Nietzsche in Pinstripes

a blog for everyone and no one

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Globalization or World Society?

One of the preliminary texts for this week’s seminar was “Globalization or World Society?: How to conceive of modern society”, by Niklas Luhmann. In fact I found this text to my particular interest, since I’ve been intrigued into a systemic approach of politics throughout this whole semester. What cached my attention while reading through the text was Luhmann’s neutral stance in terms of “society” and his rejection of enriching it with ethics. Having discussed the topic of modern, global society with some leftist friends several times I especially liked the author’s statement of “suppression” and “exploitation” being “outdated mythology” and a simple attempt to find a simple solution (“revolution”) for a complex problem. We need to understand that in a modern knowledge-society complexity is increasing from day to day. Most patterns get more and more difficult to overlook and require quite a grade of expertise in the exact topic to get an understanding of its problems and how possible solutions for it could be structured. Keeping this in mind, describing simple ways to solve such difficult boundaries we experience in our Knowledge Society seems like a natural reaction of people who are unable to see behind the complexity, though to their lack of expertise, and try to simplify the problems so a simple solution can be used on them. In fact, since the Knowledge Society is producing more knowledge every day, it is producing a significant amount of ignorance vice versa. New answers lead to new questions and our knowledge is more and more going into the depth than into the broad. Through this process, the normal member of such a society is left with an increasing amount of things he does not know and - possibly – can’t know, because he is lacking the education or the time in his life to inform himself about it. This problem makes it easy for “simple solutions” to get a lot of attention in the population. One may even argue that this is a way of demagogues to exploit the population’s “fear of the unknown” and the unease they possibly feel when facing this product of ignorance for ideological reasons, e.g. leftist or rightist movements (“revolutions”). Like Luhmann argues, we first need to understand a complex system by monitoring and evaluating it on a neutral basis, especially when it comes to the case of society. It might sound cold and somehow “inhumane” when talking about terms like equality, equal standards and equal chances for everyone to say that this is not going to happen and we need to stay away from such an approach in order to prevent future disappointment is just a matter of fact from a rational point of view.

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On Capitalism and Cultural Background

This week’s mandatory text was “e pluribus Unum?” by Wolfgang Streeck. In his text, Streeck is analyzing the differences between the different forms of capitalism that developed in certain countries. In his first paragraphs he focuses on the different cultural background, mainly comparing Germany and England/United States and the effect of the stronger, more authoritarian state in the German culture.

Most interesting from my point of understanding was his reference to Max Weber’s theory of the effect of different religious backgrounds on the development of capitalism throughout nations. Furthermore my interest was fueled by discussions about this topic that came up in the seminar.

Weber came to the understanding, that protestant work ethics were the founding “spirit” for the industrial revolution and thus capitalism. According to him, the leading figures of the reformation, namely Luther and Calvin, preached a certain set of values which was important for the development of capitalistic thinking in the western society. For instance, the value that one should be provident which led to the creation of deposits. Deposits were an important matter for the creation of investments. Also important was the teaching of the Calvinistic “predestination” which created the understanding that success in life was a way of god to show his love to a certain person.

After a discussion with Professor Dr. Willke it came to my understanding, that in fact most of protestant dominated nations have a more positive relationship to capitalism and are thus more successful, economically speaking, than catholic dominated countries because of their different sets of work ethic and understanding of the relationship between work, their life and cultural/religious relations. For example it is noticeable that mainly southern European countries who were throughout history and still are catholic dominated now suffer from severe economic crisis, namely Italy and Spain and Greece (implying that orthodox Christianity is closer to Catholicism).

If we take a closer look at Germany we can even see regional differences, for Instance Bavaria, a mainly catholic federal state, being underdeveloped in an economic sense and mainly agricultural until the late 50’s. Even in Baden-Württemberg we can see that the main industries are settled in areas that were always more protestant dominated, whilst the catholic parts remain more rural.

Bearing our examples in mind, combining it with Weber’s thesis and Streeck’s analysis of capitalism in “e pluribus Unum” we can see that the cultural background of a country is a very important factor in its development and must be regarded when taking political or economic action or making analysis about past processes. Even in a highly international and globalized world like ours it is worth to take a look at the national and cultural backgrounds of businesses and governments when evaluating their actions and policy-making.

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The Revolution from Above

In the mandatory text in this week’s seminar “Bringing the State back in” by Theda Skocpol, the author stresses the present underestimating and the now reoccurring interest of “the state” as an actor in politics.

Particularly interesting from my point of view was the part of the text that dealt with “autonomous state action”, especially when she was referring to Timberger’s “Revolution from Above”. In her study, Timberger focuses on historical cases in which autonomous bureaucrats seized power in the government of a state to press reforms to reorganize the economy and the society in their country. From the examples Skocpol mentions I chose the Japanese Meiji Restoration as the most useful example to illustrate my point in this blog. The Meiji Restoration was a period of political restoration that took place in Japan in the 1860’s and helped Japan transform into a more modern state. Basically the main part of the restoration was led by a small group of bureaucratic oligarchs in the Japanese government who pressed social and economic reforms to modernize Japanese society and get away from the old feudal system which was still in charge by then.

I think this is maybe the most illustrative example for Timberg’s and Skocpol’s point that a group of skilled experts and bureaucrats can use the power of the state effectively to reform its politics and economy. Though it must be stressed out that Skocpol labels this as “nonconstitutional ruling”, which leads us to our next point; exploring the possibilities for experts and bureaucrats to harness this power in constitutional conform ways.   Skocpol gives the US-American agricultural reforms during the New Deal period as a good example for autonomous action within a state. I asked myself the question whether we could find more recent examples for constitutional autonomous state action by skilled experts. First we need to realize that this actions, as also stated by Skocpol, happen in a certain opportunity frame, mostly when the country is facing a serious crisis in one or more political fields. In the case of Japan in the 1860’s it was the threat of western colonial powers and their interest in eastern Asian, in the case of the USA it was an overall economic crisis and the aftermath of the World War I.

Facing these facts I would claim that a good recent example for autonomous action by skilled experts in a state would be the Italian government under Mario Monti. Monti, himself not a politician but a financial expert was installed as head of the state after the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi in 2011 to lead a technocratic government to face the Italian debt crisis.

This example could show a new development of Skocpol’s point, for in the Italian case we don’t have a group of experts using their knowledge and skills “silently” but are assigned to do so in times of crisis. The use of expertocratic governments in a democratic state if they match the constitutional rights could therefore be a short-term solution to face severe crisis in said state. Even better though would be a stronger tie between experts and politicians in the first place to even try and prevent further crisis and still uphold the democratic process of participation of the citizens.

[nietzscheinpinstripes]

On Religion and Politics

In the seminar arose a discussion through a certain statement made by Professor Dr. Willke, claiming, that “as long as religion is a part of politics you will have devastating wars”.

Professor Willke supported his claim with his thesis that religion and also ideologies are highly subjective topics and it will be difficult to impossible to come to an agreement between two contradicting opinions in said topics, for instance religion. Since the task of politics is to make legally binding decisions in a society, religion should be separated from it to avoid arguments about different world views or even, as stated by Professor Willke in his quote, excessive violence.

To discuss this claim we need to evaluate certain events in history and in the development of   societies. The entangling of religion and politics is a characteristic of the so called pre-modern society. In earlier times, the organization of state and religion were not dividable.  In the first high-cultures of the world with an organized state, the ruler was also the head of the dominant religion in his dominion. This was the case in ancient Egypt and also in ancient Sumer. We can see that in a pre-modern society where there is only one or few dominant religions, religion and politics may even support each other.

The problem only arises when said society starts to evolve and to differentiate itself and its religion. A good example in this case is the protestant reformation in medieval Europe. If we see the reformation as part of a differentiation of culture in a society transforming into a more modern form of society we can clearly see the problem. Where there was only catholic Christianity in all of medieval Europa, suddenly the reformation brought in protestant Christianity. We now had to openly opposing religious views and even though both were basically Christian what followed were “devastating wars” in form of peasant insurgencies and the Thirty Year’s War. Also an example that is even more present is the ongoing bloodshed between shiite and sunni Muslims in the Middle East.

Following this examples we can see, that as soon as a society starts to develop into modernity and therefore is differentiating itself and its culture, it should separate religion from politics in order to prevent religious conflicts which are difficult to solve from interfering with the order of the state and the political process.

We don’t always have to go for the extreme and talk about wars; it can also be about more social-politic topics, like the discrimination of homosexuals, even in very modern countries, for no logical or scientific reasons but for religious reasons only.

Through these historical and contemporary examples we are able to see that religion needs to be separated from the political process in a modern society to prevent it from interfering with the very essence of politics.

[nietzscheinpinstripes]

Kill one man, and you are a murderer.

Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror.

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Kill them all, and you are a god

- Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist

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Politics, Policy and Polity

For the next few months I will post some (more or less) short commentaries about recent political activities, political decision making and political theory. I'm doing this for my university classes. If you don't like my opinions - frankly, I don't give a damn.

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eternal recurrence of the same? - photographed in Prague.

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Don't switch the blades on the guy in shades?

[archivedblog3-deactivated201305]

“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (via klatschmohnzeit)

Truth.

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Why do I suffer? - that is the tower of atheism. The faintest wince of pain tears apart the whole creation.

Büchner; Payne proofs the non-existance of god

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The power to kill a god lies in the simple act of thinking logical.

[nietzscheinpinstripes]

NN: "tell me about them"

Me: "about who?"

NN: "the people that inspire you"

Me: "Nietzsche"

NN: "so, God is dead?"

Me: "no, the Ubermensch is alive"

[nietzscheinpinstripes]

The immortal gods have so designed things that good and true principles have been established by the wisdom and deliberations of eminent, wise and upright men.

- Diocletian

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"people who can't kill will always be subject to those who can"

~ N.N.

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"I'd love your skin to be my canvas - let my fingers be the paintbrush"

- M.R.

[nietzscheinpinstripes]

Everything that's alive grows from a tiny seed You know the little tomato seeds you and Nancy planted in your garden, And how they grew into nice, red tomatoes?

When the baby grows up to be an old man, and dies, They bury his body in the ground, But his soul goes to heaven... emancipator - first snow most touching piece of music I've heard for some time.

[nietzscheinpinstripes]

Eraserhead

I'v never seen another film in which ... - ... the world he lives in had such an unsettling and depressing impact on the protagonist. - ... the characters had less social skills and less ability to communicate. - ... the sound-setting was more expressive.