Who Would Make Better Neighbors

From Man Mountain Molehill via e-mail.

Who would you rather have for neighbors?
pot heads
pill heads
alcoholics
puritan witch-hunting nutjobs

Which echos Robert Heinlein:

“Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”

Wind Power To Be Collected More Efficiently

It will be done by optimizing siting.

Evolution is providing the inspiration for University of Adelaide computer science research to find the best placement of turbines to increase wind farm productivity.

Senior Lecturer Dr Frank Neumann, from the School of Computer Science, is using a “selection of the fittest” step-by-step approach called “evolutionary algorithms” to optimise wind turbine placement. This takes into account wake effects, the minimum amount of land needed, wind factors and the complex aerodynamics of wind turbines.

What a Nice Bit Of Work. Collecting energy which is mostly useless more efficiently is a big advance. Evidently storage – which is the real missing ingredient is more difficult.

Not useless you say? This story says otherwise.

Today in Scotland, as the Great Recession rolls on, and as newly reprimitivized “wind farms” replace more tried and true — and apparently predictable – methods of electricity generation, history rhymes rather nicely. The BBC reports, “Six Scottish windfarms were paid up to £300,000 to stop producing energy, it has emerged:”

I guess wind is different. With normal power plants you pay for the energy used. With wind plants unusable energy now has value. Well not to civilization of course. But the wind farmers do quite nicely.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Master Manipulators

I'm noodling around the net and what do I find? Another conspiracy. One I call The Master Manipulators. Now if you watch the first few minutes of the video you will hear a startling revelation:

Happy People Are Docile.

And from this the master manipulators get the idea: "The way to control people is to make them happy."

Scary.

Unfortunately they are competing with "The way to make people (well a lot of them anyway) happy is to leave them alone."

I predict trouble.

In the end it always comes down to: "We did everything we could to make you happy and you are still not happy. You ingrates. Now we will have to shoot you."

Of course there is some truth to the statement about happy people. It is the essence of civilization. You only get civilization where there is enough to eat for long enough. And ultimately if you use agriculture to assure food plenty control is complete. And that happened a very long time ago.

You can read about it here:

Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

Bill Is Oil Slick

Bill? That would be our former President Bill Clinton talking about oil. And what is he saying about oil?

Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that delays in offshore oil and gas drilling permits are “ridiculous” at a time when the economy is still rebuilding, according to attendees at the IHS CERAWeek conference.

Clinton spoke on a panel with former President George W. Bush that was closed to the media. Video of their moderated talk with IHS CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin was also prohibited. …

Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it,” according to Noe and others.

Every thing is fine - for now though. And how do we know they are fine? Well US production is up.

The administration rightly notes that domestic oil and natural gas production have increased since 2008, while imports have decreased.

OK, but: Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute told Environment & Energy Publishing, "The increased production levels in 2010 are a credit to the vision of previous administrations." Milito credited the 1995 Deepwater Royalty Relief Act signed by Bill Clinton and passed by a GOP-controlled Congress.

So maybe Bill knows something Obama doesn't know. What might that be?

Clinton himself lamented "ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn't need it." The administration didn't issue a permit since the blowout until last month -- and then only after a federal judge's prompting.

Not to mention the steady job-killing creep of climbing gasoline prices.

There always has been a corner of Obamaland that doesn't appreciate the job-creating properties of cheap fuel. Now-Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Wall Street Journal, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." Chu said that in September 2008 -- and still Obama picked him for the slot.

Civilization runs on energy. In fact the more energy you can run through your system the more civilization you get. So why would our President be trying to strangle future oil supplies? I think you can come to one of two conclusions.

1. He doesn't understand
2. He does

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Uncivil?

Civilization runs on energy. The lower the cost of energy the more civilization. What exactly do people who want intermittent energy sources at 3X the cost of current steady sources have against civilization?

The Ruins Of Detroit

I was reading a bit in The Weekly Standard about Detroit.

As the night wears on, Charlie grows defensive, and almost defiant, about Detroit. He recounts everything it's done for the country, insists the city still matters and won't disappear, speculates about the potential for it to become a major port since "water is the new oil," and insists that Henry Ford is more important to history than Jesus Christ since "even Muslims drive Toyotas." At this, Patterson, a good Catholic boy, leans into my tape recorder, "That was Charlie. .  .  . When I go home tonight, I will make the sign of the cross and pray to Henry Ford."

Charlie heads for the restroom, and Patterson grows philosophical: "Detroit's history has gone the way of Rome and Athens and Constantinople. It is what history does. History moves on. And history has moved away from the Babylonian Empire. It moved away from Egypt. It be what it be. .  .  . I think Detroit sees itself in its rearview mirror. But Detroit will never again be where those other cities were, including Detroit."

And then I got a heads up from a site I had posted at a couple of years ago which reminded me of a pictorial essay The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.

Now all this is too fresh to be just an interesting ruin. It still hurts to see wealth turn into decay. Give it another 100 or 200 years and it will be an archaeological site and not the screaming pain of a city in its death throes. Civilization has moved on. Water ways are not so important for transporting industrial goods. The graft and political encrustations of Detroit are no longer supportable. Factories that were once state of the art are now too much overhead for changed technology. The layouts are wrong. The attitudes of the people are too hardened. Too much "this is the way it has always been done". So the last of the life is being sucked out of Detroit. It is sad. But we are too close. In a hundred years it will just be "interesting".

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Doing The Right Thing

One of my readers has been having a conversation with me about what she can do to change the world. Specifically the energy sector. Something overlooked, like growing your own biodiesel or something? She couldn't see much of a future if our industrial system stays static - dependent on limited resources. Energy is the lifeblood of civilization after all. My answer:

Right now there is not much that can be done even if you wanted the "right" products - they are not available at any reasonable price. Take plug in hybrids. Excellent idea. Sound engineering. You can't get it (unobtanium). And even if you could get it, I'd advise you let the rich buy in at first until the technology has gotten a significant field shakedown. That is their proper function in life: to bear the costs of trying new commercial ideas. Expensive hobbies. Electricity for the home in 1890 say. Or Tesla Roadsters today.

Most of the action right now is industrial. Things like using solar to shave the afternoon air conditioning peak electric charges. That means the sales potential is there for demand metered companies - which is basically the commercial sector.

If you were an engineer (or technician or even service provider) I could give you some suggestions. Right now working for a solar cell, or wind, or biodiesel company would be the best thing to do. Or a research lab.If you can't be a scientist or engineer, sweep the floors.

We are on the path. What we must do is let the system evolve as much as possible. We must not choose any one path too soon. Industrial systems are no different than plants. We want them to grow towards the light and bend with the winds. To do that we must give the light and wind time to influence the plant. If we short circuit that too much because of fear or politics we will wind up with less than the best system.

I wish I had a better answer for you.

Fecal Importance

Half the harm in the world is due to people who want fecal importance.

i.e. they crap on you to make themselves feel important.

With apologies to T.S. Eliot

Inspired by this thread and the comments at Samizdata.

HT Instapundit

Civilization

Civilization is hard.

The first requirement is enough food to eat. Hungry men are hard to civilize.

The second is to act civilized. No fighting in the war room. The corallary to that is give up Tribalism.

Civilized Behavior

I was reading a post at The Volokh Conspiracy about step-father, step daughter incest. A commenter noted that 5,000 years of civilization proves that this is a bad idea. Actually it doesn't. Here is my comment on why:

Did some one mention 5,000 years of civilization?

It was not uncommon for Pharoahs of Egypt to marry their biological sisters.

I don't think that bears on the current issue in the 21st Century, but one must remember that civilized people have had some strange ideas from time to time.

In the ME first cousin marriages are not uncommon. I don't know about uncle/niece marriages. Of course there are many who say the ME is uncivilized and I might tend to agree.

Tribalism

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

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

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

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

1. Avodah zarah - Do not worship false gods.

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

2. Shefichat damim - Do not murder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update: 26 Sept '06 1651z

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

Update: 27 Sept '06 1803z

Clayton Cramer comments.

Update: 30 Sept '06 0059z

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


Update: 02 Oct. '06 0807z

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

Update: 16 Oct. '06 1405z

Israel Matzav has a good bit on tribalism in Gaza.

Cross Posted at Classical Values 01 April '08.

Thanks!

Reader Paul sent me this link to a letter to the American people by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Dear Americans:

As I am visiting the United States for the second time representing free and democratic Iraq, I felt it my duty to give you an update on what has been achieved in Iraq over the past year and on the challenges that lie ahead.

The first thing I would like to convey is the gratitude of all Iraqis, who are fighting for a democratic government and a civil society, to the Americans.

Without your commitment, our struggle against despotism could not have made the progress that we have achieved. No expression of thanks could be enough for those who lost loved ones in Iraq. We feel your pain, we honor your sacrifice and we will never forget you.

To those of you who have family and friends in Iraq today, we say: Your sons and daughters are helping us through a historic transition. We will always remember the enormous sacrifice that America is making for Iraq.

Thanks to the United States, we are transforming Iraq from a country that was ruled by fear, repression and dictatorship into a country that is ruled by democracy and has the values of equality, tolerance, human rights and the rule of law at its heart.

April 9, 2003, the day of liberation, heralded a new era in the history of Iraq and the region. That day triggered a sequence of events that laid the foundation of a modern Iraq that is at peace with itself and the world.

All segments of Iraqi society have benefited from liberation. Under Saddam Hussein, the majority of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq were marginalized, Saddam and his gang were ruling in the name of this community. But in reality, the Sunni Arabs never had the chance to choose their representatives democratically and have a say about their future. Today, they have 58 deputies in Parliament, a vice president, a deputy prime minister and a speaker of Parliament; all were elected by the people of Iraq.

...The battle in Iraq today is not between the various communities. Their elected representatives have agreed on a government of national unity and on national reconciliation. Nor is it a battle between civilizations, as some have seen it.

It is a war "about civilization" as Prime Minister Tony Blair has phrased it so well - the conflict is between those who believe in having a civilization and those who don't believe in having one at all. As you no doubt already understand, we are fighting a terribly difficult war in Iraq. We are doing everything within our power to protect our people from this clear form of fascism that seduces them into civil war.

There is more. Read it all for it is good.