Unfortunately, I believe this is basically inevitable and nearly impossible to prevent.
And thus we return to the British Empire of the 1890’s, when Hilaire Beloc wrote his famous poem.
“Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not."
Yes, yes, that’s the most famous line from the poem… but it entirely misses the point. It’s the opposite of the point, even.
Hilaire Beloc was born in France, to a French father and an English mother.
Want to guess his religion?
If you guessed “Catholic,” then we have a winner.
Oh.
Whereas the Maxim Gun line from his poem is generally interpreted as a swaggering British superiority, it’s exactly the opposite – and it’s also not the most important line.
Note the faith aspects of the poem –
“And why the natives were so meek;
Until by chance we heard him speak,
And then we clearly understood
How great a Power for Social Good
The African can be.
He said with a determined air:
"You are not what your fathers were;
Liberians, you are Free!
Of course, if you refuse to go"
And here he made a gesture so.
He also gave us good advice
Concerning Labour and its Price.
"In dealing wid de Native Scum,
Yo' cannot pick an' choose;
Yo' hab to promise um a sum
Ob wages, paid in Cloth and Rum.
But, Lordy ! that's a ruse !
Yo' get yo' well on de Adventure,
And change de wages to Indenture."
We did the thing that he projected,
The Caravan grew disaffected,
And Sin and I consulted;
Blood understood the Native mind.
He said : "We must be firm but kind."
A Mutiny resulted.
I never shall forget the way
That Blood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound,
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:
“Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not."
He marked them in their rude advance,
He hushed their rebel cheers;
With one extremely vulgar glance
He broke the Mutineers.
(I have a picture in my book
Of how he quelled them with a look.)
We shot and hanged a few, and then
The rest became devoted men.
And here I wish to say a word
Upon the way my heart was stirred
By those pathetic faces.
Surely our simple duty here
Is both imperative and clear;
While they support us, we should lend
Our every effort to defend,
And from a higher point of view
To give the full direction due
To all the native races.
And I, throughout the expedition,
Insisted upon this position.“
To quote that famous American movie,
Whoa.
To break it down a little more explicitly,
“And why the natives were so meek;
Until by chance we heard him speak,
And then we clearly understood
How great a Power for Social Good”
The fictional narrator of the poem is serving on an expedition to Africa. He at first wonders why the natives were so meek, but then he listens to them and sees (implicitly, unstated) that they’re not very sophisticated.
Is his inclination, then, to machine-gun them, take their lands, take their gold and resources, lie and trick them, and bring them into slavery?
No, of course not! He “clearly understands” right away “how great a Power for Social Good the African can be.”
Faith!
Just the very next paragraph, while the narrator is still self-congratulating on what a great (faithful) person he is, he gets some advice from a Dutchman –
"In dealing wid de Native Scum…”
Oh, yeah, he doesn’t say he’s Dutch, but that’s the Dutch Afrikaner dialect right there. Dealing “wid” – Dutch. (Also Protestant, also faithful.)
The jab-hook-knockout line comes next.
Jab –
“He said: "We must be firm but kind."”
Faith!
Hook –
“A Mutiny resulted.”
Knockout, eh?
We must be firm but kind
A Mutiny resulted
The whole poem is a Catholic Works-based critique of the hypocrisy of the British and the Dutch in Africa, and illuminating the end result of the “civilizing mission” of the Protestants around the world.
“We shot and hanged a few, and then
The rest became devoted men.”
They “became devoted men” – they got faith… after a number were shot and hanged.
Faith!
You would think that all this gross hypocrisy would turn the narrator off… but just the opposite, he moves into the Large Failure Case for Faith –
“And here I wish to say a word
Upon the way my heart was stirred
By those pathetic faces.
Surely our simple duty here
Is both imperative and clear;
While they support us, we should lend
Our every effort to defend,
And from a higher point of view
To give the full direction due
To all the native races.
And I, throughout the expedition,
Insisted upon this position.“
After seeing his own side lie, betray, and enslave a people, who then mutiny, who are then shot and hung, and when the natives are cowering and afraid afterwards – they “became devoted men” – after all this does he investigate the first principles of his faith and mission?
No, of course not, no – he doubles down on it. “Upon the way my heart was stirred by those pathetic faces…” – he holds fast to his faith, and goes on to insist that he be given the position to uphold the “duty from a higher point of view to give full direction due to all the native races.”
Of course, vast massacres ensue, and at the end of it, Cecil Rhodes owns the country.
Faith!
***
GUIDANCE
In past series, we’ve focused as much as possible on best practices – how to do analysis, the value of rational accounting, managing one’s biochemistry intelligently, entraining good habits, making friends smartly and wisely, things of that nature.
Dubious Battle lets us make no such easy prescriptions.
Martin Luther was undoubtedly sincere – perhaps one of the sincerest people of all time.
But the systems unleashed by his sincerity let the far-less-sincere Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell execute their rivals and confiscate their lands and wealth.
But just when you’re recoiling in horror at faith, it also unleashes the types of invention and innovation that lead to modern chemistry, technology, transportation, antibiotics, refrigeration… hell, I don’t think it’d be incorrect to say that the faith-originating mindset built Wikipedia, which is certainly one of the most impressive achievements of mankind.
It goes back and forth.
Works is a very strong and stable ground to stand upon – as a Jewish friend of mine puts it, “Don’t tell me how hard you work. Tell me what you’ve got to show for it.”
Or, with commentary, “Don’t tell me how hard you work [faith]. Tell me what you’ve got to show for it [works].”
And yet, works so easily leads to stagnation and mindless obedience. By faith alone sees free creative and innovative minds, to follow their own inner light, and to bring forth what they can from it.
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I cannot wholeheartedly endorse either of these systems of thought, but I can recommend the following –
1. Understand your default position. If you were raised in America, it’s probably faith. America is a deeply faith-based country; it’s baked into America. If you were raised in China, it’s probably works. Through most of its history, China has been a deeply works-based society. By scrutinizing your default position towards morality and goodness, you can understand your blindspots and understand which failure cases you’re most likely to fall into.
2. Consider taking a hybrid faith/works position. Most people do not want to have conflicted and fragmented views unique to each particular domain, but faith and works both underperform in a variety of circumstances. Faith alone can be incredibly useful for mobilizing the potential in everyone; whereas works can demand results and refuse all excuses. Given that most people in the West are not religious in 2016, there’s no reason you have to stick with whatever position you inherited from your society and culture; nor would you have to flip entirely. You could come to a sort of hybrid.
3. Evolve your subtle language patterns away from the failure cases of your defaults. I got an immense out of mileage of dumping all faith-based defenses of stupidity. “It’s the thought that counts” is a very faith-based pronouncement; you’ll never hear me say it. Even if you’re faith-based to a large extent, that particular line can be very destructive. Likewise, people raised in works-based societies are probably subtly putting down any deviations from authority all the time, both in phrases and in tone of voice. Since stagnation and a lack of innovation is one of the biggest potential failings of being works-based, if you catch yourself saying, “Why are you wasting time on that?” when someone is innovating, you might want to catch that and inquire along other lines.
4. Consider adopting counter-cyclical viewpoints. In a stagnant works-based society, faith-based positions can be dangerous – especially if they challenge entrenched authority – but mild applications of faith, with its endurance and innovation and questioning, can lead to large overperformance. It can bring new people to your banner and help them realize their potential. Likewise, in a degenerate and grossly hypocritical faith-based society, there becomes immense power in adopting a more “show me the money” sort of attitude and ensuring you can actually produce successes and results.
Dubious Battle #2: Ordinal and Cardinal Inclinations
JULIUS CAESAR PASSES THROUGH
“We are told that, as he was crossing the Alps and passing by a barbarian village which had very few inhabitants and was a sorry sight, his companions asked with mirth and laughter, "Can it be that here too there are ambitious strifes for office, struggles for primacy, and mutual jealousies of powerful men?" Whereupon Caesar said to them in all seriousness, "I would rather be first here than second at Rome.””
-- from Plutrach’s Parallel Lives; first century AD
***
DUBIOUS BATTLE #2: ORDINAL AND CARDINAL INCLINATIONS
Caesar’s remark is often paraphrased as, “I’d rather be first in a village than second in Rome.”
This is a near-perfect example of ordinal inclinations.
You see, there are two types of ways to see gains and losses numerically.
The first is through Cardinal Numbers.
Cardinal: One, two, three…
The second is through Ordinal Numbers.
Ordinal: First, second, third…
This seems like a subtle point, but is actually critical to how you see the world, when you are pleased and displeased, how you relate to friends and rivals and – dreadfully – this accounts for an immense amount of all of the conflict across all of history.
You see, if you have $10,000 (a cardinal number) in the bank and you gain $2,000 (cardinal) more, you now have $12,000 and are better off.
But imagine if you had one roommate who has $20,000 the whole time.
At first, you were in second place (ordinal) in net worth with $10,000; after gaining $2,000 more, you’re still in second place (ordinal)… the increase in raw dollars without passing your roommate means you’re still in second place in net worth in your home.
This sounds so silly, stupid, and petty as to almost not be worth mentioning – let alone the subject of a whole TSR piece – but I think it’s critical to understand in yourself and others to have a successful life.
***
ORDINALISTS, ORDINALISTS EVERYWHERE
Spoiler alert: Most people are ordinalists.
“Money only makes people happier if it improves their social rank, according to new research. The researchers found that simply being highly paid wasn't enough -- to be happy, people must perceive themselves as being more highly paid than their friends and work colleagues.”
-- Science Daily: “Money only makes you happy if it makes you richer than your neighbors”
Don’t you hate that headline? I hate it.
The rest of the piece is rather predictable, my emphasis added –
“The researchers were seeking to explain why people in rich nations have not become any happier on average over the last 40 years even though economic growth has led to substantial increases in average incomes. […]
“Lead researcher on the paper Chris Boyce from the University of Warwick's Department of Psychology said: "Our study found that the ranked position of an individual's income best predicted general life satisfaction, while the actual amount of income and the average income of others appear to have no significant effect. Earning a million pounds a year appears to be not enough to make you happy if you know your friends all earn 2 million a year."
“First they examined how life satisfaction was related to how much money each person earned. They found however that satisfaction was much more strongly related to the ranked position of the person's income (compared to people of the same gender, age, level of education, or from the same geographical area).
“The results explain why making everybody in society richer will not necessarily increase overall happiness -- because it is only having a higher income than other people that matters.””
Ordanilists!
***
CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION
This is, to be clear, not some fringe once-off result – almost all surveys and studies on the topic seem to find similarly.
Here’s the abstract from a 1998 paper from the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, “Is more always better?: A survey on positional concerns” –
“We use survey data to provide some empirical information about concerns regarding relative standing. Respondents chose between a world where they have more of a good than others and one where everyone's endowment of the good is higher, but the respondent has less than others. Questions asked about education, attractiveness and intelligence for one's child and oneself, income, vacation time, approval and disapproval from a supervisor, and papers to write. Half of the respondents preferred to have 50% less real income but high relative income. Concerns about position were strongest for attractiveness and supervisor's praise and weakest for vacation time.”
The ordinally-inclined person would rather be “first in a village than second in Rome”; they would rather have 50% less real income as long as they’re earning more than others in their cohort; they are less concerted with how attractive they and their children are, but rather that they and their children are more attractive than those around them.
***
ORDINAL ICONOCLASM, DESTRUCTION, AND OBFUSCATION
Unfortunately – it gets worse.
If you have $10,000 and feel very bitter and upset that your roommate has more than you at $20,000, there are two ways to flip your relative (ordinal) positions.
You could gain $10,001 dollars – then you’d be in first place (ordinal) and they’d be in second.
Or… you could sabotage and wreck your roommate, finding a way to do $10,001 of damage to them, dropping them down to $9,999 – then you’d be in first place.
/> Of course, we know it’s easier to destroy than create – compare the difficulty of building a house with the relative ease of burning a house down – and so which option do most people choose?
Do you think this is exaggeration? Perhaps it doesn’t really work like that?
Well…
***
FROM THE GRACCHI TO BISMARCK AND BACK AGAIN
The Roman Republic ended and gave way to the Roman Empire after a disastrous series of civil wars.
A big part of the problem in the Republic was that there were obvious, known problems – there was large unemployment, the military was under-equipped, threats were rising on the Roman borders – but no prominent men in Rome wanted someone else to get the credit for fixing the problems.
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