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Javier E

The Enduring Power of Virtue - James Fallows - International - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...73149

virtue self-control Confucius values china culture education

shared by Javier E on 29 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • He posed the cultivation of virtue as a superior alternative to the manipulation or coercion of behavior through policy.
  • I'll highlight three virtues from Confucius's thought that I believe are the basic building blocks for all other virtues: One is rén (仁), benevolence or compassion. Another is self-control, which Confucius believed was enforced and nurtured by adhering to proper forms of behavior, or lǐ (礼). And, the third is wise judgment about how to turn benevolent intention into action of a kind that avoids the proverbial road to hell.
  • public discourse about virtue is muted. To abuse a recent parlour game, below is a graph of the rate of occurrence of the words "virtue" and "technology" in Google's Ngram Viewer, which plots frequency of words occurring in books over time. We see a rapid rise of technology in the last forty years against a two-century slide in virtue. (Is it a coincidence that the crossover happens around 1970, the same year I called out in yesterday's graph? Somewhat similar results are had with "virtue" against "institutions," "policies," and "systems.")
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  • I'd go even further. Virtues are paramount because they're the ultimate cause of good consequences, at least among those causes within human control.
  • While many virtue theorists insist that virtues are intrinsically and morally good, Driver defines virtue strictly in terms of outcomes. To her, a virtue is a "character trait that systematically produces good consequences." A trait is a virtue only if it tends to cause good consequences.
  • What the earthquake aftermath shows, however, is the remarkable power of virtue, even in the absence of any explicit legislation or enforcement. Virtue works without TIPS (technologies, institutions, policies, and systems), even though the converse isn't true.
  • Modern psychology research is confirming the power of virtue, as well, and the work on self-control is representative.
  • "Self-control, then, is one of the crucial mechanisms that had to improve in humans, to enable culture to succeed."
  • "Because their persons were cultivated, their families were in order. Because their families were in order, their states were well-governed. Because their states were well-governed, the whole kingdom prospered. From the sovereign down to the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides."
krystalxu

A Look at Gender Expectations in Japanese Society - Japan Powered - 0 views

www.japanpowered.com/...pectations-in-japanese-society

gender role tradition men women equality women role history society Japan culture

shared by krystalxu on 13 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Gender roles are defined by culture more than physical differences between men and women.
  • independence is not considered a desirable trait for a man in China
  • Men were expected to be loyal to their lords; women were to be loyal to their family and husband.
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  • Japan was a fairly equitable matriarchal society until Confucian ideas immigrated from China.
  • women could own and inherit property and family position in feudal Japan.
  • They were encouraged by propaganda to be married to the nation.
  • Poor women were drafted by the Japanese government to sexually service military men.
  • Discrimination based on gender was forbidden by the Japanese Constitution.
  • Modern Japanese gender roles revolve around their vertical society where someone’s identity is a part of their group identity.
  • Both genders are also delaying marriage. The stigma of being single is fading for both genders, most of all for women.
  • Genders should be brought up differently
  • The roles also work within the vertical social structure of senior-junior relations
  • the typical American ideal of the “macho” alpha male is frowned upon in Japanese society.
  • Guys are expected to be well rounded in art, music, literature, and more just like in feudal Japan
  • Girls in anime make a huge deal out of making lunch for their favorite guy because it is a wifely thing.
  • the ideal male character is rather feminine
  • Cooking well shows how the character is well rounded and able to support the woman should she have a career of her own.
  • Sweets are considered unmanly.
  • some bakeries have taken to making huge portion sizes so guys can feel less feminine about having a sweet tooth.
Javier E

Being rich wrecks your soul. We used to know that. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...7-9fc6-c7ef4bc58d13_story.html

rich wealth morality vice evil soul corruption

shared by Javier E on 25 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • We used to think that having vast sums of money was bad and in particular bad for you — that it harmed your character, warping your behavior and corrupting your soul. We thought the rich were different, and different for the worse.
  • Today, however, we seem less confident of this. We seem to view wealth as simply good or neutral, and chalk up the failures of individual wealthy people to their own personal flaws, not their riches.
  • The rich are the worst tax evaders, and, as The Washington Post has detailed, they are hiding vast sums from public scrutiny in secret overseas bank accounts.
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  • The point is not necessarily that wealth is intrinsically and everywhere evil, but that it is dangerous — that it should be eyed with caution and suspicion, and definitely not pursued as an end in itself; that great riches pose great risks to their owners; and that societies are right to stigmatize the storing up of untold wealt
  • Over the past few years, a pile of studies from the behavioral sciences has appeared, and they all say, more or less, “Being rich is really bad for you.” Wealth, it turns out, leads to behavioral and psychological maladies. The rich act and think in misdirected ways.
  • When it comes to a broad range of vices, the rich outperform everybody else. They are much more likely than the rest of humanity to shoplift and cheat , for example, and they are more apt to be adulterers and to drink a great deal. They are even more likely to take candy that is meant for children.
  • The idea that wealth is morally perilous has an impressive philosophical and religious pedigree. Ancient Stoic philosophers railed against greed and luxury, and Roman historians such as Tacitus lay many of the empire’s struggles at the feet of imperial avarice. Confucius lived an austere life. The Buddha famously left his opulent palace behind. And Jesus didn’t exactly go easy on the rich, either — think camels and needles, for starters
  • They also give proportionally less to charity — not surprising, since they exhibit significantly less compassion and empathy toward suffering people.
  • Studies also find that members of the upper class are worse than ordinary folks at “reading” people’ s emotions and are far more likely to be disengaged from the people with whom they are interacting — instead absorbed in doodling, checking their phones or what have you. Some studies go even further, suggesting that rich people, especially stockbrokers and their ilk (such as venture capitalists, whom we once called “robber barons”), are more competitive, impulsive and reckless than medically diagnosed psychopaths.
  • Some studies go so far as to suggest that simply being around great material wealth makes people less willing to share. That’s right: Vast sums of money poison not only those who possess them but even those who are merely around them. This helps explain why the nasty ethos of Wall Street has percolated down, including to our politics (though we really didn’t need much help there).
  • Certain conservative institutions, enjoying the backing of billionaires such as the Koch brothers, have thrown a ton of money at pseudo-academics and “thought leaders” to normalize and legitimate obscene piles of lucre
  • They produced arguments that suggest that high salaries naturally flowed from extreme talent and merit, thus baptizing wealth as simply some excellent people’s wholly legitimate rewards. These arguments were happily regurgitated by conservative media figures and politicians, eventually seeping into the broader public and replacing the folk wisdom of yore.
Javier E

Andrew Sullivan: You Say You Want A Revolution? - 0 views

nymag.com/...say-you-want-a-revolution.html

revolution iconoclasm woke Cultural Revolution Mao Jacobin cultural repression illiberal orwell extremism

shared by Javier E on 20 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • One of the things you know if you were brought up as a Catholic in a Protestant country, as I was, is how the attempted extirpation of England’s historic Catholic faith was enforced not just by executions, imprisonments, and public burnings but also by the destruction of monuments, statues, artifacts, paintings, buildings, and sacred sculptures. The shift in consciousness that the religious revolution required could not be sustained by words or terror alone. The new regime — an early pre-totalitarian revolution imposed from the top down — had to remove all signs of what had come before.
  • The impulse for wiping the slate clean is universal. Injustices mount; moderation seems inappropriate; radicalism wins and then tries to destroy the legacy of the past as a whole.
  • for true revolutionary potential, it’s helpful if these monuments are torn down by popular uprisings. That adds to the symbolism of a new era, even if it also adds to the chaos. That was the case in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, when the younger generation, egged on by the regime, went to work on any public symbols or statues they deemed problematically counterrevolutionary, creating a reign of terror that even surpassed France’s.
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  • Mao’s model is instructive in another way. It shows you what happens when a mob is actually quietly supported by elites, who use it to advance their own goals. The Red Guards did what they did — to their friends, and parents, and teachers — in the spirit of the Communist regime itself.
  • bram X. Kendi, the New York Times best seller who insists that everyone is either racist or anti-racist, now has a children’s book to indoctrinate toddlers on one side of this crude binary
  • Revolutionary moments also require public confessions of iniquity by those complicit in oppression.
  • These now seem to come almost daily. I’m still marveling this week at the apology the actress Jenny Slate gave for voicing a biracial cartoon character. It’s a classic confession of counterrevolutionary error: “I acknowledge how my original reasoning was flawed and that it existed as an example of white privilege and unjust allowances made within a system of societal white supremacy … Ending my portrayal of ‘Missy’ is one step in a life-long process of uncovering the racism in my actions.” For Slate to survive in her career, she had to go full Cersei in her walk of shame.
  • They murdered and tortured, and subjected opponents to public humiliations — accompanied by the gleeful ransacking of religious and cultural sites. In their attack on the Temple of Confucius, almost 7,000 priceless artifacts were destroyed. By the end of the revolution, almost two-thirds of Beijing’s historical sites had been destroyed in a frenzy of destruction against “the four olds: old customs, old habits, old culture, and old ideas.” Mao first blessed, then reined in these vandals.
  • take this position voiced on Twitter by a chemistry professor at Queen’s University in Canada this week: “Here’s the thing: If whatever institution you are a part of is not COMPLETELY representative of the population you can draw from, you can draw only two conclusions. 1) Bias against the underrepresented groups exists or 2) the underrepresented groups are inherently less qualified.”
  • Other factors — such as economics or culture or individual choice or group preference — are banished from consideration.
  • Revolutions also encourage individuals to take matters in their own hands. The distinguished liberal philosopher Michael Walzer recently noted how mutual social policing has a long and not-so-lovely history — particularly in post–Reformation Europe, in what he has called “the revolution of the saints.”
  • Revolutionaries also create new forms of language to dismantle the existing order. Under Mao, “linguistic engineering” was integral to identifying counterrevolutionaries, and so it is today.
  • The use of the term “white supremacy” to mean not the KKK or the antebellum South but American society as a whole in the 21st century has become routine on the left, as if it were now beyond dispute.
  • The word “women,” J.K. Rowling had the temerity to point out, is now being replaced by “people who menstruate.”
  • The word “oppression” now includes not only being herded into Uighur reeducation camps but also feeling awkward as a sophomore in an Ivy League school.
  • The word “racist,” which was widely understood quite recently to be prejudicial treatment of an individual based on the color of their skin, now requires no intent to be racist in the former sense, just acquiescence in something called “structural racism,” which can mean any difference in outcomes among racial groupings. Being color-blind is therefore now being racist.
  • And there is no escaping this. The woke shift their language all the time, so that words that were one day fine are now utterly reprehensible.
  • You can’t keep up — which is the point. (A good resource for understanding this new constantly changing language of ideology is “Translations From the Wokish.”) The result is an exercise of cultural power through linguistic distortion.
  • So, yes, this is an Orwellian moment
  • It’s not a moment of reform but of a revolutionary break, sustained in part by much of the liberal Establishment.
  • Even good and important causes, like exposing and stopping police brutality, can morph very easily from an exercise in overdue reform into a revolutionary spasm. There has been much good done by the demonstrations forcing us all to understand better how our fellow citizens are mistreated by the agents of the state or worn down by the residue of past and present inequality.
  • But the zeal and certainty of its more revolutionary features threaten to undo a great deal of that goodwill.
  • The movement’s destruction of even abolitionist statues, its vandalism of monuments to even George Washington, its crude demonization of figures like Jefferson, its coerced public confessions, its pitiless wreckage of people’s lives and livelihoods, its crude ideological Manichaeanism, its struggle sessions and mandated anti-racism courses, its purging of cultural institutions of dissidents, its abandonment of objective tests in higher education (replacing them with quotas and a commitment to ideology), and its desire to upend a country’s sustained meaning and practices are deeply reminiscent of some very ugly predecessors.
  • But the erasure of the past means a tyranny of the present. In the words of Orwell, a truly successful ideological revolution means that “every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
  • We are not there yet. But unless we recognize the illiberal malignancy of some of what we face, and stand up to it with courage and candor, we soon will be.
Javier E

Chartbook 328 An economics Nobel for Biden's neocon moment. On AJR's "Whig" philosophy ... - 0 views

adamtooze.substack.com/...artbook-328-an-economics-nobel

nobel biden policy culture history US politics neocon china

shared by Javier E on 19 Oct 24 - No Cached
  • Through their many papers and books including Why Nations Fail and Power and Progress, these economists have gone well beyond standard analysis of supply and demand, elevating the role of institutions, power, inclusivity, and exploitation in understanding cross-country differences in economic outcomes. Such an expansion of the scope of what’s fair game for economic analysis has had real world implications for our Administration’s policy agenda. The work of these newly-minted Nobelists has significantly informed CEA’s analysis, in areas such as inequality, worker bargaining power, race, gender, climate, and pathways to opportunity. We are thrilled to see such important, pathbreaking, historically-grounded, and timely work get the credit and acknowledgement it deserves.
  • I must admit that before reading the Boushey and Bernstein comments, I had not made the connection between the work of AJR and Bidenomics. On reflection, I think it is very illuminating.
  • a series of key aspects of their research agenda were clear: 1. institutions shape economic growth as much as economic growth shapes institutions. They are skeptical, therefore, of crude materialist or modernization theories, that see the influence running from technology and economics to institutions and do not allow for a reverse flow
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  • 2. They are interested in history and in geography, but do not accept either as fate. Political choices are decisive
  • 3. Political choices have ultimately to be explained by struggles within elites and between elites and the populations they govern.
  • They will go on, as the Nobel citation explains, to combine an account of historical opportunities, provided by crises, with a study of elite dynamics and struggles between the population and the ruling elite.
  • because they operate in the sphere of economics it is often also cast in terms of models that formalize political economy in mathematical terms. To be honest it is not obvious what is gained by those exercises in formalization. But they are de rigeur in the discipline.
  • Already in 2009 James Robinson was pleading for an empirical approach to industrial policy.
  • hose institutions are decided by politics. And the most propitious institutions for long-run economic growth driven by innovation, are institutions based on rights and freedom
  • This is Acemoglu writing in 2012:
  • Boushey cites Acemoglu’s work from the 2010s where he moved beyond the consensus amongst economists that focused on carbon pricing and carbon taxing to insist on the need to use policy to promote the development of clean energy technology, thus enabling more rapid switching to renewable energy.
  • The head of President Biden’s CEA, Jared Bernstein, studied music and social work. He has no degree in economics. Some of Kamala Harris’ top economic advisers — from Brian Deese to Mike Pyle to Deanne Millison — are all lawyers. And on issues from free trade to immigration to tax policy to rent and price controls, both the Trump and Harris campaigns are throwing bedrock economic ideas in the trash can and embracing heterodox, populist ideas that might get you laughed at in economics courses.
  • I discuss the role of industrial policy in development. I make five arguments. First, from a theoretical point of view there are good grounds for believing that industrial policy can play an important role in promoting development
  • Second, there certainly are examples where industrial policy has played this role
  • Third, for every such example there are others where industrial policy has been a failure and may even have impeded development.
  • Fourth, the difference between these second and third cases rests in the politics of policy. Industrial policy has been successful when those with political power who have implemented the policy have either themselves directly wished for industrialization to succeed, or been forced to act in this way by the incentives generated by political institutions
  • These arguments imply that we need to stop thinking of normative industry policy and instead begin to develop a satisfactory positive approach if we are ever to help poor countries to industrialize.
  • The general conclusion, however, is extremely familiar. Technology and capital accumulation are key to economic growth. They themselves are shaped by institutions.
  • It is hardly surprising, therefore, that leading economic advisors in the Biden administration see them as kindred spirits. After all, the prevailing tone around the White House in recent years has been described by Allison Schrager at Bloomberg as Yale Law School economics.
  • The figure for whom this quip was coined was Jake Sullivan, who has had a huge influence in setting the economic agenda of the administration
  • the point has wider application
  • Clearly, AJR’s work over the last quarter century fits well with the new tone and self-conception of economics in policy-making in Washington today. Though highly competent in technical terms, they are not debating the finer points of monetary economics or time series econometrics. They are interested in the interface between economics, politics, law and institutions.
  • they share a worldview. They are skeptical of free trade. They bash big business. They see the decline of manufacturing not as a natural evolution of the economy but as a policy catastrophe that needs fixing. They support industrial policy, or a more muscular role for the government in shaping industry with policies like tariffs and subsidies
  • The President personally is enamored of the democracy v. autocracy framing. The more technical side of policy-making wagers that Western models of innovation and research will out perform their Chinese counterparts
  • The rise of the Yale Law School of Economics seems to say more about the political winds of our times and the declining popularity of economists and their ideas than anything. Free-market policies — sometimes called “neoliberalism” — are unpopular on both sides of the political aisle right now.
  • All this also means, that folks that I once described as gatekeepers - blue-blooded economists like Larry Summers, for instance - have lost influence.
  • Not that AJR are outsiders. But their arguments are capacious enough to embrace a variety of disciplines, to address big question and yet also avoid being excessively technically prescriptive. Their writing is policy relevant without intruding on the discretion of the actual policymakers.
  • Though Boushey and Bernstein point to more technical essays, in the current moment, it is actually’s AJR’s macrohistorical narrative that is most in keeping with the mood in Washington.
  • If there is a red thread running through the Biden administration it is a return to a neoconservative framing of the relationship between the US and China
  • China owes the growth it has so far achieved to the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. In AJR’s terms these were a move towards a rights-based inclusive order. The slow down in recent year is then attributed to the failure to continue that reform momentum.
  • The link between the two levels is the presumption that “free societies” produce more first-class patents and top-class STEM researchers. This is precisely what Acemoglu’s “rights revolution” promises.
  • The historical narrative developed by Acemoglu and Robinson in books like Why Nations Fail, is very much in tune with this kind of thinking. Encompassing inclusive institutions brought about by political revolutions replace extractive elitist institutions and thus set the incentives for investment and private accumulation.
  • AJR do not simply dismiss the Chinese growth experience. As Acemoglu acknowledges: China has posed a “bit of a challenge” to that argument, as Beijing has been “pouring investment” into the innovative fields of artificial intelligence and electric vehicles.
  • The CCP in short acts as a non-liberal but inclusive regime. Its anti-corruption drives confirm this ambition and the work necessary to maintain that claim.
  • AJR are too realistic simply to deny these facts. But their claim is that though such structures can work for a while, in due course, if growth is to continue, there must be a transition.
  • They think a lot about dividing up the economic pie, Schrager says, and less about growing it
  • “Our analysis,” says Acemoglu, “is that China is experiencing growth under extractive institutions — under the authoritarian grip of the Communist Party, which has been able to monopolize power and mobilize resources at a scale that has allowed for a burst of economic growth starting from a very low base,” but it’s not sustainable because it doesn’t foster the degree of “creative destruction” that is so vital for innovation and higher incomes.
  • As Acemoglu remarked: “… my perspective is generally that these authoritarian regimes, for a variety of reasons, are going to have a harder time in achieving long-term, sustainable innovation outcomes,” he said.
  • “I think the conclusion of their work tells us that institutions are the most critical [to a country’s economic development]. This also has big implications for China’s way forward,” said prominent Chinese economist Xiang Songzuo, who added that the scholars’ conclusions were applicable to the China model. “Only by moving towards further marketising our economy, emphasising on the protection of intellectual property, private companies, fair market competition and upholding the spirit of entrepreneurship, can our economy attain sustainable growth, and our people can have higher incomes.”
  • tinkering with 77-article proposals from the NDRC does not do justice to the historical vision of Acemoglu and Robinson.
  • AJR’s agenda was once tightly formulated and specified. In recent years it has become increasingly wide-ranging. Whereas their aim at first was to insist on the exogenous importance of political institutions in economic development, increasingly their thinking has circled around the development of political institutions themselves and the interaction between politics, culture and the economy
  • As Cam and I discuss on the podcast, some of their arguments about culture are, frankly, hair-raising. With regard to China the issue they take to be at stake is the influence of Confucianism on Chinese institutions and, specifically, the prospects for the “rights revolution” and thus for innovation and long-run growth.
  • On the whole, their approach is non-dogmatic. Confucianism, they insist, offers many possibilities for the development of political culture and institutions. But for Acemoglu and Robinson what this entails is greater militancy.
  • While Confucius did say that “commoners do not debate matters of government,” he also emphasized that “a state cannot stand if it has lost the confidence of the people.” Confucian thought recommends respect and obedience to leaders only if they are virtuous. It thus follows that if a leader is not virtuous, he or she can – and perhaps should – be replaced. This perfectly valid interpretation of Confucian values underpins Taiwanese democracy
  • By contrast, CPC propaganda holds that Confucian values are utterly incompatible with democracy, and that there is no viable alternative to one-party rule. This is patently false. Democracy is as feasible in China as it is in Taiwan. No matter how strident the CPC’s bluster becomes, it will not extinguish people’s desire to participate in politics, complain about injustices, or replace leaders who misb
  • After reading those words you realize that the kind words from the Council of Economic Advisors undersell the association between the Biden administration’s agenda and AJR view of history. What are at stake here are not only freedom and prosperity, but injustice and ultimately nothing less than human desire
  • Regime changed advocated in the name of philosophical anthropology. As Cam remarked on the show, it makes one miss Frances Fukuyama and Kojève. Instead, the interpretation of modern history offered to us by this year’s Nobel prize winners in economics is an unreconstructed 21st-century Whiggery, fully in keeping with today’s neoconservative turn in America’s policy. It is Nobel sendoff for the Biden era.
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