Social Science and Socialism

I am reading Thomas Sowell’s “Vision of the Anointed,” and it’s great food for thought.  One of the most interesting thoughts I’m having, from reading it, is that Social Science is really only ideal for a socialist state. I’ll explain.

I am a social science graduate.  I loved studying it.  However, even at the time I took it, I found the distinctions between “scientific psychology” and “folk psychology” (for example) to be stupid.  The most “scientific” of psychologists made up this category to distinguish themselves from those other psychologists who were interested in beliefs, feelings, and other subjective phenomena.  Forgetting about the fact that people make decisions based on those beliefs, feelings, and subjective phenomena everyday.  The scientific psychologists felt they were being more accurate by sticking to testable theories and variables, which did not include things like beliefs or anything relying on the “ghost in the machine” (i.e. an individual’s inner life).  That kind of thing was reserved for “folk” psychologists who insisted on a very real inner experience.  Scientific psychologists preferred to deny this mental, inner, subjective realm altogether to avoid religious or metaphysical implications… the existence of soul, consciousness, absolute morality, spirit, etc.  And of course, they dubbed themselves more scientific and accurate for doing so.  According to them, life is a closed system where everything is biological and there is no need for outside phenomena (like emotions or the will) to invade, smashing the scientific process.

Yet I found this to be stupid not just because everyone’s personal (scientific) experience is that the mental realm exists– how can you publish an academic journal using the pronouns “I” or “we”, if there is no “I” or “we”, truly?–but because cultural anthropologists and sociologists found beliefs, emotions, and other subjective phenomena to be relevant and testable.  Of course, they couldn’t compare to testing rats in a cage.  But these social scientists still considered themselves to be “scientific” even though they studied personality, culture, beliefs, taboos, more’s, and other nebulous variables.  Did that mean only “scientific” psychologists were scientific?  Or that they had a corner on the market of applicable human research?  Of course not.  It was better to pretend “I” and “soul” and “culture” existed, with all the beliefs, emotions, and subjective phenomena, and use that as a starting point for meaningful research.

What does this have to do with Sowell?  Well, I will tell you.

One of the important points Sowell makes in the beginning of his book, is that our public policy convictions are influenced by statistics and research the media believes is important.  However, we all know that statistics are selectively chosen, results are even more selectively chosen, and that data can be manipulated.  Sowell’s point is not that we should throw out statistics, but that we should scrutinize them more carefully.  As scientists.

He levels a charge at public policy leaders who only superficially dive into social science research to grab a few “aha!” statistics, to buttress their ideological vision.  He accuses them of not being scientific at all.  By this he means they will stop aggregating data at any arbitrary point which confirms their point.  For a basic example, he uses the old standby that females make less money than males, when you compare income levels for similar job positions. (I always thought this was true, myself).  But he explains that while social scientists are trying to “control” for income level, they can’t actually accomplish this.  There are too many other variables at play.  If we simply compare men with women at similar job positions, we forget that we couldn’t control for education level, for instance.  A slightly greater number of women have bachelor degrees than men, but men outnumber women 2 to 1 when it comes to masters’ degrees.  So if a job pays more for having more education, that messes up the interpretation.   But most policy does not explain this third variable.

Sowell even takes the example farther.  Men outnumber women in PhDs by 59%, but even if we were to compare men and women who have PhDs and their income levels, we have not yet “controlled” for income because the PhD subject areas are skewed: men have 90% of the PhDs in “hard” sciences and mathematical fields whereas women predominate in the social sciences and education.  So we’re still comparing apples and oranges.  If we aggregate again and try to “control” for income–let’s say by comparing PhDs for women and men in the same concentration, we still don’t get a perfect picture.  If you compared women and men in economics, their salaries might still differ because men outnumber women in econometrics 10 to 1.  This kind of aggregation problem occurs in every job field, including CEOs, doctors, therapists, etc.  You just can’t “control” for the variables you’re looking for.  There are always intervening variables.  But we only get a partial look at the subject from most policy experts or elites.

This leads me to a personal hypothesis that social scientists really cannot reliably guide a democratic-republic.  They can only guide a socialist or totalitarian state.  This is because in a diverse republic, people are allowed to take different paths to get to the jobs they have.  They could major in psychology but go into business, or go back to work after having children.  They can choose what colleges they go to, for how long, before they get their job.  They have “n” number of paths to take, which makes studying them and aggregating data scientifically very difficult.  A female CEO’s income cannot easily be compared to a male CEO’s income, even if we think they are basically the same job.  They might not be the same job, or they might not have had the same education, or the same background experience, or the same strategies for development.  The same goes for university professors, or other seemingly “equal” professions.  Any number of factors might explain differences.  Even the diversity of culture affects statistics, as education experts have long noted for blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians.  This makes “controlling” for variables very difficult, and their application to public policy unreliable.

But if we had a socialist (centrally planned) or totalitarian state, then social science would suddenly become much more accurate and deterministic.  The route to becoming a CEO would be a lot less diverse, and researchers could study variables much more easily.  The whole world would suddenly be more “scientific” as diversity and culture were submitted to state-directed standards.  We would know, for example, that the Nabisco company and General Mills company were much more alike because they were controlled in an egalitarian way by government.  We would therefore know that the conditions under which a business grew, and which each hired a CEO would be much more similar, perhaps even identical (a government-specified path to becoming a CEO would be narrow, with limitations and restrictions on outlying candidates).  Then we could more accurately compare a female CEO with a male CEO.  Our world, scientifically and centrally planned, would be a researcher’s paradise.

This is, of course, the point of anti-utopian novels like 1984 and A Brave New World.  The scientist’s paradise.  Of course the human spirit would find a way to buck those systems too, eventually.  But a world where socialists and scientists take over would be inevitable, since we would all be reduced to egalitarianism like equal white rats in a lab maze.  Being white or Latino wouldn’t matter because everything would be standardized.  Being a male or female wouldn’t matter since the state would raise us androgynously, all the same.  Makes a lot more sense to me now how they even got the term “Social Science.”  Very close to “Socialist Science,” right?

Bias in the Textbooks 3

One of Vitz’s readers, a PhD in church history, makes the important point that high school history textbooks present a unique battleground for ideas because history is one of the only high school subjects where true scholarship enters the picture.  Most math and science (evolutionary theory notwithstanding) are still teaching skills.  English of course acquaints students with original authors, but most classes are still not venturing into collegiate scholarship on those authors (i.e. schools of literary criticism).  In high school history, however, students are expected to move beyond cursory knowledge of events, such as the Revolutionary War, and into at least a few various interpretations—was the Revolutionary War a “revolution” or not, etc.  So these history textbooks provide an avenue for us to see which schools of scholarship are acceptable by public school publishers and which aren’t.  Clearly, there is a secular, liberal bias in history textbooks which prevent most conservative or religious discussion from entering the events, icons, and interpretation of them. (Except for the stereotypical comments about Puritanism.)

In my opinion, it is mistake to leave “religion” out of the American cultural context because America is, broadly speaking, a very religious country.  De Tocqueville recognized this years ago, and Europeans still recognize it today.  Furthermore, a good history book’s job is to acquaint the upper level student with the context of history.  This is because while many schools of interpretation disagree over what factors drive history (leaders, politics, social movements, economics, etc), the beliefs of people always do.  Beliefs, usually collective, are both causes and effects of history.  Beliefs form the context of what occurs and therefore guide how we, as unprivileged observers, recreate that story.  After all, when we experience history in the  making today, we experience it in context.  We will tell our grandchildren not just the story of 9-11 but the context of how/why it occurred.  So when we tell history in a textbook, in order for it to make sense, and in order for a correct interpretation to be given, we have to interpret it in context too.  If a historical education fails to place the past in the context of the peoples’ fundamental beliefs, it fails.  People might learn some facts about what happened in the past, but they will have no ability to apply it to today.

Vitz’ list of obvious things missing (or vastly incomplete) in most world history textbooks:

1.  ancient and modern Jewish history (as opposed to Greece/Rome/Egypt)

2.  Jesus (hardly ever mentioned, especially compared to Mohammed)

3.  the first 100o years of Christianity

4.  the Byzantine empire and Orthodox faith

And in American history textbooks:

5.  Protestantism after Puritans (i.e. Quakers and abolition, the Great Awakenings, the urban/missions movement, Holiness and  pentecostal movements, born-again movement, black churches, mormonism, etc)

6.  Christianity and the West (it’s ok to say other cultures are religious but not ours; Christianity makes the West bad)

7.  the importance of the family (as opposed to geography and wealth of nations; marriage, mothering never mentioned)

8.  conservative icons/insets; male icons (Margaret Mead, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anne Hutchinson but not Roger Williams)

Vitz also suggests these kinds of examples are never included (written 1980s)

• Specific Puritans (a face to the community): Bradford, Edwards, Mather
• Generals, i.e. MacArthur
• Ronald Reagan/Thatcher
• William Buckley
• Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, etc
• Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or other business post-Carnegie
• anti-ERA
• pro-life movement
• opposition to affirmative action
• opposition to global warming
• family businesses
• blue collar or rural America
• capitalism
• charity, church, or good works

Yet these things represent millions of Americans.

Bias in the Textbooks 2

Vitz is right to call the revisionism of history textbooks “censorship.”  This is a better word because it describes exactly what the problem is.  The problem is not that every editor is a religion-hater.  It is a more sinister agenda of making sure that contemporary, religious worship is not seen as a factor for modern-day America.  As long as religious references are long ago, far away, or exotic, they can be mentioned.  So Native American religion, prior to colonialism, is welcomed in most texts.  So is the token reference and picture of the Amish, who are seen as kind of an obsolete, out of touch group that doesn’t cause any anxiety for us.

But despite the fact that modern day Catholics and Protestants form a huge part of the American backbone, they are completely wiped out of the textbooks.  No pictures, no images, no religious references in the text.  No mention of Christianity, of its good effects or signature events.  You would think that the average child today didn’t go to church, didn’t have a Bible in their house, didn’t say grace, or even celebrate the holidays… and of course that’s what the publishers are really going for.  No-one feels bad if we talk about the Spanish Missions in the 1700s, because it was long ago and far away.  (And because we can sprinkle mitigating statements in their about their colonial attitudes and abuse).  But when it comes to to religion in the 1800s or 1900s, better stay away.  Except for the Holocaust and some other token gestures to religious communities, “mum” is the word.

Good censorship skills have been exercised to achieve this result.  The basic strategy is to strip the icons of history of white, Christian, male influence (thought it was largely led by this demographic in reality), and then put in new icons with lots of zest while whitewashing whatever traditional icons we couldn’t strip.  So,we can’t get rid of the Puritans or say they weren’t religious.  But we can say they were just “giving thanks” to the Indians for helping them, were kind of strict, and were an insular community that succumbed to witch hunts.  We don’t have to say they were Christians, praying to God, trying to civilize some of the heinous Indian practices, tolerant, extremely well-educated, founded universities like Harvard, and diligent workers who formed the backbone of modern American capitalism.  We’ll just move on to the Founding Fathers who were less threatening, religiously.  And then we can leave religion behind all together after the Revolutionary era.   Sprinkle in some multicultural icons wherever we can find them, like Pocahontas, and we’re all set.  Good, urbane, un-Christian chapter.

We are essentially lying by omission.   It’s like someone went through a textbook with a white-out marker.  And it’s insulting to all religious groups.  How insulting that while the Holocaust gets mentioned for Jews, no mention of Jewish religious life is ever mentioned.  Kids don’t learn anything about Judaism or their presence, immigration, leaders, accomplishments.  And I’m not talking about turning social studies into a religion course.  (Although most teachers spend days on something minor, like Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” without spending ONE day on a monotheistic faith.)  I am talking about it accurately reflecting historical and contemporary “social studies.”  A hand-waving mention of Brandeis, Einstein, Yom Kippur, and the JCC would be nice.  Just to give kids a sense of different areas and spheres Jews influence.  The same is true for Catholics.  How insulting that the Spanish missions are sometimes mentioned without total derogatory tone, or maybe Mother Theresa, but the average kid walks away from twelve years of history never knowing anything about the Catholic religion, its contribution in assimilation and urbanization projects, its charities, and why they were discriminated against from the founding of Maryland to the election of JFK.  Again, some cursory mention of Lord Baltimore, Vatican II, Catholic schools, hospitals, and city names (i.e. Santa Fe, San Francisco, St. Paul) would be nice!

And for all the multicultural effort put into making texts black-friendly, no-one ever mentions the impact of the black churches.  Of course black Christianity is one of the prime movers within the black community, but you would think Martin Luther King, Jr. just came out of the public school system!  You would think abolition was a secular humanist idea, supported by free-thinkers, and organized within the black family on a grassroots level.  Nowhere, except perhaps when the black spiritual is brought up in the context of Southern slavery, is the soul of the black person and the black church mentioned.  The average black child receives his own whitewashed heritage in writing, and the average white child walks away totally confused.  As if Black History month were enough to help them understand the black community, past and present.  No wonder we’re so messed up.

Bias in the Textbooks1

Social studies is about introducing the child to American social, economic, and political life– as it existed in the past and exists today.  Usually the study shows continuity, i.e. how the past (for good or for ill) influenced where we are today.

The problem with secularism is that, in eliminating religious and status quo influences in history, they don’t provide the neutral history they are claiming.  Social studies today is less about representing what has really happened in history than it is, what we wished had happened.  Stories and figures who were actually on the periphery of the story, underneath the real movers and shakers, are brought into the limelight to receive the attention they should have.  In a handful of cases, this is good.  But only when bringing those little known stories and figures actually corrects the balance of historical data we have, to more clearly represent what happened.  For example, because a substantial part of the Jewish race was exterminated in the 1940s, and their possessions destroyed, digging deeply to find Holocaust survivors and hear their stories actually corrects the picture of history we would have if we didn’t make the effort.  Jewish events and figures are extremely important to understanding the period of the 1940s, but very few are left to speak to the matter.  So bringing them to light informs us of something we need to know to understand the central story.  The same could be said of studying pre-Civil Rights foment, socialism and communism prior to McCarthy, and other often unseen but influential forces in American history.

For the most part, however, this benign revisionism does not occur.  Most of the time, there are feminists, religious pluralists, black history majors, or other minorities trying hard to gain representation in a young child’s mind.  Their influence, usually exerted quite forcefully on an apologetic audience, distorts the classic history text to reflect their wishful thinking.  It’s not that whom they want to recognize didn’t exist or wasn’t sensational in their own right.  It’s that the child receives a skewed vision of what was salient at the time–how the new spotlighted person impacted social, economic, and political life in a way they probably didn’t.  For example, featuring Phyllis Wheatley instead of George Washington is disingenous.  While George Washington may indeed represent the white, Protestant male that has become the enemy of today’s politically correct culture, he certainly influenced the revolutionary era thousands of times over Phyllis Wheatley.   Featuring the black, female poet instead of the white, male leader does not necessarily teach a young child to value women or minorities more than they previously did (especially since children do not seem to grow up with such prejudices these days, in their homes).  It simply spends more time teaching them something that is not as important.  It tells them that while there was an important black, female voice even back during the Revolutionary War time, there was no important man named George Washington—or there was, but not important enough to feature him so children will remember what he did.  They have now been misguided in what the Revolutionary era was about.  Which is unfair to children because they are now the target of a re-education program when they did not commit the initial offenses in the first place. There is certainly nothing objectionable about studying Phyllis Wheatley, of course, and her poems probably do offer a nice literary component to understanding the period.  But she needs to be taught in her proper context, as an interesting voice on the sideline who can help us get a glimpse into the late colonial experience: a quick tangent for a day, or object lesson, not as a replacement for a major figurehead in the textbook.

In other words, there is a psychological force at work in textbook manipulation.  Revisionists do not have to say evil things about George Washington in order to diminish his importance in a child’s mind (although some do).  They merely have to diminish him, neglect him, or post a huge inset with picture in a textbook of someone else, to get children to focus on something else.  Sneaky!

Dinesh D’Souza

I first didn’t realize how great this apologetics book is because I didn’t recognize the author’s name.  I was familiar with all the big name apologeticists, and somehow, D’Souza didn’t make my list.  But I was uninformed, and he definitely deserves to be on there.

“What’s So Great About Christianity” deserves to be on the shelf of anyone who has felt raked over the coals for being, in the world’s eyes, intellectually or morally inferior.  Or if  atheists have actually accused you of being stupid, blind, or part of the fundamentalist/religious scourge of the world.  D’Souza devotes about half of his book to new atheism’s slander that Christianity (or any religion) is just plain stupid.  And the other half is devoted to the secularist’s claim that religion is what’s wrong with the world.  Especially if its Western, Christian religion. Considering that D’Souza is not the typical white poster boy for American apologetics, his words go far.  His writing is clear, excellent.  His topics are absolutely relevant to today’s clashes with unbelievers.  And his insights are well-collected, non-polemical, and far-reaching.  He covers many, many topics very quickly and easily which is what makes it a fun read.

My favorite chapter is probably the one on religious wars, where he addresses the common attack that Christianity has killed so many people in the name of God.  The Crusades, Inquisition, witch-hunts, and religious wars (including some non-Christian conflicts such as the Israel-Palestine conflict) are all reasons for the modern secularist why no-one should believe in faith seriously.  But D’Souza makes the great point that even if all the Christian casualties were tallied up, they only amount to about 1% of the murders committed by atheist regimes.  In other words, if all the deaths in the name of Christ from approximately 1000-2000AD were put together, and adjusted for population change, you get the adjusted estimate of approximately 1 million people by today’s standards for that 1000 year span.  As horrible as that number is, it does not compare to the 100 million deaths committed by communism in just the last one hundred years!  D’Souza follows this chapter up with a great one on the details of these atheistic regimes to put the finger back on the real murder culprit: unbelievers.

A runner-up great chapter was the one where he talks about how secularism is actually a Christian concept.  I didn’t know anything about that, but he traces the history of church versus state to explain how Christianity is the only religion to not be theocratic (the church is state) or totalitarian.  The effect of this is that Christianity makes room for the state to operate, fallen as it is, just as JEsus allowed Caesar to operate.  There is a vacuum created that secularism can fill.  But Islam, communism, even Judaism did not know this void, so church and state were always one.  Therefore, modern-day secularist lovers should know their highest value—the secular public arena–can only be supported by a Christian base.  All kinds of other good points here, but too long to elaborate.

My only real qualm with the book (but not a disqualifier) was his chapter on Darwinism.  While D’Souza otherwise touts the conservative Christian line (he prefers “traditional” Christian line), he falls short in his position on evolution, which he believes in… he’s a theistic evolutionist, not just a subscriber to old-earth theory.   Actually I learned some things from his discourse on it, such that the success of Christianity does not rise and fall over whether it could be proven that birds were once reptiles.  And I learned more about the position of theistic evolution which I had only briefly heard about before.  But the chapter stood out to me as a fly in the ointment, in what is otherwise a fabulous book.  He offers no real defense of his belief in evolution except to say that he believes evidence is compelling enough that species-to-species change is well-founded and the universe is clearly billions of years old.  He believes humans evolved from a common ancestor, he believes the fossil record is compelling enough, and he believes there is some merit to evolutionary explanations of things.  But he only believes in biological evolution, not chemical or stellar.  He also disbelieves that life came from non-life, that evolution has any explanatory merit of how the universe came about, and that God must have created the original replicating cell fully formed.  He defends himself as standing squarely in a longer line of theistic evolutionists, to include C.S Lewis and even Augustine (a stretch).  Yet he otherwise condemns “Darwinism” as a religion, meaning he sees evolution as separate from “Darwinism” and its social, ethical, psychological ramifications.

To me this is ridiculous.  You can’t say you think Darwinists are wrong but evolutionists are probably rights. While I am not ready to die on the hill of young-earth creationism, and there are valid critiques of creation science to be made, I think he gives away too much of the field here.  He critiques “Darwinism” the way any conservative Christian would, and even views some of the science skeptically.  But then he turns around and says biological evidence seems good enough.  First of all, it is not good enough which is why any biologist will probably tell you that the best evidence for evolution is actually not in biology… it is in chemistry, physics, or cosmology, which D’Souza disbelieves.  And while the author seems to approve of Intelligent Design, not seeing it as pure “creationism,” he doesn’t address Behe’s argument, for example, of irreducible complexity which is one of the main obstacles of interspecies change.  Or Dembski’s theory, which beautifully elaborates Paley’s original point (though he talks about Paley).  And while he criticizes creationists for making a big hubbub in the public school system about taking evolution out and putting creationism/ID in, he has a whole chapter defending parent’s rights over their children.  So he’s straddling a difficult line here.  For all the effort he puts in smashing Dawkins and other neo-Darwinists, he really should have taken a different tack on this issue.

That said, the book is a real winner.  Each chapter is its own piece of the pie; you can read one at a time and know you are putting arrows in your apologetic quiver gradually.  Not a simpleton reading, but not as scholarly as Dembski or W.L Craig.  Thoroughly recommended.

Capitalism

When Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations,” like a scientist he set out to try and explain how the world around him was operating.   Contrary to myth, he did not invent capitalism, he just described a process that was already going on.   He described why the system in operation was making people wealthy.  He described its flaws, and made suggestions for how to make people wealthier.

Marx did his writing a hundred years later, and when he wrote England was at the height of the Industrial Revolution.   It was Marx who invented the term “capitalism” to describe the existing system that he wanted to criticize.   Marx had many criticisms, but he had no solutions to them.  In fact, a little known fact is that he wrote almost nothing about socialism!  He simply spent his life criticizing capitalism.  The working class (or proletariat) which was exploited by the capitalists (or bourgeois) would rise up and overthrow them.    He thought capitalism was slavery because the capitalists could make you work long hours for low wages doing something menial and profit from it.    Any form of profiting from another man’s labor to Marx was exploitation.    To him, this exploitation could only be remedied by revolution.

Ironically, just the opposite happened.   Instead of conditions getting worse in capitalist countries, they got better.  And in places where Communism was adopted, they got worse! Why did conditions get better in capitalist countries?   Because the same environment economic freedom only arises naturally in societies where there is political freedom, which itself only arises naturally when there is a Christian foundation among the people.   The three forces together created a situation where owners felt religious conviction for treating the workers in inhumane ways, and the workers themselves had the power of the ballot box, and basic civil liberties.  All of these combined to limit the excesses of capitalism, without canceling the effect it has of making everyone rich.

Herein is another irony of capitalism — the countries that practiced capitalism became so rich that there isn’t any longer any real “proletariat” in the way that Marx envisioned.   Where are the factory slaves of the West?   We don’t have any factories, because we have shipped it to other countries where the labor is cheaper.    Our “working class” is mostly a “middle class” of working professionals and this leads to an irony — That in the 21st century, it is not the proletariat trying to overthrow the bourgeois, it is the bourgeois manipulating the poor to steal from the working class!

Nevermind all that, Marxists sill hate capitalism.  Not only are they are unable to see the simple fact that in countries with market economies everyone gets wealthier — they don’t care!  Because to them the great evil is that some people have more and some have less.  That some people profit from the labor of others, they cannot separate from being a form of slavery.   Nevermind that in Communism everyone is a slave and no one works!

Marx’s critique then was really a critique of the industrial phase of capitalism, when the temptation is to take advantage of the workers.   Even the Chinese have figured out that Communism doesn’t work and have made a fortune by letting people actually profit from their own work.   Which is the real stealing, having the person who gives you the job take some money from you or having the state take all of the money?    Adam Smith’s analysis though it has needed evolution over time has proven fundamentally sound, and has made those who practice it the richest countries in the world, while Marx’s ideas have made those who practice them poor.    Those countries like India and China that have discovered economic freedom are now “in the game” too.. the longer they persist in this, and the more the entire world passes the “industrial” phase of Capitalism, the more irrelevant his critique becomes because it speaks to less people.

Our society, however, is under attack because we have been convinced by Marx’s disciples that we have made our wealth by exploitation.   This is an attractive idea to the oppressed groups of society and the misanthropic children of the upper class, but not to those who actually earn a decent wage for a living.  This leads to the conclusion that the best defense from Marxism is to empower and reward people for working.    When you oppress people, you teach them that hard work doesn’t matter, and they look for a political Messiah.     When you raise children who never have to work, but lavish in money, they also learn that hard work doesn’t matter.   When you give them money instead of love, they learn to hate money.

Why You Might Not Hate the West

Today it is fashionable to hate Western Civ.  Even if you don’t set out to hate Westernization, you end up feeling super-apologetic about it because the average history classes teaches you all the mistakes of America, Europe, etc.   You graduate high school thinking American society is a black-hating, Indian-killing, culture-diluting, environment-trashing, religious nightmare.  You end up thinking not much differently about Europe.  This is just the way it is.

It is hard to feel real pride about Western society, given this appraisal.  And to be sure, not everything in Western civilization is something to be proud about.  But that is because *people* aren’t perfect… a society cannot be more than the sum of its parts.  So what we’re looking for is a society which can recognize its own perfections, transmit the need to the next generation, and treat them.  This is what we have in Westernization—the product of about 2500 years—and why we should praise and protect it.  Not only is the system a good one because it is corrective, but it has contributed so many easily forgotten components to who we are.

So are you really a West-hater?  Here are SEVEN reasons why you might not be.

1.  Science. While leftists would make you believe that Westernization has a sordid agenda of religious fundamentalism, mitigating against science, the opposite is true.  Westernization has permitted the most scientific and progressive institutions to arise and influence society.  While all cultures have forms of engineering and medicine, modern forms of science including Environmental science, demography, economics, and the social sciences owe a huge debt of gratitude to the rise of the western Academy.  No other culture fostered this sturdy form of dialogue, self-correction, application, and progression.  Are you ready to throw out the Academy?

2.  Logic. It is easy to forget that the whole way we think, rationalize, and theorize stems from the Western worldview, which sees things in terms of earhtly causality, logic, and category.  When we draw up models, charts, graphs, statistics, and plans, we are giving credit to the Western form of philosophy made famous most by Socrates and the Greek tradition.  When we evaluate based on morality, pragmatism, and statistics, we give credit to Western religion and science.  It is fashionable in other cultures to blur categories and booleans together, but this does not lead to a scientific, ordered, or logical form of thought.   It leads to societies which are most influenced by tradition, folklore, conformity, pressure, dogma, magic, or some other non-rational force (i.e. most of premodernism).  Are you ready to throw out boolean logic?

3.  Money. Many non-Western societies have had some form of barter or money.  But westernization created a capitalist economy—money and production on a scale never seen before.  While there are some good critiques of capitalism out there, most ideologically attack productivity and labor as intrinsically evil.  In reality, productivity and paid labor has increased standard of living and brought cultures into the world market universally.  Money and production has disseminated technology, medicine, educational resources, business, industry, and transportation avenues around the world.  It also makes charity possible.  While avarice must be checked, the Western view of money which says people must work to eat, wages are due, and things are regulated by supply and demand, is a view which decreases poverty and slavery, not increases it.  Without the increase of productivity and viable labor opportunity, cultures would still be isolated from one another, unaware of what world diplomacy and world markets had to offer.   Those who advocate one-world government and worldwide pacifism should definitely consider this before they attack the US and Europe.    Are you ready to throw out finance?

4.  Medicine. You don’t need Westernization to have medicine, but health never increased on such a scale until Westernization came along.  That was because science, economy, transportation, and charity all came together to make world health go way, way up.  Without modern western society, and its missionaries, most cultures would still be stuck in their premodern state where women died in childbirth, children were struck by deathly diseases, plagues ran rampant, operations were impossible, mental health cases were ostracized, and shamans were called in when nothing worked.  That’s not to say that there isn’t something to learn from alternative therapies.  It just means, are you ready to give up your nearby hospital, OTCs, and pediatrician?

5. Education. Probably the biggest difference between Western and non-Western society is the view of, and amount of, education.  Today we might argue this point because most societies have schools and universities.  But that is because they have copied the Western example, and many times, have joined in to compete.  China, for example, has great students.   But national education is still confined to cities, controlled by a communist government, and is often state-motivated as opposed to humanistically valued.  Moreover, they copied the western models of schools, university, and testing.  The idea and spirit of universal education is distinctly Western—part of that old vestige of “civilizing” the world and actualizing the human being—and modeled best in America where women, minorities, poor kids, and special needs kids were all eventually invited to join the system.  Where secondary education is getting more available to all, where there are both private and public options for specific convictions, and where there are aides and tests and tracks available for different kids.  Where many diverse subjects have made their way into the curriculum.  Are you ready to jettison the school system?  How about other forms of education like your blog, film, magazines, and Internet?

6.  Representative Government. Probably the biggest contribution of Westernization is representative government, based on law.  Most of us learned that America was a special experiment in representative government because the Founding Fathers had new ideas that they wanted to try out—that were too difficult to try in Europe, for example.  But most of us take this for granted, not realizing that our activism can change the system because of representative government.  And it can be transmitted to all people and all generations through law.  The beauty of America is not that the first crack at the nation was perfect, but the fact that we created a system that could shift with the views of the people.  That way, things that were not perfect could change as public sentiment about them also did.  This was in stark contrast to the revolutions and coups in the rest of the world.  this was in contrast to imperial Europe and primogeniture.  It was in contrast to Asian and Indian societies where there was no value to the vast population.   Westernization was able to evolve government from the influence of a few to the influence of many.  This is what we ought to fight most for, as centralizing forces today threaten to take away the voice of the many.  When that happens, the state-heavy systems of Communism, Islam, and Orthodoxy (just to name a few) will squelch the freedom and humanism we have.  Are you ready to give up your voice?

7.  Technology. There is anti-modern trend today that aims to get us back to our roots—become more in tune with the earth, with our place in it, and not so reliant on modern props.  To some extent, this is commendable.  At least, when our priorities are right, an anti-consumption mentality can be refreshing.  However, the environmentalists and primitivists who argue that premodern society is essentially healthier than modern society is, are missing the boat.  It is industry and business which allows us to create environmentally friendly products, it is industry and transportation that allows us to re-irrigate and clean up non-hygenic places.  It is technology which allows to travel and learn from new people, or institute new products on a massive scale.  If you’re unsure about whether technology has enhanced civilization, try a couple test cases… If you offered your tractor to a premodern Japanese family who slaved away in a rice paddy all day, would he want it?  If you offered an AIDS vaccine to a tribal African community where children were dying of the disease, would they take it?  If you went to Bali and offered a mom there a high chair or a grocery store, would she be grateful?  Even if you offered your dog a choice to sleep outside or in your climate controlled house, would he want it?  If we’re going to be honest about premodernism, then we have to admit that we’re pretty attached to our house, car, pets, cell phone, iTunes, and a contemporary way of life.  Are we ready to throw everything out and be more consistent?

There are lots of other institutions and tools given to us by Westernization to be grateful for.  We have to remember this foundation before we critique it.  Westernization has essentially given us the tools to self-correct, to propagate, to actualize, to share with others, to be merry.  Over the years, it has created freedom of choice, freedom to act, freedom to influence.  This is what is disappearing as the attack on Western civilization has advanced.  Let’s not deceive ourselves that if radical liberalism gets its way, everything will become controlled.  The freedom of information which allows us to evolve will become controlled.  Our freedoms of expression, assembly, worship, and speech will be controlled.  We won’t be able to create the family we want, choose how many children we’d like to have, celebrate weddings and birthdays, take vacations, change jobs, enjoy our homes, create a business, move, drive anytime we want, etc., because radical environmentalism, legalism, primitivism, collectivism, and central planning will take over.  So should changes be made?  Of course they should.  But we should use the tools Westernization has stood for—education, science, logic, medicine, technology, representative government, and economy—to make these changes.  Not criticize these foundations of society and pull the legs right out from under us.

Theology and the City of Man

Richard Niebuhr laid out perhaps the best known and most important modern framework for dealing with the relationship between Christ and Culture.    Are Christ and the church in, above, enmeshed with, or transforming culture?   This is one way of approaching what is perhaps the most fundamental element of the Christian worldview — the fact that we live in the City of God — a city which is not built with human hands, a New Jerusalem which is coming down from above, yet at the same time we live in the City of Man.    And so the question of the relationship between these two parallel existences becomes perhaps the most important question of the Christian life.     In evangelical theology the starting point is not culture or Kingdoms, but usually these are derived backwards from eschatology — your view of the end determines your view of the relationship between the two kingdoms, and between Christ and culture.     All of these things, however, are so closely intertwined, that it may not be fair to consider any of them a starting point.     The real starting point probably goes back creation, the fall, and the nature of Christ’s incarnation, our participation in that incarnation.

Different church traditions have taken the question in different directions, with dramatically different results.   The Eastern Orthodox church had and still has caesaropapism — the church was beholden to the state.   This is the political school of Eusebius.   This leads to an imperial, this worldly, model of political salvation, combined with an otherwordly mystical escapism.     The Catholics had the opposite — papocaesarism — the state ultimately is subject to the Church.    Kings looked to the Pope for moral authority to do what they did.   This leads to the church as an activist political organization. Augustine’s mentor Ambrose was a key father of this school.  Augustine’s masterwork, the City of God has been interpreted to support it, but I think it ultimately teaches something a little different — the City of God as a pilgrim through the history of the City of Man.   In that sense, you could say Ambrose and Eusebius were different kinds of postmillennials with a vision for the political authority of the Church, where Augustine was an amillennial — with a vision for the spiritual nature of the church.

The major movements of Protestantism grapple with the same issue.  The so-called “Magisterial Reformers” continued the tradition of tight relationship between church and state, and in doing so, continued it’s problems — namely that theological controversies become civil issues.   If you don’t agree with our theology to the letter, you become a dissident or enemy of the state.

The radical reformation and the Baptists take a different tack — the church is completely otherworldly.  It’s role is not to be involved in politics, it is to preach the Gospel.   All of other views correspond to infant baptism because infant baptism suggests that you are a member of the church by birth and or location rather than choice.   Membership by choice immediately leads one to a view that the states job is to give you the choice, rather than enforce orthodoxy.    In the Baptist approach, you are being Baptized into a different eternal reality.

Wesleyans, as an Anglican revival movement,  could be described as spiritual organism which supports the state.    Wesleyan Arminians say essentially if there is a problem with a person, and by extension on Earth, it is because of a failing of man that Christ can fix.   Now you can see quickly how this would lead to a belief that individuals and the Church can change the secular world, but that that is not its primary focus.   William Wilberforce did actually change the world based on Wesleyanism,

The Arminian core of Wesleyan theology merged with adult Baptism and eventually manifested in Pentecostalism.  Pentecostalism is the explosive worldwide Christian movement that says you can personally encounter God in a way far beyond your previous experience.    You can walk like Jesus walked.  Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers and raise the dead.    This means that by nature most of the Pentecostal movement is other-worldly in its focus.   Pentecostals tend to focus on the encounter with Christ.   In addition, however, Pentecostalism, unlike previous movements was much less culturally bound.   It’s primary founder is a black man and the idea of “speaking in tongues” is a fundamentally cross-cultural concept.    This, and the global geopolitical moment in which it arose gives it a distinctly different flavor than previous movements.   Now we have a global movement intent on bringing a dynamic other-wordly encounter with God to the ends of the Earth.   This starts to look like a City of God pervading the entire Earth — something Augustine himself might have cheered.

The great paradox is this however.   Those Christians who believe that the City of God should have nothing to do with the City of Man need to be physically protected by someone who believes that it should.    The pacifist Quakers of early Pennsylvania who were slaughtered by the Native Americans when they did not defend themselves and were eventually defended by the other members of the state perhaps serve as a telling example.    When the political defense of the Eastern church eroded, Islam overran it, and now there are no Christians in the places where Paul did much of his ministry and to which John wrote Revelation.    This is what leads us to the moral conflict of our time.   For those in American — we live in two cities both of which are in decay.    The Church is advancing in many ways, but also becoming less pure.   At the same time the Christian foundation of our society is being eroded.   So which should we fix?   You can’t be both Pope and Caesar.  We learned that already. So as concerned Christians, we feel torn between being politicians and prophets.

Does our theology inform us on this?  Of course if you are from the Catholic or from a High Church tradition, then the answer is in the political sphere, or the realm of ideas.   For those of us who have not accepted the Catholic view of Church and History or the Calvinist view of Church and State, what do we do?    As a Pentecostal/Charismatic, I believe in the powerful incarnation of God through me reaching out to change the world.    Is this only Spiritual?  Many believe so.  Just win souls or bring the glory down.   But what if it is both?   How can the Spiritual and Natural relate?  How can the two cities come together?

First, we must teach all of our children and the church the Christian foundation of our freedom.   This is not some political side-show.  This is part of our Christian heritage — the pillars of Freedom ultimately belong to the Christian religion.    We can make a lot of Christian converts, but if they think like slaves,  we’ll still be wiped off the map.   We must teach our Pentecostal, power encounter disciples,  what took 20 centuries to work out in history.  It’s not just enough to have a power encounter.

Secondly, while we refuse to make the political  “dominion errors” made by the Catholics, the East and the High church, we must refuse to “check out” of the world system too.    We are bringing the Kingdom to Earth.    This means we are bringing a power encounter, but we are also bringing transformative cultural ideas and political clout to back those ideas.   Sound scary?   MLK did not sit by while black people were abused by a culture which claimed a Christian basis.    He did something about it.   We need to be those who “do something about it.”    When we look back at history we see that Christ has done more than save souls,  He has actually changed culture radically to bless the people on the Earth.   We need to be in that business.    More on what that might mean later.

The Self-Hatred of the West

Western Civilization has a unique feature that is not, and has never been a feature of any other political framework — it welcomes internal criticism.  Now, on the one hand, this is a fatal flaw, because it means that it has to fight with a limp against other Civilizations.   Look at the Iraq war.    If Russia had fought that war, it would have simply suppressed criticism, and kept up a good face, and that would have been that.   In fact, that is exactly the way the Cold War was fought.  We hear a lot about supposed atrocities of American soldiers in Vietnam, but nothing about how cruel the Communists were in ever place they ever set foot.  This is because we believe in freedom of speech.  This means we have to listen to people within our own borders who criticize us right, and those who side with the enemy to slander and destroy us.    Not only do we believe in freedom of speech, however, we believe in guilt and conscience.    If a Muslim ruler executes you for blaspheming the prophet, they have nothing to feel guilty for.  They are acting in accordance with what they believe.   If we do the same thing, we are hypocrites, failing to live up to our beliefs about the value of human life.    Nietzsche’s talked about “will to power,” essentially that might makes right…  This may have been a scandal to West and basis for Nazism, but it really just describes the way the the entire world worked before the rise of the West.   If you believe in “will to power” you can’t very well be a hypocrite, can you?

On the other hand internal criticism (including freedom of the press), means that we can deal with debate and controversy without having a coup.  We can expose those who do wrong without having to kill someone.   And with democracy we can also change rulers without a lot of someones getting killed.

Now what is the point of all that?  This is to say that we have come to a point now in the West where we know nothing good about our history and we know everything that is bad about our history.   This is largely rooted in effective Communist subversion techniques of the 20th century which infiltrated our media, our institutions, and our governments throughout the West.    Thus although militant Communism is not on the march, it is very much still with us in the way we think.  In fact,  it’s getting worse.    Communist states never allow criticism, but we do, which means that we can easily end up allowing people to destroy us from within.   The Muslims have finally learned this trick, and have now decided to simply conquer Europe through immigration.

The West is in fact the greatest Civilization the world has ever known, bar none.  We rave about the advanced technology of the Egyptians, but it was nothing compared to oh say… space flight.  Nobody else ever put a man on the moon, and if anyone else ever does, they will do so with Western technology.    More importantly, we invented all of the technology that allows humanity around the world to not have to be tied to the field to work, or die before age 30 of disease.   This isn’t by accident, it’s because of the framework setup in our civilization by the religion it is based on — Christianity.  We not only are better at human rights — we invented them!  All of mankind has trouble with valuing the “other” but our foundational religious texts tell us that we must value them.   We don’t always do it, but when we don’t we’re acting in disobedience to something we actually believe.   In stark opposition to systems where being born right, or being “one of us” are criteria for being human, and that is perfectly OK.    If the Hindus treat the Dalits like sub-humans they aren’t hypocrites.  They are being consistent.  That’s what their religion teaches them to do.   Some are born better.  Our religious framework tells us that we are all created equal.  Jefferson didn’t invent that idea, not even Locke– the Bible did.

It just took a long time to get to the point of consistency, however.  Don’t expect the Turks to ever apologize for the Armenian genocide.  It’s not part of their civilizational belief  to feel bad about that.   The West feels bad about its Holocaust, however.   We even have major museums in places like Washington and even Germany itself.    It wasn’t the first holocaust, and in fact although it was numerically probably largest, it might not even have been history’s worst slaughter of the Jews.   Those slaughters of ancient history in 70AD and under Hadrian, were simply business as usual in the ancient world however.

So my point here is that the very fact that you know so many “bad things” that the West has done and feel bad about them, show how great the West is.   The bad things done by others are not only worse, they are forgotten and swept under the rug, just the way that Russia is currently sweeping Stalin’s atrocities back under the rug.

Western guilt is based partly in the fact that Christians actually believe in something called repentance of wrongs and forgiveness of sins — other religions primiarily propitiate their gods to keep them happy.   Politically however, it got root in the political tradition of the West when the great Ambrose of Milan when he refused to admit the Roman Emperor to mass after he had slaughtered 7000 people (small in Roman terms).    The Church is Caeser’s conscience.   This worked then because Caeser and the people believed that God’s authority was higher than his own.  Even in the Christian East, this idea never developed.   A great deal has been made about evil Popes and the church being corrupted by getting involved in the state, but the fact that there was actually anything other than a state is really the historically remarkable item.  Self-serving authorities with no accountability are the historical norm.

So we are now faced with a dilemma — we are the greatest Civilization in history, but we hate ourselves.   We’ve taught all of our young people that our sins are many, and other cultures are better than ours.   Even our missionaries believe this.   Is there any way out?

My Trip to India

I felt the need to write a few reflections about my trip to India. Maybe some of you might also be interested.

First of all the flight from Chicago to Delhi is long. It’s 14 hours over and 15 hours back. The good news is that I got almost a full night’s rest on both legs. I have always thought that I can’t sleep on planes, but I found that bringing ear plugs, a face mask, and sitting on the aisle helped a lot. In addition on these really really long flights, you are on it long enough that you will get tired, and you will have time to get a night’s rest. The 6 hour London or cross-country flight is much harder to sleep on in my experience . So that was a major positive travel surprise. I kind of wish that I had sat by the window on the way over, though. I would have loved to have seen all of the things we flew over.

Arriving in a foreign country you have never been to is always a little intimidating. Note to self — get foreign currency before you even leave the baggage area. You do not want to be out there in the big wide world without the money you need, as I found out later. I found the guy holding my name with a sign no problem and he took me to the driver. You definitely always want a driver pre-arranged by your in country contact, so you know you have someone trustworthy. This is even true if you are a foreigner coming to America. My Indian friend was robbed by the NY cabbie.

So I was quickly in the car and made it to the hotel no problem. Everyone was giving half-bows and calling me sir, which kind of made me feel like some elite westerner. So I felt like a jerk when I didn’t have any money to tip anyone. Maybe that is why my driver gave the job to his brother-in-law after that! The hotel was $200/night, but they put you up like that so you won’t have any problems that go with something a little lower end in a developing country. This hotel was a half step better than an American 4-star hotel. My room was smaller than a 4-star, but the furnishings were nicer, and so was the service. The included breakfast was really top notch including a variety of bars and breakfast to satisfy people from different places in the world.

Everything about India could be described as organized chaos. This is not a pejorative, this is actually a fact recognized by Indians. The driving is absolutely crazy even for a developing country. It is actually mesmerizing to watch. You can’t figure out how there are not accidents every second, yet somehow everything works just fine. It was the same when I asked a question of the class I was teaching. Everyone would answer at once, yet somehow a single person would get the floor and give the answer. It was a little hard to cope with at first, but after I got used to it, it actually seemed to work fine.

I was there for 2 days only, and that actually worked OK from a jet lag perspective since I was able to sleep on the plane. You leave and arrive around the same time, just one day later. Also, Indian work schedules are later in the day. My class for example was 11:30 to 7:30. So I ended up not sleeping much the first night since I had already slept on the plane, and waking up very early the second night because I had gone to bed early after being exhausted the first day… this meant for a lot of free time in the mornings and being a little too tired near the end of teaching the class. So the jet lag was a factor, but is was not over the top bad. The flight back basically puts you home 5 clock hours after you leave, but 15 actual hours which means that you just have an extra long night that night, and an extra long day the next day. Very manageable.

I was very briefly lost on my first day. I can’t think of a better way to really experience a country than to be by yourself with no idea where you are, and no local currency. The driver dropped me off at a building that he thought was the right one, but I found out it was the wrong one and the guy said to me that the right building was 15 minutes away by car. With my driver gone I was not sure how I was going to get there, since I had no money and I was not eager to try to get in a random car. So I started asking around about the location. Some people didn’t really speak English and I was getting a lot of different instructions, but someone seemed to think it was across the street, so I decided to at least try that. The “street” is nothing like you would see in America. It was a divided “4 lane” dirt road with everything from rickshaws, cars, and trucks with 50 people coming down it, and when I reached the middle I looked over and a very large cow was just getting ready to step into traffic. That was my “you are in India now” moment. After crossing the street and asking a series of additional people, I made it to what seemed like the right place and was waiting for the elevator when I heard “Hi Will.” This was the most pleasantly surprise I’ve had in a long long time. It was my European contact — they had arrived at the same moment I stumbled in. Now, not only did I know that I was in the right place, I was not alone. When you are in Europe you may feel different like you are the “American” but when you are in India with Europeans, that dissolves and you feel like you are the Westerners. So anyway, it wasn’t a huge scary lost event, but it was a little jarring, and obviously I was not properly prepared. I should have figured out how to use my cell phone to call Indian numbers ahead of time, I should have had money, and I shouldn’t have let the driver go until I was sure that I was sure it was the right place. I did keep him extra, but not quite long enough. I didn’t get too worried because there was visible security where I was, although the strange thing about all of the security guys I saw what that they were always about 5′6″ with the thinnest build you could imagine. When you go in and out of places the security procedures are very uneven too. Sometimes you are going through some searching ordeal, while other times they are waving a metal detecting wand at you, which even if it beeps they let you through.

There is not a heavy spirit in India like when I went to London. India is a country on the move. People are motivated, there is constant activity, things are being built, and they are open to you, at least on the surface. For those of you into end times escape scenarios, I think blending into the 1 billion people of India would be a much better bet than 100 acres in Montana. Plus it seems like a great mission field. Irony was that I bumped into a missionary at the airport on the way back. Actually he was a California youth pastor. We kind of clashed in the spirit. Although what they were doing was really radical, He was kind of a cool-Christian type, which obviously I’m not. He told me a story about the wonderful work that a church they are connected with in Mumbai is doing to help eunuchs who are forcibly castrated for some Hindu ritual, made to be temple prostitutes and then basically left for dead after 1 year. This prompted me to comment what a bad rap that Western missionaries get. To which he replied, well a lot of terrible things have been done. Which just left me speechless. Here is a guy who is proof that missionaries are a good thing, and yet saying that missionaries do bad things. Western self-loathing apparently extends even to missionaries who are the epitome of the West.

On the way back I was able to meet up with an Indian friend. Middle class people there have tiny little cars and full time drivers. He took me to a restaurant called “Mainland China” which was far and away the best Chinese food experience I could imagine. When we stepped in the door at 7:30 they were just opening the restaurant, and the managers were lecturing the wait staff who were all standing at attention. They then brought us a continuous stream of things including some outstanding kimche. (Yes, I know I thought that was only Korean food too!). The food was really really good. It was like a P.F Cheng in terms of the food style, but just at a whole different level.

My friend dropped me off at the airport, and I was in the wrong place, so he asked some baggage handler to take me to the correct place. I was wandering through some back doors and up a secret staircase and suddenly found myself among the herds of people waiting to enter the airport. While I was trying to figure out my way in a guy approached me and offered to take me to the VIP entrance. My spirit told me I shouldn’t but for whatever reason, I went along with it. It was a bit of a con which cost me $30. However, I did get in more quickly than without this VIP treatment.

I didn’t see anything outside of my business function while I was there in India, but honestly I wouldn’t have had the energy with such a long trip and it wouldn’t have been much fun by myself. It was 4 hours each way to the Taj Mahal and I was having a tough time imagining myself being happy at the end of that. What I really wanted to see in India was the people and the experience, and it was a great experience.