It does not receive much public attention in the West yet, but we are facing a water crisis - some of the most threatening developments are happening in China and India:
Here is a report from the Washington Post which discusses the problems of sinking water levels and increasing pollution of the Ganges river:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/16/AR2007061600461.html
The bottom line is that the Ganges river - the main fresh water source for about 500 million people in Nepal, India and Bangladesh - is basically fed from two sources:
1. Rain during the monsoon season
2. The Gangotri Glacier - one of the largest glaciers in the Himalayas
The Gangotri glacier supplies the Ganges river with most of its water during the dry season. It has been receeding quickly in the last decades:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=4594
The short-term effect is that the Ganges currently carries more water due to the quickly melting glacier. The long-term effect is that the Ganges will carry much less water once the glacier has melted. It is hard to calculate how long it will take until the glacier has melted completely, but some estimates say that it could happen as early as 2030. Due to large water use upstream, the lower parts of the Ganges may dry up completely during the dry season.
Drastically falling water levels will not only impact drinking water supplies, but also agricultural irrigation, industrial water use and ceremonial bathing in the river:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_of_the_Ganges
And since the freshwater pushes back the seawater in the Ganges delta in Bangladesh, the sinking water levels may lead to salination of farmlands, causing a further loss of arable land in one of the poorest and most densly populated countries in the world.
There is already tension between Bangladesh and India over water use - these tensions are likely to rise in the coming years, as water becomes an increasingly precious commodity.
Should the water levels in the Ganges really sink drastically - as is to be expected - the effect on the national economies of India and Bangladesh will be devastating. A crisis of this magnitude will impact the whole world.
Mittwoch, 12. August 2009
Sonntag, 19. April 2009
The Financial Crisis - the greatest bank robbery of all times
This time around I want to talk about an article I found on the website of the German magazine "Manager Magazine":
http://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/artikel/0,2828,604619,00.html.
It is part of a series of articles, excerpts from Rene Zeyer's book: Bank, Banker, Bankrott (Bank, Banker, Bankruptcy). This excerpt/article is called: The greatest bank robbery of all time.
[...] How could it happen that a bunch of financial acrobats in the U.S. and their notorious accomplices burned more than $ 1000 Billion, probably more like $ 2000 Billion and nobody saw the littlest bit of smoke?
Interestingly enough, this worked because nothing was "burned" as such. It was withdrawn - syphoned off. For years and years, on a massive scale and in broad daylight. Always keep in mind: Money does not disappear, it is not being burnt, it does not lose its value (unless there is rampant inflation), but rather it is redistributed. If one has less, another has more. That is how money works - simple.
The whole scheme is a gigantic, shameless, yet well orchestrated robbery of a few bankers of the fortunes of many investors as well as current and future pensioners.
Their tools weren't welding torches and lockpicks, but "financial instruments", derivates, hedge funds, financial engineering, CDO, RLN, Alt-A, Private Banking, Private asset management, just to name a few. Products that were designed in such a way that neither inventor nor seller, and particularly not the buyer had the slightest clue what they were and are about. What is really new and innovative about all those derivates, acronyms and finance double-speak?
The answer is simple: Nothing! And particularly nothing new!. At the beginning there is a more or less destitute and jobless American in the Midwest who wants to live beyond his means. Countless banks and financial institutions can't wait to help him fulfill his dream. All he has to do: Buy a house in his name and have one of the "banks", let's call her "bankruptcy bank" pay for it.
And he has to promise that some day he will pay back the loan including interest. This will not be a problem because the house will have certainly doubled in value by then and he could pay back the loan using the appreciated value. Then the house would be his and his alone. It is a great promise - nothing could possibly go wrong.
Now the bank that makes these wonderful promises must get the money itself from somewhere. This is called "re-financing". And since "bankruptcy bank" would never be able to re-finance such bad loans, they have to be "re-packaged". There are re-packaging specialists just for this purpose. But there is another reason why this re-packaging has to take place: The bonuses of its managers, but more about that later. The loans are in their re-packaged form no longer recognizable as bad loans and can be sold as attractive modern financial products to the greedy buyers. The worse the loans, the more modern they are.
The fact that the highly-paid specialists of the rating agencies gave their blessing indicates that this is about more than just ignorance of the many and cunning tricks of the few.
The end result is that the simplest financial transaction in history: Giving someone a loan with interest based on a collateral has been turned into a complex sleight-of-hand financial transaction. The result of this "financial engineering" was sold to the tune of thousands of billions of Dollars.
Interestingly enough this trick worked with what appears to be the most solid and fool-proof deal of all: Real estate. In the past this did not fly because even a financial layman can more or less figure out the value of a house and what it is definitely not worth. So how come millions of simple private investors as well as highly paid bank directors, CEOs of pension funds and other institutional investors fell for this simple trick?
The reason is surprisingly simple: They were forced to. Whoever, in the last 10 years, saved his hard-earned money to pay for college for the kids, for his retirement, a house or whatsoever, lost money every day. And the more he saved, the more he lost.
The interest was barely enough to offset inflation, more often than not, it wasn't. Once the taxes were paid, the interest was definitely less than inflation. The only way to protect your savings from this inflation was to listen to the banks advice who politely pointed to the financial markets with its attractive investment opportunities.
This mass movement was fueled by the low interest rates in the Dollar as well as in the Euro zone.
If the interest rate had not been so incredibly low, "bankruptcy bank" could not have afforded to offer the loan on the house interest-free for years and our bank would not have gotten more or less "interest free" re-financing loans. The pension fund 10000 miles away would not have invested in the hedge fund but rather put its money in the classic investment of bonds and stocks.
This gigantic cake would have crumbled long before the first indications of a soufflé-like bubble.
It is an illusion to believe that "bankruptcy bank", or let's call her "investment bank" was in the business of giving real-estate loans or about "investments" as the name implies. Particularly not about investments in destitute Americans. Its business was "re-packaging". The house was just the alibi. It could have been a dog-house for all the bank cared. There were commissions and bonuses attached to this deal.
The extemely boring business of granting real-estate loans had become a highly profitable business. Nobody noticed that officially 100 went into the package, the buyer paid for 110 and did not notice that 0nly 90 were inside. And this adds up. Within a decade "re-packager" Goldman Sachs was able to pay its minions $20 billion in bonuses for their efforts in the field of "re-packaging". UBS was able to pay more than $10 billion.
If you add all "re-packagers" in the U.S., there was easily a total of $ 1000 billion in accumulated bonusses for their activities. Without "re-packaging" it would have been 1/10th that.
These "financial engineers" caused a collateral damage well in excess of this number. Now we are talking about the "damage". Possibly $ 5000 billion, nobody knows for sure and probably nobody ever will.
To be very clear on this: The fact that the American's house had an inflated value ascribed to it is the smaller problem. At least the house is still there and has some value. The American has the smaller loss.
The American was broke at the start. Now he is even more broke and more sober. The real damage is the gigantic changing of assets: From the investors to the managers of the financial institutions. The trick is that the gangsters pulled this off with no risk to themselves and no fear of punishment. The entire world was watching and celebrated the stars of a new economy.
[...] Unless you want to assume the the celebrated chief of the Fed, Mr. Alan Greenspan, is a complete imbecile for not seeing what was going on, there has to be another explanation for his behaviour.
The only explanation is that this was a gigantic theft in which Alan - if he wasn't pulling the strings behind the scenes - was at least an accomplice.
It is simply not conceivable that for 10 years this robbery was pulled off, accompanied by encouraging words from the Fed which watches as billions change hands, the entire financial market system is crashing and justifies it with the growth of the economy for the greater good of all.This is obviously a great conspiracy in which a few abused their power over public insttitutions and the public wealth in an unheard of fashion. Just like bank presidents abused their power over the banks they headed and shamelessly exploited them.
In other words: People who had neither invested in the banks they headed nor bore any risk whatsoever if the banks were to suffer, have exploited them and put the money into their own pockets. This is the greated bank robbery in world history that would not have been possible if the head warden Alan Greenspan had raised the interest rate to where it belonged.
The years of robbery were hidden behind a wall of blabla like advantages, necessity and importance of low interest rates for the economy. The investor was not asked once if he agreed to the interest he is getting.
And the claims of these financial gurus were repeated so many times that they have become the tenets not only of economists, but the conventional wisdom of any cleaning lady.
And because they are wrong but are necessary for the greatest bank robbery, they are being repeated constantly.
What is not being said is that low interest rates are important for the stock exchange, but not for the economy as such. The economy will be fine if the interest rate is twice or three times what it is today. And he has gotten along fine for decades when interest rates where that high. At the beginning of the 80ies the Fed's interest rate was at close to 20%, the lending rate on the markets was around 10%. Although there was a mild recession, the economy did not collapse. Quite the opposite - it emerged strengthened from this period. In Brazil, 10% interest have been common for years and the economy is growing.
Anyone who was ever involved in how investment decisions in companies are made is aware that the interest rate is but one of many decision factors. In fact it is usually one of the less important ones. In a return on investment calculation that usually spans 5 years, it makes little difference if the interest rate is at four or eight percent.
I in no way intend to push for high interest rates here, but the millenia-old rule that the interest rate has to be adequate for the investment. This fundamental rule was ignored for a decade with criminal intent. And this for the single reason to permit the greatest re-allocation, the greatest syphoning off of assets the world has ever seen.
It was a conspiracy of those who happened to be in centers of power to greedily to amass wealth at the expense of others. And many contributed their part to the newfound wealth of the robbers, be it as an investor, tax payer, stock holder or American.
If we estimate the commissions, fees, kick-backs, expenses and bonuses that accumulated during the last three years in the real-estate sector alone at a conservative 10% of the $10 trillion turnover in this market, this amounts to a theft of $ 1000 billion. This gives a whole new meaning to the word "bank robbery".
Better yet for the marauding banker gangs: Reparations, pay-backs or returning the booty is out of the question. There will not be international court cases to sentence the leaders. Accomplices will not have to find excuses for their actions.
Quite the opposite: Those who have been robbed are now replacing the lost billions as well as the collateral damage, to the applause of economists and so-called experts. All the while, almost all the robbers - except those who were to dumb or to greedy and left judicially relevant traces - now enjoy life on their yachts around the world, or watch the sunset from the porches of their villas or fly to exclusive Golf courts and luxury resorts around the world.
This is any bank robber's dream. But he should have become a banker instead.
http://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/artikel/0,2828,604619,00.html.
It is part of a series of articles, excerpts from Rene Zeyer's book: Bank, Banker, Bankrott (Bank, Banker, Bankruptcy). This excerpt/article is called: The greatest bank robbery of all time.
[...] How could it happen that a bunch of financial acrobats in the U.S. and their notorious accomplices burned more than $ 1000 Billion, probably more like $ 2000 Billion and nobody saw the littlest bit of smoke?
Interestingly enough, this worked because nothing was "burned" as such. It was withdrawn - syphoned off. For years and years, on a massive scale and in broad daylight. Always keep in mind: Money does not disappear, it is not being burnt, it does not lose its value (unless there is rampant inflation), but rather it is redistributed. If one has less, another has more. That is how money works - simple.
The whole scheme is a gigantic, shameless, yet well orchestrated robbery of a few bankers of the fortunes of many investors as well as current and future pensioners.
Their tools weren't welding torches and lockpicks, but "financial instruments", derivates, hedge funds, financial engineering, CDO, RLN, Alt-A, Private Banking, Private asset management, just to name a few. Products that were designed in such a way that neither inventor nor seller, and particularly not the buyer had the slightest clue what they were and are about. What is really new and innovative about all those derivates, acronyms and finance double-speak?
The answer is simple: Nothing! And particularly nothing new!. At the beginning there is a more or less destitute and jobless American in the Midwest who wants to live beyond his means. Countless banks and financial institutions can't wait to help him fulfill his dream. All he has to do: Buy a house in his name and have one of the "banks", let's call her "bankruptcy bank" pay for it.
And he has to promise that some day he will pay back the loan including interest. This will not be a problem because the house will have certainly doubled in value by then and he could pay back the loan using the appreciated value. Then the house would be his and his alone. It is a great promise - nothing could possibly go wrong.
Now the bank that makes these wonderful promises must get the money itself from somewhere. This is called "re-financing". And since "bankruptcy bank" would never be able to re-finance such bad loans, they have to be "re-packaged". There are re-packaging specialists just for this purpose. But there is another reason why this re-packaging has to take place: The bonuses of its managers, but more about that later. The loans are in their re-packaged form no longer recognizable as bad loans and can be sold as attractive modern financial products to the greedy buyers. The worse the loans, the more modern they are.
The fact that the highly-paid specialists of the rating agencies gave their blessing indicates that this is about more than just ignorance of the many and cunning tricks of the few.
The end result is that the simplest financial transaction in history: Giving someone a loan with interest based on a collateral has been turned into a complex sleight-of-hand financial transaction. The result of this "financial engineering" was sold to the tune of thousands of billions of Dollars.
Interestingly enough this trick worked with what appears to be the most solid and fool-proof deal of all: Real estate. In the past this did not fly because even a financial layman can more or less figure out the value of a house and what it is definitely not worth. So how come millions of simple private investors as well as highly paid bank directors, CEOs of pension funds and other institutional investors fell for this simple trick?
The reason is surprisingly simple: They were forced to. Whoever, in the last 10 years, saved his hard-earned money to pay for college for the kids, for his retirement, a house or whatsoever, lost money every day. And the more he saved, the more he lost.
The interest was barely enough to offset inflation, more often than not, it wasn't. Once the taxes were paid, the interest was definitely less than inflation. The only way to protect your savings from this inflation was to listen to the banks advice who politely pointed to the financial markets with its attractive investment opportunities.
This mass movement was fueled by the low interest rates in the Dollar as well as in the Euro zone.
If the interest rate had not been so incredibly low, "bankruptcy bank" could not have afforded to offer the loan on the house interest-free for years and our bank would not have gotten more or less "interest free" re-financing loans. The pension fund 10000 miles away would not have invested in the hedge fund but rather put its money in the classic investment of bonds and stocks.
This gigantic cake would have crumbled long before the first indications of a soufflé-like bubble.
It is an illusion to believe that "bankruptcy bank", or let's call her "investment bank" was in the business of giving real-estate loans or about "investments" as the name implies. Particularly not about investments in destitute Americans. Its business was "re-packaging". The house was just the alibi. It could have been a dog-house for all the bank cared. There were commissions and bonuses attached to this deal.
The extemely boring business of granting real-estate loans had become a highly profitable business. Nobody noticed that officially 100 went into the package, the buyer paid for 110 and did not notice that 0nly 90 were inside. And this adds up. Within a decade "re-packager" Goldman Sachs was able to pay its minions $20 billion in bonuses for their efforts in the field of "re-packaging". UBS was able to pay more than $10 billion.
If you add all "re-packagers" in the U.S., there was easily a total of $ 1000 billion in accumulated bonusses for their activities. Without "re-packaging" it would have been 1/10th that.
These "financial engineers" caused a collateral damage well in excess of this number. Now we are talking about the "damage". Possibly $ 5000 billion, nobody knows for sure and probably nobody ever will.
To be very clear on this: The fact that the American's house had an inflated value ascribed to it is the smaller problem. At least the house is still there and has some value. The American has the smaller loss.
The American was broke at the start. Now he is even more broke and more sober. The real damage is the gigantic changing of assets: From the investors to the managers of the financial institutions. The trick is that the gangsters pulled this off with no risk to themselves and no fear of punishment. The entire world was watching and celebrated the stars of a new economy.
[...] Unless you want to assume the the celebrated chief of the Fed, Mr. Alan Greenspan, is a complete imbecile for not seeing what was going on, there has to be another explanation for his behaviour.
The only explanation is that this was a gigantic theft in which Alan - if he wasn't pulling the strings behind the scenes - was at least an accomplice.
It is simply not conceivable that for 10 years this robbery was pulled off, accompanied by encouraging words from the Fed which watches as billions change hands, the entire financial market system is crashing and justifies it with the growth of the economy for the greater good of all.This is obviously a great conspiracy in which a few abused their power over public insttitutions and the public wealth in an unheard of fashion. Just like bank presidents abused their power over the banks they headed and shamelessly exploited them.
In other words: People who had neither invested in the banks they headed nor bore any risk whatsoever if the banks were to suffer, have exploited them and put the money into their own pockets. This is the greated bank robbery in world history that would not have been possible if the head warden Alan Greenspan had raised the interest rate to where it belonged.
The years of robbery were hidden behind a wall of blabla like advantages, necessity and importance of low interest rates for the economy. The investor was not asked once if he agreed to the interest he is getting.
And the claims of these financial gurus were repeated so many times that they have become the tenets not only of economists, but the conventional wisdom of any cleaning lady.
And because they are wrong but are necessary for the greatest bank robbery, they are being repeated constantly.
What is not being said is that low interest rates are important for the stock exchange, but not for the economy as such. The economy will be fine if the interest rate is twice or three times what it is today. And he has gotten along fine for decades when interest rates where that high. At the beginning of the 80ies the Fed's interest rate was at close to 20%, the lending rate on the markets was around 10%. Although there was a mild recession, the economy did not collapse. Quite the opposite - it emerged strengthened from this period. In Brazil, 10% interest have been common for years and the economy is growing.
Anyone who was ever involved in how investment decisions in companies are made is aware that the interest rate is but one of many decision factors. In fact it is usually one of the less important ones. In a return on investment calculation that usually spans 5 years, it makes little difference if the interest rate is at four or eight percent.
I in no way intend to push for high interest rates here, but the millenia-old rule that the interest rate has to be adequate for the investment. This fundamental rule was ignored for a decade with criminal intent. And this for the single reason to permit the greatest re-allocation, the greatest syphoning off of assets the world has ever seen.
It was a conspiracy of those who happened to be in centers of power to greedily to amass wealth at the expense of others. And many contributed their part to the newfound wealth of the robbers, be it as an investor, tax payer, stock holder or American.
If we estimate the commissions, fees, kick-backs, expenses and bonuses that accumulated during the last three years in the real-estate sector alone at a conservative 10% of the $10 trillion turnover in this market, this amounts to a theft of $ 1000 billion. This gives a whole new meaning to the word "bank robbery".
Better yet for the marauding banker gangs: Reparations, pay-backs or returning the booty is out of the question. There will not be international court cases to sentence the leaders. Accomplices will not have to find excuses for their actions.
Quite the opposite: Those who have been robbed are now replacing the lost billions as well as the collateral damage, to the applause of economists and so-called experts. All the while, almost all the robbers - except those who were to dumb or to greedy and left judicially relevant traces - now enjoy life on their yachts around the world, or watch the sunset from the porches of their villas or fly to exclusive Golf courts and luxury resorts around the world.
This is any bank robber's dream. But he should have become a banker instead.
Samstag, 28. Februar 2009
More challenges to Religion: Literary Theory
In my last blog entry, I talked about the challenges that sociology has in store for any religion. By treating and analyzing religious groups like any other social group, sociology challenges the "organized forms" of religion: Churches and all other organized religious associations.
A different challenge to religion aims directly at the core of religious beliefs that rely on the written word: Modern literary theory.
One of the fundamental ideas (or desires) behind any literary theory really, is the wish to understand and interpret a given text. Numerous literary theories and concepts were developed to provide the tools needed to do just that.
But let's start at the beginning:
"Who gives meaning to a text?" Or put differently: "Who or what determines which interpretation of a text is correct?" This implies that there is usually more than one way to understand any text. Sometimes the deviations are small, sometimes they can be very significant - even a matter of life or death.
The obvious answer to the question above is: The author gives meaning to a text. The author who wrote the text expressed what he/she wanted to say, therefore he is the one who determines the meaning of the text.
But this overlooks the fact that a text is nothing if nobody reads it. A text always requires a reader, otherwise it is just specs or smudges on a smooth surface. Like someone remarked when he saw all the neon signs in a metropolis (New York? Las Vegas?): "It must be beautiful if you cannot read" In other words, the author-centric theory overlooks that the reader plays an important role in creating and imparting meaning to a text.
In fact, the reader is not merely a passive recipient of the information that the author provides, he has to actively contribute to "make a text work". This aspect should not be underestimated.
Literary theory set forth to analyze the role of the reader. This school of literary theory is called "reader-response" theory. It is in fact a response to other theories that focus on the author or on the form of a text. Many of the author-centric theories posit that there can be an "objective" meaning of a text, independent of the reader and his or her circumstances. Proponents of reader-response theory beg to differ.
One very fundamental aspect that became apparent to the literary sciences very soon is: Readers try to make sense of a text. In fact this is a trait that applies to anything new we encounter: We try to figure it out and make sense of it, be it an image, a object or a text. Once a reader has made sense of a text he/she tends to defend this interpretation. You may have encountered drawings/images that show something different depending on how you look at it? If you have, you may have found it hard to "see" the other image, if you get too used to seeing it the other way.
Modern literature, like much of modern art in general, toys with this idea, plays with the mind of the reader in his quest to "make sense" of what he/she is reading.
There are a host of aspects that determine how a person reads and understands a text:
Personality:
- Ethnicity, race, culture
- Sexual Orientation
- Mental and physical ability
- Age
- Gender
Environment:
- Geographic location
- Income
- Religious beliefs
- Education/training
- World views
- Personal relationships
- Class
- Hobbies
- Family structure / marital status
- Appearance
- Health
- Parental status
- Employment
This is where reader-response theories line up with constructionist theories and hermeneutics:
Constuctionist theories propose that people actively construct mental models of the world around them. As we learn, we expand our knowledge of the world. People constantly compare these internal models with their experiences and adjust them as necessary. In a person's mind, the world consists of many models of varying sophistication. Models of environments that are not close to the individual may be simplistic (stereotypes), whereas other models closer to everyday life may be quite sophisticated. For example: A person may have a very sophisticated "mind-model" of his or her immediate family, being aware of the individual characters, hobbies, tastes, preferences etc. Yet he/she may have a very simplistic model of how to fly an airplane.
The model has to be good enough to "get by" in his/her environment and is developed further and adjusted as the need arises and people learn something new.
But, the model not only serves as a "simplified to be good enough" version of the complex world around us, it also describes the relationship between the person and the world, thereby imparting "identity". That is why a person's identity is not necessarily fixed. It may change over the years as he/she learns more about the world. (On a side note: This is one of the reasons why "brainwashing" works - the individual's perception of himself/herself in relationship with the environment is changed as part of the brainwashing process.)
Whereas constructionism states that people learn and develop their mental models, hermeneutics is a theory that focuses on how people learn. In literary theory, hermeneutics holds that understanding of a text as a whole is established by understanding the individual parts (read: the words) and the understanding of the individual parts is possible by references to the whole.
Since the whole text and its individual parts cannot be understood without reference to one another, it is a circle, the famous "heremeneutic circle".
Some reader-response theorists responded to challenges from other theories that they lost sight of the actual text by developing the theory of the "implied reader". This is the reader that the author had in mind when he/she wrote the text. Every author is subject to certain assumptions, paradigms, belief systems etc. These assumptions and paradigms may not be mentioned explicitly in the text but form the underlying basis. The author's "implied reader" meets the "real reader" as the text is being read. The effect that the text has on the real reader leads to that individual's interpretation of the text. In essence the assumption is that the author generally places a "sense" in a text that would be understood by the "implied reader", but this may differ from what it means to the real person who reads it.
To put it simply, the question is no longer: "What does the text mean?", but rather "What does the text mean to you? Besides constructionism two more literary theory must be mentioned here at least briefly:
Marxist theory interprets texts in the light of Marxist/Leninist theories. While I think these theories are a thing of the past and have outlived their life (literary theory moved on as communism receeded), they did make an important contribution in the sense that they stressed the importance of the author's as well as the reader's economic situation.
Feminist theories interpret texts in the light of the relationship between men and women - particularly in light of male dominance versus female powerlessness and the perpetuation of this state. They bring aspects of the role of women to the fore that may only be implied in the text as well as influences/ beliefs on the part of the author/reader that stem from certain discourses and paradigms in society (e.g. paternalistic societies vs. liberal societies). Their contribution to literary theory is valuable for bringing the aspects of (usually male) power to light, but just like Marxist-Leninist theories, by interpreting a text solely from one perspective, important other aspects of a literary work are overlooked as they do not fit this structure.
This was a rather lengthy introduction to what I was going to talk about in this blog entry: How is literary theory a challenge to religion?
Literary theory treats the Bible, the Koran or any other "holy book" first and foremost as "a book". It has one or more authors, it was written at a certain time in history and it reflects the "Zeitgeist" of the time.
Clearly, both Bible and Koran were written by someone at some point in time. The Koran in a frame of a few decades, the Bible over several millenia. Nevertheless it is inevitable that the authors introduced their own beliefs and paradigms into the text. This is where Marxist-Leninist and Feminist theories come in. They focus on the society that the author lived in and its influences on him/her. They expose implicit male-dominant or even chauvinistic paradigms.
This for example leads to the ironic situation that Mohammed actually strengthened the role of women in Arab society through the Koran. The role of women as described in Koran was ground-breaking and meant a drastic improvement of women's lives at the time.
But times have changed - nowadays the role of women as described in the Koran seems outdated and "traditional" in a negative sense. Not only are they not allowed to develop their lives as they wish, feminist theories will be quick to point out that men, who dominate the official interpretation of Koran to this day will ensure that this male-centric interpretation of the Koran will continue.
However, the most crushing blow to anyone who claims the right to interpret a religious text comes from reader-response theorists: Who is the Pope to say what the Bible means? Who is the Imam or an Islamic scholar to say? What authority do they have to tell me (the reader) what to make of the text in front of me? The Koran, the Bible may mean to you or me something different than to the next guy - and who is to say who is right and who is wrong?
One may argue at this point that text interpretation cannot be completely arbitrary. You cannot interpret a text as you please without at least some facts found in the text to support your case.
One answer to this lies in the "implicit reader" concept outlined earlier: The author will have had an implicit reader in mind as he/she wrote the text - but keep in mind: The Koran and the Bible are centuries old! The implicit reader has long passed away!
It is therefore highly likely that the understanding that you and I gain from reading the holy books is very different from what the author intended at the time anyway - just because we are so far removed and so different from him/her.
It all boils down to this: No person and no entity has the right to prescribe a certain interpretation of a religious book and ban divergent interpretations as heresy. The Koran and the Bible were written by humans and therefore contain (implicit) assumptions and beliefs prevalent at the time they were written. In addition, the author(s) personality influenced the work as well.
My personal opinion is: The Bible and/or the Koran are not God's word. But God's word can be found in them.
You may be of a different opinion and you have every right to be. All I ask is that I have the right to think this way.
A different challenge to religion aims directly at the core of religious beliefs that rely on the written word: Modern literary theory.
One of the fundamental ideas (or desires) behind any literary theory really, is the wish to understand and interpret a given text. Numerous literary theories and concepts were developed to provide the tools needed to do just that.
But let's start at the beginning:
"Who gives meaning to a text?" Or put differently: "Who or what determines which interpretation of a text is correct?" This implies that there is usually more than one way to understand any text. Sometimes the deviations are small, sometimes they can be very significant - even a matter of life or death.
The obvious answer to the question above is: The author gives meaning to a text. The author who wrote the text expressed what he/she wanted to say, therefore he is the one who determines the meaning of the text.
But this overlooks the fact that a text is nothing if nobody reads it. A text always requires a reader, otherwise it is just specs or smudges on a smooth surface. Like someone remarked when he saw all the neon signs in a metropolis (New York? Las Vegas?): "It must be beautiful if you cannot read" In other words, the author-centric theory overlooks that the reader plays an important role in creating and imparting meaning to a text.
In fact, the reader is not merely a passive recipient of the information that the author provides, he has to actively contribute to "make a text work". This aspect should not be underestimated.
Literary theory set forth to analyze the role of the reader. This school of literary theory is called "reader-response" theory. It is in fact a response to other theories that focus on the author or on the form of a text. Many of the author-centric theories posit that there can be an "objective" meaning of a text, independent of the reader and his or her circumstances. Proponents of reader-response theory beg to differ.
One very fundamental aspect that became apparent to the literary sciences very soon is: Readers try to make sense of a text. In fact this is a trait that applies to anything new we encounter: We try to figure it out and make sense of it, be it an image, a object or a text. Once a reader has made sense of a text he/she tends to defend this interpretation. You may have encountered drawings/images that show something different depending on how you look at it? If you have, you may have found it hard to "see" the other image, if you get too used to seeing it the other way.
Modern literature, like much of modern art in general, toys with this idea, plays with the mind of the reader in his quest to "make sense" of what he/she is reading.
There are a host of aspects that determine how a person reads and understands a text:
Personality:
- Ethnicity, race, culture
- Sexual Orientation
- Mental and physical ability
- Age
- Gender
Environment:
- Geographic location
- Income
- Religious beliefs
- Education/training
- World views
- Personal relationships
- Class
- Hobbies
- Family structure / marital status
- Appearance
- Health
- Parental status
- Employment
This is where reader-response theories line up with constructionist theories and hermeneutics:
Constuctionist theories propose that people actively construct mental models of the world around them. As we learn, we expand our knowledge of the world. People constantly compare these internal models with their experiences and adjust them as necessary. In a person's mind, the world consists of many models of varying sophistication. Models of environments that are not close to the individual may be simplistic (stereotypes), whereas other models closer to everyday life may be quite sophisticated. For example: A person may have a very sophisticated "mind-model" of his or her immediate family, being aware of the individual characters, hobbies, tastes, preferences etc. Yet he/she may have a very simplistic model of how to fly an airplane.
The model has to be good enough to "get by" in his/her environment and is developed further and adjusted as the need arises and people learn something new.
But, the model not only serves as a "simplified to be good enough" version of the complex world around us, it also describes the relationship between the person and the world, thereby imparting "identity". That is why a person's identity is not necessarily fixed. It may change over the years as he/she learns more about the world. (On a side note: This is one of the reasons why "brainwashing" works - the individual's perception of himself/herself in relationship with the environment is changed as part of the brainwashing process.)
Whereas constructionism states that people learn and develop their mental models, hermeneutics is a theory that focuses on how people learn. In literary theory, hermeneutics holds that understanding of a text as a whole is established by understanding the individual parts (read: the words) and the understanding of the individual parts is possible by references to the whole.
Since the whole text and its individual parts cannot be understood without reference to one another, it is a circle, the famous "heremeneutic circle".
Some reader-response theorists responded to challenges from other theories that they lost sight of the actual text by developing the theory of the "implied reader". This is the reader that the author had in mind when he/she wrote the text. Every author is subject to certain assumptions, paradigms, belief systems etc. These assumptions and paradigms may not be mentioned explicitly in the text but form the underlying basis. The author's "implied reader" meets the "real reader" as the text is being read. The effect that the text has on the real reader leads to that individual's interpretation of the text. In essence the assumption is that the author generally places a "sense" in a text that would be understood by the "implied reader", but this may differ from what it means to the real person who reads it.
To put it simply, the question is no longer: "What does the text mean?", but rather "What does the text mean to you? Besides constructionism two more literary theory must be mentioned here at least briefly:
Marxist theory interprets texts in the light of Marxist/Leninist theories. While I think these theories are a thing of the past and have outlived their life (literary theory moved on as communism receeded), they did make an important contribution in the sense that they stressed the importance of the author's as well as the reader's economic situation.
Feminist theories interpret texts in the light of the relationship between men and women - particularly in light of male dominance versus female powerlessness and the perpetuation of this state. They bring aspects of the role of women to the fore that may only be implied in the text as well as influences/ beliefs on the part of the author/reader that stem from certain discourses and paradigms in society (e.g. paternalistic societies vs. liberal societies). Their contribution to literary theory is valuable for bringing the aspects of (usually male) power to light, but just like Marxist-Leninist theories, by interpreting a text solely from one perspective, important other aspects of a literary work are overlooked as they do not fit this structure.
This was a rather lengthy introduction to what I was going to talk about in this blog entry: How is literary theory a challenge to religion?
Literary theory treats the Bible, the Koran or any other "holy book" first and foremost as "a book". It has one or more authors, it was written at a certain time in history and it reflects the "Zeitgeist" of the time.
Clearly, both Bible and Koran were written by someone at some point in time. The Koran in a frame of a few decades, the Bible over several millenia. Nevertheless it is inevitable that the authors introduced their own beliefs and paradigms into the text. This is where Marxist-Leninist and Feminist theories come in. They focus on the society that the author lived in and its influences on him/her. They expose implicit male-dominant or even chauvinistic paradigms.
This for example leads to the ironic situation that Mohammed actually strengthened the role of women in Arab society through the Koran. The role of women as described in Koran was ground-breaking and meant a drastic improvement of women's lives at the time.
But times have changed - nowadays the role of women as described in the Koran seems outdated and "traditional" in a negative sense. Not only are they not allowed to develop their lives as they wish, feminist theories will be quick to point out that men, who dominate the official interpretation of Koran to this day will ensure that this male-centric interpretation of the Koran will continue.
However, the most crushing blow to anyone who claims the right to interpret a religious text comes from reader-response theorists: Who is the Pope to say what the Bible means? Who is the Imam or an Islamic scholar to say? What authority do they have to tell me (the reader) what to make of the text in front of me? The Koran, the Bible may mean to you or me something different than to the next guy - and who is to say who is right and who is wrong?
One may argue at this point that text interpretation cannot be completely arbitrary. You cannot interpret a text as you please without at least some facts found in the text to support your case.
One answer to this lies in the "implicit reader" concept outlined earlier: The author will have had an implicit reader in mind as he/she wrote the text - but keep in mind: The Koran and the Bible are centuries old! The implicit reader has long passed away!
It is therefore highly likely that the understanding that you and I gain from reading the holy books is very different from what the author intended at the time anyway - just because we are so far removed and so different from him/her.
It all boils down to this: No person and no entity has the right to prescribe a certain interpretation of a religious book and ban divergent interpretations as heresy. The Koran and the Bible were written by humans and therefore contain (implicit) assumptions and beliefs prevalent at the time they were written. In addition, the author(s) personality influenced the work as well.
My personal opinion is: The Bible and/or the Koran are not God's word. But God's word can be found in them.
You may be of a different opinion and you have every right to be. All I ask is that I have the right to think this way.
Samstag, 21. Februar 2009
The real challenges to Religion
Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design" - this discussion seems to be a hot topic particularly in the "bible belt" of the U.S. I must admit, most Europeans are shaking their head about it, but this does not take away from the fact that it is a serious topic that the U.S. society will have to come to terms with.
There are a number of questions associated with that discussion:
Was the world created a few thousand years ago, or 4.5 Billion years ago?
Is evolution essentially a more or less haphazard process, based on the "survival of the fittest" and arbitrary gene mutation, or is there an "intelligent design", some intelligent force (read: God) behind the scenes determining the direction, ultimately leading to the existence of humanity?
Finally, one of the underlying questions is: Can you read the Bible (in this case, the book Genesis) as an account of what really happened when the world was created, or is it more of a metaphoric or allegoric account that tries to explain why we are here?
I do not want to get into this argument here - my point is simply this: For the core of Christian belief, this is of marginal importance.
I think that wether God created the world in 7 days as Genesis says, or in 4.5 Billion years as scientists say, does not affect the core of Christian belief at all. It is not as big of a challenge as it is made out to be. It does not affect Jesus' teachings. Or have I missed something?
The struggle between Christianity and natural sciences is a thing of the past centuries. That battle probably started with Galileo Galilei's famous "Eppur si muove!" ("and she does move!") and ended in the 20th century. Since then it is generally accepted that the Bible is not intended as a scientific account, but was written for a very different purpose. It is time to move on.
The real challenges for modern religion (not just Christianity, but any religion really) have nothing to do with physics or biology or any other natural science. I believe the real challenges come from another direction, that nobody seems to be aware of: Sociology.
Scientific progress in modern sociology raises questions that challenge any religion. In this blog entry I will talk about some of them.
1. Let's imagine you found yourself stranded in a very different culture from the one you grew up in. For this example, let's assume you are a pious Christian who grew up in the bible belt of the USA. You believe in Christ, go to church on Sunday, read your bible and pray every day. For some reason you find yourself stranded in Saudi Arabia, with no contact to your own culture. You will suddenly be exposed to people with a belief that differs enormously from your own. First of all, Jesus is not the messiah, the saviour for them, he is merely a prophet. Instead of going to church on Sundays, people around you go to the Mosque on Fridays. They don't believe the bible is the word of God, they believe it Koran is. They use a different calendar and follow very different religious rites. Five times a day you hear the Muezzin call from the Mosque and it will remind you that they believe in something you don't. Those are just some of the things you will be faced with. Assuming that the people you are suddenly surrounded with are just as devout and upright Muslims as you are a devout and upright Christian, you will sooner or later have to come to terms with the fact that everyone else around you believes something different than you do. And they honestly do! They think you are wrong. You think they are wrong. It is a dilemma:
Humans have a hard time accepting two mutually exclusive views as both valid. You will start to question yourself. Could I be wrong and they are right? Or are they all misguided and have not seen the light? Or is there a middle ground, where we're both partially right?
Whatever the outcome of your introspection and self-questioning is, whatever your personal answer to these questions is: The point is that you will start questioning yourself and you will have to find a way to deal with the fact that your deeply held beliefs are different from the rest of society.
This is essentially the first sociological challenge to religion: People tend to believe what the people around them believe.
Let me phrase it in a provocative question: Could it be that religions are a nothing but a form of organized and constantly perpetuated mass illusion? Are they the "opium for he masses" as Karl Marx claimed? Could it be that religions exist because people keep telling each other that what they believe is true and not because they really offer valid truths about God and the world?
2. Sociologically speaking, a religious group is a sociological group like any other. Social groups are established, exist for a while and cease to exist at some point. This applies to churches too. The "Shakers" in the USA are a good example of a religious group that became extinct. A social group will be created when people come together with the same interest. In this case it is an interest in reading the Bible or the Koran, but it could just as well be an interest in building model airplanes. Social groups persist as long as they satisfy the wants and needs of the group members. In other words, people "get something out of it". This could be the comforting belief that they will go to heaven, or it may be something else. Social groups disband when people stop going there because their wants and needs are not satisfied any longer. In addition, social groups face threats from other social groups. Social groups are locked in a constant struggle for power and influence. If you analyze successful social groups and compare them with less successful ones, certain characteristics become apparent:
- Since there is always a certain fluctuation in any social group (e.g. people moving or passing away, etc.), successful social groups are good at "recruiting" new members. The most successful social groups attract significantly more people than they lose.
- Successful social groups are good at imparting and maintaining a certain mindset of its members: A feeling of Identity (e.g. "I am a Baptist") and a feeling of being different from the rest of the world. There has to be a clear separation between group members on the one hand and those outside of the group on the other hand.
- Social groups face an implicit (or sometimes explicit) pressure from society as a whole - on the one hand they have to be different from the rest of society for them to be able to justify their own existence. On the other hand, the more different they are, the harder it is to keep the group from falling apart. As described above, everyone feels the pressure to "be like the rest". The further away you are from what society as a whole believes, the more "closed" the group has to be to maintain their internal mindset and belief system.
- Social groups have to have an internal organization that determines how power is awared and shared in the group and how the group's teachings are preserved, developed and perpetuated. Again, the more the group's views differ from the rest of society, the stricter and more hierarchical the group's internal organization has to be to counter the external pressure. Every group needs leaders, the more powerful they are, the easier it is to keep the group together.
Let's take Jehova's witnesses as an example. I do not wish to make a statement here about the validity of their teachings. All I want to say is that those teachings are quite different from what the rest of society believes. For Jehova's witnesses to survive as a social group, they have to become "close-knitted" and they require strong internal leadership. Power has to be limited to a select few. They determine the way forward and the rest has to follow. Unless they limit the group members social interactions outside the group, and unless they constantly re-affirm their belief systems (e.g. bible study, bible classes, sermons, daily readings and prayers, etc.), they risk that the members of the group "drift away". This is inevitable.
What challenge to religion lies in this? Let me phrase it as a provocative question again: Could it be that not the "true religions" have survived over the centuries, but rather the sociologically most successful ones? Maybe the Shakers had all the answers. But since they were not as successful, sociologically speaking, they did not survive.
The challenge continues: If it is true that the religions that are best at recruiting people, those that are internally well-organized, are well-established in society and have found efficient ways of maintaining the group-internal mindset, have the best chance to survive, this is a form of natural selection that leads to polarization (if not extremism). Could it be that the sociological laws outlined above lead to an "evolution" of religions in which only the best organized, the most evangelic and most polarizing religious groups survive? Is it a sociological "survival of the fittest"?
No wonder we see more and more intolerant religions - and no wonder more and more terrorist groups are drawing on more or less obscure religious ideas to justify their murders.
Whatever you may think about Darwin's theories about fauna and flora. It seems that sociologically speaking, he was on to something without even knowing. Now isn't that ironic?
Note: Give credit where it's due: Many of these ideas where taken from the book "Rumours of Angels" by Peter L. Berger. Unfortunately it is out of print. His ideas are too valuable to be forgotten, so I felt some of them deserved being published in my blog.
There are a number of questions associated with that discussion:
Was the world created a few thousand years ago, or 4.5 Billion years ago?
Is evolution essentially a more or less haphazard process, based on the "survival of the fittest" and arbitrary gene mutation, or is there an "intelligent design", some intelligent force (read: God) behind the scenes determining the direction, ultimately leading to the existence of humanity?
Finally, one of the underlying questions is: Can you read the Bible (in this case, the book Genesis) as an account of what really happened when the world was created, or is it more of a metaphoric or allegoric account that tries to explain why we are here?
I do not want to get into this argument here - my point is simply this: For the core of Christian belief, this is of marginal importance.
I think that wether God created the world in 7 days as Genesis says, or in 4.5 Billion years as scientists say, does not affect the core of Christian belief at all. It is not as big of a challenge as it is made out to be. It does not affect Jesus' teachings. Or have I missed something?
The struggle between Christianity and natural sciences is a thing of the past centuries. That battle probably started with Galileo Galilei's famous "Eppur si muove!" ("and she does move!") and ended in the 20th century. Since then it is generally accepted that the Bible is not intended as a scientific account, but was written for a very different purpose. It is time to move on.
The real challenges for modern religion (not just Christianity, but any religion really) have nothing to do with physics or biology or any other natural science. I believe the real challenges come from another direction, that nobody seems to be aware of: Sociology.
Scientific progress in modern sociology raises questions that challenge any religion. In this blog entry I will talk about some of them.
1. Let's imagine you found yourself stranded in a very different culture from the one you grew up in. For this example, let's assume you are a pious Christian who grew up in the bible belt of the USA. You believe in Christ, go to church on Sunday, read your bible and pray every day. For some reason you find yourself stranded in Saudi Arabia, with no contact to your own culture. You will suddenly be exposed to people with a belief that differs enormously from your own. First of all, Jesus is not the messiah, the saviour for them, he is merely a prophet. Instead of going to church on Sundays, people around you go to the Mosque on Fridays. They don't believe the bible is the word of God, they believe it Koran is. They use a different calendar and follow very different religious rites. Five times a day you hear the Muezzin call from the Mosque and it will remind you that they believe in something you don't. Those are just some of the things you will be faced with. Assuming that the people you are suddenly surrounded with are just as devout and upright Muslims as you are a devout and upright Christian, you will sooner or later have to come to terms with the fact that everyone else around you believes something different than you do. And they honestly do! They think you are wrong. You think they are wrong. It is a dilemma:
Humans have a hard time accepting two mutually exclusive views as both valid. You will start to question yourself. Could I be wrong and they are right? Or are they all misguided and have not seen the light? Or is there a middle ground, where we're both partially right?
Whatever the outcome of your introspection and self-questioning is, whatever your personal answer to these questions is: The point is that you will start questioning yourself and you will have to find a way to deal with the fact that your deeply held beliefs are different from the rest of society.
This is essentially the first sociological challenge to religion: People tend to believe what the people around them believe.
Let me phrase it in a provocative question: Could it be that religions are a nothing but a form of organized and constantly perpetuated mass illusion? Are they the "opium for he masses" as Karl Marx claimed? Could it be that religions exist because people keep telling each other that what they believe is true and not because they really offer valid truths about God and the world?
2. Sociologically speaking, a religious group is a sociological group like any other. Social groups are established, exist for a while and cease to exist at some point. This applies to churches too. The "Shakers" in the USA are a good example of a religious group that became extinct. A social group will be created when people come together with the same interest. In this case it is an interest in reading the Bible or the Koran, but it could just as well be an interest in building model airplanes. Social groups persist as long as they satisfy the wants and needs of the group members. In other words, people "get something out of it". This could be the comforting belief that they will go to heaven, or it may be something else. Social groups disband when people stop going there because their wants and needs are not satisfied any longer. In addition, social groups face threats from other social groups. Social groups are locked in a constant struggle for power and influence. If you analyze successful social groups and compare them with less successful ones, certain characteristics become apparent:
- Since there is always a certain fluctuation in any social group (e.g. people moving or passing away, etc.), successful social groups are good at "recruiting" new members. The most successful social groups attract significantly more people than they lose.
- Successful social groups are good at imparting and maintaining a certain mindset of its members: A feeling of Identity (e.g. "I am a Baptist") and a feeling of being different from the rest of the world. There has to be a clear separation between group members on the one hand and those outside of the group on the other hand.
- Social groups face an implicit (or sometimes explicit) pressure from society as a whole - on the one hand they have to be different from the rest of society for them to be able to justify their own existence. On the other hand, the more different they are, the harder it is to keep the group from falling apart. As described above, everyone feels the pressure to "be like the rest". The further away you are from what society as a whole believes, the more "closed" the group has to be to maintain their internal mindset and belief system.
- Social groups have to have an internal organization that determines how power is awared and shared in the group and how the group's teachings are preserved, developed and perpetuated. Again, the more the group's views differ from the rest of society, the stricter and more hierarchical the group's internal organization has to be to counter the external pressure. Every group needs leaders, the more powerful they are, the easier it is to keep the group together.
Let's take Jehova's witnesses as an example. I do not wish to make a statement here about the validity of their teachings. All I want to say is that those teachings are quite different from what the rest of society believes. For Jehova's witnesses to survive as a social group, they have to become "close-knitted" and they require strong internal leadership. Power has to be limited to a select few. They determine the way forward and the rest has to follow. Unless they limit the group members social interactions outside the group, and unless they constantly re-affirm their belief systems (e.g. bible study, bible classes, sermons, daily readings and prayers, etc.), they risk that the members of the group "drift away". This is inevitable.
What challenge to religion lies in this? Let me phrase it as a provocative question again: Could it be that not the "true religions" have survived over the centuries, but rather the sociologically most successful ones? Maybe the Shakers had all the answers. But since they were not as successful, sociologically speaking, they did not survive.
The challenge continues: If it is true that the religions that are best at recruiting people, those that are internally well-organized, are well-established in society and have found efficient ways of maintaining the group-internal mindset, have the best chance to survive, this is a form of natural selection that leads to polarization (if not extremism). Could it be that the sociological laws outlined above lead to an "evolution" of religions in which only the best organized, the most evangelic and most polarizing religious groups survive? Is it a sociological "survival of the fittest"?
No wonder we see more and more intolerant religions - and no wonder more and more terrorist groups are drawing on more or less obscure religious ideas to justify their murders.
Whatever you may think about Darwin's theories about fauna and flora. It seems that sociologically speaking, he was on to something without even knowing. Now isn't that ironic?
Note: Give credit where it's due: Many of these ideas where taken from the book "Rumours of Angels" by Peter L. Berger. Unfortunately it is out of print. His ideas are too valuable to be forgotten, so I felt some of them deserved being published in my blog.
Sonntag, 18. Januar 2009
Some key concepts of Postmodernism
Postmodernism can be defined in many ways. The most obvious way is to look at postmodernism as the philosophical school of thought that became popular (and in some circles in western society: prevailing) after "modernism". Just like people (at least in large parts of the western world) lived in "modern times" in the 19th and early 20th century, many now live in "postmodern times".Postmodernism is a reaction to modernism.
This definition does not tell us anything about postmodernism though. A simplistic way of looking at postmodernism is to say that it calls into question and critizises the tenets of modernism. What were those?
Wikipedia offers a pretty good definition: "It is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology or practical experimentation. Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end."
Modernism was not limited to philosophical circles - it shaped or influenced many parts of society, especially the arts, but also the economy. In fact it was a paradigm of the industrial age, and was supplanted by postmodernism in the post-industrial age.
Both capitalism and communism are fundamentally modernist ideologies. Both are concerned with improving the lives of the many - albeit in very different ways. This is a deeply modernist thought: First of all to believe that the lives of people CAN be improved nad secondly that this is a goal worth striving for. Both goals are never questioned - they are axioms of modernist thought.
Postmodernism as the antithesis of modernism was triggered by the "negative side effects" of modernism. "Side-effect" is an understatement: Modernism did not reach its goals, thereby calling itself into question:
Communism did not exactly work out as envisioned by Marx and Engels. Instead of creating the ideal communist world, a paradise on earth where everyone was to be free, equal and fairly shared the sufficient material resources, it became a totalitarian oligarchy/dictatorship, suppressing large parts of the world and killing millions.
Even Marx' assumption that socialism and subsequently communism are inevitable developments to an increasingly decadent and imperialistic capitalism did not come true.
Both deeply held beliefs - that of an inevitable direction towards communism that history has to take, as well as that of a worker's paradise on earth did not come true. Quite the opposite. The only inevitable consequence of modernism was post-modernism (isn't that ironic?)
On the other political extreme, right wing "fascist" theories did not fulfill their promise either. Hitler and Nazi Germany are the most striking example: Instead of leading to a 1000 year glorious German "empire", Hitler led Germany into a terrible world war that killed more than 55 million people. The idea that some races are "superior" to others lacked any scientific foundation whatsoever from the start and was further discredited by the fact that the "superior" arian race committed the worst atrocities in world history - what is now known as the "holocaust" or the "shoa".
Postmodernism was shaped by the experience that all those wonderful ideologies that promised heaven on earth led to the exact opposite: They produced hell on earth.
Postmodernism started to systematically break down modernist beliefs, questioning everything and anything.
Is there such a thing as absolute "truth"?
Is "morality" a value in itself?
Are our thoughts and actions really governed by reason?
Can we really rely on rational thought ("logos") to increase our knowledge of the world and help us find out what we are supposed to do in it?
If you call into question the very foundations of thought, where will that lead? Is everything questionable, leaving "nihilism" as the only answer? What a frightening thought! Or is there a foundation that cannot be shaken?
Postmodernism gives the answer: There is no single answer. There are no more "one size fits all" answers. Postmodern thinking will never "agree" on any single answer. You find your answer, I'll find mine. For some this may be nihilism, for others it may be the thought that even though the all-encompassing ideologies have failed, individual attempts to do good and live a just life are goals worth striving for. But just because you believe this, it does not mean anyone else has to...
While modernist thought is imbued with the wish to do better - improve yourself, improve the world you live in (until ultimately the world becomes a paradise for everyone). Postmodernism refuses to believe in that. There is no "pilgrim's progress" leading us all to a "promised land".
It is a deeply postmodern thought that there is no single answer for anything and no single truth in this world. There is no single concept or train of thought that offers absolute truth or redemption. Postmodernists will say looking back at modernism's aim to create a better world: "been there - done that". Now see what it got us: Auschwitz, the Gulag, China's cultural revolution and countless other tyrannies, wars and genocides.
Instead, postmodern thought stresses the contradictions in the world:
- We strive for good, yet there is so much evil in the world
- We want peace, yet there are wars everywhere
- We want economic prosperity, yet millions are starving
- We strive for happiness, but we cannot find it
- We want to believe in a benevolent God, yet there is no proof he even exists.
- We want to be reasonable, yet are mostly driven by powers beyond our control.
- We want safety, yet safety is an illsion.
Postmodernism holds that these contradictions are inherent to life. There is no way to find a "solution" or an "answer" to solve them. Living with them, finding your own answers and be prepared to question them again.
This is scary stuff. People want absolute truths, people want to guidance and direction, people want safety and happiness. So none of those are attainable? Well - you probably guessed it - there is no single answer to that question.
In one of my next blog entries I'll talk about this some more.
This definition does not tell us anything about postmodernism though. A simplistic way of looking at postmodernism is to say that it calls into question and critizises the tenets of modernism. What were those?
Wikipedia offers a pretty good definition: "It is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology or practical experimentation. Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end."
Modernism was not limited to philosophical circles - it shaped or influenced many parts of society, especially the arts, but also the economy. In fact it was a paradigm of the industrial age, and was supplanted by postmodernism in the post-industrial age.
Both capitalism and communism are fundamentally modernist ideologies. Both are concerned with improving the lives of the many - albeit in very different ways. This is a deeply modernist thought: First of all to believe that the lives of people CAN be improved nad secondly that this is a goal worth striving for. Both goals are never questioned - they are axioms of modernist thought.
Postmodernism as the antithesis of modernism was triggered by the "negative side effects" of modernism. "Side-effect" is an understatement: Modernism did not reach its goals, thereby calling itself into question:
Communism did not exactly work out as envisioned by Marx and Engels. Instead of creating the ideal communist world, a paradise on earth where everyone was to be free, equal and fairly shared the sufficient material resources, it became a totalitarian oligarchy/dictatorship, suppressing large parts of the world and killing millions.
Even Marx' assumption that socialism and subsequently communism are inevitable developments to an increasingly decadent and imperialistic capitalism did not come true.
Both deeply held beliefs - that of an inevitable direction towards communism that history has to take, as well as that of a worker's paradise on earth did not come true. Quite the opposite. The only inevitable consequence of modernism was post-modernism (isn't that ironic?)
On the other political extreme, right wing "fascist" theories did not fulfill their promise either. Hitler and Nazi Germany are the most striking example: Instead of leading to a 1000 year glorious German "empire", Hitler led Germany into a terrible world war that killed more than 55 million people. The idea that some races are "superior" to others lacked any scientific foundation whatsoever from the start and was further discredited by the fact that the "superior" arian race committed the worst atrocities in world history - what is now known as the "holocaust" or the "shoa".
Postmodernism was shaped by the experience that all those wonderful ideologies that promised heaven on earth led to the exact opposite: They produced hell on earth.
Postmodernism started to systematically break down modernist beliefs, questioning everything and anything.
Is there such a thing as absolute "truth"?
Is "morality" a value in itself?
Are our thoughts and actions really governed by reason?
Can we really rely on rational thought ("logos") to increase our knowledge of the world and help us find out what we are supposed to do in it?
If you call into question the very foundations of thought, where will that lead? Is everything questionable, leaving "nihilism" as the only answer? What a frightening thought! Or is there a foundation that cannot be shaken?
Postmodernism gives the answer: There is no single answer. There are no more "one size fits all" answers. Postmodern thinking will never "agree" on any single answer. You find your answer, I'll find mine. For some this may be nihilism, for others it may be the thought that even though the all-encompassing ideologies have failed, individual attempts to do good and live a just life are goals worth striving for. But just because you believe this, it does not mean anyone else has to...
While modernist thought is imbued with the wish to do better - improve yourself, improve the world you live in (until ultimately the world becomes a paradise for everyone). Postmodernism refuses to believe in that. There is no "pilgrim's progress" leading us all to a "promised land".
It is a deeply postmodern thought that there is no single answer for anything and no single truth in this world. There is no single concept or train of thought that offers absolute truth or redemption. Postmodernists will say looking back at modernism's aim to create a better world: "been there - done that". Now see what it got us: Auschwitz, the Gulag, China's cultural revolution and countless other tyrannies, wars and genocides.
Instead, postmodern thought stresses the contradictions in the world:
- We strive for good, yet there is so much evil in the world
- We want peace, yet there are wars everywhere
- We want economic prosperity, yet millions are starving
- We strive for happiness, but we cannot find it
- We want to believe in a benevolent God, yet there is no proof he even exists.
- We want to be reasonable, yet are mostly driven by powers beyond our control.
- We want safety, yet safety is an illsion.
Postmodernism holds that these contradictions are inherent to life. There is no way to find a "solution" or an "answer" to solve them. Living with them, finding your own answers and be prepared to question them again.
This is scary stuff. People want absolute truths, people want to guidance and direction, people want safety and happiness. So none of those are attainable? Well - you probably guessed it - there is no single answer to that question.
In one of my next blog entries I'll talk about this some more.
Sonntag, 11. Januar 2009
Malthus coming back to haunt us
In 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus published "An Essay on the principles of population". This very influential book is not only the first book on population growth to receive wide public attention, but it is also best remembered for the thesis that population growth will outpace the increase in food production, thereby invariably leading to poverty. You may remember it from high school: Food production growth according to Malthus is likely to increase along a slow arithmetic progression while population growth follows a much faster geometric progression.
Well, Malthus did not take the productivity increases that modern industrialized agriculture brought about into account. Indeed, Malthus' model is overly simplistic, ignoring many other factors that affect the growth of food supply versus population growth: Wars, natural disasters, epidemics, changes in diet, and on the other hand, new productivity increases through better agriculatural methods, fertilizers, irrigation etc.
The bottom line is: For more than 100 years, the world was happy to see that Malthus was wrong.
But was he really? Maybe he wasn't right on how long it would take to get to the point where there are more people on the planet than the earth can feed, but if the population continues to grow, eventually there will not be enough food for everyone. This is obvious and inevitable.
When I was 16 or so, I remember realizing at some point how incredibly many people live on the Earth. Back then more than 4.2 billion people lived on our planet. I found that number shocking and worrying. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population), the world population is estimated to be about 1.5 times that - an estimated 6.7 billion people today. Furthermore, continued population growth is expected until about 2050 when the world population will peak at about 9 billion.
For decades now we all have lived in a stark imbalance between the rich nations in the north and the poor nations in the south. According to the world health organization, about 1/3 of the world's population is well-fed, 1/3 is under-fed and 1/3 is starving. Today, hunger and illnesses caused by malnutrition are the single greatest cause of death world-wide, accounting for 58% of all mortalities - about 36 million people in 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition).
I saw a documentary on "Arte TV" ("Die Hungerkrise - http://www.arte.tv/de/woche/244,broadcastingNum=963998,day=6,week=50,year=2008.html) about a month ago that discussed the reasons for this situation and outlined what is likely to happen in the future.
Reasons:
- Population growth and industrialization using up more and more farm land
- Pollution and climate change increasing the size of deserts and arid land.
- Pollution and climate change decreasing the world's harvest. According to the Arte documentary, a 1 degree (celsius) increase in the average temperature will lead to a 10% decrease in harvests, mainly in the tropics and subtropics (e.g. Africa).
- Changing world diets: As a general rule, it takes about 6 calories of plant-based food to create 1 calorie of meat. Cows in particular require a lot of water and grain and produce a lot of methane. The more meat is produced and consumed, the less food is available overall. Particularly the growing economies in Asia (India, China) experience a diet change. More and more people are eating poultry, meat and fish.
- The last century saw a dramatic increase in food production due to widespread use of fertilizers and other chemicals. It is unlikely that similar increases are possible in the future - quite the opposite, negative effects of over-fertilization and the use of other chemicals are likely to lower productivity.
- Overall decrease of fresh water. See also the "virtual water" concept developed by professor John Anthony Allen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_water).
- Increased production of bio-fuels further reducing the available food supply.
The "arte" documentary went on to explain what the consequences will be:
- More and more countries will be unable to feed their population. They will need to procure agricultural products on the world market. As food becomes more and more scarce, the market prices will rise. The poorest will be the first to be unable to obtain enough food to survive.
- The scarcity of food will lead to "hoarding" making even less food available on the world market, thereby increasing prices.
- The increased prices will lead to speculation on the mercantile exchanges, driving prices up even further.
- Food riots will increase, destabilizing entire nations. The most widely notices food riots in 2007 were in Egypt, Bangladesh, Haiti and Mexico (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/04/14/world.food.crisis/)
- Conflicts over water rights will increase, leading to potentially armed conflicts
- Populations in famine-stricken regions will try to flee, increasing the number of refugees. Refugees are generally not able to take care of themselves thereby putting a strain on the host nation's resources. Eventually, borders will be closed.
Two factors contribute to the world's inadequate reaction to this increasingly severe problem:
1. People are generally unable to think in exponential growth rates:
You may remember the famous example of the water lilies. Let's assume there is a lake in which the number of water lilies doubles every day. After 30 days, half the lake is covered in water lilies. The question is: How long will it take until the entire lake is covered. Very few people realize that the lake will be completely covered by the next day.
2. People generally do not focus on "critical factors". Critical factors are those that compound the gravity of a situation, thereby leading to more dramatic results than expected. It gets especially dangerous when several critical factors compound each other. In this case there are several critical factors that will cause the situation to worsen much more quickly than most people expect:
- Climate change -> decrease in arable land and decrease in harvests
- Diet change -> Less food available overall because an increasing amount of food is used up for meat production
- Decrease in available fresh water: China has all but used up its (self-replenishing) gound water in many regions. It is now drilling deep wells to access deep water aquifiers. These are not self-replenishing. When they run out, China is (to a large degree) out of water.
For a good discussion of how humans fail to deal with complex situations, I recommend: The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do To Make Them Right
by Dietrich Dorner
Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1996, translated by Rita and Robert Kimber, ISBN: 0805041605, $25.00. Paperback edition: The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations, Perseus Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997, 222 pages, ISBN: 0201479486, $16.00.
The big questions are: What can be done about this? What can I do to help? What does this mean for my life and the lives of the people around me?
I'll discuss that in one of my next blog entries. Stay tuned...
Well, Malthus did not take the productivity increases that modern industrialized agriculture brought about into account. Indeed, Malthus' model is overly simplistic, ignoring many other factors that affect the growth of food supply versus population growth: Wars, natural disasters, epidemics, changes in diet, and on the other hand, new productivity increases through better agriculatural methods, fertilizers, irrigation etc.
The bottom line is: For more than 100 years, the world was happy to see that Malthus was wrong.
But was he really? Maybe he wasn't right on how long it would take to get to the point where there are more people on the planet than the earth can feed, but if the population continues to grow, eventually there will not be enough food for everyone. This is obvious and inevitable.
When I was 16 or so, I remember realizing at some point how incredibly many people live on the Earth. Back then more than 4.2 billion people lived on our planet. I found that number shocking and worrying. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population), the world population is estimated to be about 1.5 times that - an estimated 6.7 billion people today. Furthermore, continued population growth is expected until about 2050 when the world population will peak at about 9 billion.
For decades now we all have lived in a stark imbalance between the rich nations in the north and the poor nations in the south. According to the world health organization, about 1/3 of the world's population is well-fed, 1/3 is under-fed and 1/3 is starving. Today, hunger and illnesses caused by malnutrition are the single greatest cause of death world-wide, accounting for 58% of all mortalities - about 36 million people in 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition).
I saw a documentary on "Arte TV" ("Die Hungerkrise - http://www.arte.tv/de/woche/244,broadcastingNum=963998,day=6,week=50,year=2008.html) about a month ago that discussed the reasons for this situation and outlined what is likely to happen in the future.
Reasons:
- Population growth and industrialization using up more and more farm land
- Pollution and climate change increasing the size of deserts and arid land.
- Pollution and climate change decreasing the world's harvest. According to the Arte documentary, a 1 degree (celsius) increase in the average temperature will lead to a 10% decrease in harvests, mainly in the tropics and subtropics (e.g. Africa).
- Changing world diets: As a general rule, it takes about 6 calories of plant-based food to create 1 calorie of meat. Cows in particular require a lot of water and grain and produce a lot of methane. The more meat is produced and consumed, the less food is available overall. Particularly the growing economies in Asia (India, China) experience a diet change. More and more people are eating poultry, meat and fish.
- The last century saw a dramatic increase in food production due to widespread use of fertilizers and other chemicals. It is unlikely that similar increases are possible in the future - quite the opposite, negative effects of over-fertilization and the use of other chemicals are likely to lower productivity.
- Overall decrease of fresh water. See also the "virtual water" concept developed by professor John Anthony Allen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_water).
- Increased production of bio-fuels further reducing the available food supply.
The "arte" documentary went on to explain what the consequences will be:
- More and more countries will be unable to feed their population. They will need to procure agricultural products on the world market. As food becomes more and more scarce, the market prices will rise. The poorest will be the first to be unable to obtain enough food to survive.
- The scarcity of food will lead to "hoarding" making even less food available on the world market, thereby increasing prices.
- The increased prices will lead to speculation on the mercantile exchanges, driving prices up even further.
- Food riots will increase, destabilizing entire nations. The most widely notices food riots in 2007 were in Egypt, Bangladesh, Haiti and Mexico (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/04/14/world.food.crisis/)
- Conflicts over water rights will increase, leading to potentially armed conflicts
- Populations in famine-stricken regions will try to flee, increasing the number of refugees. Refugees are generally not able to take care of themselves thereby putting a strain on the host nation's resources. Eventually, borders will be closed.
Two factors contribute to the world's inadequate reaction to this increasingly severe problem:
1. People are generally unable to think in exponential growth rates:
You may remember the famous example of the water lilies. Let's assume there is a lake in which the number of water lilies doubles every day. After 30 days, half the lake is covered in water lilies. The question is: How long will it take until the entire lake is covered. Very few people realize that the lake will be completely covered by the next day.
2. People generally do not focus on "critical factors". Critical factors are those that compound the gravity of a situation, thereby leading to more dramatic results than expected. It gets especially dangerous when several critical factors compound each other. In this case there are several critical factors that will cause the situation to worsen much more quickly than most people expect:
- Climate change -> decrease in arable land and decrease in harvests
- Diet change -> Less food available overall because an increasing amount of food is used up for meat production
- Decrease in available fresh water: China has all but used up its (self-replenishing) gound water in many regions. It is now drilling deep wells to access deep water aquifiers. These are not self-replenishing. When they run out, China is (to a large degree) out of water.
For a good discussion of how humans fail to deal with complex situations, I recommend: The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do To Make Them Right
by Dietrich Dorner
Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1996, translated by Rita and Robert Kimber, ISBN: 0805041605, $25.00. Paperback edition: The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations, Perseus Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997, 222 pages, ISBN: 0201479486, $16.00.
The big questions are: What can be done about this? What can I do to help? What does this mean for my life and the lives of the people around me?
I'll discuss that in one of my next blog entries. Stay tuned...
Donnerstag, 8. Januar 2009
TOR - The Onion Router
As promised, here a few words about TOR - The Onion Router.
Once it is installed, it starts up whenever the computer boots. A window on the desktop shows the status. You can minimize it to the taskbar. When minimized you can still turn it on and off. All that runs without a hitch.
What is a bit disconcerting is that Firefox displays "Tor deactivated" in its status bar even though Tor says it is running in its own window.
The reason is apparently that Tor is not really compatible with Firefox 3. I'll have to wait for a newer version for that... This is a bummer because I rarely use Internet Explorer. Firefox seems to contain fewer security risks.
All in all it looks like it works well - but there is no way for me to gage if it really does provide a certain amount of privacy... or if it just takes up space.
Once it is installed, it starts up whenever the computer boots. A window on the desktop shows the status. You can minimize it to the taskbar. When minimized you can still turn it on and off. All that runs without a hitch.
What is a bit disconcerting is that Firefox displays "Tor deactivated" in its status bar even though Tor says it is running in its own window.
The reason is apparently that Tor is not really compatible with Firefox 3. I'll have to wait for a newer version for that... This is a bummer because I rarely use Internet Explorer. Firefox seems to contain fewer security risks.
All in all it looks like it works well - but there is no way for me to gage if it really does provide a certain amount of privacy... or if it just takes up space.
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