What is Luther Really Doing?

Some historians have characterized the struggle between Martin Luther and Pope Leo X as a struggle between “Papal Authority” and “Individual Experience / Revelation”.

The same conflict can be described in a different way: “Is the ultimate source of authority in the Pope or in the Text?” Behind the different wordings lie two different notions of what Luther was really doing.

For the Roman Catholic Church in the 1500's, the Pope was the final word: what he said, was to be considered as the final decree on any topic.

For Martin Luther, the Text (i.e., the Hebrew and Greek documents which we call “Tanakh” and “New Testament”) was the final word. Since we can all (hopefully!) read, we can each individually have access to the text for ourselves. It is in this sense that Luther stressed “individual experience.”

Luther is sometimes mis-understood in this matter of "individual experience" - he was not a mystic, although there were many mystics in Luther's time. Luther did not want to place too much emphasis on individual spiritual experiences or revelations, because they retain a mainly subjective element. Rather, Luther located authority in text, because this made it objective. The letters on the page are the same, no matter who reads them! Certainly, there will remain a certain amount of subjectivity, as each person reads a text slightly differently. But the essence of text is objective, and that is what Luther was looking for.

The subjective side of Luther, then, lies in the fact that he empowers each individual to study the text and draw meaning from it; and as different individuals examine the same text, different interpretations will arise.

The objective side of Luther is seen in the fact that he views the text as the location of truth, publicly accessible to all; the ink on the page does not change, even if the readers do. The text is an objective fact.

So is Luther an objectivist or a subjectivist? Or both?

Analyzing Augustine

Augustine of Hippo (354 A.D. to 430 A.D.) is one of the most complex authors of his era. An African, he is part of the Roman Empire; a Christian, he was educated in pagan philosophy. His books deal with a wide variety of topics, and sometimes with more than one topic at the same time. He is defends the Christians who have been blamed for the fact that the Goths from northern Europe attacked and trashed Rome in 410 A.D.; the Roman polytheists said that the presence of Christians had angered the pagan gods and weakened the city. Augustine points out that the City of Rome would have been trashed even worse if the Christian churches hadn't protected both the pagan and Christian citizens of Rome.

Augustine uses the metaphor or image of two cities in his writings, but it is difficult to exactly define what they represent. The two cities are, of course, not actual physical cities, but symbols, for those who embrace Christianity as compared to those who cling to paganism. Alternatively, the can be interpreted, not as those two groups of people, but rather as two sets of ideas, and the interplay between them.

He is realistic enough to say that you will never have a society which is 100% pagan or a society which is 100% Christian, so the two groups have to cooperate, and they have common goals which will help them do this. Augustine pleads for tolerance: the pagans should stop killing the Christians, and stop blaming them for Rome's misfortunes, and simply allow the Christians to live peacefully within the Empire. Augustine echoes, in this way, the Emperor Constantine, who essentially founded the idea of tolerance, when he decided that Jews, Christians, and pagans would all be allowed to study their ideas in Roman society.

Augustine also says that simply being a member of the church doesn't guarantee that a person really has a Christian spiritual desire for peace. Being a Christian is studying and believing the distinctive ideas presented by Jesus (that each human life is valuable, that peace is better than war, etc.); being a Christian is different than merely being a member of a church.

As part of the Christian tradition, Augustine embraces the whole idea of God's unearned favor toward people; nobody earns God's gifts, and the thing that will really get a person into trouble is if she or he thinks that he or she is good enough to earn God's favor. Admitting that you're not perfect (says Augustine) is the basis for Christianity. These concepts apply equally to all people, making Christianity a user-friendly religion.

Augustine criticizes the pagans for thinking that earthly peace can be achieved by human intellect and abilities. Rather, he says, peace has a spiritual origin beyond human beings. Human beings, trying to use their own powers, are imperfect and insufficient to create peace. Augustine is pointing out that human reason is good and powerful, but it is not perfect, and there are some things that human reason can't do. We need to be honest enough with ourselves to admit that we have limits. Centuries later, Augustinian philosophers, who formed one part of the Scholastic movement in the Middle Ages, will apply these ideas in a new setting.

Augustine points out the need to balance both the Christian impulse for societal involvement (helping the poor, founding schools, etc.) and the Christian impulse for meditation and contemplation: both are good, he says, but we should not have too much of either.

The future of human history is, then, societies continually trying to find peace and justice, and sometimes succeeding more, and sometimes succeeding less, depending on how the mix of people works together.

Mill or Blake - Natural or Revealed?

One of the big debates in 19th century was about (no surprize) the character of religion.

J.S. Mill is an example of what is called “natural religion” - meaning that using reason alone, in a priori thought, we can learn about God: who he is, what he does, what he's like. Mill had a lot of company. The idea of “natural religion” was shared by people like Rene Descartes and Thomas Paine. This type of religion is based only on those facts about God which human reason can deduce from pure logical thought. Mill's personal version of natural religion had two interesting features: a great emphasis on hope, and a reminder that there is nothing which forces God to give us a life after this one.

J.S. Mill's essay, “Theism,” is a short work began in 1868 and unfinished when Mill died in 1870. Mill thought that belief in a creator of great power was supported by the design argument, and one could certainly erect the superstructure of hope upon the base of a belief in a creator who would extend human existence beyond the grave: “Appearances point to the existence of a Being who has great power over us — all the power implied in the creation of the Cosmos, or of its organized beings at least — and of whose goodness we have evidence ... ; and as we do not know the limits either of his power or of his goodness, there is room to hope that both the one and the other may extend to granting us this gift provided that it would really be beneficial to us.”

Mill continues: “Hope with regard to the government of the universe and the destiny of man after death ... is legitimate and philosophically defensible. The beneficial effect of such a hope is far from trifling.” (Mill 1874)

On the other hand, people like William Blake embraced what we call “revealed religion” - being skeptical about the powers of human reason to answer all questions. This was a more widely-held view than “natural religion,” endorsed by most ordinary people, as well as physicists like Isaac Newton and chemists like Robert Boyle. They thought that human reason was a good and powerful tool, but questioned whether it could know everything, or be the only source of knowledge. In addition to reason, they saw revelation as a source of truth and knowledge - studying sacred texts.

Blake attacked the institutional church, while enthusiastically endorsing the Christian faith. Blake described the ‘everlasting Gospel’, which he saw as the original revelation that he believed Jesus preached. Jesus, for Blake, symbolizes the vital relationship and unity between divinity and humanity. One of Blake's strongest objections to traditional churches is that he felt they encouraged the suppression of natural desires and discouraged earthly joy. Blake believed that the joy of man glorified God and that stale religions which deny earthly joy are opposed to God.

These two alternatives - “natural religion” and “revealed religion” - have caused creative thinking in debates over the last two or three centuries. Which one do you like?

Private Sector Charity Trumps Government Aid

In modern political and social thought, the role of governmental assistance in various areas of life has grown. A large segment of the population in modern industrial and post-industrial nations expects, and views as proper, the taxpayers to fund efforts in education, health care, anti-poverty efforts, the arts, and other projects.

Such governmental intervention has proven, however, to be both weak and counter-productive.

Weak, inasmuch as private-sector efforts are both better-funded and more effective. When the government sends hundreds of millions to help Tsunami victims in southern Asia, charities send billions more than any world government could hope to send. When the government offers a few beds for the homeless in downtown Ann Arbor, private organizations offer dozens more.

What do these agencies all have in common, these agencies who offer help which is so much more effective than any government program? They receive no taxpayer funds. They are supported entirely by freewill donations from private citizens.

Many, but not all, of these agencies are "faith-based" - mainly churches. Ironically, American churches sent billions of dollars to the Tsunami victims, who were mainly Muslim and Hindu: because one principle of the Christian faith is to help all human beings, not simply those who share your faith. By contrast, the wealthy Muslim nations of Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, sent almost no assistance to Tsunami victims, even though they are members of the same Islamic faith.

Are there numbers to back up these claims? Americans give more money to charities, per capita, than any other country. Americans give over $300 billion annually to registered charitable organizations - and billions more to other charities. That's over $1,000 per person. Consider that many people under the age of 18 are not able to give large sums: that means that the average wage-earner is giving even larger sums.

In addition, Americans donate millions of hour of labor to charities: Ann Arbor's homeless program relies of hundreds of hours of volunteer work each week.

Boyle's Ideal Gas Law and Newton's Gravity

Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.”

His scientific fame notwithstanding, Newton's study of the Bible was among his greatest passions. He devoted more time to the study of the Scriptures, Alchemy, and the Christian faith than to science, and said, “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.” Newton himself wrote several books about the Bible, based on his knowledge of Hebrew grammar. Newton also placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which is now the accepted traditional date. His ability to calculate this date so accurately was due to careful cross-referencing between events in Roman history, events in the New Testament, and careful astronomical observations. Despite his focus on theology and alchemy, Newton tested and investigated these ideas with the scientific method, observing, hypothesising, and testing his theories. To Newton, his scientific and religious experiments were one and the same, observing and understanding how the world functioned.

Newton may have rejected the church's version doctrine of the Trinity. His studies of Hebrew texts may have led him to a different understanding of the nature of God's personalities.

In his own lifetime, Newton wrote more on religion than he did on natural science. He believed in a rationally immanent world. Thus, the ordered and dynamically informed universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason, but this universe, to be perfect and ordained, had to be regular.

Newton and Robert Boyle’s mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers. Thus, the clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of atheism, and, at the same time, to demonstrate the possibility of a “natural religion.” The idea of a “natural religion” is a religion which can be understood inductively from experience, a religion which is reasoned deductively from general principles of human knowledge. A “natural religion” is usually contrasted with a “revealed religion”, which is based upon the careful study of a text. Newton seems to have engaged in both types of religion, and his books had the effect in England of encouraging both types, even though they sometimes competed with each other.

Boyle, who worked to ensure that the Bible would be accurately translated into different Asian languages by competent linguistic scientists, developed a mechanical conception of the universe, most famously with his “ideal gas” law. Newton gave Boyle’s ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more important, was very successful in popularizing them. Newton refashioned the universe into a world crafted by a God who designs along rational and universal principles. These principles were available for all people to discover, allowed man to pursue his own aims fruitfully, and to improve, but not perfect, himself with his own rational powers.

Newton saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. The laws of physics are the God's thoughts, which He imposes on the world. In the Resurrection, Newton saw an absolutely “unique event” - a phrase which carries special importance in physics, because most events are not unique, being in principle reproducible by the re-application of the laws which produced them the first time.

The law of gravity became Sir Isaac Newton's best-known discovery. Newton warned against using it to view the universe as a mere machine, like a great clock.

Though he is better known for his love of science, the Bible was Sir Isaac Newton's greatest passion. He devoted more time to the study of Scripture than to science; he wrote more books about religion than about math or physics.

Newton’s conception of the physical world provided a stable model of the natural world that would reinforce stability and harmony in the civic world. Thus there is a social and political aspect to Newton's thought, but he did not write much about it.

Both Newton and Robert Boyle wrote substantial books about their faith, and worked to ensure that Bibles were distributed among the poor. Boyle's “ideal gas law” was for him a symbol of the perfect organization of the universe, which he said could only arise from a logical intelligent design.

Which Cultures Wage War Against Women?

Leading Demographer Warns UN About Global War on Girls - (NEW YORK — AP) At the UN this week, renowned scholar Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) warned delegates of the growing global gender imbalance due to prenatal sex selection. Calling the trend a “Global War Against Baby Girls”, Eberstadt delivered extensive statistics on the rise of “son preference” in every part of the world.

Refuting the assumptions that preference for baby boys is a localized cultural phenomenon or due solely to coercive population programs, Eberstadt’s research reveals that imbalance is due to several factors: an existing preference for sons, a decrease in overall fertility, and the exponential increase in the use of technology which facilitates sex selection in the prenatal stages. He also emphasized that a rise in education levels does not slow the problem and in some cases is associated with a stronger tendency to choose boys.

According to Eberstadt, natural birth rates are about 105 males for every 100 females born. Some regions of the world are experiencing upwards of 115 boys born for every 100 girls, some are as high at 150 boys born for every 100 girls. He warned delegates that this could just be the beginning and that the world is “moving to the realm of science fiction” as the ratio of baby boys to baby girls was already at levels “beyond nature.” Citing a recent study, Eberstadt said that even now there are 20 million “missing” baby girls in Asia alone, that sex-selection has permanently skewed the demographic balance of China and is in the process of skewing the demographic balance of India. He also showed the way that the trend has crept into Eastern Europe and Latin America, and that almost every African state is showing signs of vulnerability to the phenomenon.

Since 1994, the UN has recognized that “son preference” is discriminatory to women and girls and the Beijing Platform for Action lists female infanticide and prenatal sex selection as incidences of violence against women.

The recent Violence Against Children (VAC) study released earlier this year made no mention of the problem of sex-selection whereby parents are forced or coerced to choose one or two children and almost inevitably choose boys. The 139-page in-depth Violence Against Women (VAW) study also released this year only referred to prenatal sex selection three times.

A delegate at the lecture said, “This is astonishing. The research clearly shows that this is a growing problem all over the world. It is our job as delegates to seek solutions.”

Experts say solutions will be hard to come by. Eberstadt pointed out that when South Korea made sex selection illegal, the practice skyrocketed. Experts also point out that a rising imbalance of boys to girls will lead to trafficking in women and could contribute to an increasing national security concerns.

Culture and Creativity

Whether you call it "Western Culture" or "European Civilization" or simply the "Judeo-Christian Tradition", including much of North America and places like Australia, this stream of history has been an incredibly creative one.

According to the second Arab Human Development Report, which was written in 2003 for the United Nations Development Program by a group of courageous Arab social scientists, between 1980 and 1999, Arab countries produced 171 international patents. South Korea alone during that same period registered 16,328 patents. Hewlett-Packard registers, on average, eleven new patents a day. The average number of scientists and engineers working in research and development in the Arab countries is 371 per million people, while the world average, including countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, is 979, the report said. This helps to explain why although massive amounts of foreign technology are imported to the Arab regions, very little of it is internalized or supplanted by Arab innovations. Between 1995 and 1996, as many as 25 percent of the university graduates produced in the Arab world immigrated to some Western country. There are just 18 computers per 1,000 people in the Arab region today, compared with the global average of 78.3 per 1,000, and only 1.6 percent of the Arab population has Internet access. While Arabs represent almost five percent of the world's population, the report said, they produce only one percent of the books published. Of the 88 million unemployed males between fifteen and twenty-four worldwide, almost 26 percent are in the Middle East and North Africa, according to an International Labor Organization study (Associated Press, December 26, 2004).

This trend continues despite the fact that the Arab nations are wealthier than not only the average nation, but also wealthier than even the average developed nation. In fact, Arab wealth allows them to enjoy the fruit of Western technology: in Dubai, what will soon be the world's tallest building is being built - with engineers and architects from Europe and America, who quickly discovered that local builders were not up to the task.

The excess of wealth in the Arab nations is used to enjoy Western technology, but not to help or advance human needs: when the Tsunami struck a number of Islamic nations, disaster relief and humanitarian aid came largely from Europe and America, with only a trickle from the Arab world.

In contrast with the West, Arabic culture seems to have shut down its creative capabilities.

Dhimmi

The term "dhimmi" refers to a non-Muslim person in a country which has been occupied by Islamic armies. This word, and the concept for which it stands, shaped history in southeastern Europe for several centuries.

Muslim armies steamrolled over North Africa, the Middle East, and Spain for five centuries after the death of Muhammed in 632 A.D.; magnificent basilicas and monasteries in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia were left in smoking ruins by Muslims from the eighth to the tenth centuries.

Spain was pillaged and devastated many times: Zamora in 981, Barcelona in 987, Santiago de Compostela in 997. In 1000, Castile was ravaged, its Christian and Jewish populations either killed, or enslaved and then deported. This was the fate of the dhimmi.

God at the U of M Hospital

During these first few years of the twenty-first century, research hospitals, like Ann Arbor's U of M, having been looking ever more closely at the link between spirituality and wellness.

To be sure, no simple link exists: we cannot simply assert that those who sharpened their spiritual awareness don't suffer from the same health problems as everybody else. They get sick and die like the rest of us.

But it is also indisputable that some fascinating correlations exist among the realms of faith and health. The mediator between those two is sometimes psychology. All three play a role in a recent dissertation, "God in Fatherlessness", submitted in June 2000 by a staff member at Michigan's hospital.

There exists, on the one hand, the established connection between fatherlessness (through death, divorce, or a father who is physically present but emotionally unavailable) and a decreased ability to engage spiritually. On the other hand, there are the indirect links between spirituality and health.

The recent dissertation adds to this already complex mix the notion that fatherlessness pushes the fatherless toward the conclusion that the absent father is "negatively intended"; one possible conclusion is that the fatherless are nudged, not only toward mere atheism, but toward a view that God is somehow malicious.

Final conclusions in these questions will be found only after much more research, but this will clearly be a major field of medical exploration as the century moves forward.

Getting Married in Somalia?

The Associated Press recently (11/11/2006) reported that the Islamic government of Somalia has made it illegal, punishable by death, to get married without the explicit prior consent of the parents of both the bride and the groom, no matter how old they may be. “It is against the teaching of our religion and parents do not approve of it,” said Sheik Mahad Mohamed Sheik Hassan, chairman of Somalia's Islamic court. The fact that the title “Sheik” occurs twice indicates his high governmental position.

The Muslim government has also banned movies, live music, and sporting events. Somalia is currently in the midst of a civil war. Both sides, however, seem to embrace the view that Islamic law should control society.

Persia or Iran?

We tend to think of Iran as one of the large Islamic countries in the Middle East, but that perspecitve is relatively recent in history. The area has been known as Iran for only a few years, but for centuries it has been called Persia. For 600 years, its most popular religion was Christianity.

Persia is home to two large groups of Christians, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church. Although these churches were originally maintaining ties with the Christian churches in the Roman Empire, they were indeed quite different from the churches in the Roman Empire. One reason for this is language.

Another factor was that the churches within the Persian Empire did not maintain such close ties with their counterparts in the Roman Empire. Additionally, there was the continuous rivalry between these two great empires. Quite frequently, Christians in Persia were (often falsely) accused of sympathizing with the Romans, even though the Roman Empire was persecuting and killing Christians, while the Persian Empire embraced Christianity. In Persia, unlike Rome, it was both legal and popular for people to leave Zoroastriansim (the mythological belief system of Persia prior to Christianity).

But it was not until the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. that the vast majority of Christians in Persia broke their ties with the churches in the Roman Empire.

Most of the Christians in the Sassanid empire lived on the western edge of the empire, predominately in Mesopotamia, but there were also important communities on the island Tylos (present day Bahrain), the southern coast of the Persian Gulf, the area of the Arabian kingdom of Lakhm and the Persian part of Armenia. Some of these areas were the earliest to be Christianized; the kingdom of Armenia choose the Christian faith sometime before 100 A.D., and became the first independent Christian state in the world in 301 A.D.; while a number of Assyrian territories had almost become fully Christianized even earlier during the 1st century, they never became independent nations.

Most Christians in the Persian Empire belonged to a number of predominately Christian ethnic groups. Some of these groups were the Assyrians, the Arabs of southern Mesopotamia, the Armenians, as well as some smaller ethnic groups such as the Syriacs. The latter group was taken to Persia as prisoners of war from the many conflicts with the Roman Empire. Conversion was common among ethnic Persians and other ethnicities residing in the empire. Among them were certain small Caucasian and Kurdish tribes which had converted to Christianity.

For approximately 600 years, these groups lived as Christians. In 651 A.D., the first wave of “jihad” from the Islamic Caliphate swept across Persia in a fourteen-year-long bloodbath. Christians could flee, convert to Islam, become enslaved, or be killed. Eventually, the name “Iran” would replace “Persia” as the usual name for the region.

What Does Wikipedia Have to Say about the Renaissance?

Giorgio Vasari was the first to coin the term Renaissance, in 1550, though an awareness of the ongoing rebirth in the arts had been in the air earlier. Since that time, historians have differed in their interpretations of the meaning of Renaissance. Many historians now view the Renaissance as more of an intellectual and ideological change than a substantive one. Marxist historians, for example, hold the view that the changes in art, literature, and philosophy affected only a tiny minority of the very wealthy and powerful, leaving the lives of the great mass of the European population unchanged.

Many historians now point out that most of the negative social factors popularly associated with the "medieval" period - poverty, ignorance, warfare, religious and political persecution, and so forth - seem to have actually worsened in this era which saw the rise of Machiavelli, the Wars of Religion, the corrupt Borgia Popes, and the intensified witch-hunts of the 16th century. Many people who lived during the Renaissance did not view it as the "golden age" imagined by certain 19th century authors, but were concerned by these social maladies. Significantly, though, the artists, writers, and patrons involved in the cultural movements in question believed they were living in a new era that was a clean break from the Middle Ages.

Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) acknowledged the existence of the Renaissance but questioned whether it was a positive change. He argued that the Renaissance was a period of decline from the High Middle Ages, destroying much that was important. The Latin language, for instance, had evolved greatly from the classical period and was still a living language used in the church and elsewhere. The Renaissance obsession with classical purity halted its natural evolution and saw Latin revert to its classical form. Robert Lopez has contended that it was a period of deep economic recession. Meanwhile George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have both argued that scientific progress was slowed.

Historians have begun to consider the word Renaissance as unnecessarily loaded, implying an unambiguously positive rebirth from the supposedly more primitive Middle Ages. Many historians now prefer to use the term "early modern" for this period, a more neutral term that highlights the period as a transitional one that led to the modern world.

A 4,000-Mile Journey to Nowhere - The Harrowing Journey of Exile under Stalin

Josef Stalin is known as the brutal Soviet ruler, responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians, Poles, Ukranians, Jews, and Germans. What is not so well-known is that also arranged for the deaths of millions of Koreans, long before the Korean War. Researchers at the University of Michigan have made a documentary film about Stalin's mass killing of Koreans.

In 1937, Vladmir Tyan watched as soldiers shot his father and older brother. He had no time to mourn. Chased from their house, the rest of the family lived on the street for three days. Then they boarded a train.

“You’d hear in the neighboring car the cries of children, the elderly, and the sick,” Dekabrina Kim recalls. “They took out the dead, and no one knew where they were buried.”

“The train went to a dead halt, and we were told it was our stop,” says Sergei Yun. “Each family dug a hole to live in. There were no trees or charcoal. We lived that way for two or three years.”

The victims’ stories describe what occurred when Stalin deported some 180,000 Soviet Koreans that he dubbed “unreliable people.” Evicted from their homes and farms and locked into crowded cattle cars headed for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - remote destinations nearly 4,000 miles and one month away - they found themselves on desolate lands without housing.

Making history public

These stories are largely unknown outside of Central Asia, and only a small number of scholarly documents have shed light on this chapter of Stalin’s Great Terror. “Few knew that this 1937 episode served as the opening salvo for a series of similar ethnic cleansings and deportations that involved Germans, Jews, Ukranians, Poles, Tatars, and Chechens,” says Meredith Jung-En Woo, an LSA political science professor. With David Chung, co-director of LSA’s Archive of Diasporic Korea and lecturer at the U of M, Woo is making this historical event better known to the world. Determined that LSA would be the site of the world’s first digital archive on the history of these Soviet Koreans, Woo and Chung traveled to Kazakhstan. The team bought Soviet and Kazakh newsreels and film footage, and scanned family photos, letters, and official documents. They did extensive interviews with survivors and their children, exploring the memories of the old and the challenges the young still face.

“Time was running out,” says Woo, “because the last survivors of the deportation, well into their seventies and eighties, were dying.” “With materials as compelling as these, a documentary film practically forced itself on us,” says Woo. With seed money from the U of M, they expanded the project.

The film is the harrowing saga of Koreans who were deported from the Soviet Far East, where they had lived in farming and fishing villages, enjoying their own theater, schools, and Korean language newspaper. Told through the eyes of deported Koreans, the film is also a story of multiethnic and multicultural Kazakhstan struggling to forge a new national identity in the aftermath of independence from the Soviet Union - and the place of the Korean-Kazakhs in this struggle. “We have our own soul, our own aura, and you can’t confuse us with anyone,” second-generation deportee and musician Jacov Khan says in the film. “We certainly all feel some envy when looking at Korean-Koreans or Kazakh-Kazakhs,” adds second-generation deportee Svetlana Nigai, who now lives in Almaty. “They have their own mother land. When people ask us what our native language is, we say Russian. But when they ask our nationality, that is a tougher question to answer.”

Progress with Stem Cells?

Stem cells are producing promising results these days. Adult stem cells, that is. For people with blocked arteries, a growth factor called GMCSF, when injected into the body, stimulates bone marrow to release more stem cells and enables new arteries to be grown. Tests have shown a 60 percent improvement in blood-vessel function as a result.

Blindness caused by outside factors often cannot be repaired with corneal transplants, yet stem cells offer new hope. While not yet producing perfect vision, patients can become self-dependent again. They are able to see well enough to do the basic tasks of life.

Tests in mice have yielded a way to spur the growth of neural stem cells in the brain - possibly paving the way to treating or curing Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. Key in all three of these stories is that using one's own stem cells, rather than those of another, prevents the body's immune system from rejecting them, much like a transplanted organ. It is becoming clear that the hope for an Alzheimer or Parkinson cure comes from adult stem cells, not embryonic ones.

Outside the U.S., in Portugal, physicians have actually succeeded in partially regenerating various internal human organs, using adult stem cells.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for any success story from the use of embryonic stem cells. We'll try to keep you posted.

Roman Civil War

The late Roman Republic was plagued with civil wars for approximately a century. What made these bloody conflicts possible?

The Roman civil wars were very different than the civil war in the United States. The Roman internal conflicts were not about political issues or moral principles. The Roman civil wars were about personalities.

The typical Roman soldier had a primary loyalty, not to the Roman Republic, but to his general and officers. If two generals decided to compete for power, a civil war arose. This pattern culminated in the Battle of Actium.

Movies and History

For better or worse, Americans gain a significant and increasing percentage of their knowledge of history from movies.

Learning history from movies can be helpful, but there is an even greater need for critical thinking than when learning from books.

Certainly, history books can be loaded with "spin" - history is told in a certain way to advance the author's political agenda.

But movies are subject to double spin - they have the same political spin as books, and then a second layer of spin is added because the movie needs to be entertaining. Movies may contain historical inaccuracies, not only beause of the filmmaker's political views, but also because the filmmaker may change the events simply to make them more entertaining. People going to see movies demand to be entertained, but they don't care if they're accurately informed. Recent films about the Trojan War and Alexander the Great demonstrate this sufficiently.

The informed viewer can exercise critical thinking by watching two different films about the same historical events.

Cleopatra, for example, was the subject of a 1963 film by Elizabeth Taylor, and a 1934 film by Claudette Colbert; view them both, and you'll hopefully "cancel out" the spins of the various screenwriters.

Likewise, Marie Antoinette was the subject of a 1938 film by Norma Shearer, and a 2006 film by Kirsten Dunst. Both are informative.

In either case, it helps to read even a brief, half-page encyclopedia article about the people and events concerned. Reading even a little before the film not only makes you understand it better, it helps you to enjoy it more, because you understand.

More recent events in film include the movie "End of the Spear" (made in 2005), which depicts the murders in the Amazon Basin of several Americans; the same situation was filmed as "Beyond the Gates of Splendor" in 2002. Both films seem fairly accurate.

Women Enter American Politics

In 1917, Jeannette Rankin, a Montana Republican, became the first woman to serve in the House of Representatives. She'd been elected in 1916. Committed to her pacifist beliefs, she was the only member of Congress to vote against entry into both World War I and World War II.

Shortly after Ms. Rankin's election to Congress, the 19th Amendment was passed in 1919. This means that the first woman was elected to Congress before the right to vote was even given to women! The amendment's journey to ratification had been a long and difficult one. Starting in 1896, the Republican Party became the first major party to officially favor women's suffrage. That year, Republican Sen. A. A. Sargent of California introduced a proposal in the Senate to give women the right to vote. The proposal was defeated four times in the Democratic-controlled Senate. When the Republican Party regained control of Congress, the Equal Suffrage Amendment finally passed (304-88), over the objections of the Democrats.

When the amendment was submitted to the states, 26 of the 36 states that ratified it had Republican-controlled legislatures. Of the nine states that voted against ratification, eight were controlled by Democrats. Twelve states, all Republican, had already given women full suffrage before the federal amendment was finally ratified.

The Origins of an American Political Party

The Republican Party was born in the early 1850's by anti-slavery activists and individuals who believed that government should grant western lands to settlers free of charge. The first informal meeting of the party took place in Ripon, Wisconsin, a small town northwest of Milwaukee. The first official Republican meeting took place on July 6th, 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. The name “Republican” was chosen because it alluded to equality and reminded individuals of Thomas Jefferson's party. Jefferson had called his political party the “Democratic Republican” party. The name “Republican” also reminded voters of the grand era of Rome, before it became an empire. At the Jackson convention, the new party adopted a platform and nominated candidates for office in Michigan.

In 1856, the Republicans became a national party when John C. Fremont was nominated for President under the slogan: “Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Fremont.” Even though they were considered a “third party” because the Democrats and Whigs represented the two-party system at the time, Fremont received 33% of the vote. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican to win the White House.

The Civil War erupted in 1861 and lasted four grueling years. During the war, against the advice of the Democrats, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves. The Republicans of the day worked to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, the Fourteenth, which guaranteed equal protection under the laws, and the Fifteenth, which helped secure voting rights for African-Americans.

The Republican Party also played a leading role in securing women the right to vote. In 1869, Republicans were the first major party to favor women's suffrage. When the 19th Amendment finally was added to the Constitution, 26 of 36 state legislatures that had voted to ratify it were under Republican control. The first woman elected to Congress was a Republican, Jeanette Rankin from Montana in 1916.

Presidents during most of the late nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century were Republicans. The White House was in Republican hands under Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. Under the last two, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the United States became the world's only superpower, winning the Cold War from the old Soviet Union and releasing millions from Communist oppression.

Republicans have supported these ideas: Individuals, not government, can make the best decisions; all people are entitled to equal rights; and decisions are best made close to home.

The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. During the mid term elections way back in 1874, Democrats tried to scare voters into thinking President Grant would seek to run for an unprecedented third term. Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper's Weekly, depicted a Democratic jackass trying to scare a Republican elephant - and both symbols stuck. For a long time Republicans have been known as the “G.O.P.” And party faithfuls thought it meant the “Grand Old Party.” But apparently the original meaning (in 1875) was “gallant old party.” And when automobiles were invented it also came to mean, “get out and push.”

Anti-War Protest?

The Crusades were not popular among the Christians of Europe, even if they were considered a military necessity as a counter-attack against the home base from which surprise attacks and invasions had been launched against sleepy and unsuspecting places like Spain, France, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Austria.

During the Middle Ages while the Just War Theory - a debate about when or if a war was ever part of "justice" - was becoming more developed and Crusades were happening. Peace movements among Christians flourished. Francis of Assisi may or may not have been a pacifist, but he lived as if he were. A peace movement known as the "Great Alleluia" involving thousands of people took place in northern Italy in the 13th century, lead by an energetic priest who went from town to town, preaching in public. In 1233 the movement had grown to such proportions that 400,000 people gathered to demonstrate for peace and reconciliation. Another Italian peace movement known as the "Bianchi" moved about in thousands from city to city. Peacemaking was their major work. One chronicler notes that by the time one of these processions reached Rome its numbers had swelled to 200,000. Various groups of monks and priests opposed the Crusades, sometimes with words, and sometimes with actions.

Popular opposition to the Crusades spread, sometimes for these spiritual reasons, and sometimes for more worldly reasons: the Crusades cost money, and the soldiers who were part of them behaved like pagans. Yet the public tolerated these Crusades, even if they didn't like them, because it was understood that the alternative was a massive invasion by the Islamic armies into Europe.

People remembered how a Muslim army took over almost half of France, burning the wheatfields and houses, raping and killing the villagers, before Karl Martell and his army were able to turn them back. Those horrifying memories made the Crusades seem like a necessary, if unpleasant, defensive move.

War in Ireland

The Irish seem to have been at war, off and on, forever, or at least for the last few centuries. Certainly, in the last few years, there have been periodic terrorist or guerilla-style attacks between the those in the northern part of the island, and those in the southern part.

The newspaper and TV routinely report these conflicts as the struggle between the Protestant and Catholic parts of Ireland. To be sure, southern Ireland is largely Roman Catholic, and northern Ireland is mainly Anglican. But is that really what the conflict is about?

Remember, Christianity in Ireland split into the two group in 1532, when Henry VIII started the English Reformation.

But the warfare in Ireland has been going on since the 1100's, and perhaps even earlier, when there was no religious division on island.

The fighting is Ireland is about the same things that most other wars are about: land, power, and money. It is not a religious war.

Sampling Errors

When we study the culture of a different time or place, we read their books, view their paintings, hear their music, and so form for ourselves a concept of what that society was like.

But how much material do we need to form an accurate view? Consider the following:

Shakespeare wrote approximately 154 sonnets, give or take. If I've read only one of them, can I make generalizations about them? What if I've read ten? Or twenty? He wrote around thirty-eight plays; if I've studied one of them, is that enough to form an impression of what his plays are like?

Sophocles penned about 123 plays; if I've read only two of them, can I make categorical statements about what the average Sophocles play is?

The statue of the Minoan Snake Goddess, with her eye-catching topless outfit, is much studied. But that is only one single statue, from a culture that made thousands of statues. Can I make generalizations about their statues from only this one? Or make generalizations about their religions, or about the roles which women played in their society?

Think of it this way: imagine yourself studying history 4,000 years from now, and reading about life in a typical North American city in our era. If you were to read only one magazine from this time, and use it to try to form a general idea about our culture, what would happen if that one magazine were Sports Illustrated? Or Vogue? Or Playboy?

Clearly you need several samples, and various samples, to gain a more accurate concept of a society.

The Gospel of Whom?

The manuscript known as “The Gospel of Judas” has recently been featured in TV shows. Although researchers have studied this document for decades, it has suddenly become popular in the electronic media, after the technical scholars in the university have concluded that it contains little historical information about the actual events of the first century.

The life of Jesus took place in a Hebrew culture in the first century, and the most reliable documents about that era are written by first-century Hebrews; the “Gospel of Judas” is a Greek document, written several centuries later.

Clearly, Jesus remains a controversial and influential figure in history; but whatever their personal beliefs, historians simply seek the most reliable texts about the life of any famous person. There are always plenty of spurious sources concerning any historical event or person.

In recent lectures and articles, James Voelz (Cambridge University, England) and Jeffrey Kloha addressed four aspects of the gospel of Judas manuscript:

1) How the manuscript is portrayed in the media: the “popular media” of TV, radio, and internet isn’t allowed to take the time to do a careful historical analysis of the manuscript, because people want “entertaining” news.

2) Basic features of the manuscript: written much later than the historical accounts of the life of Jesus, it couldn’t possible have been written by an eyewitness to the events. Instead, it relies upon tradition.

3) Gnosticism as a point of reference for the manuscript: “Gnosticism” is belief system, a mixture different Greek philosophical ideas, combined with a few ideas from Judaism and Christianity – interesting ideas, but they can’t be the ideas which were being discussed in Jerusalem in first century, because they are ideas from a later era.

4) The manuscript and canonicity: this manuscript, known to ancient authors and modern scholars, was never taken seriously because of its obvious flaws. Rejected by serious researchers, the TV industry picked it because it is entertaining, if untrue.

“There is nothing of the historical Jesus, the Jesus that walked the earth, in this document,” commented Kloha. “It is important that we know about this document since people are watching and reading media reports about it and being influenced by them.” Instead of a factual account of the actual events that happened during the life of Jesus, this document presents a series of Greek philosophical ideas that flourished during the later years of the Roman Empire. Modern archaeology and ancient texts give us some core facts about events in Jerusalem during the first century; the “Gospel of Judas” is clearly a combination of later traditions.

The gospel of Judas was featured in a National Geographic Society television documentary. It is dramatically different from the four gospels that are contained within the New Testament and purports to provide a secret account of a revelation that Jesus spoke with the disciple Judas Iscariot.

“Jesus is never described as ‘the Christ’ in this manuscript,” commented Kloha. “Instead, an individual named Seth is referenced as the Christ.”

In describing the media’s portrayal of the document, Voelz stated, “They are conveniently omitting a lot of information that would put the manuscript in a bad light. It is important for people to know how odd this document is.” The ideas presented in the “Gospel of Judas” are not the ideas of either Jews or Christians in the first century; the concepts of “Messiah” are different.

There are other documents about these events which are simply more reliable, more accurate, and older, having been written by eyewitnesses to the events in question.

Surprise!

Historians and scientists love to surprise people. For example, most people know that Cleopatra was the queen of Egypt, but did you know that she wasn't Egyptian? She was actually Greek, the descendant of one of Alexander's Macedonian generals; she and her family spoke Greek, and didn't consider themselves Egyptians, although they would engage in the traditional ceremonies of the Pharaohs in order to get the popular support of the Egyptians.

But some reporters go too far in their desire to surprise readers, when the actually falsify sources, and create fictions, merely so that they can say something unexpected. For exampel, the actress who played Jan Brady in the famous TV series did not die of a drug overdose; she's alive and well. But the story about her was created those desiring to surprise an audience.

More serious examples have been uncovered by The Washington Times, in January of 2002:

Hoping to close two national forests, government scientists planted evidence that the forests were inhabited by an endangered species of lynx.

The scientists' dishonesty undermined a three-year study and confirmed suspicions that some government scientists fake studies is order to control environmental policy.

Another example from American history:

Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles apparently believes so strongly in gun control that he invented a history for the purpose of undermining the Constitution's Second Amendment, the right of citizens to own guns.

Professor Bellesiles' politically correct book, Arming America, was awarded the Bancroft Prize, a prestigious award for historians. But scholars examining the work say Mr. Bellesiles' conclusions are based on made-up and nonexistent sources.

Mr. Bellesiles aruges that gun ownership was so rare among early Americans, even on the frontiers, that no one would have cared enough about the right to give it constitutional protection. He claims to have studied many wills and to have found scant evidence of guns being bequeathed to heirs.

When skeptical scholars checked his sources, they found he claimed to have studied wills of people in Colonial Rhode Island known to have died without wills! He also claims to have studied probate records in San Francisco for the years 1849-59. However, the city's librarians say no such records exist. They were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.

Most historians and scientists are honest. But we need to think critically, especially when they are writing about issues related to modern politics. They might be so interested in keeping tourists out of national forests, or in eliminating the Second Amendment, that they falsify data to support their points. When science meets politics, look for fake evidence; when history intersects with controversial issues, watch for falsified sources.

Which Sargon?

The Ancient Near East included three different rulers, all named Sagon:

The first reigned from approximately 2350 until 2300 B.C., and gained control of both Sumer and Akkad; he united them to form Babylonia, and his empire included all of Mesopotamia, and had significant influence to regions well beyond that area.

The second reigned around 1850 B.C., ruled Assyria early in its heyday.

The third also ruled Assyria, between 722 and 705 B.C., and was responsible for the final wave of attacks on the North Kingdom of Israel, conquering its capitol city Samaria; the Hebrew author Isaiah gives us information about him.

Three men, with the same name, in different countries, living over a thousand years apart!

The Many Sides of John Locke

The writings and ideas of John Locke stand as some of the most brilliant in English history. They are marked by, among other things, their variety.

One aspect of Locke's thought is political; he is famous for his significant influence on the Founding Fathers and their creation of the United States Constitution. A different side of Locke is seen in his purely philosophical essays, in which he ponders questions of human consciousness, perception, and knowledge; his formulations of empiricism and the process by which the mind turns sensations into ideas remain influential to this day.

These two facets of Locke are connected by a third and a fourth.

One connection is the legal implication of Locke's empiricism; if each human being is indeed born as a "blank slate", then the legal defense - used by, e.g., a kleptomaniac caught stealing - of "I was born that way" is illegitimate. Locke denies the existence of innate ideas.

A second connection between Locke's politics and his purely philosophical ideas is the implication of religious belief. Locke took great pains to show that the majority (not all) of humans arrive at their religious beliefs rationally, and that, therefore, we can also rely on the majority to vote on laws that are, on average, good laws. Locke said that, because religious beliefs are most central and essential to human thought, then their rationality ensures the rationality of other human thought. He also pointed out that those occasional instances of irrational religious belief are usually due to a lack of information or a lack of study, and can be corrected by exercise of the rational faculties of the mind upon substantial bodies of fact.

The REAL Martin Luther King

It is most appropriate for students in the Humanities to note a national holiday, Martin Luther King's birthday, because Rev. King was a diligent student of the humanities.

Originally born as Michael King, Jr., in 1928 (his father was named Michael King, Sr.), the father and son both changed their names to "Martin Luther" after studying the works of the German Reformer. One can only imagine how profound the impact of Luther's books was, if they caused father and son to change their names. This is truly a gigantic historical leap - from Germany in 1517 to Atlanta, Georgia in the 1940's.

King went on to do graduate research at Boston University. His dissertation, over 200 pages long, was an analysis of the writings of a German philosopher named Paul Tillich. King's research required him to have reading knowledge of German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. King analyzed Tillich's concept of God, and compared it to the way other philosophers viewed God. King was looking for the perfect balance between a "transcendent" view of God and an "immanent" view of God; the transcendent view is more cosmic and eternal, and immanent view is more personal and relational. King believed that a balanced view of God - not moving to either extreme - would improve both individuals and societies.

Too often, the television gives us the impression that King's main activity was giving speeches and marching. In reality, he spent years of his life in libraries. King's ideals of equality and non-violence came from studying texts.

Paul Tillich was a major influence on King. King also read books by Ghandi; Ghandi, in turn, had been educated in England. It was from England that Ghandi brought to his native India ideals of non-violence and equality, and began to criticize India's "caste" system. Ghandi wanted a "Magna Carta" for India. It's ironic that to get from England to America, these ideas went through India. Ghandi wanted to import the British ideas about the dignity and value of every human life, and about civil justice, into India. He probably did not foresee, at least initially, that they would be then exported to other countries, especially to the USA.

King had also read Thoreau and Emmerson, who in turn had been educated in the seminaries of New England, mainly at Harvard, where the Bible was studied in the context of its original Greek and Hebrew grammar, and in the context of rise and fall of the major ancient empires. This mixed approach - a personal commitment to valuing each human life, a geo-political context of major world powers, and the careful examination of text - would be formative.

So we see what a wide range of texts and authors are wrapped up in the influences which enabled King to take his remarkable place in American history. We see, in his words and writings, how a Humanities education can be powerful.

Statistics, Statistics!

Most of us, at one time or another, have heard something like this: "in the Middle Ages, the average life span was shorter than forty years; today, life expectancy often reaches as high as the mid seventies."

Makes us sound pretty cool, right? I mean, with all our modern technology and science, and good medical care, we're much better off!

Well, not really.

Notice the slightly different wordings: "average life span" and "life expectancy". These are, to statisticians, two very different things.

Average life span is simply the arithmetic mean of a group of human beings, for example, those living in Europe in the Middle Ages. Some of them died as small babies, others lived to be 100 years old or more, and most were between those two extremes. Add them up, divide, and you have the average. You learned to do that in some math class.

But "life expectancy" is a little trickier. For example, the generation of Americans who fought World War Two is now over eighty years old. We look around, and see many of them still living; others have died only recently, having made it into their seventies. And so we say that this generation had a pretty good "life expectancy". But their average life span was much shorter. We forget about the hundreds of thousands who actually died in the 1940's, fighting in the Pacific against Japan. When they are factored into the group, we find that the average life span is much shorter than the life expectancy. Remember, many of those soldiers who died were under twenty years of age.

Your life expectancy is defined, roughly, as how long you can expect to live if you have already made it to a certain age, say 20 or 30, and if there are no major unforeseen catastrophes, say like a war or an earthquake.

It's not meaningful to compare a modern life expectancy to a medieval average life span. That's comparing apples to oranges.

Given that the modern life span is shorter than the modern life expectancy, maybe we're not so much better off than those folks in the Middle Ages after all.

The Backwards Revolution

Sometimes, revolutions fail to make things better; in 1959, the Cuban Communist revolution rejected American-style democracy, and promised to make things better for the "common working" man. What happened after that?

Many economic and social indicators have declined since the 1959 revolution. Pre-Castro Cuba ranked third in Latin America in per capita food consumption; today, it ranks last. Per capita consumption of cereals, tubers, and meat are today all below 1950's levels. The number of automobiles in Cuba has fallen since the 1950's - the only country in Latin America for which this is the case. The number of telephone lines in Cuba also has been virtually frozen at 1950's levels. Cuba once ranked first in Latin America and fifth in the world in television sets per capita. Today, it barely ranks fourth in Latin America and is well back in the ranks globally.

Cuba's rate of development of electrical power since the 1950’s ranks behind every other country in Latin America except Haiti. Cuba is the only country in the hemisphere for which rice production today is lower than it was four decades ago.

Cuba's infant mortality rate of 32 per 1,000 live births in 1957 was the lowest in Latin America and the 13th lowest in the world, according to UN data. Cuba ranked ahead of France, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, all of which would eventually pass Cuba in this indicator during the following decades. Cuba's world ranking has fallen from 13th to 24th during the Castro era, according to UN Data.

Japan, with four cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 1958, was far behind Cuba (24) that year, but by 1988, Japan's number had grown to 251, whereas the figure for Cuba remained frozen at its 1958 level. Similar comments could be made for Portugal (increased from fifteen in 1958 to 216 in 1988), Spain (increased from six to 278), and Greece (increased from four to 150). Indeed, Italy's 29 cars per thousand was not far ahead of Cuba's 24 in 1958, but by 1988, Italy boasted 440 cars per thousand, whereas the figure for Cuba was unchanged from the 1950's.

Today, Cuba has only three telephone lines per 100 people, placing it 14th out of twenty Latin American countries surveyed in 1994 and far behind countries that were less advanced than Cuba in this measure in 1958, such as Argentina (today 14 lines per 100 inhabitants), Costa Rica (13), Panama (11), Chile (11), Venezuela (11), and several others.

During the late 1950's, Cuba ranked second only to Uruguay in Latin America, with 169 radios per 1,000 people. (Worldwide, this put Cuba just ahead of Japan.) At that time, Argentina and Cuba were very similar in terms of this measure. Since then, the number of radios per capita in Argentina has grown three times as fast as in Cuba. Cuba also has been surpassed by Bolivia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, and Brazil in this indicator.

Cuba had 45 television sets per 1,000 inhabitants in 1957, by far the most in Latin America and fifth in the world, behind only Monaco, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In fact, its closest competitor in Latin America was Venezuela, which had only sixteen television sets per 1,000 people. Today, Cuba has 170 televisions per thousand, behind Uruguay (232 per thousand), Argentina (220), and Brazil (209). Of these three countries, Uruguay in 1957 had less than one television per 1,000 people, and Argentina and Brazil each had five per 1,000 people.

Although Cuba has never been a regional leader in public electricity production per capita, its relative ranking among twenty Latin American countries has fallen from eighth to 11th during the Castro era. In fact, in terms of the rate of growth for this measure, Cuba ranks 19th of twenty countries in the region, with only Haiti showing less accelerated development.

Cuba is the only country in Latin America whose production of rice has fallen since 1958, when it ranked fourth in the region in production of this staple.

Cubans had a choice of 58 daily newspapers during the late 1950's, according to the UN statistical yearbook. Despite its small size, this placed Cuba behind only Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in the region. By 1992, government controls had reduced the number of dailies to only seventeen.

A Short Snooze for a Short Emperor: Napoleon's Naps

From the time of his self-appointment to the first consulship in 1799, Napoleon had constructed for himself folding field-bed out of iron. On all campaigns and field manouvers, he took one along: either a small one on the back of a mule, or a larger one on a supply wagon. But even when he slept on something more comfortable, Napoleon slept only a short time. Allegedly, he never remained in bed for any longer than four hours at a time. He didn't like those who slept for long periods of time. Sleep experts celebrate him today as a pioneer of the "power-nap", an energizing short snooze. Accordingly, Napoleon is supposed to have slept briefly several times a day - for example, when commanding. Sometimes even during a battle!

Peace in the Middle East?

The recent "heating up" of military action in the area of Israel and Lebanon has brought the ancient conflicts of the Middle East to the forefront again.

Many American politicians are debating about the best way to make peace - but their debates are founded on the presupposition that peace is possible in this situation, and that is an assumption which we must examine more carefully.

First, let's define peace. If, by that word, we mean merely the absense of violence, the lack of shooting, then, yes, peace in the Middle East is possible. Either by diplomacy or by force, it is possible to create a cease-fire, an uneasy and tenuous truce; this can be done by the involved parties themselves, or by external forces. It has been done before.

But if we mean, by the word peace, something more than an imposed restraint on military action, if we mean, perhaps, the creation of a political stable equalibrium, and the conviction on the parts of all involved parties that an even-handed solution to the underlying conflicts has been reached, then one begins to wonder if "peace" is at all possible in the Middle East.

Remember that this recent round of fighting is simply a continuation of fighting that has been going on since 1948. Remember that the fighting that began in 1948 is merely a continuation of the fighting that has been going on since around 1500 B.C.; indeed, the ancient accounts are shockingly similar to today's headlines: the same towns and countries are mentioned, armies move along the same roads.

For those who want to reduce all Middle Eastern conflict to the Israeli situation, remember that this part of the world has hosted nearly ceaseless conflict over the last fifteen centuries between Arab nations, between Islamic nations, even when there was no Jewish state present, even when the number of ethnic Jews living in the region was insignificant, and even when Europe and America didn't intervene in any way.

This part of the world is used to constant warfare as a way of life. They have fought for centuries. One wonders if any rational articulation of the reasons is at all still possible.

Thus it may be foolish to think that the United Nations, or the United States, can intervene with a "peace plan", and resolve the tensions and create a non-agressive co-existence.

Why has a reasonable and fair peace been possible in Europe following WWII? Europe has enjoyed sixty years of peace, interrupted only by the civil war as Yugoslavia disintegrated into six or seven separate nations. The periodic attacks by Soviet soldiers on unarmed civilians were not military wars, but massacres, and fall into a different category. Why the stability and peace in Europe, but not in the Middle East? For the answer, we must examine the underlying cultures and worldviews.

Tristan and Isolde

The ancient story, and recent film, about Tristan and Isolde is one well worth studying. This narrative has inspired poets, composers, and painters over the centuries, leaving us with many different versions of the same basic plot.

But don't be confused: this is not merely a love story. This is an account of the political upheavals caused by the fall of the Roman Empire, and of the beginnings of English national identity. The effort to unite a handful of independent tribes into what would become England, and the struggle between these collected tribes and the Irish, formed the geo-politics of Europe for several centuries. Understanding this story is understanding what England is, how it arose, and what the authentic English identity was prior to 1066. But 1066 is another story.

Going Native

When the British oversaw an empire "on which the sun never sets" - meaning that, because it had large territories around the world, it was always daylight somewhere in the empire - they used the phrase "going native" to describe a certain phenomenon: when an Englishman, sent to work in one of the colonies, would be begin to adapt himself to the ways of the local cultures. An British man who began to dress according to local fashions, converse with the natives, eat their type food, perhaps marry a local woman, learn their languages, and - the ultimate step - begin to identify with them instead of with his fellow Englishmen and to see things from their point of view, they said that he had "gone native."

Now, to be sure, this was sometimes a negative evaluation, and sometimes merely a neutral observation.

The British Empire has faded away, but this concept can help us to understand a current situation.

The politics of the Middle East are very complicated, and it would be foolish to think that they could be completely explained in one small blog posting. How can one ever completely analyze the intricacies of Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Syria, Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt, with their various languages, cultures, religions, and histories? No, I will not present a comprehensive examination of the entire political situation in the Near East.

But I will examine one small part of this big puzzle.

In 1948, when the modern state of Israel was organized, it was done for several different reasons: one of them a hope to transplant a handful of European Jews, and with them, the western concept of democracy, and of a democratic republic; the hope was that these concepts would take root in the Middle East, and spread the notion of this type of government and society. The dream was that the Near East would begin to look like Europe, and that the nations there would begin to operate on a basis which would allow them to make peace with each other, and with the rest of the world, and to enter into a more normalized relation with the states in the rest of the world. The modern state of Israel was supposed to be a "seed" of a modern democracy republic in the region.

That was one thought behind the founding of the nation. There were others, perhaps more important, or at least more dominate, which we will not discuss here.

How did matters fare? Well, there will be different interpretations of the last fifty years of world history, but one interpretation is to say that some of those European Jews, who were to plant democracy in the region, "went native" - that is to say, instead of changing the region, the region changed them. They may have adopted the ancient attitudes of the Near East, attitudes alien to democratic republics, even alien to the peculiar way in which western civilizations value human life, and value peace over war.

The Middle East, at war for centuries, is, or has become, comfortable with war as a way of life; this is a a worldview which is at odds with Eurocentric ideologies, a worldview in which human life is not necessarily extremely valuable.

Have some of the citizens of modern Israel adopted this viewpoint - have they "gone native"?

Definitions are Everything!

What do Jesus and Karl Marx have in common? Well, to start with, they were both Jewish, and they both were Communists. That may startle you, but this shocking statement also depends on how you define "Jewish" and "Communist" - and reminds us that definitions are the key to understanding confusing episodes of both history and philosophy.

Jesus was spiritually, culturally, and genetically Jewish; Karl Marx merely happened to have Jewish grandparents; so they were both "Jewish", but in very different senses of the word. Jesus inspired his followers to put their money and material possessions into a common treasury, and share equally from it; this would qualify him as a "Communist" - but in a very different sense than Marx. Marx's version of Communism relied on the government as the ultimate power, on material objects as the ultimate reality, and on atheism as the ultimate belief. Jesus, to say the least, was not an atheist.

Many politicians are debating about "immigrants" now - but we must first define whether we are talking about legal or illegal immigrants.

Biologists are discussing "stem cells" these days - but are they examing those taken from adults, or from unborn babies?

It is precisely in these topics - the most emotional, passionate, and political themes - that we must focus most carefully on the definitions of words. Only then can we speak more rationally.

An atheist once attacked a philosopher with the often-repeated question, "can you really prove that God exists?" The philosopher, tired of the game, returned with a question, "can you even define the word 'God'?"

Patterns in History

Over the years, different historians have found - or have claimed to find - recurring patterns in world history. Alexander Fraser Tytler, also known as Lord Woodhouselee, a Scottish history professor, writing in the 1780's, examined the rise and fall of Athens, and concluded: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

Tytler continued, noting that civilizations tend to develop until they hit their high points, and remain at that high point for an average of two centuries: “The average age of the world's greatest civilizations, from the beginning of history, has been about two hundred years. During those two hundred years, these nations always progressed through the following” sequence:

The attribution of this eight-step cycle to Tytler has been questioned. There are reasonable suggestions that someone else wrote these words, and that they were later attributed to Tytler. In any case, the ideas remain interesting, no matter who wrote them:

1. From the bondage of supersition, myth, and pagan magic into the freedom of spiritual faith.

2. From spiritual faith into great courage, motivated by that faith.

3. From courage to liberty, bought and protected by that courage.

4. From liberty to abundance, attained by diligent application of that liberty.

5. From abundance to complacency.

6. From complacancy to apathy.

7. From apathy to dependence.

8. From dependence back into bondage."

Do you agree with Tytler's analysis? Can you think of specific, concrete examples in ancient or modern history to support his general conclusions?

Evaluating a Pope

For more than a thousand years, popes have been playing an influential role in world history. From the Reformation to the Fall of the Iron Curtain, the top officer of the Roman Catholic church is a player in culture and civilization. Some popes are very famous, others almost unknown. But how do you evaluate a pope?

Well, if you happen to be an actual, practicing Roman Catholic, as opposed to those millions who merely called themselves Roman Catholics, you'll have to figure this out on your own. Because as an "insider", you will evaluate a pope as an internal matter, from within the framework of the Roman Catholic church. I can't help you on this one.

I, the author of this blog, happen to be an outsider, i.e., I am not a Roman Catholic, and so have an external perspective on a pope. So, if you happen to be an outsider as well, how do we evaluate a pope?

The first step is to gather information. This is not easy, because almost everyone who writes about a pope has a "spin" which they are trying to inflict on the reading public. Anything written from within the Roman Catholic church will give us glowing reports about the pope, making him seem like Superman, talented and skilled in every manner, and seemingly without flaw. Most articles written from outside the Roman Catholic church are from organizations, like Time, Newsweek, or The New York Times, which have the clear purpose of opposing the pope, and so will make each of his actions seem like a blunder or mistake, and interpret every speech as proof of either ignorance or ill will.

How, then, can we accurate information about a pope, if the sources are explicitly skewed, either for him or against him?

The clearest picture of a pope can perhaps be gained by letting him speak for himself. Every recent pope has written a number of books, both before and after becoming pope. These texts will show us what was on his mind, and will show us if he changed his mind in any way after becoming pope. Admittedly, such documents may difficult to read, but getting to an actual, objective truth is usually hard work. Reading propaganda is easy.

So, ignore the books written by monks and nuns, designed to make a pope look good; and ignore The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and the TV reports on ABC, NBC, CNN, and CBS, which are composed to make the pope look bad. Both are equally biased. Instead, see what he himself has written.

Jus Primae Noctis

From opera (Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro) to Hollywood (Braveheart), the notion of jus primae noctis has been a great dramatic device, because it inspire's the deepest sense of outrage at injustice in the viewer, and the dramatic energy is enough to propel the plot forward. It is part of the larger pattern of many great dramas to posit a horrific injustice, which energizes the forward action of the storyline as the protagonists attempt to restore justice.

For those who don't know, jus primae noctis is a legal term for the right of the local nobility (usually a count, or a duke, or a baron; originally a feudal lord in earlier times) to be the first man to sleep with any girl on the night of her wedding before she is allowed to sleep with her husband.

Despite the depth of the outrage which this phrase invokes, and despite the high profile which it has attained in literature and other art forms, one question remains: did this ever actually happen in real life?

According to most historians, the answer is no. Although history knows many examples of aristocrats who used their influence to seduce, or rape, girls in their territories, there seem to be no recorded examples of a royal who attempted to codify this as law, or who attempted to systematically carry out this idea. It seems to be a powerful, but ficticious, literary invention. Sociologists have noted that, if anybody had ever actually tried to institute this as a legal practice, he probably would have been quickly assassinated.

The Home of Modern Science

What we call science, or, more properly, natural science, has been around at least since Aristotle started organizing categories of animals and thereby founded biology.

But science was re-started, and what we call modern science arose and found its home in Europe during the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era. Astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and the mathematical infrastructure needed to form them constituted a new era in scientific thinking, an era which continues to this day. But why did this happen in Europe, and not somewhere else in the world?

European culture in the late Middle Ages had reached a point, after several centuries, at which it could clearly formulate six ideas which contributed to a scientific mindset:

[1] The physical world is real, not an illusion. Many non-European cultures had embraced a philosophy which taught that the physical world is an illusion. Eurpean philosophers taught that the world is real and can be known. This assumption primed Western thinkers to value the physical world and to consider it worthy of study.

[2] Nature is good but not divine. Many primitive cultures held animistic beliefs, which taught that the world is the home of the divine or an emanation of God's own essence. Consequently, they believe that nature is alive with sun gods, river goddesses, and astral deities. Eurpean philosophers taught that the sun and the moon are not gods; historians call this the "de-deification" of nature; nature is not to be worshipped, it is to be studied.

[3] Nature is orderly and predictable. Another unique contribution of European thought was the ideas of the laws of nature. Nobody had ever before used the word "law" in relation to nature. Many other cultures had regarded nature as mysterious, dangerous, and chaotic. Early scientists acted on the belief that nature is orderly, before they had amassed enough evidence to prove it. Modern physics is based on the ideas that the universe is rational because it is understandable, uniform because laws like gravity operate in the same way on different planets, and organized according to the laws of mathematics.

[4] Humans can discover nature's order. Early scientists acted on the hypothesis that the order in nature can be discovered by the human mind. The ancient Chinese, by comparison, believed that the order of nature was inscrutable to the human mind; so they never developed science as a self-correcting, experimental enterprise.

[5] We need to experiment. The ancient Greeks had organized natural sciences, like Aristotle's biology, as a largely reflective effort. They thought about biology, but they did not investigate biology.

[6] The order in nature is mathematically precise. Modern science depends on the idea that the order in nature is precise and can be expressed in mathematical formulas; European thought did not see nature as random or haphazard, but rather structured and organized by equations.

These six ideas formed a culture which was the ideal place for a new set of scientific breakthroughs. This is how culture relates to science.

The Most Superlative

It is not unusual to hear or read statements like, "Alexander the Great was an excellent tactian and strategist" or "the Magna Carta was formative" or "the Thirty Years War was devastating." These types of propositions are routine in history, and are no problem, if you can support them by citing specific facts: "Alexander the Great was an excellent tactician and strategist because he managed to invade and conquer Greece, Persia, and Egypt" or "the Magna Carta was formative because it has shaped not only the government of England, but also the governments of several other nations (USA, Canada, Australia), and has exerted this influence continually over the last 800 years" or "the Thirty Years War was devastating because more people died in it than in any other war prior to 1914." General statements are fine, if they are supported by specific facts.

What are, however, much more problematic, are superlative generalizations. To say that "Alexander the Great was the most excellent tactician and strategist" is very hard to prove: what about Napoleon or Ulyses Grant? To write that "the Magna Carta was the most formative political document every written" is difficult to support: what about the Ten Commandments, or the Declaration of Independence?

So be very careful when using superlatives: "the most" or "the greatest" can get you into trouble. Much safer are "one of the greatest" or "one of the most"; but they still need to be supported by citing details.

The Queen and the Philosopher

One of the most famous rulers of Sweden was Queen Kristina (often spelled in the English way, “Christina”). She not only governed Sweden during an era that was historically important, but she also interacted with some of the most important people of her time.

In 1646, she began to write letters to Rene Descartes, the French thinker who almost single-handedly began modern rationalist philosophy. They discuss love, ethics, God, and creation; she is interested in his Roman Catholic views: she is, like 99% of Swedes, Lutheran.

In 1648, she will play a leading role in the negotiations which bring an end to the Thirty Years War, and bring peace to Europe. The negotiations are held in a church in Germany. Some people praise her for bringing peace; others will condemn her, because the war ended badly for Sweden. Until this time, Sweden had been very powerful in European politics and economics; after this time, Sweden will be less significant.

In 1650, Queen Christina invites Descartes to Stockholm, so that they can discuss philosophy together. She wants to meet with him every morning at 5:00 am in a poorly-heated room in her palace; in order to do this, he must arise at 3:30 am, because the house where is he staying is more than an hour's journey away. He contracts pneumonia and dies.

After a series of secret letters to Jesuits, discussing the Roman Catholic faith, she abdicates in 1654, and travels to Rome, where she officially converts to Roman Catholocism and meets with the pope in 1655. She will remain active in European politics, travelling through France, Sweden, Italy, and elsewhere. She will continue her interest in philosophy, and the impact of philosophy on astronomy, carrying with her the influence of Descartes.

Jewish Women - Makers of History

To consciously scan history for women who made a difference is a project worth doing; whether or not there is some patriarchal bias in history, the point stands as valid that history has been shaped by men as well as women. This is true in all areas of history; today we'll draw our examples from Jewish events. Some reminders:

It was a woman who ...

Risked her life to protect Moses at a time when Egyptians were engaging in "ethnic cleansing" by killing Hebrew baby boys.

Protected the Israelite spies in the city of Jericho, gave them information, and helped them to escape, making possible the Israelite invasion.

Led the Israelites to victory in battle, advising and eventually replacing the military leader Barak.

Kept the prophet Elijah alive by giving him provisions when there was no other food to found.

Crystalized the concept of devotion in the words, "wither you go, I will go, and your God will be my God."

Risked her life, confronting the Persian king to whom she was married, to save her nation from destruction.

Was cited by Jesus as demonstrating altruism when she donated an absolutely small, but relatively large, sum.

Shattered an alabaster container to pour perfume on Jesus, a radical act at the time.

Wetted the feet of Jesus with her tears, in a symbolic gesture.

Embraced the concept of mystery and elucidated the concept of the divine incarnation.

The women listed above changed history, and had they not played the roles they did, our culture and civilization today would different beyond recognition - all manner of art, music, philosophy, and politics would have taken radically divergent paths without the influence of these historic Jewish women.

Categorizing Worldviews

Different scholars develop various systems for keeping track of beliefs; here's one:

You can picture this as a 6 x 10 grid, with six worldviews on one axis, and ten topics on the other. Each cell in the spreadsheet would then contain a statement about what one of those worldviews has to say about the topic.

The six worldviews are: Christianity, Islam, Secular Humanism, Cosmic Humanism, Marxism-Leninism, and Post-Modernism.

The ten topics would be: theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics, and history.

Try to sketch this chart for yourself, and fill in the cells. Then ask yourself: Could there be more worldviews? Who are the authors and texts that define each worldview? Are there better ways to keep track of worldviews?

Judging the Quality of a Speech

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address, a speech which is not only significant because of its historical context at the turning point in one of the most important wars in the history of the world - and the single most noteworthy war in the history of the United States - but which is also a masterpiece of language.

Lincoln was sandwiched between several other speeches which were given that day by other politicians. These other speakers each spoke for approximately an hour, making a long day of it. Lincoln, by contrast, probably took about two minutes for his oration!

Editorializing about the event, The Chicago Sun wrote: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame, as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."

Today, textbooks around the world cite Lincoln's work as a paradigmatic example of the English language!

Playing Victim

One distinctive aspect of our civilization is its concern for those who are vulnerable in society. Our culture has been marked by this trend ever since Moses, who gave special legal advantages to the weaker classes: widows, orphans, the poor, and the foreigners. This is the basis for many aspects of modern social structures, including welfare systems, and extends even to sports: Americans love to “root for the underdog” when a lesser-known team takes on a powerful opponent.

As Nietzsche pointed out, other cultures do not share this inclination: other cultures consider it appropriate to exploit the poor and weak, and to take advantage of those who are vulnerable. Outside of our civilization, it is considered an unusual thing to want to help those in need. Some varieties of Hinduism and Buddhism even reject the idea of relieving the suffering of others, because they have been fated to endure such suffering to pay off the sins of their previous lives. By helping them, you would be helping them to unjustly escape their punishments, and condemning them to suffer more in the next life because they didn't suffer enough in this one.

Although it is generally a good thing that our society wants to help those who are defenseless, there is one drawback: our society can be fooled into helping those who merely claim to be victims, but who in reality suffer no disadvantage.

To be sure, it is not really a big problem if a man takes a meal from a homeless shelter when he's actually not so poor. It may be immoral, but society isn't harmed by his deception. He has exploited our society's desire to help the weak, but the damage to society at large is not great.

Another example of this principle is the trend of faking “hate crimes”. Desiring to help those who are oppressed by racism or cultural prejudice, our society wants to prevent crimes based on a person's skin color or nationality. But some individuals have seen a chance to exploit this system by filing reports of crimes which never took place, in order to gain sympathy for themselves and their political causes.

In U.S. News and World Report, the University of Georgia revealed that a resident assistant in a dormitory had filed nine police reports, claiming to have been the victim of nine separate attacks because he was a homosexual. When the police began to investigate the incidents, he confessed that he had faked them, because he wanted to create the impression that homosexuals were victims.

The French newspaper Le Groupe National carried the story of Edward Drago, a student at the College of New Jersey, sent death threats to himself, and to a homosexual student group to which he belonged. He confessed to faking the death threats, trying to get publicity for his student club.

At St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, a lesbian student used a razor blade to cut her own face; she reported to the police that she had been attacked. When the police discovered that she had faked the attack, she told the U.S. News and World Report that she had done it in order to help raise funds for a pro-homosexual student group.

The same article revealed that a lesbian at Eastern New Mexico State University told the police that her name had been posted by an “anti-gay hate group”, and that she had then later been physically attacked because her name was publicized. The police discovered that she had posted the list herself, that there was no “anti-gay hate group”, and that she had faked the physical assalt as well.

In joint reporting between World magazine and AZcentral web news, it was revealed that a lebsian had hired a homosexual man to beat her, so then she could tell the police that she was the victim of a “hate crime”.

In a California high school, a student faked a series of “gay-bashing” incidents, including grafiti on lockers and cars, and eggs being thrown at students and their houses. The Los Angeles Times discovered that these actions had actually been done by the school's Gay-Straight Alliance.

Because this tactic of gaining sympathy is based on our culture, it is found outside the U.S. in other countries which share our cultural roots. In England and Europe, the police have reported faked hate crimes.

One of our civilization's strengths is its conern for the down-trodden, and we should not give up this precious aspect of our society. But we must be aware that it can be exploited by political groups, who present themselves as vicitms in order to gain sympathy - and power.

The Other Van Gogh

Most of us are familiar with Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch painter. Less famous is his relative, Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker, who was brutally murdered on November 2, 2004.

Theo van Gogh was murdered because of his art. He had made a documentary film about the treatment of women in Islamic societies. He questioned whether it was appropriate for Muslim leaders to continue to repeat advice, found in the Qur'an, that husbands should beat their wives if they wives fail to obey. Theo van Gogh also documented how Islam prevented women from attending school and gaining an education.

On the morning of his death, Theo was riding his bicycle to work. Muslim gunmen, who were waiting for him, opened fire; he was hit several times, and fatally wounded. Not content with killing him, the assassins stabbed him with a knife, and then used the knife to attach a five-page note to Theo's body. The note stated that the governments of Europe were the object of "jihad", and listed specific government leaders in Holland who would be targeted for assassination.

It seems that more than one member of the van Gogh family produced turbulent art, and faced a tragic death.

Arguing about Darwinism

Most of us are by now familiar with the usual discussions about evolution: the hard-core Creationists dogmatically assert that the universe as we know was created in six twenty-four hour days, six thousand years ago; the hard-core Darwinists dogmatically assert that life was spontaneously generated out of lifeless random chemicals billions of years ago. This type of debate has been going on for approximately two hundred years now.

Is there a third option? Increasing numbers of professors are embracing a view which, through observation and induction, frames the hypothesis that life is not the result of random coincidences.

At universities and colleges like Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Vanderbilt, Duke, Tulane, and all eleven of the Big Ten schools, professors in departments such as Astro-Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Genetics, Embrology, Dendrology, Bio-Chemistry, and Quantum Mechanics are being attacked by university presidents and administrators because they are skeptical about Darwinism.

Five hundred of them signed a petition, stating that they "are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

Althought they are being punished for questioning the claims of Darwinism, this group of researchers may be opening up a "third option" in a debate that has been locked up between two sides.

Who Are You?

When asked, "who are you?", many people will reply with "I work at IBM," or "I live in Detroit," or "I write software," or "I come from Wisconsin." But these answers don't really address the question. (You may recognize the comedy bit from the movie "Anger Management".) If you tell me what you do, or where you live, that doesn't really tell me who you are.

In Denmark, in the 1840's, the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard struggled with this question. He decided that the real answers to these questions lay in the meaningful and significant choices you make. Who you are is shown by how you make decisions, and the most consequential decisions are made in the context of relationships. Kierkegaard would happily grant that, if you are standing by yourself in front of a machine, faced with the question of "Coke or Pepsi?", you can indeed make a free choice; but it is not a significant choice. The meaningful decisions are those which impact other humans, and which impact your relationship to those other humans. Those decisions reveal who you are.

So Kierkegaard would answer the question "who are you?" by saying, "I am a friend, a brother or sister, a son or daughter, a neighbor, etc." The answer to "who are you?" is not found in your education, your job, or your athletic record. It is found in the way you interact with other humans. Granted, you may interact with them in the course of your job, your education, or your athletic involvement.

Kierkegaard also points out that the ultimate relationship is one's relationship to God. The manner in which you deal with God shows something about who you are. Kierkegaard is known as the founder of existentialism.

Avoiding Fascism

In the course of analyzing fascism, we noted that fascism avoids free market capitalism. This kind of laissez-faire economics is not compatible with the fascist's desire for control.

We also learned that fascist politics are dominated by militarism; instead of the political process directing the military, the military controls the political structure. In the words of the famous French leader during World War One, "war is too important to be left to the generals."

These two general principles can be applied to the United States. If we continue to allow our economy to function freely, without interference or regulation by the government, and if we make sure that our politicians direct the military, instead of the military directing the politicians, then we can avoid fascism.