This post is a classic: Cornel West, the Matrix, the minority of one, nobility of spirit. And the reminder that there are those who profit from heightening racial consciousness rather than emphasizing the shared beauty of the American Dream. Like a fine wine or an aging cheddar, it keeps getting better.
Mr Bowen, Relative your thesis on ghetto isolation. What are your thoughts on why the people in Africa remained in primitive hunter/gather cultures until Europeans colonized the sub-Sahara regions? intellectually, African tribes were mentally keen, etc., but why didn’t they advance in scientific discovery, communication skills (reading and writing), science, including world travel and industry? Europeans had already “discovered” the Far East and the Americas via ocean-bound ships due to living on ocean shores. Did Insular environment of Australian aborigines factor into millennium of living in primitive ages when England landed on its shores?
My recommended reading starts with Jared Diamond, and ends with Karl Popper, but it continues with what decentralized networks of governance have yet to demonstrate at scale. Simply put, until the era of mass communication, human beings without deep water ports and navigable rivers were at a permanent economic disadvantage in trade. Africa sorely lacked domesticatable animals and highly nutritious grains and people who live in mountainous and arid regions anywhere on the planet suffer tremendously relative to those who don't. The difference between eastern and western China are an excellent illustration that goes back further than European colonization.
Popper demonstrates the utter disregard for the European Enlightenment by the very same ethnics who invented it with two World Wars as examples. At some point I might investigate further the abuse of Plato by Hegel and consider the futility of other Western and European worldviews, but I'm more interested in the future that can work and the history that did work than proofs of the failures of European girls gone wild. As it stands computer science has an oracle problem which is exacerbated by postmodernism, and Americans currently demonstrate too much intellectual laxity in their current bourgie populism. So we have new problems to solve. The race problem is already solved, just as the nuclear energy problem is already solved. People still have to fund the implementations or suffer the regressive status quo.
What about the need to plan? If you find yourself, as a result of random migration over prior generations in a northern climate, planning becomes essential for survival.
People will do what is necessary when it is essential for survival, whether that is planning or spontaneous improvisation. In the context of upward social mobility, planning is required. How much planning depends upon the aegis of authoritarian forces maintained by the upper class. At the other end of the spectrum is the self-indulgent incoherence of the upper class. Not surprisingly we have both in the US.
How do you plan for your family's health when the upper class defies its own rules about social distancing, a term it invented? How do you follow the advice of competent individuals outside of the gated news establishment? How do you achieve self-actualization when you are told that you essentially 'black' or essentially 'white' or essentially 'colored'?
I think the Wild West is our best metaphor. If we want to be civilized, we may have to grow civilization anew. And to preserve what we know to be civilized, we may have to look beyond traditional borders for examples. Today, with regards to the proper use of history, I am saying the traditional borders of 'current events' are not a good model for what should be considered civilized. Maybe everybody alive right now has it wrong. So we must look to history.
I would also add that I expect a lot more from Europe and Japan than I thought I would have to for models of civilization.
Thanks for the response but we seem to be approaching the subject in a different context. The original question relates to why achievements in science and other fields evolved in Europe and not Africa. This a process that started centuries ago and predates current issues of class and national borders.
I see. I think the core of the answer relates to Popper, having to do with the strength of a culture to be able to deal with a philosophy that asserts contingency and emergent property of truth. Any society that doesn't experience the dynamism of large stable populations that gives rise to a conflict of visions will be unable to sustain the sort of debates necessary to evolve rationality. That to me is the fundamental question. Is there a population of many millions that is coherent enough to sustain intellectual conflict, yet open or far flung enough to not suppress variant answers?
I would argue that the conflicts between Christian canon law and the secular 'divine right of kings' played a large role in the Middle Ages during and after the fall of Rome. That the Roman Empire split in two as did the Catholic Church set the stage. The Protestant Reformation was another split that accelerated the process. Any civilization that could withstand schisms of this magnitude would inevitably evolve something like an Enlightenment. The key was that in Western Europe there were enough remnants remaining after the wars that would have destroyed smaller, more isolated populations.
Again, geographically it is trivially easy to get around Europe. Rome to Brussels or Madrid to Prague are 1500 or 2200 km respectively. Brazzaville to Kisangani is 2300, that's all just Congo.
This post is a classic: Cornel West, the Matrix, the minority of one, nobility of spirit. And the reminder that there are those who profit from heightening racial consciousness rather than emphasizing the shared beauty of the American Dream. Like a fine wine or an aging cheddar, it keeps getting better.
Mr Bowen, Relative your thesis on ghetto isolation. What are your thoughts on why the people in Africa remained in primitive hunter/gather cultures until Europeans colonized the sub-Sahara regions? intellectually, African tribes were mentally keen, etc., but why didn’t they advance in scientific discovery, communication skills (reading and writing), science, including world travel and industry? Europeans had already “discovered” the Far East and the Americas via ocean-bound ships due to living on ocean shores. Did Insular environment of Australian aborigines factor into millennium of living in primitive ages when England landed on its shores?
My recommended reading starts with Jared Diamond, and ends with Karl Popper, but it continues with what decentralized networks of governance have yet to demonstrate at scale. Simply put, until the era of mass communication, human beings without deep water ports and navigable rivers were at a permanent economic disadvantage in trade. Africa sorely lacked domesticatable animals and highly nutritious grains and people who live in mountainous and arid regions anywhere on the planet suffer tremendously relative to those who don't. The difference between eastern and western China are an excellent illustration that goes back further than European colonization.
Popper demonstrates the utter disregard for the European Enlightenment by the very same ethnics who invented it with two World Wars as examples. At some point I might investigate further the abuse of Plato by Hegel and consider the futility of other Western and European worldviews, but I'm more interested in the future that can work and the history that did work than proofs of the failures of European girls gone wild. As it stands computer science has an oracle problem which is exacerbated by postmodernism, and Americans currently demonstrate too much intellectual laxity in their current bourgie populism. So we have new problems to solve. The race problem is already solved, just as the nuclear energy problem is already solved. People still have to fund the implementations or suffer the regressive status quo.
Excellent reply. Thank you for your attention and information —jules
What about the need to plan? If you find yourself, as a result of random migration over prior generations in a northern climate, planning becomes essential for survival.
People will do what is necessary when it is essential for survival, whether that is planning or spontaneous improvisation. In the context of upward social mobility, planning is required. How much planning depends upon the aegis of authoritarian forces maintained by the upper class. At the other end of the spectrum is the self-indulgent incoherence of the upper class. Not surprisingly we have both in the US.
How do you plan for your family's health when the upper class defies its own rules about social distancing, a term it invented? How do you follow the advice of competent individuals outside of the gated news establishment? How do you achieve self-actualization when you are told that you essentially 'black' or essentially 'white' or essentially 'colored'?
I think the Wild West is our best metaphor. If we want to be civilized, we may have to grow civilization anew. And to preserve what we know to be civilized, we may have to look beyond traditional borders for examples. Today, with regards to the proper use of history, I am saying the traditional borders of 'current events' are not a good model for what should be considered civilized. Maybe everybody alive right now has it wrong. So we must look to history.
I would also add that I expect a lot more from Europe and Japan than I thought I would have to for models of civilization.
Thanks for the response but we seem to be approaching the subject in a different context. The original question relates to why achievements in science and other fields evolved in Europe and not Africa. This a process that started centuries ago and predates current issues of class and national borders.
I see. I think the core of the answer relates to Popper, having to do with the strength of a culture to be able to deal with a philosophy that asserts contingency and emergent property of truth. Any society that doesn't experience the dynamism of large stable populations that gives rise to a conflict of visions will be unable to sustain the sort of debates necessary to evolve rationality. That to me is the fundamental question. Is there a population of many millions that is coherent enough to sustain intellectual conflict, yet open or far flung enough to not suppress variant answers?
I would argue that the conflicts between Christian canon law and the secular 'divine right of kings' played a large role in the Middle Ages during and after the fall of Rome. That the Roman Empire split in two as did the Catholic Church set the stage. The Protestant Reformation was another split that accelerated the process. Any civilization that could withstand schisms of this magnitude would inevitably evolve something like an Enlightenment. The key was that in Western Europe there were enough remnants remaining after the wars that would have destroyed smaller, more isolated populations.
Again, geographically it is trivially easy to get around Europe. Rome to Brussels or Madrid to Prague are 1500 or 2200 km respectively. Brazzaville to Kisangani is 2300, that's all just Congo.
Michael, The last paragraph is beautifully written. It is a pleasure to read.