Ranto Part 2: Ye Olde Times

SUPER CIVILIZE ME

What was it that allowed human beings to congregate into cities? Well, as discussed in part 1 (circuitously), there needed to be a static and abundant food supply. Check that- a food surplus. If it's true that controlling an animal's food supply helps to tame their natural impulses, then the same could be said for humans- we became different once our food supply became controlled.

The second innovation came in the form of trade. With trade involved, different sectors could concentrate and specialize in the production of a good or service, which could be traded for others. This created a 'taming' or civilizing effect. We concluded, in the deep, dark genetic boiler rooms, that we no longer needed to burn calories in physical combat to get things we wanted. We could just trade for them.

But, and here's the kicker- there's always the option to walk away from desire. The human brain takes the same lazy route that everything else in nature takes- the path of least resistance. If we want something, we calculate the amount of work, physical or occupational, that it will take to get it. And we compare that to the amount of happiness we can expect to obtain from said object. If an iPod costs 4 days salary, but will bring you years of happiness...well, expect to sell many iPods. BUT- if the work is too risky or exhausting, our brain will rationalize away the desire for the object.

So where am I going with this? Well, I'm suggesting that the novelty of the market would have died out very quickly if it weren't for one very important innovation. At the beginning, it would have been very difficult to incentivize people to work, regardless of how revolutionary some new tools might have been. To get people to accept this new way of life, we had to restrict something. We had to manipulate the first ever market, the market for markets, by locking up the food.

AAAAND HISTORY STARTS....NOW. NO, NOW

There are theories abound regarding exactly when history starts, and what the first "civilization" was. Was it the Sumerians? The Egyptians? Han Chinese hydraulic civilization? Did early cultures in East Africa count as civilizations? Or did red-headed aliens come in boats from across the stars, and kindly fill in our ancestors on burials, marriage, agriculture and the rest? I'm not really sure which one is right, and I'm not sure it's really that important. What seems relevant to me is that history began when a farmer, with a surplus, first took issue with a less talented person stealing some of his surplus. There had to be a first time for that. Up until that point, theft was...well, theft wasn't. There was no concept of ill-gotten gain, because there had to be a fundamental shift in the idea of property. That's when history started, when someone first said 'Hands off'. From there. it's not hard to extrapolate how war, management, architecture, science, high technology and law evolved into their modern day counterparts. The only 'hard art' that I can think of that took a wholly different path is medicine, and that's mainly because the other disciplines can all refer back to that initial bullshit, whereas medicine has to be less bullshitty. Of course, this refers to actual medicine- life affecting surgery and chemistry.

Anywho, back to the point. I think this is where right wing and left wing begin as well. Of course, the concept of there being a line in the sand between the two is only relevant to post-enlightenment European societies and the people they affected (read: almost everyone). But the fundamental difference begins here: one side believes in ownership, the other side believes in need. Both sides believe in freedom- the concept that one person should have no control over the other. Except that they don't. I'm going to suggest again that one side believes in God, and the other side believes in Apocalypse. But even they're not quite sure which is which.

A SLIPPERY SLOPE

The idea that civilization began is hard to argue with, since everything happens for a first time at some point. But the idea that civilization is a lineal ascension towards the heavens is a little harder to lock down. To begin with, there are bumps in the road. Egyptian civilization was highly sophisticated, but was outmuscled by a mercantile Levantine civilization. That culture had to deal with the simple but quick-learning Hellenes, who grew to enormous sophistication, only to be bamboozled by the proudly prosaic Romans. And so forth. If sophistication is to be equated with a higher capacity for reason and a more egalitarian approach to systemic problems within human societies (poverty, sickness, substance abuse, etc), then it's hard to say we're in the most advanced window even now. Even if one were to take a 'right wing' view that sophistication is measured in terms of personal freedom and direct compensation for work that produces value, it could be easily argued that we've been in better places before.

Ok, but even accounting for bumps in the road, one could say that it's still an ascension. On a line graph, it might look a little jagged, but it still goes up, right? And it's a common academic conceit to say that people conceive of the modern day as being inferior to a golden past, but that really, everything is much better than it used to be. But even looking within the last 200 years, a period in which statistics has become the rigorous discipline we now take it to be, there's no evidence we're going up. The median age at death hasn't budged nearly as much as we think it has, leaps in technology have been enormous, but not proportionally superior to other ages of discovery and innovation, and human health isn't necessarily better as a whole. This isn't being creative with the stats, this is just trying to look at the whole situation.

LOOK, SERIOUSLY, TASTE IT. IT'S GOOD

I remember a friend asking me what "Jewish" means. I grew up in the stable and remarkably self-contained Jewish community of Melbourne, Australia. When i got out of school and into the workforce, I discovered that people who had grown up 30 minutes away by car had no idea what a Jew was, or how Jewish religion and culture was distinct from others.

I tried to think of a novel metaphor to explain how Jewish culture differed from Christian culture, specifically in light of the inevitable question about race, religion and nationality. Actually, the way the conversation went was :

- What nationality are you
- Jewish/American
- No, but nationality
- I guess Polish.
- What does it mean that you're Jewish?

So how do you answer this without starting from the year dot? Clearly, I have no problem starting from the year dot. But I wanted to see if I could put it into a context my friend could quickly get his head around. So I tried PC vs Mac.

Judaism is similar to Apple. It's a closed system, encompassing a hardware and software model. You can't easily graft Judaism onto another nationality, (which I surmised was my friend's word for what others may call ethnicity) and you can't easily operate another software model onto the Jewish ethnic group. Benjamin Disraeli may have been baptized as a Christian and lived a devout Christian life while serving as a member of parliament and Queen Vic's Prime Minister; but neither he nor his contemporaries could resist labeling him as Jewish. On the flipside, the Khazars, a nomadic central asian kingdom, tried taking up Judaism as an antidote to Christian and Muslim influences in the middle ages. It never caught on with the people.

So, to extend the metaphor, Judaism works for Jewish people, the same way Apple software works best on Apple hardware. Can Apple hardware run other OS's? Sure! But not well. And you can run Apple software on a PC, but why bother? The point seems to get lost. I know this metaphor breaks down in light of more up to date Macs that run Windows well, because the guts are the same as a PC. You could string out the metaphor and say this is analogous with Jewish people becoming more "white", with intermarriage being so high- but Jesus, enough already.

Now, how is Christianity like Microsoft? Well, like Microsoft did with Apple, Christianity took some initial cues from Judaism, but made the format much more open. Christianity pared back some functionality to allow for more open market readiness. They took away the hardware compatibility issue, by making it so that you didn't have to be ethnically Jewish, and you didn't need to be circumcised. They took away some of the more restrictive software elements, by eliminating dietary regulations and strict guidelines regarding the Sabbath. They kept a lot of the cool stuff- the all-powerful God, the asceticism- and added some killer apps of their own. Most spectacularly, they added the idea of Salvation. That's the killer app of Christianity, the way documentation is the killer app of Windows, and e-mail is the killer app of the internet. It adds something so fundamental to the mix, that other cultures started to budget in Christianity as a necessary expense. Because Hell is as bad as the competition being quicker and more organized than you are, and as bad as being unable to communicate quickly where others can.

In this metaphor, companies like HP, Gateway, Dell, Acer, Asus...they start to look like the Greeks, the Romans, the Gauls, the Teutons...they were hardware folk who paid a license to adopt a great system and graft it onto their 'hardware' cultures- the license fee being a tithe to a centralized church. Sometimes the fit was imperfect, so things got adjusted, cottage industries were started to smooth over the differences...think of Adobe and Java and Cisco, and then think of the fragmentation of the European Christian landscape. Think of all the Sony software you get on your desktop with a new Vaio, and then think of Christmas trees, Yule logs, easter rabbits and other conventions that fit with ancient European cultures, but have nothing to do with the New Testament.

So what's the relevance of this long detour? The civilization that we live in now, with it's fundamentals in Christianity and agriculture, is based on the concept of "what we have is very good, and we recommend you take it up as well". It's hard to argue with that logic, because...here we are! Obviously, our ancestors thought it was good, because they took it up. This culture then, must be superior to cultures it supplanted!

That approach should work with Microsoft as well. It's on 95% of machines around the world. Apple, by comparison, is a minnow. So why does Apple inspire such loyalty? And why are Apple fans sometimes portrayed as being brain-dead zombies suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, trapped into an ecosystem that sucks their wallets dry, while Windows users can blaze a free trail? Because of bullshit.

Look, I'm not saying Apple is better, or that Judaism is better, or anything like that. That's not really the conversation here. But one thing to point out- Microsoft got it's market power with clever legal, marketing and licensing tricks. It's underlying product was excellent; but soon, that wasn't as important as how well it could lock you in with sophisticated deals.

Christianity has things to recommend it over Judaism, and for that fact, most other faith software. The idea of Grace, the concept of a (new) covenant with God, and the idea that you're pre-damned, and need to work towards Salvation- these are exciting, world beating innovations. That got the ball rolling. That allowed the Church to enter the spiritual market. But it was their vertical integration- the idea of Christian governments and Christian armies- that allowed them to win market dominance. And after a while, that was the source of their power, not their spiritual innovation. Meanwhile, The Jews carried on, with their own civilization in the background, borrowing bits and lending bits as they went, occasionally beaten down in the market (very beaten down), but staying true to a closed system that only changed on their terms. Other groups weren't so lucky. Some died out in body and spirit, others in spirit only. A big heap joined the party to the extent that they became the party. It's like how "Roman" once meant people from the city and region of Rome, then came to mean people who adopted Roman culture, then came to mean the Greek Christians in Byzantium, then came to mean a plurality of Germans.

So what's the problem here? Christianity isn't really what this long, tired rant is all about. In a way, it's a minority player now too; a supporting act. The real star of the show here is the whole industry of Markets. The idea of trade and rewarding value and merit. This idea, a spectacular, world changing idea, is what's really at stake. And if History began with the idea of property, it may be at a fundamentally precarious point right now. A confused point, where the left and right are more divided than ever, but where fundamental meanings are clouded in a fog of bullshit. Where corporations, which mimic governments, are champions of the right, and where progressive innovators are champions of the left. Where faith, mystery and personal peccadilloes are right wing stalwarts, while firm handshakes, clear visions and operational efficiency are left-wing causes. How did we get this way? What did World War 2 have to do with it? And at what point does right-wing anarchy meet left-wing anarchy to make...anarchy?

Next up: Modern Bullshit and Bullshit of the Future