Two views of history

First, Daniel C Dennett writes an enthusiastic review of a book about how we became WEIRD.  Here are some parts (from the New York Times):

How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
By Joseph Henrich

According to copies of copies of fragments of ancient texts, Pythagoras in about 500 B.C. exhorted his followers: Don’t eat beans! Why he issued this prohibition is anybody’s guess (Aristotle thought he knew), but it doesn’t much matter because the idea never caught on.

According to Joseph Henrich, some unknown early church fathers about a thousand years later promulgated the edict: Don’t marry your cousin! Why they did this is also unclear, but if Henrich is right — and he develops a fascinating case brimming with evidence — this prohibition changed the face of the world, by eventually creating societies and people that were WEIRD: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic.

In the argument put forward in this engagingly written, excellently organized and meticulously argued book, this simple rule triggered a cascade of changes, creating states to replace tribes, science to replace lore and law to replace custom. If you are reading this you are very probably WEIRD, and so are almost all of your friends and associates, but we are outliers on many psychological measures.

The world today has billions of inhabitants who have minds strikingly different from ours. Roughly, we weirdos are individualistic, think analytically, believe in free will, take personal responsibility, feel guilt when we misbehave and think nepotism is to be vigorously discouraged, if not outlawed. Right? They (the non-WEIRD majority) identify more strongly with family, tribe, clan and ethnic group, think more “holistically,” take responsibility for what their group does (and publicly punish those who besmirch the group’s honor), feel shame — not guilt — when they misbehave and think nepotism is a natural duty....

WEIRD folk are the more recent development, growing out of the innovation of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, the birth of states and organized religions about 3,000 years ago, then becoming “proto-WEIRD” over the last 1,500 years (thanks to the prohibition on marrying one’s cousin), culminating in the biologically sudden arrival of science, industry and the “modern” world during the last 500 years or so. WEIRD minds evolved by natural selection, but not by genetic selection; they evolved by the natural selection of cultural practices and other culturally transmitted items. 

Sounds interesting.    Other reviews have appeared in The Atlantic and (ugh) Quillete, amongst other places.

Secondly, a short article at Philosophy Now makes the case that Kant was pretty progressive in his thoughts on history:

In 1784, three years after the publication of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant published a curious article in a prominent intellectual newspaper titled: ‘Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective’. Made up of nine Propositions, the article attempted to outline the necessary elements a future historian would have to consider if he or she wanted to compile a universal human history. This may not seem like such a curious idea today, as we see this type of history frequently published, with various subjects as their catalyst. For example, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) or Harari’s Sapiens (2015) are both attempts to construct a universal history from a particular point of view. But what is curious about Kant’s short article is its discussion of conflict in history, as well as nature’s role in conflicts....

In Kant’s view history tells us that conflict is not simply a set of randomly occurring mindless acts, nor is it a sign that we are heading toward an apocalyptical nightmare. Rather, there is something integral to all conflicts no matter how multifarious they are and in what context they appear.

In Proposition Four, Kant outlines a notion commonly linked to a concept of the ‘cunning of nature’ (Hegel’s later doctrine of the ‘cunning of reason’ is a clear reference to Kant). The cunning of nature involves a feature of human social interaction which Kant calls ‘unsociable sociability’, which he defines as the human “tendency to enter into society, a tendency connected, however, with a constant resistance that continually threatens to break up this society.” Put simply, it is a natural human inclination to connect with other people and to be part of a larger whole; yet it is also part of our natural inclination to destroy these social bonds through isolationism and divisiveness. Kant argues that this dichotomy is the source of all human conflict, even attributing conflict between states as emanating from unsociable sociability: countries entering into conflict break sociable links, resulting in a state of war. We need only look at the Cold War for a striking example of unsociable sociability propelling states into dangerous and unresolvable deadlocks.

Yet Kant also attributes historical progress to it – which means that unsociable sociability is responsible for humanity developing toward more enlightened states. Without the antagonistic aspect of humanity, Kant thinks we wouldn’t be compelled to grow culturally or intellectually. In these senses, unsociable sociability is the driving force behind all human history.....

.....According to Kant’s Proposition Five, the point toward which human historical development tends is a perfectly just civil constitution, meaning an egalitarian or ‘cosmopolitan’ society where all are welcome, and equal. Kant attributes this utopian goal also to unsociable sociability, because we may learn from the conflicts it catapults us into. This is the crux of Kant’s article, and perhaps its most peculiar feature: unsociable sociability pushes human beings into conflict with each other, forcing them to learn how and how not to treat one another, and so develop moral laws. Moreover, according to Kant, this will all lead to a state whereby conflict is necessarily eventually abolished. Hence the cunning of nature: conflict occurs in the pursuit of a developmental end we are oblivious to by helping us learn from the mistakes made in history on both an individual and a global level. In a note from 1776, Kant already had a clear inkling of this idea, writing, “The useful aim of philosophical history consists in the preservation of good models and the display of instructive mistakes.”

I think this teaches us a key lesson about today. It is easy to lose sight of our ability to construct laws and institutions which prevent harm to others. It’s easy to look at the social and political situation, globally or in our own country, and determine that things can never improve – that we’re on course to collide with catastrophe. What Kant teaches us is that no matter how unlikely it appears, we must not lose hope that a perfectly just society is possible, and that the social antagonisms and conflicts we see are steps toward this goal. Without this hope we are rendered powerless to change anything.

I like his optimism.   And how ironic is it that to fulfil his vision, the side of politics in America that is most aligned in his stern view of morals is the one that must be defeated in order to make for a better future.

 

Always a conspiracy

Don't you like how, instead of admitting that it looks like there were conned by highly political partisan  Right wing spin on what Obama and people around him have done, people like this prefer to believe instead that it must be a Deep State betrayal of their Dear Leader if people haven't been arrested:

The Conservative Catholic brand is not coming back from the fact they so gullibly endorsed such an obvious un-Christian authoritarian fraud in Trump and his circle, all because of culture wars and abortion.
   

But she has seven children!

I agree entirely with this commentary in the Washington Post - it's pretty cringey, the emphasis the Republicans are putting on a judge's family:

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has seven kids. And don’t you dare forget it.

The opening day of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court was kid-friendly. It was child-obsessed. It was a little over five hours of children as talking points and visual aids and proof of unwavering conservative values. It’s hard to recall a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee that was so focused on the well-being, the deportment and the birth story of our youngest citizens. ...

The many references to Barrett’s children were a not-so-subtle pronouncement that her prolific motherhood was especially good and admirable and a sign that she was not shirking her womanly duty while she was unleashing her ambition. Barrett had it all — on terms that were acceptable to social conservatives.

If you ask me, she's setting herself up for a fall.   If her husband isn't caught having an affair (cue the "she's so busy, she never had time for me" excuse), one of two of the kids in 10 or 15 years time will do a tell all interview about how the happy family on the TV was not so happy in private.  I've seen it happen in big, apparently happy, conservative Catholic families before. 

I also agree with this tweet:

Basically, any judge who accepts a nomination in these circumstances is automatically deeply suspect, no matter how many children.

Update:  Democrats, please go ahead and pack the court - 

Update 2:  from The Onion:

Paganism re-visited

In a conversation over some craft beer last weekend, the topic of pagan practices being pretty ugly came up briefly, specifically this practice (referring here to Vikings, but I think the death of chieftains in other societies might have led to this to):

A man couldn’t marry his concubine, thus his wife didn’t feel threatened by her. They all lived together in the same household. The most powerful men among the Vikings owned sex slaves. The life of sex slaves was hard.

When a chieftain died, his men had sex with the sex slave to express love for their deceased leader. Afterwards, they killed the poor woman and cremated her together with her master. She would serve him also in the afterlife.

"...to express love for their deceased leader"!   That seems to be putting spin on the practice, to put it mildly.

Another site notes that pre-Christian Vikings took the idea of a male dominance in sex very seriously:

Calling a man by any term which suggested he played the ‘passive’ or ‘feminine’ part in homosexual sex was considered an insult so severe that the person who had been insulted had the right to avenge it in combat. Just the insult itself might be enough to get a man outlawed.

There is no apparent equivalent derogatory term for a man who played the ‘active’ part in homosexual sex. Indeed in ‘Guðmundar saga dýra’ Guðmundar plans to rape a male captive in order to break his spirit. This reflects badly on the slave, but not on the rapist, who is merely demonstrating his manliness.

Both castration and rape of defeated foes was seen as a good way of making them more effeminate, and therefore easier to control.

In this context – where the penetrator is regarded as perfectly normal and admirable, but to be the one being penetrated is to be shamed, broken, treated as a slave and ridiculed thenceforth as unmanly – it’s hard to imagine many m/m relationships existing as between equals.

From yet another article, I don't think I have heard before about men being the specific victims of sacrificial rites led by effeminate priests:

From Saxo Grammaticus, a 12th Century Christian chronicler, comes the information that the god Freyr was served by gender-variant male priests who displayed feminized behaviour and employed bells, which were considered ‘unmanly.’ They apparently enacted a symbolic sacred marriage in order to “ensure the divine fruitfulness of the season.” A ritual which took place every nine years, and consisted of the sacrifice of nine males of every species (including humans) to Freyr, who was worshipped as an erect phallus. The Priests of Freyr also performed shape shifting rites with boar masks.The ergi priests who practiced seidr also performed tasks usually associated with women, such as weaving and childrearing. The quality of their voices was was referred to as seid laeti, possibly indicating that some of them were castrati. Seidrmen were clearly differentiated from men who might occasionally indulge in same-sex relations & take the active role.The key theme here is that in surrendering themselves to passive intercourse, the ergi became a channel for the divine.

I wonder - how did one avoid becoming part of the 9 year festival?

And I can't say I know about Freyr, so here we go:

Freyr (pronounced “FREY-ur;” Old Norse Freyr, “Lord;” sometimes anglicized as “Frey”) is a god who belongs to the Vanir tribe of deities. He’s also an honorary member of the other tribe of Norse gods, the Aesir, having arrived in their fortress, Asgard, as a hostage at the closing of the Aesir-Vanir War.

Freyr was one of the most widely and passionately venerated divinities amongst the heathen Norse and other Germanic peoples. One Old Norse poem calls him “the foremost of the gods” and “hated by none.”^[1] The reasons for this aren’t hard to understand; their well-being and prosperity depended on his benevolence, which particularly manifested itself in sexual and ecological fertility, bountiful harvests, wealth, and peace. His role in providing health and abundance was often symbolized by his fylgja, the boar Gullinborsti (“Golden-Bristled”),^[2] and by his enormous, erect phallus.^[3]

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Freyr was a frequent recipient of sacrifices at various occasions, such as the blessing of a wedding^[4] or the celebration of a harvest. During harvest festivals, the sacrifice traditionally took the form of his favored animal, the boar.^[5]

This drawing of him (thankfully modest) is a popular one at several site:

 Yet a visit from the priests of Freyr was not always a worry:

We know from medieval Icelandic sources that priestesses and/or priests of Freyr traveled throughout the country on a chariot which contained a statue of the god.^[12] The significance of such processions is described by the Roman historian Tacitus, who vividly depicts the processions connected with the early Germanic goddess Nerthus, whose name is the Proto-Germanic form of the name of Freyr’s father Njord. When the chariot reached a village or town, the people laid down their arms and “every iron object” and enjoyed a period of peace and joyful festivities, reveling in the deity’s kind presence.^[13] Such processions and celebrations appear to have been a common feature of the worship of the deities the Norse called the Vanir from at least as far back as the first century CE through the Viking Age. 

Back to the human sacrifice story, from another site:

Another Freyr-related sacrifice is the Frøsblot ("Frø-sacrifice", with Frø being another name for Freyr) as recorded by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish scholar who lived c. 1150-1220 CE. In Uppsala, Sweden, a certain Haddingus is said to have instituted a yearly sacrifice to Freyr – the Frøsblot - as a way of atonement to the god, something seemingly linked to the great sacrifice at Uppsala that is supposed to have happened every nine years.

There may indeed have been a temple at Uppsala, as a famous account – based on hearsay but usually considered reasonably to moderately authentic – written by Adam of Bremen c. 1070 CE argues. Adam writes of a big, golden temple with statues of Thor, Odin, and Fricco (synonymous with Freyr), the latter adorned with an "immense phallus" (4). Every nine years, men, horses and dogs were allegedly sacrificed, their bodies swinging from trees in the sacred grove. The archaeological record does not support the existence of a temple, although there are other buildings among which a large hall have been found dating to between the 3rd and 10th centuries CE.

 Anyhow - I'm rather glad to have avoided the era.    

As I said on Saturday,  the most pleasing aspect of Christianity is that it's a religion that displaced the extremely widespread belief* in the need for continual animal or human blood sacrifice - God partook in the ultimate (self) sacrifice, and doesn't require fresh animal (or human) sacrifice any more.   Which is a kind of relief, in a practical sense.    

*  I was even surprised to read this in Journey to the West.  The Monkey King does this:

One day he instructed his four Stalwart Generals to arrange a feast for the six other kings. Oxen and horses were slaughtered, sacrifices were made to Heaven and Earth, and the assembled monsters danced, sang, and drank themselves blotto.

Chinese babies

Not that I want to upset our (slightly delayed) future Overlords, but Chinese sensitivity to imagined  historical slights is getting out of hand.  They're almost as whiny as transgender folk are towards JK Rowling (or, to be fair, as Donald Trump on the failure of people outside of his cult to also praise him):  

South Korean boyband BTS is facing a barrage of criticism in China after its leader made remarks about the Korean War and several big-name brands, including Samsung, have apparently distanced themselves from the K-pop group amid the uproar.

The controversy is the latest example of the political landmines lying in wait for big brands in China, the world's second-largest economy.

The leader of BTS, known by the initials RM, upset many people in China in a speech when the band received an award from a US-based organisation for their contribution to South Korea-US relations.

RM invoked a "history of pain" shared between South Korea and the United States and, referring to the 1950-53 Korean War, spoke of "sacrifices of countless men and women".

The war pitted South Korean and US forces against those from North Korea and China.

The comments touched off heated debate on social media in China.

"They should not make any money from China," one angry user said on the Weibo platform, referring to BTS.

"If you want to make money from Chinese fans you have to consider Chinese feelings."

Posts featuring Samsung's BTS special edition smartphones and earphones disappeared from Chinese e-commerce platforms Tmall and JD.com as the controversy swirled.

I noticed the band and their somewhat catchy song Dynamite featuring in a Samsung ad here.   They need to retire soon, or this level of celebrity is going to eat them up, in the way it usually does.

 

Very unfortunate

It's pretty rare to see significant construction accidents in Australia lately, it seems; and this one seems particularly embarrassing given where it happened.  (Not that, I presume, the school or its graduates necessarily had much to do with it, I suppose):

At least one person is believed to be dead and several injured after a building under construction at Curtin University collapsed after midday WA time on Tuesday.

The construction site at Curtin’s Bentley campus has been closed, and police, firefighters and ambulance officers rushed to the scene after part of the building collapsed at around 12.30pm....

The five-storey building under construction is part of Curtin’s new facility called Exchange, and features a glass courtyard as part of the new School of Design and the Built Environment. It was due for completion in 2021.

Weird Japanese tomb to be excavated?

From Japan Times:

The Imperial Household Agency is considering excavating Daisen Kofun in Osaka Prefecture, the country’s largest ancient burial mound, in a conservation project that could begin around next fall, sources close to the plan said Saturday.

The tomb mound in Sakai, dating back to around the middle of the 5th century, is under control of the agency as the mausoleum of Emperor Nintoku, while academic debate continues over who was actually buried there.

If the planned re-excavation project is carried out, it would be the first digging since an ancient burial complex comprising 49 tombs including Daisen Kofun was added to the World Heritage list in 2019, the sources said.

Archaeologists and historians hope the envisioned research on the tomb mound will shed light on its structure, many aspects of which remain a mystery.

I posted about this tomb about a year ago, as I hadn't previously realised they existed.   A reminder:

 

  

Some good context on "court packing"

I learnt stuff from this column at CNN. 

Another cult noted

I have to say, the New York Times Op-docs videos on Youtube are very good.  Very artfully made, sometimes a bit trivial but still extremely watchable.  Here's one I saw recently: 

And here's a creepy one about kids growing up in the narco zone of Mexico: 

There's a lot more that look interesting, but I haven't watched many yet.

Corn fritters for future reference

I love when it's cheap, fresh corn season, and over the last couple of years I've tried making corn fritters a couple of times, with mixed results.   I tried again last night, basically using this recipe except just using self raising flour instead of plain with baking soda.  I probably used more than that amount of coriander, too, but it still working out fine.   The amount of salt for this quantity seemed just right, too.  (Working out the right amount of salt by taste can be tricky.)

I'll copy the key parts of the recipe here: 

For the fritters:

For dinner, we ate them with some hot smoked salmon on top (although cold smoked salmon would be fine too) and some grilled asparagus too.  Nice.

Exactly. Why doesn't Chas Licciardello realise this?

I refer to cheery Chas on Planet America who keeps saying Biden is playing this wrong.  

Maybe something good for my ageing body?

Oh look, maybe body builders have stumbled onto something good.  From Science last month:

A dietary supplement bodybuilders use to bulk up may have a more sweeping health benefit: Staving off the ravages of old age. Mice given the substance—alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG)—were healthier as they aged, and females lived longer than mice not on the supplement.

Other compounds, like the antiaging drug rapamycin and the diabetes treatment metformin, have shown similar effects in mouse experiments. But AKG is naturally made by mice and by our own bodies, and it is already considered safe to consume by regulators.

“The big thing about this is that its safety profile is so good,” says University of North Dakota aging researcher Holly Brown-Borg, who was not involved with the study. “It has potential and should be explored further, for sure.”

AKG is part of the metabolic cycle that our cells use to make energy from food. In addition to its use by bodybuilders, doctors sometimes treat osteoporosis and kidney disease with the supplement.

The molecule grabbed attention as a possible antiaging treatment in 2014, when researchers reported AKG could extend life span by more than 50% in tiny Caenorhabditis elegans worms. That’s on par with a low-calorie diet, which has been shown to promote healthy aging, but is hard for most people to stick with. Other groups later showed life span improvements from AKG in fruit flies.

In the new study, Gordon Lithgow and Brian Kennedy of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and colleagues turned to mammals. They gave groups of 18-month-old mice (about age 55 in human years) the equivalent of 2% of their daily chow as AKG until they died, or for up to 21 months. AKG levels in blood gradually drop with age, and the scientists’ aim was to restore levels to those seen in young animals.

Some differences jumped out within a few months: “They looked much blacker, shinier, and younger” than control mice, says Azar Asadi Shahmirzadi, a postdoc at the Buck Institute who did the experiments as a graduate student. In addition, the AKG-fed mice scored an average of more than 40% better on tests of “frailty,” as measured by 31 physiological attributes including hair color, hearing, walking gait, and grip strength. And female mice lived a median of 8% to 20% longer after AKG treatment began than control mice, the group reports today in Cell Metabolism.

The AKG-eating mice did not perform better on tests of heart function or treadmill endurance, however, and the tests did not include cognitive performance.

I see it is readily available, although in variations that are confusing.

Here's some reference to a possibly dubious claim by a certain company selling the supplement to oldies under the brand name Rejuvant.    Only $150 for a 30 day supply(!).   I might have to pass on that one.

 

 

It might be slightly exaggerated...

...but this Twitter commentary on how a Trump interview on Hannity went a short time ago is pretty amusing:

 

What he said...

 And also, what she said:

Extremely obvious sexism and misogyny

It's impossible to read the conservative reactions on Twitter and the net to Kamala Harris's debate performance without seeing screamingly obvious sexism and misogyny.

From Trump calling her a "monster", to Fox News calling her "cringeworthy", to (of course I went there) Australia's pathetic Trump base at Catallaxy saying that that her very voice was unbearable and making "jokes" about her and fellatio.

It is simply an inexplicable overreaction without factoring in white, older male sexism and misogyny - the same group in which Trump still has a majority of support, at least if they low education.   

I watched a bit of her performance on Youtube and I find her inoffensive.   I will make allowances for people letting political partisanship read things into voice and mannerism that are not really there (or not so obvious, at least, to the other side), but as I say, in this case, the conservative reaction is just over the top and the reason for it transparent.

By the way:   why are journalists buying into the whole Republican line that it's really bad if Biden and Harris don't explain clearly their intention regarding "court packing"?   As someone said on Twitter, what the Republicans are doing (or trying to do - it would be hilarious if COVID casualties prevent them from having a quorum to confirm Coney Barrett before the election) is a form of deeply unethical "court packing" anyway;  and I don't see that anyone who would be inclined to vote Democrat would really care if Biden kept his cards hidden on what his party might try to do re court numbers in future.

Update:  Ahem.