Guns, Germs, and Steel

Diamond's thesis is that geography - not race - is the leading factor in the rise of advanced civilizations. Geographically, Eurasia covers the most latitude on the globe. This latitude allows Eurasia to have environmental advantages over Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Wide geographic latitude allows for more consistently fertile land; more consistently fertile land allows for agriculture, involving the growth of crops, and the domestication of animals.

The people in this geography, thus, shifted from being nomadic hunter-gathers to being agricultural communities quicker than people in other geographies.

In such communities, crop growth and animal domestication propser. Under these conditions, people develop immunities from various diseases, since such people encounter diseases in the animals they domesticate. Also, people use metal tools to help them work within the community. The metal in the tools leads to the development of steel used for their weapons. Also, some people in agricultural communities don't have to worry about growing their own food; only some of the people grow the crops, and the rest can focus on other things, like thinking, inventing, art, literature, etc . . . Nomads can't focus on such things because their primary focus is on raising their family and finding food.
Eurasia beat out Africa, Australia, and the Americas, and so Europe conquered them, rather than the other way around. Europe had guns and so better weapons; Europe had diseases, which wiped out a huge portion of the conquered. And all this was because Eurasia has a priviledged geography that helped them develop agriculture societies quicker than everyone else.

What's wrong with this scenario given to us by Diamond? Diamond is trying to refute the thesis that Europeans are inherently smarter than other peoples, since Europe conquered everyone, and they seem to have the best collection of inventors, poets, philosophers, literature, technology, scientists, military, and mathematicians.

1. Diamond says that we can't say that one race is smarter than another. But then says that people from New Guinea are smarter than your average white person. Huh?

2. Geography provides opportunities for trade, agriculture, etc . . . But Geography doesn't determine their coming about. Individual people have to have industry, imagination, and intiative too.

3. In Latin America, you'll find mountains; you can't have good agriculture, crop-growth, or animal domistication on mountains. And yet Indians (who lived there) domesticated the lama, figured out how to grow corn and potatoes, were literate, had architecture, etc . . . But how can this be? The Indians in Latin America weren't in an environment or geography that naturally grow lots of crops and had lots of animals that could be domesticated.

4. Africans can't tame the Zebra. So Diamond thinks Zebra aren't able to be domesticated. But Erasians had the same problem with the Horse, and the Horse has now been trained. It's the same story with Reindeer, Elephants, and Lama. But Diamond doesn't mention these.

5. Europe wasn't a Garden of Eden, full of abundant crop, seeds, and ready-made farm land. 10,000 years ago, Europe was coming out of an Ice-Age! There were thick forests everywhere, not to mention The Alps, the Urals, the Caucasus, the Russian Steppes, the Taiga, the Anatolian plateau, and long brutal winters. Europe finally grew corn and wheat after a long time of struggle. The Thar desert, the Himalayas, the Gobi desert, and Tian Shan mountains divide East and Centra Asia. All these regions DID NOT exchange culture until the 15th century. But it doesn't matter. Eurasia soared in culture/technology, compared to Africa and America. So, why isn't Africa on par with Eurasia by this point? Africa is just as close to the Fertile Cresent as West Europe, and closer to it than Asia!

6. Why didn't sub-Saharan African's have wheels or literacy or carts drawn by oxes?

7. Why did Carthage (AFRICA) invade Rome on elephants? Well, the elephants were domisticated. So Africans could domisticate animals if they wanted to. They just need initiative, imagination, and industry.

8. Why did Diamond tell a story about how he stayed at a farm, saying all the whites were idiotic drunks, and that the only decent person was a Native American?

9. Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan were in Nomadic Tribes. Khan had the biggest empire in history: all of Asia, and half of Europe. And Attila was a major threat to the Roman Empire (re. Europe). Also, the barbarian hordes brought down the Roman Empire. So, civilized peoples don't necessarily conquer nomadic peoples. So, you don't need urban civilization to conquer.

10. Why does Diamond think that the only reason why an animal CAN'T be domesticated is because they just happen not be now? That's dumb. We haven't domesticated bison, but it just doesn't follow that we can't! And there's no need anyway: cattle do just fine. Diamond says the Africans have been trying to tame Eland, but they haven't, so they can't be domesticated? How in the world does that follow? It doesn't mean it's impossible to domisticate them, period.

11. Do you need land with lots of potential for crops in order to have agricultural communities? No. The Incas has potatos and maize. And the Cahokia also exploited maize. West Europe had wheat; China had rice.

12. Does Europe have more animals that can be domesticated compared to Sub-Sarahan Africa? No. From the Sudan to the Cape, we find sheep, goats, and cattle by 200 AD. As was said above, S. America had llama. In N. America and Australia, there mammals were hunted until nigh extinction. But Europeans didn't . . . hmmmm.

13. Deseases weren't a factor in conquest, because diseases only became a factor after conquest. Also, nations conquered had their share of diseases that Europeans weren't immune from.

The Idea of the Holy: part 3

"The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religion experience, . . . whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no further . . ." Otto, The Elements in the 'Numinous'

So we are to remember one of our own religious experiences. What was unique about the experience? What was a unique element about being 'rapt in worship', or in 'solemn worship'? Schleiermacher thought it was a 'feeling of dependence'. Otto doesn't think that's right - we feel such a Feeling in other circumstances besides religious worship. If we feel 'dependence', the feeling might give an analogy to the Numinous, but it itself isn't an element in the Experience. What can give us a hint about such an Experience of the Numinous?

When Abraham is trying to get God to save the people in Sodom, we read, "Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes" (Gen. 28:27). Here, we have feelings of Dependence and Something More. Otto calls this something more 'Creature-Consciousness'. That is, a Feeling that one is Nothing when confronted with that Whom is Supreme in Being above all creatures - Otto says we feel Submerged in Nothingness before an 'Overpowering Absolute Might' of some sort. Again, concepts flee from us; we can indirecly understand it by the 'tone and content' of this Feeling that Otto notes.

Another reason Otto thinks It can't be mere Dependence is that it focuses too much on the Self. We have to travel from this Feeling I have (of dependence) and go to whatever or whoever caused it. But 'creature-consciousness' has a direct aquaintance with Something outside the Self, and it's as a result that Feelings of Dependence arise. Feelings of dependence are the shadow cast by the feeling of 'creature-consciousness'. This Feeling is a 'primary immediate datum of consciousness' of an Object outside the Self. This Object IS the Numinous.

It is this Numen which Abraham experiences as he Feels like 'dust and ashes' before the Holy God. Next, Otto will get into the nature of the Numinous, and how it manifests itself.

The Idea of the Holy: part 2

"Holiness - 'the holy' - is a category of interpretation and valuation peculiar to the sphere of religion." - Rudolf Otto, 'Numen' and the 'Numinous'.

So what exactly is this Idea of the Holy? We learn that it is 'applied' to Ethics, even if Ethics doesn't come from it. It is Ineffable: that is, it cannot be comprehended by concepts. It is compared to 'the category of the Beautiful'. But isn't 'the Holy' just another concept?

Otto realizes this, and sees that if it were just another concept, he'd be inconsistent. Of course, it has been used as a concept, meaning 'the most Good' - Kant calls the Will that always follows the moral law the 'Holy' will. Yet even though 'Holy' means this, it doesn't 'only' mean this - we also Feel it means something else, something that concepts can't capture, but which Otto wants to try and 'isolate'. To isolate it, Otto notes that at first, 'The Holy' only meant the part that concepts can't capture. Today, and maybe back then, 'The Holy' might have meant 'morally good'; but because we also want to isolate that part of The Holy which 'morally good' doesn't cover, which no concept can cover, we'll need another word.

We want a word that captures every part of the meaning of The Holy without the 'morally good' part. Since concepts allude us at this point, Otto wants to try and make us Feel this unnameable Something. This Something is the core of all Religion. Otto calls it a 'unique original Feeling-Response', 'ethically neutral', not mere Goodness. Otto chooses the word 'Numen', from 'Omen', from which we get 'Omnious', and from Numon we arrive at the Numinous.

Since the Numinous can't be defined, and concepts can't directly describe it, It itself must be 'brought to life' in consciousness - it must somehow be indirectly 'stirred' into being. Otto wants to do this by bringing our attention to 'regions' in our minds we are familiar with, and then showing an analogy or a resemblance to this experience of the Numinous. Otto adds: "This X of ours is not precisely 'this' experience, but akin to this one and the opposite of the other. Cannot you now realize for yourself what it is?" So Otto thinks he can't directly teach us about the Numinous. It must be 'Awoken', as do all things which are 'of the Spirit'.

The Idea of the Holy: part 1

"This book, recognizing the profound import of the non-rational for metaphysics, makes a serious attempt to analyse all the more exactly the 'feeling' which remains where the 'concept' fails, and to introduce a terminology which is not any the more loose or indeterminate for having necessarily to make use of 'symbols'." - Rudolf Otto.

In this blog, I plan to put into my own words the thoughts of Rudolf Otto in his book 'The Idea of the Holy'. The book claims to be an 'inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational'. It has always fascinated me that there might be a part of religion which is non-rational. That is, a part which can't be put into concepts. We feel so comfortable calling God good, or a person, or rational; but isn't there another part of us which feels that these concepts don't capture the whole reality of what God is: that these concepts can't capture it?

In his book, Chapter 1 is called 'The Rational and the non-Rational'. The rational is what we can put into the form of concepts. By analogy to human experience, we apply to God, say, the concept of 'goodness'. If a theology is rational, it will be content to call God good, and leave it at that. The more concepts we have about God, the more rational we are, and so the more knowledge we have about God, and so the better the religion or theology. But do these concepts capture God completely?

It might seem so. The Bible is written in concepts. But Otto says that's to be expected, since concepts make up language. So, when we call God 'good', 'goodness' is an essential attribute of God; but 'goodness' only tells us about a part of God's entire essence. God's deeper essence alludes what the concept reveals; the part of God that the concept can't reveal needs to be understood in a way that doesn't use concepts. We have to understand God's deeper essence in some other way, since if we couldn't use any concepts, we couldn't say anything about Him. However, throughout the ages, people have favored the rational over, and to the exclusion of, the non-rational.

If we look to mythology to give us a clue about the origin of religion, we can't look at the rational evolution of concepts. Such an evolution has nothing to do with how religion came to be. Religion's origin has to do with something non-rational. And so Otto concludes that Religion can't be fully explained and understood in terms of the rational. We begin to explain the origin of Religion with the 'category of the Holy or Sacred'.

We've seen that there are rational and non-rational aspects to Religion. The rational parts are those that can be put into concepts; the non-rational parts are those that cannot. If we are to fully understand Religion or God, we must look at the non-rational idea of the Holy or Sacred.

Musings on Poetic Language

If the question, what is poetry? has never been answered, everyone will agree at least thus far: that it is not merely so many waves in the air or ink-marks on a piece of paper - that it exists primarily in the world of consciousness." - Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction.

Poetic language expresses information. It does not just express emotion, although it might. This information can be true or false. Regarding super-sensible objects, it arouses in us the same emotion we would feel if we encountered that thing we've never experienced. Poetry gives us the quality of experiences we've never had, or perhaps never will have, or even can have. It does this by using things we have experienced to point to things outside our experience. We learn more about the super-sensible things by using sensible things to arouse the same emotion the poet thinks we'll feel if we were to ever encounter the super-sensible things.

Asia, in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, says, "My soul is an enchanted boat." An enchanted boat moves along the ocean at night to an unknown destination without sail, a map, or paddles. Asia isn't just saying, "My soul is pretty neat." Something more is implied here. Asia is being transfigured, is turning into a god. We don't know what that feels like. But Shelley thinks the emotion aroused by the image of an enchanted boat is the same emotion that might accompany the gradual transformation into a god.

We have to go half-way to receive what Poetic Language has to offer us. We can't force the Poet to cough it up by force. We can't put him on a witness stand and cross-examine the poet about how a river could have a hair, or how thoughts could be green, or how a woman could be a red, red rose, or a violet half-hidden by a mossy stone.

Poetic language is harder to falsify than scientific language or ordinary language. You can say that this particular woman is a red, red rose. But then that woman might arouse a different emotion in me, an emotion that isn't aroused when I observe a red rose. So, the observation of the woman might be falsified for me, but not for you. Whereas, the falsifiablity of scientific language is more easy to grasp and to prove. But when poetic language is successful, it captures oceans of meaning, as opposed to the puddles of scientific language.

The same applies to Religious Language that borders on being poetic. In non-Religious language, we had scientific and poetic; in Religious language, we have theological and poetic. Each type has an ordinary-language counterpart. For example, 'I believe in God.' is an ordinary-language statement. Now, we can go in two directions if you were to ask me what I mean. Theologically, I can say, 'I believe in a triune unity of persons, exemplified by one substance, personal, supernatural, immaterial, creator of the heavens and the earth, relational, and on which we are all dependent for our individual and collective existence.' This is scientific, in the religious sense; that is, theological. This could all be true, but the point is that this isn't Religion's natural language. And, if it were, we'd have puddles when we could have oceans.

Theological language is abstract. But God is the most concrete, personal Being there is. Theology arises out of debate, argument, and controversy; in such, clarity of concepts is key, along with the validity of logic and the soundness of arguments. Religio-poetic language is meant to point to the concrete. But only if you meet it half-way. It would be like putting a witness on the stand and demanding the witness to convey to the court the character of a close friend, or the love he had for his wife. The court is not in the right frame of mind to listen to the witness even if he was a poet, and the poet isn't in the right frame of mind to convey such information while a dialectical pistol is being held to his head.

Religio-poetic language is concrete. It compares God to bright lights, consuming fires, a shepard, a gate, a husband, a warrior, a hunter, a lamb, a lion, love. Jesus is called the Son of God, a familial metaphor. Theologically, we can analyze the metaphor - Jesus doesn't stand to the Father in all respects as a son stands to his father: there are temporal/physical differences. We might then call - as did Aquinas - 'Son of God' analogical language, of which metaphor is a species. But this route is bound to fail to capture as much meaning is the divinely inspired 'Jesus is the Son of God'. If we keep to the theological road, we end up with something like: "Between the Son and the Father, we have a relation of asymetry, harmony, and equilibrium, and yet involving homogeneity." The meaning of 'Son of God' has been changed from concrete language to the abstract language of theology. In a religio-poetic context, we again understand 'Son of God' if we go half-way. We experience first-hand what it's like to be a good son or a good father, and we strive to be a better son or father by praying and meditating on the relation of Sonship Christ has to the Father, and the relation of Fatherhood the Father has with the Son - and trusts the Divine relation is the rule, and our clumsy imitations the exceptions. If we get at 'Son of God' like this, we become a perfect conduit for an ocean of meaning contained therein.

The next step is to recognize that though poetry - or pros verging on the poetic - arouses emotion, and though it doesn't have to: that when it does arouse emotion, we can always follow that emotion to the object which evoked it. In other words, emotions are always about a Something that is responsible for arousing it. When I first heard 'Release' by Pearl Jam, I felt the emotions of transcedence; but if I could duplicate that feeling by taking a magic pill, I wouldn't do it. The significance of the first emotion came from what the emotion was about, that Something - whatever the song hinted at in my aesthetic imagination, the result being a felt change of consciousness - which aroused it. It's the same with any metaphor given in any medium. They are designed to arouse in you a certain emotion in relation to a certain object so that you can have some idea of another object of which you might not have had experience - the poet tells you what it might feel like to have this other experience of which you have no experience.

And now we come to those people who are obsessed with only Scientific Language, to the exclusion of the religio-poetic, and even ordinary, since scientific language is that language denuded of metaphor, only revealing those common elements in experience that can be measured by scientific instruments. Such a frame of mind seems to be overtaking the West. So much is it taking over, that there might come a time when poets and religious people are no longer even understood, a time when our language will be labled meaningless, as the verficationists already tried to do: they thought that if something couldn't be verified by science, then that something was meaningless. You see where this will lead? The huge store-houses of meaning saturating the texture of the universe and language shall be stopped up: the funnel will only let through those droplets of meaning that are allowed to pass through science's truncated faucet.

Imagine a species divided into three groups: one can see, one can see, but objects are very blurry, and the last are blind. The first group's language is uninhibited in the use of words which have meaning based upon the sense of sight: look, see, light, dark, etc . . . The second group can still see very little, a mere hazy brightness during times of day, and various shades of blackness during the night, but they can still somewhat understand the first group, although they might begin placing 'light' not 'out there', but 'in the eye itself', which many scientists do today. The third group is completely blind, and they only use 'look', 'light', 'dark', and 'see' as metaphors pointing to something super-sensible (to them), or else regard them as utterly meaningless, preferring scientific exactitude when using language: this is when they 'see' your point in an argument, or call an a difficult task 'dark', etc . . .

This is pretty much the situation of the West. How could the first group convince the third or the second that their language wasn't meaningless? That it was the language of the third group which was utterly inadequate to capture all the meaning that was plainly before the first group's eyes?