and manifestations. In The Soul's Code, he argues for an acorn theory of development. I'm not sure that I buy it all, but I love the sale's pitch.
    
Fun Stuff
    A couple of fun things. Mind Performance Hacks: Tips and Tools for Overclocking Your Brain, by Ron Hale –Evans. Fun things to do the keep the machine working at peak potential. How about learning short hand or Morris code? Number short-cuts? You name it, he's got an angle. Fun. 

    Similarly, The Owners Manual for the Brain: Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research by Pierce Howard. More a compendium than a do-it-yourself manual like Mind Performance Hacks, it's still fun and interesting. 

    Finally, I'm not done with it, but try a Raymond Smullyan book, like The Riddle of Scheherazade and Other Amazing Riddles. Smullyan is a professor of math and logic, and a man with a sense of humor and a love of paradox. He's great when you're in the mood to tackle a word problem!

 
    Enough for now. Other reads have gone un-noted. Too little time and patience. And many books get started and set aside for one reason or another. Since I haven't quite finished it, next year you can look forward to a fascinating—both terrifying and hopeful—book on juvenile justice courtesy of A2, and some great recent additions from Christmas. In fact, I'm so excited about what's sitting in front of me that I think it best to now close the books on this year and begin working on next year's list!

Lukacs on Lewis & James on all knowledge as history

In this quote, Lukacs identifies a fundamental insight: all knowledge is memory, even the knowledge of the imagination. He calls in an insight of C.S. Lewis to develop this idea:

 

The past in our minds is memory. Human beings cannot create, or even imagine, anything that is entirely new. (The Greek work for "truth, aletheia, also means "not forgetting")"There is not a vestige of real creativity de novo in us," C.S. Lewis once wrote. No one can even imagine an entirely new color; or an entirely new animal; or even a third sex. At best (or worst) one can imagine a new combination of already existing—that is, known to us—colors, or monsters, or sexes.

At the End of an Age (52).

 
Lukacs then goes on the quote another favorite of mine, William James:

 

William James wrote: "You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught by reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to whom these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature means grammar, art a catalog, history as list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures"

At the End of an Age (53), quoting James, Memories and Studies (1911) (312-313).

 Lukacs goes on to summarize this line of thought:

 In sum, the history of anything amounts to that thing itself. History is not a social science but an unavoidable form of thought. That "we live forward but we can only think backward" is true not only of the present (which is always a fleeting illusion) but of our entire view of the future: for even when we think of the future we do this by remembering. But history cannot tell us anything about the future with certainly. Intelligent research, together with a stab of psychological understanding, may enable us to reconstruct something from the past; still, it cannot help us predict the future. There are many reasons for this unpredictability (for believing Christians let me say that Providence is one); but another (God-ordained) element is that no two human beings have ever been the same. History is real; but it cannot be made to "work", because of its unpredictability.

At the End of an Age ((53-54)
 

I might add that Lukacs, starting back in the 1960s, took an interest in quantum theory as a metaphor for understanding the historical world. I think that I would bring in complexity theory. History, like the weather, does not submit to predictable certainty, but like climate, we can discern broad outlines of what may likely happen (although now we have man-made climate change to contend with, thus making history even more complex!). See Niall Ferguson's recruitment of complexity theory to explain historical change and causation in his introductory essay to Virtual History.

Lukacs on the history in all of us

I've been pulled back into reading some more John Lukacs, and here I'm going to offer some insightful (at least to my mind) quotes from his book At the End of an Age (2002). This quote goes to the universality of history in the human experience.

All living beings have their own evolution and their won life-span. But human beings are the only living beings who know that they live while they live—who know, and not only instinctively feel, that they are going to die. Other living beings have an often extraordinary sense of time. But we have a sense of our history, which amounts to something else. . . . Scientific knowledge, dependent as it is on scientific method, is by its nature open to question. The existence of historical knowledge, the inevitable presence of the past in our minds, is not. We are all historians by nature, while we are scientists only by choice.(50)

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Mammon, Evils, Democracy & Tyranny:

Because of the labyrinthine way that the Net can take you're here and there, I came across this quote from C.S. Lewis that I want to share:

The difference between us [Professor J.B.S. Haldane, biologist and Marxist] is that the Professor sees the 'World' purely in terms of those threats and those allurements which depend on
money. I do not. The most 'worldly' society I have ever lived in is
that of schoolboys: most worldly in the cruelty and arrogance of
the strong, the toadyism and mutual treachery of the weak, and
the unqualified snobbery of both. Nothing was so base that most
members of the school proletariat would not do it, or suffer it, to
win the favor of the school aristocracy: hardly any injustice too
bad for the aristocracy to practice. But the class system did not in
the least depend on the amount of pocket money. Who needs to
care about money if most of the things he wants will be offered by
cringing servility and the remainder can be taken by force? This
lesson has remained with me all my life. That is one of the reasons
why I cannot share Professor Haldane's exaltation at the banishment
of Mammon from 'a sixth of our planet's surface'[Haldane refers here to the U.S.S.R.]. I have
already lived in a world from which Mammon was banished: it
was the most wicked and miserable I have yet known. If
Mammon were the only devil, it would be another matter. But
where Mammon vacates the throne, how if Moloch takes his
place? As Aristotle said, 'Men do not become tyrants in order to
keep warm'. All men, of course, desire pleasure and safety. But all
men also desire power and all men desire the mere sense of being 'in
the know' or the 'inner ring', of not being 'outsiders': a passion
insufficiently studied and the chief theme of my story [Lewis refers here to That Hideous Strength from the Ransom trilogy]. When the
state of society is such that money is the passport to all these
prizes, then of course money will be the prime temptation. But
when the passport changes, the desires will remain.

Lewis continues his argument:

My fears of such a tyranny will seem to the Professor either
insincere or pusillanimous. For him the danger is all in the
opposite direction, in the chaotic selfishness of individualism. I
must try to explain why I fear more the disciplined cruelty of
some ideological oligarchy. The Professor has his own explanation of
this; he thinks I am unconsciously motivated by the fact that I
'stand to lose by social change'. And indeed it would be hard for
me to welcome a change which might well consign me to a
concentration camp. I might add that it would be likewise easy for
the Professor to welcome a change which might place him in the
highest rank of an omnicompetent oligarchy. That is why the
motive game is so uninteresting. Each side can go on playing ad
nauseam, but when all the mud has been flung every man's views
still remain to be considered on their merits.

The quotes from Lewis conclude with this statement on democracy:

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of
men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over
others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more
dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence
Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a
tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's
cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated;
and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly
repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of
power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely
because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience
and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since
Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to
Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers
with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the
inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents,
it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly
high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human
passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be
actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political
programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We
never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess
the future. To attach to a party programme -— whose highest real
claim is to reasonable prudence -— the sort of assent which we
should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of
intoxication.

This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldanes article.
He simply cannot believe that a man could really be in doubt
about usury. I have no objection to his thinking me wrong. What
shocks me is his instantaneous assumption that the question is so
simple that there could be no real hesitation about it. It is
breaking Aristotle's canon—to demand in every enquiry that
degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not "on
your life" to pretend that you see further than you do.

Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and
sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they
never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That
technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly
disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police
follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group
good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions
with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation
will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring
which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high
ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the
dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the
change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi. The
worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety. The
character in That Hideous Strength whom the Professor never
mentions is Miss Hardcastle, the chief of the secret police. She is
the common factor in all revolutions; and, as she says, you won't
get anyone to do her job well unless they get some kick out of it.

Lewis represents for me, at least in these quotes, a sensibility that I find very attractive and persuasive. It is, in some sense "conservative", but more in the way of cautious rather than reactionary. It doesn't celebrate the "free market", nor does it seek to impose Christianity on everyone (some persons expectations of Lewis notwithstanding), rather it takes a very empirical and practical, yet deeply insightful view of the human condition. I say, "Three cheers for Professor Lewis!". (My first inclination of Lewis as a careful and insightful student of the human condition came from reading the Narnia books to my daughters, and given that experience, none of his thoughts expressed above come as a surprise. Thank you, daughters!)

BTW, the website that I found this on (don't ask me how I got there, I don't know!) is the "Chicago Boyz Blog", apparently a tribute the all thinking associated with UC, as odd a mixture as that may prove to be.

Anti-Obama Demonstrators: What Motives?

I read about Jimmy Carter's interview where he seems to be back speaking truth to power. In this case, he offers his opinion that much of the vehement opposition to Obama comes from racism. Put simply, some cannot accept a Black president. Seeing and hearing what I have of late, I'm inclined to agree with him, at least this is a factor. I respect libertarianism, philosophical anarchism, free market economics, and traditionalists. However, many protesters strike me as clearly irrational—Obama is not a Nazi, not a Communist, and not a Kenyan, etc. On cannot locate a coherent argument in much of the popular discontent.

Reflecting on the above, I have developed the following hypothesis: Civilization (and its cultural carrier, education) represents the project of overcoming –or fast-forwarding—evolution. Our "gut—most primitive—instincts promote us to distrust the Other. This could be the result of a survival trait. The Other is a competitor in a harsh, Malthusian environment. Thus, in the words of contemporary psychology, we see the difference between System 1(fast, down-and-dirty heuristics) and System 2 (reflective and reasoning). Thus, the Socratic project (Socrates as the proto-type of reasoning man in the West) and his Axial Age counter-parts represent forces working in favor of System 2 (Reason). However, Socrates and his ilk have not triumphed after 2000 plus years. We find that each generation must pass through its own learning sequence; indeed, each individual must do so, and not all make it. Thus, physical and cultural evolution must undergo a constant recapitulation for the Socratic project of reason to succeed. (I would posit Buddha as perhaps the best-known Eastern counter-part of Socrates and the tradition of reason.)

The bloody and genocidal 20^th century demonstrates how tenuous the sway of reason and rationality are upon us. A part of the Socratic project must include a measure of liberty and liberality. Plato's mistake—pointed out by the likes of Hayek and Popper—arises from thinking that reason ("Reason") compels a particular answer to any problem—but it doesn't, it can't. An answer cannot be compelled because we don't have the resources of time, computing power, and insight to know for sure the "right" answer to most problems. Freedom to explore and toleration of exploration by others becomes a hallmark of modernity. Liberty and liberalism must include a public space in the sense defined by Hannah Arendt: space to literally and figuratively interact, explore, and create.

So what's all this to do with Obama and the racism manifesting against him? Racism seems to me a cultural artifact of System 1, now deeply ingrained in some sub-cultures. It represents the primitive instinct of distrust and aggression toward the Other. However, while the distrust of the Other comes from the primitive (shall we say reactionary?), racism as a manifestation exists only as a cultural creation. Racial differences that seem so stark to some are in fact trivial biologically. As a social (or cultural) creation, race is huge; as biology, it's next to nothing. However, think of the education (formal and informal), intelligence, and open-mindedness that one needs in order to weigh and judge from such a perspective.

In the end, we will have to battle racism and other forms of prejudice for a long time to come. However, I do believe that the tide continues to turn, and the world changes for the better. But it is all so tenuous!

Addendum with a couple of quick points:

• Jimmy Carter improves with age. I think that he's now 85! Happy birthday, Jimmy!
  
• Dave Brooks in his NYT article "No, It's Not All About Race" counters the racism argument by saying it's all native populism. Part right, I think (as usual).
  
• Frank Rich in the NYT "Even Glen Beck Gets It Right Twice a Day" has the most insightful take in my opinion.
  
• After writing all of the above, Stephen Colbert weighed-in on the issue "The Word: Blackwashing" and skewered it the way only he can. Interestingly, the audience groaned more than laughed at Stephen's extreme take, which tells me that he was hitting some nerves.

The Road to Pearl Harbor: Inevitable?

Listening to Jean Smith's FDR and reading Ian Kershaw's Fateful Decisions creates a great synergy. For instance, the road to war between the U.S. and Japan contains a number of crucial misperceptions and missed opportunities. If FDR had met Prime Minister Kenoe, would this have prevented the war? On the other hand, would American public opinion, already turned away from appeasement because of the failure of Munich, in conjunction with the influence of the military in the Japanese government, have made war inevitable? In addition, the Japanese public held a very strongly nationalistic sentiment. Would these factors have doomed any diplomatic initiative? Individuals, no matter how capable, cannot overcome strong social forces, can they? However, if society, national and international, constitutes a complex system, then even small number of agents with limited power can have a crucial effect on the system. No single viewpoint, individual or collective, can take hold of an assured position to control the outcome. These two accounts of the road leading up to Pearl Harbor make me believe that war could have been avoided in late 1941, but I question whether it could have been delayed long enough for the conflict to resolve on its own (as did the Cold War). For an influence on my thinking about this, read Niall Ferguson's essay in the volume Virtual History that he edited.

Quick Updates on Various Reading

Listening to Tyler Cowen's Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World (2009), and after hearing about

Autism in a new light, the joys and possibilities of modern communications technologies (primarily via the Internet, but by texting, etc), he's now begun speaking about Buddhism as a counter-weight to the constant mental buzz in which we live. I'm just starting this, so I'm very interested. Updates to come.

I'm continuing to read Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought. Her presentations of Rousseau and Kant have been quite enlightening (pun intended)—especially of Kant, whom as more of a pure philosopher than political thinker, I'm not as well acquainted with (although his reputation precedes him). She shows Kant to be someone who sees a radical, almost tragic disconnect between the world as nature and human reason. I might also note that she attributes to Kant the idea that purpose is the attribute of human reason and not is found in Nature standing alone. I just started into Hegel this morning, but she gives promise of making good sense of him as well (no easy task by most accounts).

I've started A.P.J. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War (1961). Taylor is an excellent writer with some keen insights. So far, just some general observations of what the Versailles negotiations hoped to accomplish—and what it did or did not contribute to the origins of the Second World War.

Garry Wills on the Entangled Giant

Garry Wills just published a piece in the NY Review of Books, "Entangled Giant", on how the Obama Administration continues some of the policies and attitudes of the Bush Administration. How discouraging! How frightening! Wills argues that since the Second World War that we have been in a perpetual state of war that has eroded the Constitution (that quaint old document),that has seen the growing ascendency of the executive branch, and that begins to buy into ideas like the theory of the unitary executive. Wills sees the Obama Administration surrendering to the inertia of past practices, the inertia of a government so big and powerful that no one can completely control it. I fear that Wills may be correct, all of my hopes for Obama notwithstanding. The only way to prevent a further slide will come from those willing to speak up in opposition. I'm not talking about becoming a pacifist or sit down strikes, but making principled arguments to overcome this terrible inertia. For those who may not have a sense of what I'm writing about, read Jane Mayer's The Dark Side about the abuses of the Bush Administration. The book made me both ashamed (of what my country did) and frightened (for what it might do, even to its own citizens). Tyranny can become real, and I'm not a right-wing nut—far from it!

Explanations of Moral Evil

I've started reading Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (2002) by Susan Neiman. She begins her Introduction with a quote from Wittgenstein that I want to share:

 

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something—because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his inquiry do not strike a person at all.—And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and powerful.

 

    —Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #129

    

While you're thinking about the quote (let it sink in), we can discuss Neiman's work. She discerns two strands in philosophical thinking since the Enlightenment: one that runs from Rousseau to Arendt "insists that morality demands that we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Jean Amery, insists that morality demands that we don't." (8). Having read her section on Rousseau earlier today, and having been a long-time fan of Arendt, I'm inclined to agree with that line of thought, but I'm not sure of the argument from the other side, so the I will suspend final judgment. This book looks to prove very thoughtful and thought provoking—what fun!

Consolations of Philosphy

I’m reading The Consolations of Philosophy (2000) by Alain de Botton. My eldest daughter mentioned that she intended to read it, and her interest prompted me to locate my copy. I’d read the Nietzsche chapter, but not the others. I looked: Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, and Schopenhauer—an impressive list! Add to this de Botton’s ability—I enjoyed his How Proust Can Change Your Life greatly as well as the Nietzsche chapter that I had read. (Nietzsche being one of the more vexing philosophers—even with the help of Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins, I’m not quite sure what to make of him). In any event, I’ve plunged in.
De Botton mixes the originals with his own gentle observations and vignettes, often quotidian events drawn from daily life that exemplify the point in question. Epicurus, Seneca, and Montaigne are personal favorites. Epicurus is perhaps the most misunderstood and maligned of philosophers, but much of what he says seem eminently sensible. When you read his work (of which very little remains), one finds a very measured man, not the glutton of the popular imagination. Seneca proves a model of sobriety, especially about the passions. Montaigne show himself an earthy, relatively plain-spoken observer of humankind. In all, a very pleasant, entertaining, and enlightening book, even after having read about gloomy Schopenhauer (who did have some insights).

Michael Pollan Nails It

Michael Pollan points out the elephant in the room: America's obesity problem as the root (or at least the largest root) of its health care problem. Of course we need to reform the system, he agrees, but once we can't dump or limit coverage of those with Type 2 diabetes and other diseases of civilization, then we'll have a clash of the corporate titans: Big Food vs. Big Insurance. It'll be bigger than Godzilla meets Rodan! Check it out, as usual, Pollan makes a great, succinct case. "Big Food vs. Big Insurance".

Maureen Dowd: Obama Spocky or Rocky

Maureen Dowd, the colorful columnist for the NYT whose take on the zeitgeist of contemporary politics is always entertaining and often insightful, has thrown down the gauntlet to President Obama in her column "Less Spoky, More Rocky". Does she have a point? She may, indeed, although listening to my FDR biography, I see that good and especially great politicians can be crazy like foxes. Is Obama timid or calculating? Lincoln and FDR, to name two of our best, went through firestorms of criticism (and sometimes did mess up), but for all their seeming reluctance and caution, they were very calculating and careful, and ready to pounce at the right moment. Thus, I reserve judgment for the moment, although I hope that Obama does kick ass and take names. :)

Number crunching & rational actors in political science

I've critiqued economists who believe in purely rational actors and markets, but this is not to critique number crunching in general. Indeed, a recent NYT Magazine article on an NYU political scientist is quite tantalizing. An article by Clive Thompson titled "Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?" focuses on the work of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, who trained at Michigan and developed his ideas based on the work of William Striker at Rochester University. Bueno de Mesquita claims quite a track record forecasting events using an acute analysis of the players in the decision-making and an analysis of their levels of interest and commitment and power. Also, he uses a theory of coalitions. It seems that this works very well. I must say that I'm happy to learn that Bueno de Mesquita doesn't make forecasts by percentages: it either happens (his particular forecast) or it doesn't.

I was very interested to learn that he interviews players and learns as much about them as possible before making any predictions (i.e., feeding data into his proprietary program). Thus, a very human element remains. It appears that a computer can perform calculations of coalitions and run scenarios that no single human mind could manage. So be it. But how does one filter out "the passions"? I can understand that reason and interests sort themselves out over the long run, but the passions can hit like a sudden summer thunderstorm: brief but forceful. Perhaps those are the forecasts that don't work out--or that suffer from the random event. Query: how would his prediction about approval of a health care reform bill be affected by Ted Kennedy's death? (Apparently forecasting Clinton's effort was a miss for him.) So, in the end, I admire the work but I still believe that we can go wrong placing too much emphasis on the predictable based on induction. Too many Black Swans swim around in reality ready to appear out of nowhere.

Krugman on contemporary economists & thier big disagreement

Paul Krugman in the NYT today asks a very interesting question: “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” Krugman argues that in addition to lax regulation by Washington and reckless risk taking Wall Street, faulty thinking in academia also contributed to the crisis. He recounts that a growing but weakly grounded meeting of minds between Keynesians (or Neo-Keynesians) and Classical economists (updated via Milton Friedman). Indeed, he posits a difference between fresh water (Chicago orbit) and saltwater (coastal schools) economists. He recounts that even the monetarist Friedman didn’t deny the ability of the government spending to boost the economy; rather, he argued that this could be handled more effectively via monetary policy. Like the successors of many a genius, his disciples took it too far. Some Chicago economists argue that we have high unemployment because people don’t want to work! Wow, nuts.

Krugman takes the problem deeper, and posits two shortcomings of classical free market economics: the belief that humans are constantly making rational decisions and its corollary, that economists can create precise mathematical models to predict behavior because things like bubbles just don’t exist. How can someone believe that humans are always rational? It allows that math to work, but beautiful equations do not necessarily square with reality. It comes back to the point that you can start with any faulty premise and use logic (and beautiful math) to arrive at just about any crackpot conclusion. Don’t the economists who believe in perfectly rational humans and perfectly operating markets know about other economists like Herbert Simon (satisficing), Daniel Kahneman, and Vernon Smith, not to mention to spate of younger researchers, who publish in the area of behavior economics (given a shout-out by Krugman) and human decision-making? Also, Eric Beinhocker in The Origin of Wealth (a book I’ve dipped into but need to read in full) describes the economy as a complex system, and he very effectively critiques the shortcomings of neo-classical economics. Of course, there is also Nasim Taleb, a veritable holy warrior against contemporary economics based in part on ancient skepticism.

All this makes my glad that I trained in history and political science and resisted the invitation to become an economics major (okay, the math had a lot to do with it, I admit). But in history and political science, you can crunch number and perform mathematical analysis, but in the end, you are constantly reminded that you’re dealing with irrational human beings: people motivated by reason, passions, and interests—and not necessarily in that order!

Ian Kershaw, Fateful Decisions & Beyond

I’m reading (among other things) Ian Kershaw’s Fateful Choices, his history of ten key events at the beginning of the Second World War. I finished his chapter about the Japanese and their decision leading to the confrontation with the U.S., which a number (but not enough) of Japanese leaders knew would prove disastrous (and thus the willingness to gamble on Pearl Harbor). I’m now into Mussolini’s decision-making up to Italy's entry into the war. Mussolini was weak actor in a weak country with aspirations of warrior culture and empire that received little support from the reality of his military capability and which lacked popular support. Kershaw asks crucial questions and then attempts to understand the decision-making processes of the actors. An earlier chapter dealt with Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union, and thereby open a two front war. Part of the answer, of course, lies in the fact that Hitler always (from the 1920’s) wanted to move east and confront “Jewish-Bolshevism”. Anyway, it’s quite an interesting book to consider as look back on the 70th anniversary of “the last European war” (John Lukacs). This also ties in with reading Niall Ferguson’s summary of history of thinking (in his Virtual History) about historical causation (determinism v. individual decision-making, in a general sort of divide). Ferguson looks to chaos theory as a way to see stochastic events with in a (somewhat) deterministic framework. Also, reading up on complexity theory, which may prove event more insightful for historical and social science thinking.

McNanmara: Man of Compassion?

I came across a very interesting piece by legal and international relations scholar Phillip Bobbitt recently. He wrote a piece for the NYT about Robert McNamara "Calculus and Compassion". In it, he relates how his uncle, none other than Lyndon Johnson, described McNamara as the most compassionate man in his cabinet. A far cry from the public that later came to demonize McNamara during his tenure as Secretary of Defense. However, it doesn't surprise me, as a viewer of "The Fog of War", the documentary about McNamara directed by Errol Morris. The film is poignant, and McNamara a sympathetic figure. (Thanks to my friend F for watching it with me this summer after McNamara's death, along with a viewing of "Thirteen Days"). I highly commend the film ("Fog of War") and the column for a consideration of this complex, and in some ways, tragic figure.

Kristoff: Gov't Not So Bad

Nicholas Kristoff shares an interesting and persuasive take on health care delivery today in his column "Heath Care That Works". He points out that Medicare and the VA system, two of the largest providers in the nation, have the highest patient satisfaction rates. Further, he notes that some goods, such as education, police and fire protection, and other like services are best handled by the government--and we know because that used to be provided privately, and it didn't work well. This raises an interesting question: how did the anti-government ideology become so strong in the U.S.?

FDR: Model for Obama?

I've been listening to Jean Edward Smith's biography of FDR, and it's fascinating. Thus, I read an article by Smith in the NYT today ("Roosevelt the Great Divider") with a great deal of interest. Smith describes how FDR pushed through almost all of the New Deal legislation without any Republican support. FDR threw down the gauntlet to the vested, moneyed interests--and won. He suggests that Obama should do the same. I'm more and more inclined to agree. "Bipartisanship" has a place, but when push comes to shove, as it must for any real change, you've got to prepare to vanquish your adversary (democratically, of course).

Krugman On Ideology & Influence: I Wish He Wasn't Correct, But I Think He Is

Paul Krugman's piece in NYT today, "Missing Richard Nixon" raises two points that I'm coming more and more to accept. One--well, actually this is quite old--the Republican Party has been taken over by right wing crazies. Even Senator Charlies Grassley, whom I believed to be genuinely conservative in the small-government, tight-fisted, Midwestern small town kind of way, has given over to the crazies. A far cry from the Republican Party that I knew growing up (although the take-over began in earnest in 1964). Second, corporate, moneyed influence has gotten worse? I think yes, but it's a good question for a historian of American politics. I agree with Krugman that it has gotten worse. It's gotten so bad that we now start to make Richard Nixon look good! How do we break the powerful, powerful hold of the moneyed interests on Washington?

Quick Updates

Lots of good reading going on now that I no longer have an six-day jury trial looking at me. Thus, a quick update with ideas:
1. Jon Elster, Alexis De Toqueville: The First Social Scientist (2009). If De Toqueville is the first, Elster is one of the best. De Toqueville, unlike Marx or Durkheim, looks primarily to mechanisms to explain social behavior. Elster, at his analytical best, shows Toqueville's insights and failures. Things like envy and hatred, equality and privilege, are seen through a jeweler's eye--or I should say eyes, as Elster adds his perspective to Toqueville's. I have also dipped into Political Psychology by Elster (1993), an earlier Elster consideration of Toqueville, along with French historian Paul Veyne and Russian Alexander Zinoviev. Again, mechanisms, individual decisions with great social consequences, are the topic of consideration and Elster's primary methodological concern.

2. Jean Edward Smith's FDR (2008). Listening to this in the car, I started with FDR's inaguration. It's all so familiar. President Obama should read it (perhaps any good FDR biography would do). The attacks from right and left; the ability to steer the middle ground. Certainly no president, however great in hindsight, goes without every Dick, Jane, and Sally second-guessing and criticizing him (or her, when the time comes). A familiar story, but still fascinating.

3. Steig Larson's The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo (2008). I'd heard or seen a lot about this mystery, so I popped for it last weekend. 270 pages into it, I'm just getting going. Larson doesn't rush things, and he sets up things very carefully. Without knowing the ending, I know that it's engrossing and well thought out.

Happy reading for now.

Books on the Founding & Early Repulic

I've pulled this from a some writing that I did a while ago to allay my conscience for not having posted anything recently. So as not to let my fan--someday maybe we'll get to a plural--down, I thought I'd pull something out of the (figurative) drawer.

Some Good Reading on the Founding & the Early Republic

After some delay, I’ve finally gotten to recounting some of the good reading I’ve discovered about the founding and the early republic. Of course, this is a work in progress, as I’m currently listening to a very fine work on the various playing in the Revolution and Early Republic: Gordon Wood’s Revolutionary Characters, essays on Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Paine, and Burr. You’d think that all of these men are so well known that you wouldn’t learn anything new, but I have found the essays very informative and insightful.

But let’s start near the beginning—in this case, with Garry Wills’s Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1976). Wills, after receiving a degree in the classics from Yale and then gaining fame for his 1969 book on Richard Nixon, Nixon Agonistes, published Inventing. He used his writing skills as a magazine writer in combination with his skills as a scholar to bring a new understanding the Jefferson and the Declaration. He showed that Jefferson was more directly influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment than by John Locke. He followed this book with Explaining America: The Federalist (1981), in which he followed the path of Douglas Adair and showed the influence of David Hume on Madison and his cohorts.

Moving a away from Wills for a bit (but only to return), I’ve greatly enjoyed listening to Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers, like Woods’s Revolutionary Characters, essays on the Founders. Very telling and informative. Likewise, I enjoyed listening to Ellis’s His Excellency George Washington, a brief biography of GW. GW was an immensely ambitious man, and Ellis gives a very compelling portrait. Also on GW, see Garry Wills’s Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (1984). This is not so much a biography as a study in iconography. Wills does discuss some incidents in GW’s life, but it’s mainly about the images that animated GW.
On Jefferson, in whom I’ve developed some reserve, I have no one good single biography that I’ve read, but he comes up in works such as those of Ellis (who’s written a highly acclaimed biography of TJ: American Sphinx) and Wood. I have read Forrest McDonald’s book on Jefferson’s presidency, and it was indeed informative. Alas, I’ve not read some of McDonald’s highly regarded work on the Founding. However, for John Adams, I’ve read a couple: David McCullough’s popular biography John Adams. Charming and a good overall consideration. However, I most enjoyed John Patrick Diggins’s John Adams in the American Presidents series. Short, but Diggins is always full of insight, and he’s one of my favorite American historians, whether dealing with the Revolution and Early Republic or a contemporary figure like Ronald Reagan. I also recommend his The Lost Soul of American Politics, although only the first few chapters deal with this era.
I listened to an abridged version of Ron Chernow’s recent biography of Alexander Hamilton, a true genius of the era, but a frightening prospect to many of his contemporaries. I’d like to read more about Hamilton, perhaps the most genius of a group of geniuses.
As for the Early Republic, Wills’s Negro President: Jefferson & the Slave Power (2003) argues that Jefferson won the election of 1800 against Adams (and Burr) by virtue of the constitutional provision that slaves counted for 3/5 of a person in the census, thereby giving an electoral advantage to the slave states. Back on Wills, portions of his books Under God: Religion and American Politics (1990), A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (1999), and Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (1994) (includes an essay on Washington), all include chapters on Founding & Early Republic issues.
Wills’s James Madison, for the American Presidents series, is a good overview of Madison & his presidency: how so effective a theorist and legislator was a less effective president. And last year, Wills added Henry Adams and Making of America (2006), part retrospective on Adams and part extended commentary on Adams’s History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson & Madison. Will seeks to rehabilitate Adams’s great work, so often misunderstood and too little considered. Wills argues that the late Adams of The Education (voted the outstanding non-fiction book of the 20th century by Modern Library), who was cynical and determinist, is not the Adams who wrote the History. I’m now reading part of the history in conjunction with a re-reading of the Wills book. The interesting things about Adams work—a counterpoint to Gibbons’s—is that he sees America rising into nationhood after an uncertain start. Truly first-rate reading and history.
I have a bunch of books that I can list or share about this era that haven’t read (and that I’m now more motivated to do so), but these are ones that I have gotten to. All in all, a fascinating group of (mostly) men, not angels, who managed quite an amazing feat. Happy reading!