Merry Christmas

And Seasons Greetings to my more secular friends.

Can You Buy Happiness?

Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago discusses how money can buy happiness and also how money can cost you happiness. His bottom line is that only you can decide what you value but that it is the wise person who knows or at least has thought about (often with the help of others) the trade offs. He also makes an astute observation which I like very much.

The people consumed by envy are a small misanthropic set of the general population.

What he fails to emphasize sufficiently is that it is those people who are often bellowing the loudest, trying to influence others to employ theft (government) to bring things into the "proper" balance. To the detriment of all concerned.

It never works. Because there is always some one smarter, prettier, taller, more charming, more accomplished, more talented, etc. etc. etc. And there is nothing you can do about it even if you make every one's material condition identical.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Happy New Year

May the New year bring you life, liberty, love, and the opportunity to pursue the happiness you desire.

Tribalism

Across the sea,
Corpses in the water;
Across the mountain,
Corpses heaped on the field;
I shall die only for the Emperor,
I shall never look back.

Japanese Popular Song: Umi Yukaba
The war against Islamofascism is not the first time we in America have faced enemies who loved death more than life. Honor more than victory. We have faced such enemies every time we have faced one of the oldest human cultures on earth. Tribalism.

What we call western civilization is really a series of attempts to get past tribalism and move towards universalism. The Jews with their universal laws (good for Jews and gentiles - the Jews of course were chosen to be burdened with more laws than the gentiles). The laws are (taken from this Wiki):

The seven laws (commonly rendered as Sheva Mitzvot Shel Bnei Noach) are:

1. Avodah zarah - Do not worship false gods.

The universe is a unity. Since it is a unity there can be only one Maker. Tribal gods are null and void. Unity for a nation then becomes possible. Egypt solved the unity problem by incorporating local gods into their religion. They would find in their pantheon a god or goddess that was similar and graft the tribal god to it. The Romans pretty much took the Greek gods wholesale. Eventually Christianity spread the Jewish idea of the unity of the universe and the pagan gods and goddesses were junked. Still the Catholic Church will, if the demand is great enough, incorporate tribal gods disguised as saints.

2. Shefichat damim - Do not murder.

What is special about this law is that it was applied not just within the tribe, but universally.

3. Gezel - Do not steal (or kidnap).

Again what is special about this law is that it was applied not just within the tribe, but universally. There is no such thing as fair game for theft, kidnap, and plunder.

4. Gilui arayot - Do not be sexually immoral (forbidden sexual acts are traditionally interpreted to include incest, bestiality, male homosexual sex acts, i.e. sodomy, and adultery.)

The acts are still forbidden, but the prosecutorial zeal is not what it once was. Except for incest and adult-child sexual relations. That Jesus guy may have had something to do with this. Plus the fact that the status of women has risen from that of property (goats as one of my commenters likes) to people.

5. Birkat Hashem - Do not "bless God" euphemistically referring to blasphemy.

Again the act is still forbidden, but the prosecutorial zeal is not what it once was. Even among the devout, at least in the current western practice.

6. Ever min ha-chai - Do not eat any flesh that was torn from the body of a living animal (given to Noah and traditionally interpreted as a prohibition of cruelty towards animals)

This gives the idea that unnecessary cruelty is not a positive virtue. You can still eat your meat, but the kill must be with as little suffering as possible.

7. Dinim - Set up a system of honest, effective courts, police and laws.

Here is a truly novel idea. Your brother in law or cousin doesn't get special treatment. Every one is equal under the law.

The Talmud also states: "Righteous people of all nations have a share in the world to come" (Sanhedrin 105a). Any non-Jew who lives according to these laws is regarded as one of "the righteous among the gentiles". Maimonides states that this refers to those who have acquired knowledge of God and act in accordance with the Noahide laws.

In the west even the most devout secularist adheres to these laws as currently practiced. Exceping for some on the left who wish to devolve back to a state of tribalism in the name of multi-culturalism where certain tribes are to be given special favor. Everyone is not equal under the law. Of course this destroys the unity of a nation and would reduce the nation state to groups of warring factions when the big advantage of the nation is that it eliminates open warfare within a nation thus making the nation more economically advantaged and stronger morally and militarily. United we stand... and all that.

Which is a long lead up to this very interesting look at tribalism in the Middle East.

To understand the nature of the enemy in the Middle East and to evaluate the prospects for democracy and peace, we need to extend our gaze not five years into the past, but five hundred and even five thousand.

I've spent the last four years writing two books about Alexander the Great's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, 331-327 B.C. What has struck me in the research is the dead-ringer parallels between that ancient East-West clash and the modern ones the U.S. is fighting today — despite the fact that Alexander was pre-Christian and his enemies were pre-Islamic.

What history seems to be telling us is that the quality that most defines our Eastern adversaries, then and now, is neither religion nor extremism nor "Islamo-fascism," but something much older and more fundamental.

Extremist Islam is merely an overlay (and a recent one at that) atop the primal, unchanging mind-set of the East, which is tribalism, and its constituent individual, the tribesman.

Tribalism and the tribal mind-set are what the West is up against in Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Iraqi insurgency, the Sunni and Shiite militias, and the Taliban.

It looks like what we are confronting is a very old form of human organization. The problem with this type of organization is that the justice it provides is not universal. The in tribe gets a measure of justice. The out tribes get the leavings.

What exactly is the tribal mind-set? It derives from that most ancient of social organizations, whose virtues are obedience, fidelity, warrior pride, respect for ancestors, hostility to outsiders and willingness to lay down one's life for the cause/faith/group. The tribe's ideal leader is closer to Tony Soprano than to FDR and its social mores are more like those of Geronimo's Apaches than the city council of Scarsdale or Shepherd's Bush.

Can the tribal mind embrace democracy? Consider the contrast between the tribesman and the citizen:

A citizen is an autonomous individual. A citizen is free. A citizen possesses the capacity to evaluate the facts and prospects of his world and to make decisions guided by his own conscience, uncoerced by authority. A congress of citizens acting in free elections determines the political course of a democratic community.

The citizen is an altogether different animal from the member of a tribe. He lives by a diffeent set of rules. A set of rules the tribalist considers unmanly and without honor. The civilized man rates peace and prosperity higher than honor. Which is not the same as being without honor. A mistake tribalists have been making about the democratically civilized for a very long time. Because the civilized man will allow himself to be dishonored for the sake of peace the tribal man assumes that the civilized man is weak. In fact the civilized man can be more brutal than the tribalist when the civilized man goes into the honor mode. When in that mode it is not just tit for tat revenge he seeks, but the complete destruction of the disturbers of his peace.

The value of the civilized man is the value of the merchant who will take small humiliations for the sake of profit. For the tribalist no amount of profit is worth any humiliation. Which is why merchants and bankers are so despised by the tribalist.

A citizen prizes his freedom; therefore he grants it to others. He is willing to respect the rights of minorities within the community, so that his own rights will be shielded when he finds himself in the minority.

The tribesman doesn't see it that way. Within the fixed hierarchy of the tribe, disagreement is not dissent (and thus to be tolerated) but treachery, even heresy, which must be ruthlessly expunged. The tribe exists for itself alone. It is perpetually at war with all other tribes, even of its own race and religion.

The tribesman deals in absolutes. One is either "of blood" or not. The enemy spy can infiltrate the tribal network no more than a prison guard can worm his way into the Aryan Brotherhood. The tribe recognizes its own. It expels (or beheads) the alien. The tribe cannot be negotiated with. "Good faith" applies only within the pale, never beyond.

The tribesman does not operate by a body of civil law but by a code of honor. If he receives a wrong, he does not seek redress. He wants revenge. The taking of revenge is a virtue in tribal eyes, called badal in the Pathan code of nangwali. A man who does not take revenge is not a man. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the sectarian militias of Iraq are not in the war business, they are in the revenge business. The revenge-seeker cannot be negotiated with because his intent is bound up with honor. It is an absolute.

Perhaps the most telling difference between the citizen and the tribesman lies in their views of the Other. The citizen embraces multiplicity; to him, the melting pot produces richness and cultural diversity. To the tribesman, the alien is not even given the dignity of being a human being; he is a gentile, an infidel, a demon.

The tribesman grants justice within the tribe. In his internal councils, empathy, humor and compassion may prevail. Outside the tribe? Forget it.

Civilization is a fragile thing because the lure of tribalism is always there. Socialism's appeal is that the government will take care of you in the way that being a member of a tribe did. The Nazis' appeal was to the greater German tribe. Sadly in America the Democrat Party is the Party where tribes gather; they just don't get civilization. Civilization works by encouraging the tribes to make the tribal identity secondary.

I'm going to be looking into this topic further over time. The number one question is how the tribalist can be converted either over time or by generational change to more universal values.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The civilized man pursues happiness. The tribalist pursues narrow justice.

The number one problem for the civilized and the tribalized alike is mirror imaging.

Update: 26 Sept '06 1651z

Commenter Paul noted in the comments this very interesting piece by a libertarian anthropologist: Observations on Arabs

Update: 27 Sept '06 1803z

Clayton Cramer comments.

Update: 30 Sept '06 0059z

Elder of Zion and Liberty ans Justice and Infidel Bloggers Alliance comment.


Update: 02 Oct. '06 0807z

Captain's Quarters discusses Afghan tribalism. The comments are especially good. See the one by Dale in Atlanta.

Update: 16 Oct. '06 1405z

Israel Matzav has a good bit on tribalism in Gaza.

Cross Posted at Classical Values 01 April '08.