Barrel Strength

This morning’s article in the National Post trumpets Capitalism made us Kinder, study says.

Obviously it is not capitalism, which is a late development of the post-1400s in Europe, but the universal human tendency to trade, which has softened barbaric manners.

“The finding, reported in the journal Science, suggests people trust and play fair with strangers because markets and religion — not some deep psychological instinct inherited from our dim tribal past — have helped shape our neural circuitry over the eons.”

“The hunter-gatherer and tribal societies studied are known for sharing among family and close acquaintances. But the researchers found fair play in monetary transactions with strangers was almost an alien concept. People in the simpler societies treated strangers less fairly, and were less likely to punish people who kept most of the money for themselves.

“Social scientists — and economists in particular — have long been baffled with the way people in large societies are so trusting and fair in dealings with strangers. Many academics have argued it is a throwback to a time when humans were hunter-gatherers.

“Mr. Henrich and his colleagues say their findings indicate playing fair with strangers is a behaviour that was favoured as the size of societies and populations grew.

“The emergence and growth of markets allowed for the exchange of goods, skills and knowledge and enabled large complex societies to emerge and function, Mr. Henrich says, noting that humans in large societies are not nearly as selfish as some would suggest.

“There are all these aspects to our lives that just seem to work, because we are not actually baboons,” Mr. Henrich says in an interview.

This is what we would have expected.

The late Toronto social theorist Jane Jacobs stated the same for many years, in a series of deeply interesting books.  She goes so far as to say that trade begat settlements, and that agriculture followed settlements, as the work of cities (in her usage, settlements whose population may have numbered in the hundreds) summoned forth agriculture (not just the gathering of seeds) to feed the makers and traders. So in her view, making and trading created settlements, settlements needed food, and agriculture supplied it. It is not necessary to agree with her on every point to acknowledge that trade has had a vast influence in shaping humanity, making it more urban, and taming manners. Anothert link to Jacobs on economies is here. As a nice old Jewish granny who was thought of by the imperceptive as a leftist, she managed to express her deep appreciation of markets and get away with it.

Now, back to the civilizing effects of markets. 

A great line from George Friedman goes like this:

“Barbarism is the belief that the manners of your tribe or village ought to be the ways of the world, and a barbarian is ready to take fire and sword to his neighbours to enforce the ways of his tribe or village.

“Civilization is the belief that one needs to pick one’s fights carefully, but that sometimes one must take fire and sword to one’s enemies to preserve the benefits of civilization.

“Decadence consists of not believing in the distinction between barbarism and civilization”.

I recommend George Friedman’s highly entertaining book, “The Next Hundred Years”for many reasons, particularly for his foresight in the rise (again) of Turkey and  for his surprizing prediction that the rise of the United States is only beginning, as the colossus that bestrides the oceans between Asia and Europe.

The study which provoked this blog entry also empasizes the role of religion in creating trust and good behaviour.

“The study also suggests world religions, such as Christianity and Islam, were a potent evolutionary force, favouring the growth of complex societies by reinforcing fairness and trust.

“The problem with large, impersonal societies is there is lots of opportunity to cheat at the margins, and to do the wrong thing,” Mr. Henrich says.

“Religion helped check bad behaviour. If you believe that there is a God watching that will sent you to hell for all eternity, then you’re less likely to take advantage of somebody.”

Mr. Henrich says policy-makers and economists need be more aware that fair play and altruism are powerful forces that motivate people to do things for the public good, such as donate blood, recycle or conserve energy.

“People will give blood freely as an altruistic act,” he says. But he notes that blood donations can actually drop when people are paid money to give blood because the cash takes away the “warm glow of altruism.”

The article by Peter Hitchens linked to here shows what happens when trust disappears.(Hitchens brother without the issues with God). Hitchens speaks of the coasened manners of the Russians after 75 years of communism, and of the horrors of Mogadishu, where truckloads of militia have reduced the place to misery and anarchy, when he wrtes:

“Together with the experience of Soviet society, it convinced me that my own civilisation was infinitely precious and utterly vulnerable, and that I was obliged to try to protect it.
When you have seen a place from which the whole apparatus of trust, civility and peace has been stripped, you are conscious as never before of the value of these things. And more curious than before about their origins, not in wealth or power but in the mind of Man and in the better angels of his nature. ”

And finally, on the subject of Turkey, trade, trust, and Islam, I recommend “Empires of the Sea” by Roger Crowley. It deals with the naval wars and piracy in the Mediterranean in the years 1521-1580. It makes clear two things:

• Ottoman policy was and remained permanent warfare against all non-Muslims, and did not depened on changes in who was the Sultan; warfare was his justification for ruling; and
• millions, not hundreds of thousands, of whites were enslaved to the Moors and the Turks. Entire parts of southern Europe were depopulated in consequence.

Thus, while world embracing religion may establish strong bonds of trust between fellow-believers, the sharp distinctions made by Islam between the faithful and the kuffar are unaffected. I would say that Christianity has had no such effect. The Christian religion teaches that all are to be extended credit, unless good reasons dictate otherwise.