I find it interesting that more women than men consider religion important to them, when religion is partially to blame for them being marginalized in society.
On the whole, I just look at those figures and feel a deep amount of shame for my country (US). We'll catch up, but I think part of the reason for these figures is that the US is relatively rural.
I am consistently amazed by the profound contempt which modern liberalism holds for the traditional role of the wife and mother. In traditional societies, motherhood is not looked down upon or held in contempt, but mothers are honored. As the managers of families and the people that consistently invest the most in the next generation, they are the backbone of society. Every successful person today owes his success to a chain of hundreds of successful mothers, stretching back into pre-history.
It is only as our planning horizon has shrunk from a thousand years to six months that we begin to look on motherhood as a form of slavery. Females are told that they must do anything but a traditional female role to have value in society. We cajole women to act like men. In a way, liberalism is ironically misogynist.
It is little surprise then that Western liberals no longer breed above replacement rates. Denigrating motherhood is not the way for a people to last the aeons of time. I believe the future of the West is profoundly more conservative than the present, because Darwin. Liberalism is a suicidal ideology.
What does any of that have to do with the marginalization of women? Women are marginalized when they are told that they are simply not allowed to do certain things, or that they are not allowed to do certain things without their husband's or father's permission.
American women are not told that they must do anything but being a housewife. They are actively encouraged to pursue careers that at one time women were basically forbidden to pursue. Most of those careers are compatible with motherhood as much as they are compatible with fatherhood.
> American women are not told that they must do anything but being a housewife. They are actively encouraged to pursue careers that at one time women were basically forbidden to pursue. Most of those careers are compatible with motherhood as much as they are compatible with fatherhood.
Especially black American women who have to look forward to being a bitch, a mother, and a low wage worker. Liberation for the win. This rhetoric is about reducing people to workers and saying that because people can't serve a corporation they are not being themselves because the desire that corporations create for women to be something in the public sphere competes with similar jobs which they held in the private sphere.
Liberation is freedom from work to do whatever you choose. Liberation has not held up to this ideal as it's a lie. The whole point of women's lib was to increase the work force so that the capitalists can have more people in the economy and the government can tax those people and get richer and so on.
You have a particularly twisted idea of what women's lib was about, and also what 'liberation' means. Women in the workplace surged after WWII not because the capitalists went "awesome!", but because it became increasingly apparent that it was not true that women couldn't do 'work'.
Besides, women's liberation in the West stretches at least as far back as the suffragette movements, which is hardly something pushed by capitalists.
The US Women's Suffrage Movement actually grew out of two things in the 19th century. Unfortuently, neither gets much recognition since historical media, reporting and education is a bit slanted to focusing on the last 60-70 years in America with bits of info mixed in about the Civil and Revolutionary Wars.
- Women had to take over many of the jobs and responsibilities of the men that went off to fight during the American Civil War. Unfortuently, it does not get recognized as having the same impact as WW2 did on women and freedom to choose one's own path in life, but it was the "catalyst" while WW2 was more of the "coup de grâce" in holding onto the outdated ideas.
- The Temperance Movement in America. Although there's much to dislike about the Temperance Movement, it was initially started by women that were fed up with alcohol tearing apart their families. Women realized that when they organized and stood up for what they believed in, that others would listen and rally behind them with many counties and states putting restrictions on alcohol long before the 18th Amendment. Many of the women, including Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would go onto start the Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States.
Yes because men and women find child rearing to be equally fulfilling socially and psychologically... because evolution obviously made them that way. /s Why be a wife and a mother women you can be a scientist busting their ass for making your university or corporation the next 1 billion dollars. Or why not be a model or a booth babe? Or better yet why not flip burgers and answer phone calls at a call center. These give meaning to lives!
There is some interesting research on personality differences between the sexes[1]. Also, there is solid biological reasons for believing a species like ours with modest amounts of sexual dimorphism will have substantial behavioral differences between sexes. I have severe doubts about the perfect equality hypothesis, which seems to be the default assumption of liberals. Roughly, women are evolved to care and men are evolved to kill.
Of course, we are talking about distributions of traits and there are outliers in both sexes[2], and everyone ought to be judged individually on their own characteristics. But we need to recognize that the average woman and the average man are substantially different, and we should expect their behavior to diverge.
I can think of two major objections to this. First, this does absolutely nothing to control for the social context in which the subjects were raised. That is, it is impossible to draw any conclusions from this study about what the breakdown would look like of men and women were raised in an equal society, where there are just as many knightesses rescuing dons in distress as vice versa, and all the other similar inequities had been cleaned away.
Second, the perfect equality hypothesis does not describe my beliefs. I guess it my describe some non-scientifically-minded liberals' beliefs, maybe even most, but that does not matter very much. What I believe is that perfectly equal opportunity ought to be available to both sexes, and that women should control their own reproductive choices. I believe that we should work to minimize any effects that would tend to accentuate the differences between the sexes. And I believe this independent of the magnitude of those differences. Fundamentally, it does not matter to me if a paper did demonstrate differences, even in a perfectly equal society. It would still be optimal under my value function to no further accentuate them.
But, to wrap it up, I think it's really far fetched to suggest that conservative social policy towards women is the way it is because it's good for women. I mean, just look at what and who women vote for. (Then again, perhaps this is a bad argument because poor people vote for conservatives all the time.)
> Fundamentally, it does not matter to me if a paper did demonstrate differences, even in a perfectly equal society. It would still be optimal under my value function to no further accentuate them.
Isn't the use of "optimal" here a contradiction, if in fact, we don't nurture certain innate differentiating factors in people to their full potential? For example, lets say we find evidence that developing perfect pitch is indeed something you have to be born with, and that you have a son/daughter born with it. Would you not want a bit more musical exposure for them than usual? Not 'pushing' them necessarily, but certainly emphasizing the difference enough to maybe intrigue them about the possibility of developing their full potential in that area?
We already know that people are born with certain 'limitations' (for the lack of a better word) in terms of IQ, so the idea of dealing with biological differences is nothing new in the realm of cognitive science, and sex/gender is but one of many variables that could affect personality/cognitive performance in an array of areas. So really, it would almost seem like denying this probability is the more conservative viewpoint, no?
Either way, this whole area is much too complicated to be simplifying it in such terms, and neuroscience is still much too young to help guide us thoroughly, but dismissing it outright seems like a mistake to me. After all, culture[1] is an emergent property of our individual personalities coming together, which are themselves emergent properties of our brains/genetics...
[1] As an interesting side-note, there have apparently been some attempts at converging neurology with anthropology recently, so hopefully this will help more research come along about any links between biological and cultural differences: https://brainsciencepodcast.squarespace.com/bsp/2013/neuroan...
No, because I specified that it was under a given value function (mine). You seem to be assuming that I'm optimizing economic production or something like that, which is where differentiating factors tend to come in. That is of course not what I think is most important.
Simple counter example: let's say there were some means of doubling half the population's output, assuming we only had to keep them miserable by telling them they are worth less for the duration of their childhood. I would not make that trade. Whether there are differentiating factors doesn't factor into the question for me.
> Either way, this whole area is much too complicated to be simplifying it in such terms
That will never fail to be the case in almost any complex subject you want to talk about, but it doesn't mean you can't say useful things. For example, "I value that women be as free to choose their way as I, and not be systematically diverted to choices that are convenient to males via their representation in the media, via social policies, etc. I value this more highly than whatever minor benefits I believe are likely to stem out of the socially regressive way of doing things."
> No, because I specified that it was under a given value function (mine)
Ok, but what's the benefit of defending a position on the basis of it being a personal belief? The greater context here is on how certain viewpoints shape society, so naturally I assumed that to be your point of reference. Opinions are all well and good, but when discussing effects on a population larger than oneself, it's generally more practical to deal with issues empirically, which means acknowledging additional context and not regressing to arbitrary value functions. What is the ideal value function here? If you have a notion of one, it'd be easier to understand your point of view if you were to explain that clearly first before giving us the end result of your logical conclusions. Then the discussion could turn into a rational productive one about whether or not that value function is actually a logical one.
> let's say there were some means of doubling half the population's output, assuming we only had to keep them miserable by telling them they are worth less for the duration of their childhood. I would not make that trade.
I wouldn't either, but I don't find this to be a realistic example. Adjusting for IQ for example, would ideally increase people's confidence, motivation, and happiness, because they would experience the same ratio of difficulty:reward throughout their lives as everyone else, not the highly unjust and disproportionate one (with way too much difficulty over reward) that they face now. The example I gave of perfect pitch is also a realistic situation, and I see no reason for not exposing your child to more areas he/she might be good at. If you have a value function that differs on these outcomes, please extrapolate on that, because I feel it would clear things up a bit.
> That will never fail to be the case in almost any complex subject you want to talk about
True, but I was talking with specific regards to the development of neurology when I stated that. Sorry, should've probably been more clear on that.
> "I value that women be as free to choose their way as I, and not be systematically diverted to choices that are convenient to males via their representation in the media, via social policies, etc. I value this more highly than whatever minor benefits I believe are likely to stem out of the socially regressive way of doing things."
See, I value this too, and I value it equally when you substitute "women" with "men" as well[1]. I just don't believe that what you're labeling as "socially regressive" is in fact, socially regressive; there is a fine distinction between oppression and well-informed difference optimization. Unfortunately, this has been given a bad reputation historically (e.g. 'separate but equal' nonsense), but the real problem seems to be a greater misunderstanding of what "equality" as a concept should even look like, because generally, differences are much too nuanced to totally nullify or account for, to really provide a truly equal environment.
[1] An important designation to make when dealing with human equality. Here's an interesting 'case study' that exemplafies this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eqYEVYZgdo
Time to get rid of more of the 'traditional' roles. There is a lot of so-called 'tradition' which is just religious fundamentalism.
Also there is no need to 'breed above replacement rates'. For thousands of years humans in Europe were living in much smaller numbers. There is no need to add more millions to the 500+ million people we already have here. To get to more sustainable levels of population, we'll some downsizing can be necessary.
We need to see that the religious fundamentalistic views will die out over the next decades, with its proponents. At least in Europe.
If managing families and raising children is such an honored and fulfilling role and makes you the backbone of society, why don't conservative men fall over themselves to fill that role?
My guess would be that they don't actually believe their own ad copy.
Just as there are roles specified by society for women - there are roles specified for men. Actually nowadays I think men have much less choice than women if they care about society opinion at all.
Nobody blinks an eye when some women doesn't have kids and choose career. On the other hand being a "house husband" that doesn't work and "only" deal with house and kids is still considered weird and people think you are "not 100% man".
See the whole "real men" stereotype. There's no "real women" stereotype. We have one sex that have a choice, and one that doesn't. It's even visible in fashion. Women wear what they want. Men doesn't wear dresses.
BTW at least part of the differences in salaries is direct consequence of that. People expect men to keep working no matter the family situation, because "man should work". With women there's significant probability that they'll eventually choose kids, and salary reflects that belief.
Feminists try to deal with the salary gap by regulation - I don't think it will work. You need to change society so men have same choice women have. It will be even harder.
I don't necessarily disagree [1]. The point that I was making was that childcare is often sold as a high-status job, when in reality it is generally a low-status, low-reward job. This ties directly into your argument about stay-at-home dads being looked down upon. It's the other side of the same coin.
[1] Nor do I necessarily agree, either, but I don't want to get sidetracked.
If OBSERVING that men and women are built and operate differently on a mass and indefinite number of levels (mentally, physically and emotionally) - I guess that I too hold these "sexist views". Then again, maybe I am just honest and choose not to buy into lies and false propaganda.
How can there be the kind of equality that you are referring to when there is no equivalence?
There are always going to be some women who could have done better than the man that got the job that they both interviewed for. Same for men who were beat out by a women, but the idea that some preconceived notion that a man is going to be a better fighter pilot than a women is going to go away is pure fantasy. When something is true 99+% of the time, people are going to lean toward probability. It is human nature.
I guarantee that if anyone in this topic (man or women) was playing a game of deadly roulette and had to choose odds with who was more qualified and would do a better job in a field of men and women with certain careers, everyone here would be a "sexist".
So don't call out someone with There's your problem. If you consider it a problem then it is YOUR problem too. Maybe not on the same level, but you yourself are affected by it on some level (like it or not). You are a human - therefore have human nature.
> It is little surprise then that Western liberals no longer breed above replacement rates.
The implication here seems to be that politics is a major independent predictor of fertility rates, i.e. liberal views on gender depress fertility rates, independently of, say, socioeconomic status. Is that true? If we look across countries, the lowest birth rates aren't in places particularly famed for the dominance of their feminist movements: South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan.
There are a lot of graphs on the topic here[1]. Income isn't explicitly controlled for, but correlated characteristics like education level and IQ are. IQ appears to be strongly anti-fertile for liberal men and slightly pro-fertile for conservative men. 53% of the smartest group of liberal men age 35-44 had no children in the GSS data from 1995-2012[2a] compared to just 21% of conservatives[2b]. The differences with women are smaller but similar.
It should be noted that regardless of one's political beliefs, our modern culture can broadly be considered "liberal" and it is an extreme conservative indeed that doesn't guzzle down liberal books, movies, and television. Thus, while conservatism increases your fertility at the margin, white Americans of all political persuasions are having fewer kids than they used to[3].
Some more water to add to this side of the debate: In China women were also regarded as reliable agents for spreading Chinese culture and civilisation.
Quote: After Mongol rule had been ended by the Ming Dynasty in 1368, [there was] a violent Chinese backlash against West and Central Asians. In order to contain the violence, the Ming administration instituted a policy where all West and Central Asian males were required to intermarry with native Chinese females, hence assimilating them into the local population.
Please also note that in most other culture, the way to fix ethnic violence is in the "remove them away" to "kill them all" range. In the above example, the solution found was "merge them through our girls", which actually worked not that bad (Hui people still exist, and are relatively well integrated).
History is full of its little ironies. Maybe someday a group of people will arise that see through the lies and wishful thinking of both liberals and conservatives, and marry the best qualities of each group.
>> I am consistently amazed by the profound contempt which modern liberalism holds for the traditional role of the wife and mother. In traditional societies, motherhood is not looked down upon or held in contempt, but mothers are honored.
Only if they follow a certain line. Those lines are defined by the nature of society, and being from a country that has a middle-class which resonates between being mildly conservative to ultra-conservative, these lines can be anything, but in the end they are nothing more than a tool to control women. For mildly conservatives, they are happy if their daughter goes to a medical school, but then the same girls are put into marriages even before they complete their medical school. For the ultra-conservatives, women are supposed to be hidden behind those hideous burqas and must be married off as soon as it can be. Again under the pretense of Honor.
The only thing common between them is of course mothers and wives are honored. If only they do not challenge the status-quo, do not ask for their rights, are an honor to a family.
This is not honor. This is a vile way to justify objectification of half of the population.
Your romantic notion of motherhood in traditional societies totally denies centuries of oppression and abuse, continuing to this very day in those traditional societies you praise so much.
> It is little surprise then that Western liberals no longer breed above replacement rates. Denigrating motherhood is not the way for a people to last the aeons of time. I believe the future of the West is profoundly more conservative than the present, because Darwin. Liberalism is a suicidal ideology.
It doesn't really work like that. India has over 1 billion people, and I'm sure "traditional" lower caste women there "breed above replacement rates" as you put it.
On the other side you might have an upper middle class, white, historically mainline Protestant couple living in the US. Both have a sibling, both have advanced degrees, both have parents who went to college. Their families have slowly been acquiring wealth for generations. The couple will have two "replacement rate" kids.
On the other hand, the lower caste Indian woman has more than one child die in infancy. The family does not always have enough food to eat every day.
Yet in your mind, the Indian family is a winner because of "Darwin", because the western liberals have a "suicidal ideology". But who would doubt the upper middle class American son would not want to trade places with the Indian kid, and there's a much more significant chance that the Indian kid would trade places with the white kid.
You seem to see some "contempt" and a "misogynist" tone in the parent which I do not. You're advocating a way of life and morality and such that belongs to history, and to rural farmers in that history. The US is losing its industrial jobs never mind its agricultural jobs. Traditional life in the US is Michael Moore's "Roger & Me" vision of 1950s blue collar unionized industrial workers driving their cars back to the suburbs. A way of life going away with Detroit's bankruptcy. Your vision of women only raising kids, and more than two as you say, is not traditional, it's almost ancient tradition. It's like, Pennsylvania farmers circa late 17th century. The Amish and Mennonites in Pennyslvania live like you're talking. But most of America considers it rather antiquated.
It does not matter who is happier or have better life - middle class family in US or low-cast family in India. Sad fact is that ALL western societies are below replacement level. White US population is on decline (and it's not steep only because of conservative rural population). Depopulation is a bitch and nature hates void. Two kids are not replacement level - you need 2.33 kids on average.
Fertility rate for white female with college degree (liberal dream) is 1.6 in US. What it means? It means that it takes only 10 generations (180-250 years) to go from 150 million species to 15 million (10x reduction). That means that current model of liberal society just does not work from evolutional perspective. Being educated white female is a negative trait from evolutionary perspective.
I am saying this as somebody who has highly educated girlfriend and who is very unlikely to have more than two kids (one reason being that it takes 200k to send one kid to college).
There is no such thing as a liberalism gene. Cultural evolution plays a much larger part in the development of human society than traditional biological evolution does. "Caucasians", insofar as that term has any scientific basis in fact, might be on the decline. Liberal society is not.
It's only true if conservative=>liberal conversion continues in future which is not necessarily true. Currently liberal societies generally outperform conservative ones but historically it was often not the case.
Just look at Siege of Baghdad by mongolian hordes or depopulation and fall of Roman Empire.
This graph[1] is the number of children of white Americans age 44-55 by political leaning in the 2000-2010 GSS survey, which seems to suggest that there is a pattern of liberals breeding themselves into extinction. This graph[2] is the same thing over time.
Don't you get it, this is our way of keeping the wealth to fewer and fewe people. That 1% will be turned into .5% soon, and we will all be twice as rich.
It sometimes can be obvious, the small flock of little old ladies attending Wednesday evening mass for example.
If you can manage, check out the crowd shots in a modern televangelist audience. Lots of men, but many many more women: sometimes a shot will show 1 or 2 men, and 8-12 women.
I'm sure it's some strange human expression having to do with who has which reproductive organs, but it's always seemed to me such a strange, interesting and repeatable pattern.
> On the whole, I just look at those figures and feel a deep amount of shame for my country (US).
I feel a deep shame for your comment. I can respect someone for believing in a socialist approach, why are you unable to do the same for those who believe in a laissez faire approach?
Uh the very first one? "Which is more important, Freedom to pursue one's goals without state interference, or that the state guarantees no one is in need"?
Although there are people like myself who think that the state does a very poor job of guaranteeing no one is in need, and that individuals are better at providing 'socialism' than governments.
I personally found it highly surprising (in a disconcerting way) that so few people answered "don't know" for the question "is individual success under your control". Am I really the only person who is squarely in the "in some ways yes, in some ways no" camp?
I don't believe witchcraft can claim any reasonable success, while socialism can at least make a claim for converting the largest countries in the world from agrarian to industrial economies. Now, I would argue that capitalism can do it better, but there would be an argument at least ... what argument can you have with witchcraft? Hence my respect.
Get over it. As an American living in Western Europe, there are plenty of things to be ashamed about everywhere. And there is a lot of good stuff in the US, too. Forget about this so quickly?
The important thing is to try and identify things that your country doesn't do so well, and try and import the good stuff from elsewhere. This is a long and slow process that requires lots of hard work. And it's also complicated, because sometimes the good things are mixed up with the bad things.
We're talking about culture as a whole, not outlying tasks performed by few. Part of the delusion is people believing they have anything to do with the success of NASA.
In my experience, religious women are unlikely to agree with the assertion that religion marginalizes them. Instead, they are likely to claim that religion shows them the importance of womanhood (often motherhood in particular).
On the differing-demographics question, it would be interesting to have some finer-grained data to look at some of those confounding issues. I can believe that Americans and Western Europeans differ on some values, but they also differ considerably amongst themselves: the values of Brooklyn and suburban Houston are fairly different.
Even just regional data could be useful to be a more accurate view.
What is there to feel shame about? Opinions are just that - opinions. You shouldn't feel ashamed for people that have different opinions than yourself. That seems overly judgmental and elitist, especially the "relatively rural" nonsense.
I for one am glad that we don't share the same views on the whole as Western Europe, especially the self-reliance and choose-your-own-adventure. It's the over-reliance on the government that has Western Europe in the terrible economic shape that it is.
While we have gone a bit overboard in letting corporations dictate so much of our rules and regulations, all in all, the capitalist system we have gives people more opportunities than our European counterparts. Our culture may not be superior (how could it be when we've only been around for ~250 years), but our economics most certainly are.
I think the Europeans' smugness and looking down their noses at the "upstarts" in the colonies has gotten to you.
I bet the lack of a national curriculum - that banishes religion from everything except religious classes has something to do with the US results.
Here in the UK we are slowly degenerating by allowing schools to have more freedom, so religious groups are having increased influence on standard state schools.
There's no national curriculum in the US, but religion most certainly is "banished" from state schools. Not even excepting religious classes - there aren't any such classes in state-operated schools, at least not any that I've ever heard of.
Treating school systems as the primary mechanism for transmitting cultural memes, and attributing social attitudes to its functions, seems a very bizarre position.
In fact, if anything, the exact reverse may be the case: by not permitting religion to have any state-supported expression, it ensures that religion is sustained and advanced by civil society itself, which yields a much more vigorous and energetic religious sphere in American culture than you'd see in countries where religion is mediated and subdued by politics.
Not really - 82.4% of the US population lives in urban areas, which is a bit higher than the UK (79.6%) and quite a bit higher than Germany (73.9%), Italy (68.4%) or Ireland (62.2%):
They probably do not consider themselves marginalized. To understand how people who disagree with you think, start with the assumption they don't think of themselves as stupid hypocrites.
That's a pretty wild claim. Being religious is not similar at all to being abused. Growing up with a certain worldview doesn't affect that. Your body doesn't know you are learning the "wrong" worldview.
"Brainwashing" is a term too lightly used - although it can happen, the average religious person is not brainwashed. They simply just grow up with a certain cultural mindset.
You're probably right that 'brainwashed' is a term used lightly, yet with some people if you challenge their views, they go flat out into denial so that their world doesn't shatter. I probably should call them brainwashed even though it's just simply the way they grew up.
Well, you could say the same about a non-religious person. Tell them about God, and they would flat out deny it. Why? Because they believe their own worldview to be correct, and that God is incompatible with it. It's fair for them, so it should be fair for religious people to do the same. To them, religious reality is as axiomatic as scientific fact is to non-religious people. It doesn't matter which side is technically correct - they both believe their own point to be true, based on the very complex cultural and social factors in their upbringing. I don't think a religious and non-religious person are physiologically any different, they just make different choices about their beliefs.
I'm not saying science is equivalent to a religion, but rather that a religious worldview is just as unshakable as a non-religious worldview.
Okay I don't want to get into debate of religion as the topic here because that never ends well. But in general more open minded people are willing to give anything a shot, and more importantly, they're willing to say "You know what, I was wrong in thinking that you need large engines to get more horsepower. I didn't know you could add turbos or have direct injection to increase power without increasing engine capacity."
A closeminded person would say, "Yeah, so what if it shows it has 200HP for a 1.8l engine, that's still not real power. I mean, you're using turbos and DI unlike me. I'm using `pure` engine power".
[I shifted gears (no pun intended) to something else because in my experience debate/discussion on religion NEVER ends well)
Well, I didn't intend to get in that sort of debate either, so that's fair. Yes, I definitely agree that open mindedness is a big difference between those two groups. However, I bet it's just a matter of closed-minded people tending to prefer A, and open-minded people tending to prefer B, rather than A creating close mindedness.
I know a musliam woman that dislike the fashion tastes of Saudi Arabian women.
In Saudi Arabia, women must use black clothing covering almost everything. And the reason for that, is that they want to, there are no laws that say that, no religious rule that say that, and men don't enforce that, when a muslim visitor of another country wear muslim clothes but not black for example, Saudi women that will nag you to go change to something black. (or if a woman wear muslim clothing that does not cover the same things, they also get nagged by other women).
That said, I disagree with your statement that religion marginalize women. Maybe, because I am religious myself.
I am referring to specificity of the design. The women I knew in particular liked Saudi clothing, but pink, and was unhappy that the women there bothered her.
I'll admit that I'm apparently a dumb American, because till now I thought those women were forced to wear those black robes that cover everything but their eyes. They really like it, and they aren't coerced with any kind of religious pressure?
Of course there are laws, I have no idea what the other poster is talking about. Saudi Arabia even has a police force, the mutaween, which enforces things like dress codes for women (officially the name of the organization which runs the religious police in Saudi Arabia is called "The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice"). There is a famous example of an incident in 2002 wherein during a fire in a girls' school in Mecca the mutaween prevented girls from fleeing the school due to being improperly clothed, 15 girls died and 50 others were injured from the fire.
Just because there are no laws does not mean there is not a lot of pressure from family and society. There is no law saying women can't wear bikinis in the street, yet you don't see it very often.
Sure. I did use the phrase "other countries". I don't know enough about Saudi society to counter your narrative that it is only laws that mean that every single woman is clad in a burkha (which I find suspicious). So I took an anecdote from a society that I know.
Mind you, most of the muslim clothing reflect a culture that already existed before and had its reasons.
For example middle east people believe that women should not display themselves in public, on the other hand they DO should display themselves at home for their husbands, this led to some curious architecture, where homes have one "public" area, where visitors are welcome, and women show up covered, and a "private" area, that depending on the home not even male adult sons of the family is allowed, where women can stroll naked or almost naked. (this when dialed up to eleven that results into the "Harem" that for necessity reasons need male people working on it, thus the eunuchs)
In Egypt the reason for why a women should cover herself still apply: people (specially desert semi-nomads) still kidnap beautiful women. Since covered women you do not know if they are beautiful or not, they don't kidnap them.
Arabs are specially wary of Tuaregs, Arabs perceive them as women kidnappers, and I think that perception is not all illusion.
In local news media where I live (Oslo, Norway), there have been stories about the "muslem morality police". These are people who use social control to make sure girls dress properly and don't have too much contact with outsiders.
Although a family may be relatively liberal, they feel pressured by neighbors to control their daughters. In some cases they even are shamed by neighbors calling their more conservative families back home.
The interesting fact is that this "morality police" is driven by more women than men.
Women have usually been more strongly religious then men. Religion is historically a major part of family life, and women are historically the ones charged with socializing children and giving structure to families.
As an aside, I find your reaction amusing. Why should anyone be ashamed that Americans think it's necessary to use force to preserve order in the world, or that Americans believe our culture to be superior? We are coming off a 60 year run in which:
1) The U.S. subsidized the military defense of Europe through NATO against the Soviet Union;
2) America dominated nearly every major field of technological development;
3) Europe, after economic dysfunction in the 1970's and 1980s, took pages out of the American playbook and enjoyed resurgent economies in the 1990's and 2000's as a result of economic liberalization and deregulation.
Over the last 60 years, America has given the world: peace, the transistor, computers, the cell phone, and the internet. People in France watch American media (Hollywood) on an American platform (Youtube), then talk about it all on an American website (Facebook). America has reshaped world culture and technology to a degree that only a few countries can claim: Great Britain and Rome. There is nothing to be ashamed of in taking a little credit for that.
Peace? Is this some kind of trolling or are you that ignorant?
Pretty much every major conflict in the second half of the 20th century was instigated or at least participated in by the US (Korea, Vietnam, both Gulf wars, Afghanistan, numerous conflicts in South America and SE Asia where the US tried to topple local governments etc). How about supporting various local militia groups all over the world to fight local regimes (Al-Qaeda and the Taliban come to mind).
As for technological inventions, America has definitely given the world the gift of numerous technological breakthroughs in the recent history, but so have other nations, and let's not forget that no nation has ever achieved anything without relying on the foundations laid out by somebody else before them. To quote Isaac Newton, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". If it hadn't been for the European civilization, America wouldn't even exist. And likewise, Europeans would still be savage barbarians if it hadn't been for the Roman Empire and Greece beforehand... and those empires would've had nothing without the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The way the human civilization works is through constant collaboration and migration of human intellect, goods and people.
So before you turn this into a pissing contest about how much better the US is than the rest of the world (which you have already done, judging by other posts in this thread), consider what I wrote above.
> Pretty much every major conflict in the second half of the 20th century was instigated or at least participated in by the US (Korea, Vietnam, both Gulf wars, Afghanistan, numerous conflicts in South America and SE Asia where the US tried to topple local governments etc). ....
And pretty much every destructive building fire was instigated or at least participated in by the fire department, and every deadly epidemic was instigated or at least participated in by the medical community.
Comparatively speaking, the world has enjoyed almost-unprecedented peace and prosperity since 1945. It's all the more remarkable when you consider the destruction wrought by World War II, together with the relentless drive for conquest by the USSR and other communist states, notably North Korea and North Vietnam. The U.S.'s contributions of blood and treasure were a necessary component of that peace and prosperity; the era really should be called the Pax Americana.
Sure, we made some misjudgments along the way, some of them truly terrible. But Colin Powell, former U.S. secretary of state (and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), put it well [1]: "And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? ... No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead."
> Peace? Is this some kind of trolling or are you that ignorant?
Pretty much every major conflict in the second half of the 20th century was instigated or at least participated in by the US (Korea, Vietnam, both Gulf wars, Afghanistan, numerous conflicts in South America and SE Asia where the US tried to topple local governments etc). How about supporting various local militia groups all over the world to fight local regimes (Al-Qaeda and the Taliban come to mind).
The U.S. spent decades and trillions of dollars fighting the Soviet Union so Europe didn't have to. You can send the thank-you cards in the mail.
To protect your own national interests, not to promote world peace. Let's cut out this "we love freedom so much that we feel the need to share it with the rest of the world". I'm getting sick of the empty platitudes and the propaganda getting spouted like this. Just save it.
Now, before anyone says that Europeans have inflicted much more violence on the world over the course of history, I do agree with that. As a civilization, we've done some really atrocious things to various indigenous cultures, each other and even our own citizens at times. The thing is, most of us don't have a problem looking ourselves in the mirror and admitting this.
America has done wonderful things for the world and I'm sure everyone is thankful for that. But it doesn't change the fact that it has and still does act like a gang of murderous self serving international criminals. If you can take credit for the good things that you've done, you should also be able to take responsibility for the bad things. No one is perfect and I don't see why Americans get so freaking defensive every time someone points out a flaw with their country. You're not perfect, it's a part of the human condition and just learn to accept it.
> To protect your own national interests, not to promote world peace.
The U.S. does act in its own national interest, but it has taken a broader view of national interest than any major power in modern times. Rhetoric aside, it doesn't act on some abstract love of democracy. Rather, it acts on a practical commitment to preserving the status quo of the ascendency of the western democracies. And that just happens to be in the interest of much of Europe too.
> Now, before anyone says that Europeans have inflicted much more violence on the world over the course of history, I do agree with that
The tendency in Europe right now is to think that you're outside of history. That the forces that existed in Europe, embroiling it in nearly perpetual war for hundreds of years before World War II no longer exist. I'd posit that this isn't really the case. You're not different or better people now than you ever were. Something else is in play.
> No one is perfect and I don't see why Americans get so freaking defensive every time someone points out a flaw with their country.
I'm not trying to be defensive. I'm pointing out something Europeans tend to gloss over: it's easy to feel like you've turned the corner on violence and war when the U.S.'s foreign policy just happens to involve clearing all your brush fires for you. Let's not pretend. It's not like Europe doesn't benefit tremendously from U.S. attempts to maintain stability in the middle east and keep the oil flowing. It's not like Europe could afford to spend relatively little on their militaries in the face of continued Russian military power if the U.S. didn't exist as a foil. Going back further, it's not like no European country had anything to do with Vietnam...
> Let's cut out this "we love freedom so much that we feel the need to share it with the rest of the world"
How about "we realize that freedom tends to lead to positive outcomes not only for those who are being granted freedom, but those they interact with, including us. But even if we don't particularly share in the direct material benefits, we enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling we get from knowing that people in other parts of the world are enjoying certain freedoms we also cherish"?
"that Americans believe our culture to be superior?"
Well, for people outside America it does seem both arrogant and amusing in fairly equal parts.
By the way, about your list.
Peace - bwahahahaha
Transistor - The Canadian Julius Edgar Lilienfeld first patented the FET.
Computer - The first programmable electronic computer was built by Tommy Flowers in the UK for WWII codebreaking.
Cell phone - Yep, american's built the first cell phones.
Internet - Certainly a hell of a lot of the initial work was done in the States, but the protocols were knocked out between groups in Stanford and University College London and the bit of it that most people use was designed by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN.
how many global conflicts, or even local conflicts between any two major powers, have there been in the past 60 years? While "Pax Americana" obviously isn't perfect, it's hard to deny that it doesn't exist.
>Transistor - The Canadian Julius Edgar Lilienfeld first patented the FET.
He was actually Hungarian, (and emigrated to the US shortly afterward) but that's besides the point. He never actually created his design, only patented it. It took another 20 years for a design to actually be implemented by Shockley and others at Bell labs.
>Computer - The first programmable electronic computer was built by Tommy Flowers in the UK for WWII code breaking.
Fair... Although it was IBM, Intel, RCA, DEC and eventually Apple which made computing what it is today.
>Internet - Certainly a hell of a lot of the initial work was done in the States, but the protocols were knocked out between groups in Stanford and University College London and the bit of it that most people use was designed by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN.
how many global conflicts, or even local conflicts between any two major powers, have there been in the past 60 years?
You are trying to redefine the word peace to fit your rhetoric.
I prefer to define peace as an absence of war, in which case we definitely have not seen anything like peace, and certainly not because of US involvement. The US has been involved in, and started, many wars over the last 60 years where millions died, has backed many brutal dictatorships (and continues to back them - see Bahrain), and has pioneered in the last decades new ways to perform targeted assassinations far beyond its borders, including innocent civilians far from any war zone. Hardly a force for peace. There are many good things about US culture but promoting global peace or human rights is not one of them.
Pax Americana is an old comforting lie, as was Pax Britannica, and the Pax Romana before it.
The absence of war is relative. The late 20th century was remarkably free of the kinds of conflicts between major powers that defined the 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
What relative peace coincident with the ascendancy of Rome, Britain, and America have in common is that a global with overwhelming military power keeps major wars from breaking out between lesser powers.
After all, do you think Europe suddenly just got religion in the 1950's after hundreds of years of infighting? Human nature didn't change that suddenly--what changed was the political balance of power: there was no room for Britain to war with France or Germany when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were internationally dominant.
The late 20th century was remarkably free of the kinds of conflicts between major powers that defined the 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
There have been many wars all over the globe, including some in progress still involving the US, we've been on the edge of global nuclear war due to brinkmanship between the US and USSR, we've seen genocide in various African countries, Syria, Iran-Iraq, Iraq, Iraq II, civil war across the middle east. There is no Pax Americana.
That is not relative peace, that is a state of constant warfare, much like the rest of global history.
Pax Americana means very little in the countries being bombed by the USA. And in the past 60 years there has been quite a number of them, many of them proxies.
Ah, yes. It was all America's doing. No-one else has done anything of note since the end of WWII.
Hang on... who instigated that unnecessary war in the Middle East ten years ago? Oh, and who propped up a puppet regime in South East Asia before that? Hrm... where was this clarion call for peace in the Second Congo War?
The US should be proud of its achievements, but for the love of god, stop doing that all-too-American thing of taking all the credit.
A couple years back I have heard an idea in a psychology class that this has to do with risk assessment. If women are less likely to take risks, they are less likely to "take their chances" in an afterlife.
I look at those answers and find a deep amount of shame for my country, the UK. Especially on the role of the state and the fact that many people feel their life is outside of their control. It's no wonder that the U.S. is a more successful country.
Although we haven't yet achieved the slow rate of economic growth and high rate of unemployment that Europe currently enjoys, don't worry, the current administration is working hard to get us there. And if you're too impatient to wait for the whole country to reach an acceptable level of dysfunction, you can always move to Detroit and get ahead of the curve.
I know that you are all about equality but I think you missed the idea. All people are treated differently because drum roll... They are different. Men, women, musicians, mathematicians, authors, doctors.
Humans are not evil because when people are different, they tend to group them all together. This is human nature. This affects everyone's decision making (including yours). If you were in a game of deadly roulette where you had to pick the outcome of certain peoples lives, how certain people would react to certain challenges or situations, how well certain people would do in certain jobs - you would go with the numbers too. You would not treat these people equally. Therefore you yourself are sexist, bigoted, and stereotype people just as those you criticize.
Just knowing this this fact means that these probabilities do have an affect on you.
I am not condoning the mistreatment of anyone - I am merely saying that blindly ignoring peoples strengths and weaknesses is foolishness. Also, giving resources or opportunity which was not earned or deserved to someone will not usually result in a better outcome. Negative side effects create more problems to this scenario than the original solution was meant to solve (and it too fails).
A lot of the questions are misleading -- placed with an American bias as to what they meant. Eg the first table measures whether people value:
(a) "freedom to pursue one’s goals without state interference."
vs
(b) "State guarantees nobody is in need".
The formulation shows an American understanding/bias on the issue. For a lot of Europeans (a) is not about real freedom, because it translates to big corporations and private interests shaping your life and be given free pass to exploit people.
That is, we don't see "state" as an enemy that restricts us, but as the (imperfect of course) embodiment of our collective will, as stated through democracy, that helps set the stage for our personal freedom.
So those same questions are also read as:
(a) Do you want to forgo a lot of democratic procedures, and have society be a jungle where you are supposedly "free" but in practice the "big fish" can crush you at will, or have you starve to work for them cheaper?
vs
(b) You want people to vote and use the state power to restrict exploitation and need in the interests of the majority, and thus be able to enjoy your individual freedom better.
So it's not really about valuing "freedom" vs "state", it's about how different peoples see how freedom works and what state does.
What's the difference between "big corporations and private interests" on the one hand and "state" on the other? They seem in all cases to be organizations of human beings with the capacity to concentrate and assert power over other human beings.
The difference seems to be in the scale and scope of that concentration and assertion of power. So, if you're inclined to minimize the capacity of any external institution to shape your life or to exploit you, which option is most optimal? Do you prefer option (a), which admits at most a haphazard and ad hoc system of institutional control - one which can, with some effort, be evaded - or option (b), which establishes a universal and de jure system of institutional control, evading which requires resources inaccessible to most?
I've always found it odd that so many think the solution to the concentration of power in the hands of a plurality organized institutions is to concentrate all power in the hands of a single organized institution.
The obvious difference is that corporations are not democratically governed by the people whose lives they affect. Or are even required to pay attention to those people.
Yes there are exceptions when the reverse is true. (but note that I am calling large corporations)
I'm pretty sure there is no large corporation whose management is democratically elected by all the people it employs and whose life they affect, with each vote counting the same, be it a janitor or a CEO.
I know the above idealistic view of a democratic government is also not true in the real world, but governments do get a lot closer to that ideal than giant corporations ever have.
The amount of voice possessed by customers and employees of commercial organizations might be theoretically lower than what citizens possess with respect to political organizations (although in practice, I'm not sure there's much difference), but with political institutions, the capacity for exit is essentially nonexistent, whereas with commercial institutions, it's fully available to all participants.
In terms of the ability to assert one's freedom, I'd regard exit as being of far greater importance than voice.
> but governments do get a lot closer to that ideal
Why do you believe that the "ideal" you're positing is the best one to maximize human freedom? Democracy is still a kind of uniform, monopolistic rule.
I'll also point out, as an aside, that you're channeling this conversation into a debate opposite sides of a false dichotomy: the existing forms of centralized government and commercial corporation are hardly the only two viable models for social institutions: there's a vast range of alternatives that offer a variety of risk-reward tradeoffs.
That false dichotomy is also based on the presumption that people must outsource responsibility for a wide range of elements of their lives to some external institution. But what about people who want to take direct responsibility for their lives, or create their own social institutions in conjunction with like-minded others for that purpose? How are they not hamstrung by attempts to create universal monopolies?
> (although in practice, I'm not sure there's much difference)
You really ought to qualify that with "where" in practice there isn't much difference.
In the US, yes, obviously your government is pretty much entirely bought by corporations to such extent that I'd be hard-pressed to even call it a de facto democracy.
There's other parts in the world however, that have multiple political parties, that actually have radically different viewpoints on a wide variety of topics, which are not merely deemed "the lesser evil" by many[0] of their supporters ... some (this depends on the party) even depend on their supporters for input on what policy course to take.
Sounds pretty utopian, but such places do exist.
[0] you can never please everyone, of course
> Why do you believe that the "ideal" you're positing is the best one to maximize human freedom?
I don't. Nor do I believe it is right to merely maximize human freedom. You need to maximize both freedom and happiness, didn't you ever take a course on ethics? If you only have one but not the other you get terrible badwrong things.
To clarify further, it felt weird to defend democracy in my previous post. I don't usually do that, I think it's a very imperfect solution, but it's still the best option that I know of.
> Democracy is still a kind of uniform, monopolistic rule.
Sure, it's just that most alternatives that I know or heard of generally fail on the "who's going to take care of the elderly and the disabled?" criterion. In particular the ones that aim at purely maximizing freedom are generally proposed by young and healthy individuals that either don't realize or don't care that part of society will be left rotting in the streets that way.
You cannot judge a society by how it treats the average individual, you can only judge it by how it treats those who are worst off.
> I'll also point out, as an aside, that you're channeling this conversation into a debate opposite sides of a false dichotomy: the existing forms of centralized government and commercial corporation are hardly the only two viable models for social institutions: there's a vast range of alternatives that offer a variety of risk-reward tradeoffs.
I didn't mean to do that, I'm not even sure that I did.
> That false dichotomy is also based on the presumption that people must outsource responsibility for a wide range of elements of their lives to some external institution. But what about people who want to take direct responsibility for their lives
Yeah usually that means these people want to be free of the burden to also take responsibility for the lives of those who cannot (or not to a useful extent).
There are exceptions of course, but people that do this by their own motivations, are pretty rare, definitely not enough to take care of the problem. Even if you take into account that most (but definitely not all) will take care of their own families (but not everybody has that luxury either).
> or create their own social institutions in conjunction with like-minded others for that purpose? How are they not hamstrung by attempts to create universal monopolies?
It is my experience that, unless such social institutions are in fact governments (or something very similar, religion, giant computer, etc), these communities will fail after about 30+ years when generation-churn sets in and the amount of "like-minded others" in the community starts to dwindle.
It's perfectly possible to start some beautiful communal living project where everybody knows what's what because they all believe the same thing, and it can go very well for a while, make a beautiful space to live, etc. However, as soon as the original founders start to disappear (or can't do their part anymore), and if there is no "construct" that is somehow bigger than the individuals that makes sure the values of the society are kept as they were intended, it'll fall apart. Such a construct is called a government (or something very similar).
For a real-life example of this happening, see Christiania in Kopenhagen, Denmark. Beautiful idea, really fallen apart. If you ever visit Kopenhagen, check it out, not for what's left of the hippie art and community ideals, but for the broken roads, windows and alcoholics. It's very educational. Fortunately there's an actual state just a few blocks away.
> You really ought to qualify that with "where" in practice there isn't much difference.
It's true everywhere to some extent. I'd suspect that extent is likely a function of scale; the broader the scope and greater the impact of political power, the more likely it is to be disconnected from any viable mechanism of restraint or accountability.
> In the US, yes, obviously your government is pretty much entirely bought by corporations to such extent that I'd be hard-pressed to even call it a de facto democracy.
I don't understand this obsession with corporations. Any political system of sufficiently concentrated power is going to be controlled by whatever faction has the means to manipulate it. Whether that manipulation is expressed via money, social connections, Machiavellian ruthlessness, or some other mechanism, the end result is the same. There's simply no such thing as a government that's uniformly accountable to every person in equal measure.
If you think your own country - whichever it is - is immune to this, you're probably not looking closely enough.
> Yeah usually that means these people want to be free of the burden to also take responsibility for the lives of those who cannot (or not to a useful extent).
No, I don't think it does. Again, that false dichotomy is showing up; it's implicit in your viewpoint, even if you're not consciously articulating it. People's duties toward others are a function of their actual relationships with those others; the mutual obligations and the mechanisms of reciprocal accountability by which people involve themselves in each other's lives are properly defined by those people themselves.
In other words, every particular relationship or community is a society unto itself, and its members have the right to make their own rules and set their own standards, in the manner that they choose, without being shoehorned into conformity with abstract universals imposed by some external institution. The political state is properly a failsafe mechanism, to be invoked if and when disputes and controversies that arise within substantive social contexts aren't contained and resolved within those social contexts; its legitimate role is judicial, not legislative. The state is not properly the a priori driver of social norms or the definer of mutual obligations.
What you're calling "democracy" is a bit of a misnomer, because it doesn't have its roots in any substantive demos that actually exists; it gets its theoretical mandate from an abstraction of society, not the actual thing.
> There are exceptions of course, but people that do this by their own motivations, are pretty rare, definitely not enough to take care of the problem. Even if you take into account that most (but definitely not all) will take care of their own families (but not everybody has that luxury either).
Then your own system isn't enough to take care of the problem either, because no matter what institutional forms you create within society, that society is always composed of the same people, bearing the same motivations.
The logic of "people are too stupid/selfish/evil to manage things on their own, so lets put some institution controlled by those same people in charge of everything!" is quite obviously broken.
If anything, the existence of political will sufficient to create policy in aim of certain social objectives is evidence that there indeed is sufficient will for society to just work towards those objectives directly, without using politics, and without people misdirecting their energies and resources into dysfunctional institutions that generate unnecessary conflict. And when people eschew politics, and just work to address the problems they care about, they'll probably be a lot more successful at it.
> It is my experience that, unless such social institutions are in fact governments (or something very similar, religion, giant computer, etc), these communities will fail after about 30+ years when generation-churn sets in and the amount of "like-minded others" in the community starts to dwindle.
I'm glad you've managed to gain experience of social institutions administered by giant computers - that solid empirical data will surely reveal some important truths :)
In seriousness, though, this doesn't appear to be the general case at all. The vast majority of our social infrastructure - language, art, commerce, law itself - has been developed and sustained over millennia by bottom-up emergence, not by institutional fiat. If anything, the rise of centralized state power over the past century or so has eroded them and made them more susceptible to failure, not less so. It's actually given us the worst of both worlds with respect to the conservative/radical dichotomy: by imposing top-down uniformity on society, it eliminates the opportunities for experimentation and innovation at the micro level, which are the source of all real progress, while forcing everyone into patterns defined entirely according to abstractions and rationalizations at the macro level, denying us the ability to refine our social infrastructure against real experience.
> For a real-life example of this happening, see Christiania in Kopenhagen, Denmark.
I'm well aware of Christiania; and I'll say that I'm not sure that the organizing principles of that particular community were necessarily the most suited to long-term survival - which is fine; we learn from failed experiments - but I'm also aware that its decline wasn't entirely a matter of its own defects, but that it was in part actively undermined by the "official authorities".
>What's the difference between "big corporations and private interests" on the one hand and "state" on the other? They seem in all cases to be organizations of human beings with the capacity to concentrate and assert power over other human beings.
The difference is in the use, origin and organization of such "capacity". Which makes all the difference in the world.
For one, state power comes from elections and laws passed by elected representatives of the majority. Corporate and private interest power on the other hand is arbitrary.
Second, the democratic state (however imperfect) was founded to serve the people. And in most cases it was founded BY the people, through bloody struggles against opressors (feudalism, colonial powers, the King, etc). Corporate and private interest power on the other hand is self serving.
To put it in another way, "private interests" amount to a dictatorial state (or, to be more presice, to a constellation of dictatorial regions of control). Something people fight to get rid of, and establish democratic states.
>The difference seems to be in the scale and scope of that concentration and assertion of power.
Private interests, if left unguarded, can drawf states in scale and scope (and have done so, in tons of historical examples, especially for less powerful countries. The term "Banana Republic" is an example of that).
So, nope, the difference is in the origin and check of that power, as well as the purpose of it.
>So, if you're inclined to minimize the capacity of any external institution to shape your life or to exploit you, which option is most optimal?
No question about it: stump private interests at every opportunity.
There can be a marketplace for private companies. There is competition for hiring workers as well as for selling goods. But the state is a monopoly. While the state might start out as well-meaning, it will quickly attract corruption which imposes itself on every citizen, leaving them without recourse. If you leave a bad company and join or found a better one, that's business as usual. If you revoke a government, that's revolution.
In a democracy, its called an election. They happen regularly and you have a direct say on them. The directors of large companies however you have absolutely no say on.
Also, its not always possible to just "join or found a better" company for many, many reasons. Perhaps my comparative advantage isn't in building up companies against entrenched competition. Perhaps there isn't capital available to start a company in a particularly capital intensive or regulated industry. Perhaps the company tactics are awful enough to destroy me even if I tried (eg. mafia visits, suppliers refuse to deal, FUD campaigns).
An election just rearranges the people who are in various pre-determined positions. It doesn't change the structure of the government. If there is a "chief surveillance officer", an election might change who is in that position but you will still be spied on. In fact, what is more likely is that you won't get to vote for that person directly, but the president you elect will appoint a candidate and the congress you elect will approve that candidate. This means you are even more removed from actually making any changes.
Even if a market is hard to enter, it's better than having armed officers show up and charge you with treason for trying to overthrow the government. Reflect on the political situation leading up to the American Civil War. Even with that many people who felt that strongly about the issue of states' rights, they were not able to change the structure of the government.
All good points. But in most democratic countries while you don't vote for the "chief surveillance officer" you vote for the person who is his boss (unlike say, here in the UK where you can only vote for your local representative). They ought to be able to push changes down from the top and have the ultimate executive power to help them do so.
(PS. I am not aware of the US Civil War (beyond the Ironclad battle) so I can not comment on that)
Well you might be aware that our federal government is divided into three branches. The President doesn't get to decide what the laws of the land are, that's up to Congress. So Congress creates a department, funds it, sets limits on it, and then the executive branch uses those funds to do the job. It get complicated, but to be specific, elections don't change laws. You would have to elect enough representatives to change the law, a president to sign the law, and then the courts would have to accept the law as constitutional.
> The difference is in the use, origin and organization of such "capacity". Which makes all the difference in the world.
The use, origin, and organization of power is an expression of human nature, and is substantively the same within all human institutions. Differences in form do little to differentiate the range of potential abuses that concentrated power might enable.
> To put it in another way, "private interests" amount to a dictatorial state
Everything is a "private interest" - even a putative "democratic state" is administered and controlled by a specific set of people at any given time, and the mechanisms that are intended to hold those people accountable to some general public interest are, like all mechanisms, subject to being gamed and manipulated by people pursuing divergent purposes for the use of their power. (And even an ideal "democratic state" is still "dictatorial" in the way it operates - it creates universal top-down rules that everyone is expected to obey, irrespective of divergent particulars.)
In the United States, there are exactly 537 elected officials in the federal government. Do you think there's a viable mechanism in existence that could keep those 537 individuals accountable in equal measure to each of 300,000,000 citizens?
Do you think it even makes sense to regard there as being a single "general public interest" applicable equally to that entire population of 300,000,000?
> About half of Americans (49%) and Germans (47%) agree with the statement, “Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others;” 44% in Spain share this view. In Britain and France, only about a third or fewer (32% and 27%, respectively) think their culture is better than others.
The French only say that because they disagree with the "our culture is not perfect" bit.
There's an unstated assumption that could be clarified:
- our culture is superior to some others
- our culture is superior to most others
- our culture is superior to all others
My answer would change depending on which of these I thought the question was asking. Would a native French speaker make a different assumption from a native English speaker? Would linguistic differences make all three equally possible in Spanish but only one possible in German? In other words, is it possible that language difference is significantly distorting our ability to spot attitude difference on this question?
Also remember that most people don't study culture and might think that means along the lines of "well my friends / people in my area are generally nice but I heard people in other countries are raping and killing each other".
What I'm trying to say is that as part of the study, asking people who responded what they thought culture meant might be really valuable to gauging the value of this question.
Pretty much, milking a stupid cliche. Most Americans' only exposure to France is stereotypes they've seen, or if they're more well traveled, exposure to Parisians. Which is like if I came from another country, visited NYC, and concluded that Americans were generally pretentious, almost never made eye contact, and paid obscene amounts for rent.
That stereotype is largely true, in my experience, having grown up in the US. There are, of course, exceptions, but they're exceptions. The snotty Frenchman is the exception, though, probably borne from our disproportionate exposure to Paris. So in that case the stereotype isn't warranted.
One possible reason for the British response in the Religious vs National Identity question is that British identity can be a very fractious thing.
The UK is made up of constituent kingdoms, but not all of these are on the island of Great Britain. Thus you can be technically British (i.e. of the UK) without being British (i.e. of the island of Great Britain). This most notably manifests itself amongst the Northern Irish, some of whom see themselves as Irish (ethnicity, or wanting to be of a united Irish state) or British (of the United Kingdom, but of island of Ireland).
To confuse things further, there's a debate going on over whether or not Scotland should stay part of the United Kingdom or become a separate country. Scottish nationalism is a very strange creature. Thus some people may identify with being Scottish first, or solely as Scottish. This occurs to a lesser extent in Wales and in England (being Welsh and English, not Scottish, that would just be silly).
Additionally there are many people who are first or second generation British with foreign parents or grandparents, particularly from former colonial territories. I have friends who identify with being both British and Indian, despite being born and raised on the island of Great Britain.
It all makes for a big, typically British mess. Finally, my wife was born in Turkey, moved to England and became a British citizen, but she can never become English because there's no English citizenship status.
"Scottish nationalism is a very strange creature."
Why? We already have seperate legal, educational and health systems and a government that deals with a lot of domestic policies.
We have a clear national identity and seem to be immune to the swing towards the far right that seems to be happening in England. Personally, I would far rather be in a Scotland that is independent, free of Trident and part of the EU than left as an appendage to London in the Former UK.
[Sadly, I suspect we won't get indepedence, but I rankle a bit at this being described as "strange"]
Because unlike other common forms of nationalism, it's based on a sense of self-determination rather than a sense of superiority (e.g. American, historic British, Italian and German nationalism etc.).
Ah - I'd never really thought of it like that. So when you meant "strange" you meant "nice strange", not "scary strange". If that is the case the I am standing down from my state of ranklement ;-)
[NB I believe the French (our occasional ancient allies) - had a saying along the lines of "As touchy as a Scotsman"!]
As an Englishman I'm happy to support Scottish independence but only if its done in a binary, all or nothing way. You are either in or you are out and we have no place getting in the way of that decision but if you do choose to go it alone then, imho, that should mean Scotland no longer uses the pound, no longer has any involvement in Westminster, no longer enjoys the free movement (i.e. sans passport checks) of its people across the border and forgoes any expectation of automatic defence by the UK. Independent should mean independent.
I'd rather be in the EU in Scotland than out of it in the UK - and there are other reasons for my interest in Scottish Independence, getting rid of Trident being an important one.
[The "re-apply to the EU" thing is a bit of a red herring - membership is usually held up by legal compliance and Scotland's laws obviously already comply with EU legislation.]
I'm not convinced that an independent Scotland would be able to get rid of Trident. Any independence will be negotiated and as the armed forces belong to the crown it'll be down to the armed forces and monarch to largely decide what happens with Trident. If Scotland were to become a republic, then I can see that changing but I suspect that separation wouldn't be an immediate and overnight thing and that armed forces would continue to operate jointly for some time following independence.
That particular daft idea was killed pretty quickly (by the sounds of it came from some official at the MOD) because that kind of arrogance is exactly what motivates a lot of people in Scotland to look seriously at independence.
I am confused as to why that is arrogant. Should Scotland gain independence, the idea of Faslane becoming sovereign British territory seems plausible. There are plenty of examples of armed forces bases being located within foreign jurisdictions in accordance with similar arrangements.
As I understand it, relocating the infrastructure of the Naval base might well prove prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, its continued presence would provide a considerable boon to the local scottish community in terms of jobs and the presence of British armed forces personnel.
To be clear, I hold no strong opinion on the continuation of the Trident programme or Scotland's membership in the Union. The part of me that is proud to be British would be sad to see it break up I suppose. I do however support the requirement for a Binary referendum whole-heartedly... no more self-determination.
On the subject of RBS (not an organization that I have a very positive opinion of) - given that the corporation tax receipts from RBS in its boom years went to the UK government and it was the UK government that "regulated" the finance sector the most likely outcome would be that Scotland would take a pro rata portion of those liabilities.
That seems fair to me - especially as RBS has most of its UK operations in England, not in Scotland.
Trying to backdate things would rapidly get very silly indeed (e.g. Scotland asking for North Sea Oil tax revenue back?).
I have to be honest, whichever way you slice it it would be a nightmare to untangle the two countries on all sorts of levels. I even heard there was a concern as Scots are over-represented in the British Armed Forces.
"One possible reason for the British response in the Religious vs National Identity question is that British identity can be a very fractious thing."
I think it might also be because Britain is simply not a very religious country any more and is much more secular than the U.S.
For example, the 2011 census for England and Wales showed a big jump in the number of people who said they had "no religion" compared with the 2001 census (a jump from 15% in 2001 to 25% in 2011).
Interesting that the US believes they shape their own destiny or that they are the product of their own work, yet the 'cultural superiority' question seems to indicate that they don't necessarily value what they have produced.
I find it interesting that Americans have so little trust in their democratic government, yet have so much faith in authoritarian phenomenon of religion.
Religion is a far more decentralized, organic, community-based institution (at least in America). In contrast the American government is a distant faceless bureaucracy, and even if a small subset of its employees are elected that doesn't make Americans feel better about it telling them what to do. But Americans are perfectly happy teaming up with their neighbors to help the elderly in the community once a week with their church groups.
Religion as it is practiced is not the bogeyman of liberals' dreams.
This 'study' reaks of bias and hand waved conclusions...the list would be so long, perhaps the extensive use of 'Americans' as a short hand for US citizens in an international opinion survey is the most blatant give away ?
It comes from the Pew Reasearch Center, an US think tank chaired by former Bill Clinton's secretary of States, funded by a very wealthy conservative entity, and scanning the other surveys I get the same feeling of being very transparent on the methodology while strongly aiming for a given output. Like this one the NSA for instance: http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-ph...
PS: even for a selected target, what does questions like 'Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others' point to ? They surveyed that short of half of the Christinans think themself as Christian first and citizen of a country second. For these people, what does 'our culture' even point to ?
The age difference in the cultural superiority question is really eye opening. It went from 60% of 50+ Americans saying 'yes', to 37% for 18-29 -- second lowest after France.
Glad to know that my generation has a sprinkling of modesty.
I've taken a Pew Research Poll before. What struck me immediately was the inane and terrible format of the questions. I actually said to the individual giving the poll, "None of these questions really allow me to confer how I feel about the issues that I know you're asking me about. They're basically nonsense."
Is it because it sets up a situation where there are only two sides? That thought crossed my mind when it was the state or religion, and excluding a possible third option that could describe the way people feel.
I wonder if there is room in the market to disrupt polling then. I have never been part of a poll but have heard similar bad things about their structure, so I wonder if anyone is out there trying to make it more accurate.
On the technical side you need two things for disruption:
1. A sane test design. Before trying to pull an MVP here, please take some psychology classes on that topic since there's already a huge body of work on how to design a test in a way that lets you infer reliable data, even if participants think the test is nuts (and try to sabotage it), or if they try to second-guess "desired" answers ("Of course I'm not racist").
2. Comparable data sets over time/regions. People are interested in how things change. That's the incumbent advantage in this market, they have all that stuff.
#2 also helps to get _some_ useful information out of insane questions (since they're consistently insane over the years).
"Western Europe" is an odd and outdated term as it is the EU that is acquiring political and economic powers and which some seek to federate. Leaving out the most religious EU countries like Malta, Cyprus, Romania, Poland and Italy you will get a very skewed picture if you are mentally equating Western Europe with the European Union (which is a term often conflated itself with the ambiguous "Europe"). Large portions of legislation in "Western Europe" are decided upon by Southern European politicians in the European Council and the European Parliament where representation is weighted by population in various ways (QMV and MEP caps).
Some "North Eastern America" with a selection of blue states would give you pretty different results to the USA mean as well. The question people would ask though is: what justification do you have for putting that geographical constraint on your study?
"Western Europe" is a sort of Americanism historically used to distinguish European NATO states and allies from Soviet-bloc states ("Eastern Europe"). Many states to the south and even far to the east (e.g., Greece) fall under the geopolitical concept of Western Europe in this context.
On the whole, I just look at those figures and feel a deep amount of shame for my country (US). We'll catch up, but I think part of the reason for these figures is that the US is relatively rural.