8 ms·

The world's most toxic value system

51 points by akkartik 19y ago

pg 19y ago
He's roughly correct. Yet if warrior societies are so bad, why are they so common? The answer is that they used to work. In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins, even if they're outnumbered 10 to 1. So for most of history warrior aristocracies have controlled territories way out of proportion to their numbers. Industrialization changed the balance. If you have guns and your opponents have spears, it doesn't matter how fierce they are. The traditions of warrior socities may be obsolete, but it seems provincial to call them "toxic." Members of those societies would be equally contemptuous of our traditions. For example, our lack of loyalty. We're nicer to women, but would we be as willing to die to save a friend? We're more sensitive, but are we as honest?
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  Are we as willing to die to save a friend? Are we as honest? Yes. In fact, no matter what your opinion of the current politics vis-a-vis Iraq, it seems that not only would we die to save a friend, we would die to save an enemy, or an idea. We've done it time and again. As far as I know, no other culture is like that. As far as honesty, societies with "thar" mentalities are some of the most dishonest societies on the planet, whereas western societies a lot of business can be conducted on just a handshake. Ever try a handshake at a bazaar? I think western civilization stacks up quite well against those questions. It's not a relative thing -- certain ideas make cultures better than other ones. Societies are all not equal -- that's a late 20th-century mode of thinking that's non-operative. But perhaps I read too much into your response.
  - aswanson 19y ago
    Ever try a handshake at a bazaar? I've tried them with people working on my car transmission, my real estate agent, and various/sundry people in my path I thought I could trust. I would trust a stranger at a bazaar more than any of those parasites.
    - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
      You would trust a random person in an open-air market more than you would trust a trained, certified, bonded, licensed real-estate agent? Care to think that over a bit more? Perhaps phone a friend?
      - Xichekolas 19y ago
        I'd trust the Real Estate agent to not kill me... but I certainly think the random person at the market's interests are more aligned with my own than any real estate agent's interests are. Real estate agents want the house to sell quickly at the highest price possible (to increase both their deal throughput and commission). This serves neither the buyer (who should be looking for lowest price of whatever it is he wants) nor the seller (who gets to pay an absurd commission for what amounts to secretarial work). So yeah, this is completely off topic, but at least the person in the open air market just wants to sell something, and by being there you must want to buy it, so I don't see the swindle.
        DanielBMarkham 19y ago
        Maybe off-topic, but interesting, at least to me. So the person in the market is unknown to you. He has something, you have something. You trade, life is good. But how do you know when you give your money you'll get something? How do you know it's the thing you asked for? How can you be sure the trader isn't just trying to lure you back to some back room where you can be mugged or worse? While haggling at a bazaar can be great fun, there's a lot of risk involved. Financial transactions do not like risk. That's why we don't sell houses using the bazaar format. I'd like to point out that houses sell and are bought for all kinds of reasons aside from price. So I believe your reply to be a little weak in that regard. Whatever the case, the position of "real estate agent" in our society confers all kinds of things. If the house is not the seller's, then you are covered. If the agent runs off with your down-payment, you are covered. If the agent knowingly misrepresents the house, you are covered. In fact, the idea is that the risk is reduced to simply: is it worth what I am paying for it? Financial markets like this. There's no problem with multiple parties all having somewhat conflicting interests. Financial transactions occur when parties find some subset of aligning interests in which to trade around. Not total alignment -- that doesn't exist. Once you have enough alignment for a trade, you've got to reduce risk. Some of these cultures, for instance, refuse to use a banking system, believing it to be immoral. While I deeply respect the right of any individual to believe any dang thing he wants, cultures that do things like ban banking, private property rights, etc. greatly increase the risk during financial transactions. That's why I'd never get involved in Russia, for instance -- never can tell when the ruling party might decide just to take over your entire business. You can't have a highly-functioning society like that.
  - pg 19y ago
    I was talking about the honesty of the ruling military aristocracy. I wouldn't put a lot of trust in the honesty of a merchant in a warrior society, because merchants are usually a despised class, and behave correspondingly despicably.
- qaexl 19y ago
  Interesting. However, the author did point out a culture similar to 'thar' values without its toxicity -- Japanese bushido. It may have helped that the bushi-class outlawed the use of guns for a good while, and they were essentially warrior-bureaucrats. As a counterpoint to what I just said, the original Bushido code was codified by a ronin, and the most recent literary work on the Bushido code, the Hagakure was written when the Japanese warrior class was already on their way out ... and the author thought the greatest shame was to meet his death in soiled underwear. Like any career path in any culture, you'll find people who obediently obey the well-worn paths. The warriors of a warring culture is no less the same. They were fertilizer then, and they are fertilizer now. And there's always the minority who are aware of their cultural blinders. The old initiations were meant to give this gift of awareness to the perceptive. In the old days, these were the warchiefs or the shaman; today, they are the military apprentices and the hackers.
  - pg 19y ago
    Japan at that stage seems to have had a kind of degenerate warrior culture, where warriors still ruled, but because there were no really dangerous enemies left, etiquette was starting to replace effectiveness. Something similar was happening in the France of Louis XIV-- which was likewise a better place for women than the France of Charlemagne.
- akkartik 19y ago
  "In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins, even if they're outnumbered 10 to 1.. Industrialization changed the balance." I'm not sure who's more 'fierce' between the Romans and the Germans. Technological advantage existed long before industrialization: the macedonian pike, the persian archers, the roman phalanx. Has anybody read "The Fates of Nations" by Paul Colinvaux? Recommended. Especially if you've read Guns, Germs and Steel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fates_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fates_of_Nations
  - pg 19y ago
    I'm not sure who's more 'fierce' between the Romans and the Germans. That's why I said fiercest and most cohesive. There's no single word for it, but the key to winning in ancient warfare was never to run away. Ancient battles usually lasted one day and continued till one side broke, whereupon a rout ensued. So the way to win was to be willing to stay at your post and fight to the death. If you were willing to, you didn't have to. Perhaps the closest thing to a one-word recipe would be "steadfast." There is always technological advance, but the examples you give are really more social than technological.
    - akkartik 19y ago
      I consider the way of life Macedon constructed -- allowing superior funding and training of armies -- a technological/logistical advantage accompanied with more rapidly-evolving tactics. You call it just 'social'. It is a minor disagreement. I agree: For most of history battles were not based on technological advantage against superior numbers, but were simple wars of attrition between increasingly equal opponents in numbers and technology. (That mindset culminated in WWI.) Warrior aristocracies did control territories out of proportion of their numbers. Especially in times of peace, when subjugating their own populations. Being more steadfast can't defeat 10-1 odds (that requires significant technological advantage), but it was still worth a lot. --- I wasn't sure how to talk about cohesiveness. Cohesive can be just stubborn persistence, or it can be more harmonious tactics. Technology always has a social component. For the macedonian pike to arise you needed the social infrastructure around it that allowed Philip to train soldiers, then send them out to become battle-hardened defending trading routes from pirates. (That's a pretty common pattern, and explains why islands often grow into great powers; the right social infrastructure for warlike technology often arises after trade for several generations.) But by no means is it so simple a matter as just being more steadfast. I can't think of a single battle that was won against 10-1 odds in numbers without technological advantage (including dramatically superior generalship and training). In fact, it's battles like in WWI or involving General Marlborough that relied on steadfastness and attrition because there was no other advantage, of technology or of generalship or of numbers.
- Alex3917 19y ago
  "Industrialization changed the balance." Faith in brands has replaced faith in our neighbors. If honor is obsolete, it's because the individual is obsolete; corporations (and government) have eclipsed the individual as the primary change agents in people's lives. Who cares if my spouse is unfaithful as long as I can trust Apple and Coca-Cola. </cynicism>
- run4yourlives 19y ago
  >Yet if warrior societies are so bad, why are they so common? Because they aren't "bad". They seem foreign to our intellectual understanding, but they are a successful way to run a culture. For an example, witness the current US practice of "Thar" after 9/11. Honour is an effective device when moving a society into action.
  - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
    I'm sure you are not suggesting that the average overall culture of 300+ million people changed after 9-11 to include things like honor killings, oppression towards women, clans instead of families, etc. I mean, that would be a miracle of miracles. Cultures change only slowly over time, right? And you can't be suggesting that societies that adhere to things like, say, no banking, enslaving half the population, anti-rationalism, etc are successful ways to run a culture? Perhaps you are confusing stagnation with things that most any person would agree to be good: modern medicine, free markets, ability to form private contracts, etc. These aren't values that are owned by one society that somehow we arbitrarily use to judge other societies. These are good ideas that occur time and time again no matter what the original culture. Some cultures work better than others. Some cultures are better at things like feeding their people, making them happy, and understanding the universe than others. Everything is not more or less the same.
- gills 19y ago
  I don't know, toxic seems like the right word after reading the conclusion. The bulk of this piece is a build-up to his final warning that "advanced" cultures must be vigilant to avoid slipping [back] into warrior-esque social dogma. What the author describes is the most basic form of a pattern which can emerge in societies at any level of advancement. The metaphorical problem is the implicit assignment of hierarchy and title, whereas a successful and fluid society will only grant these things explicitly as a result of behavior beneficial to all.
- kingkongrevenge 19y ago
  > In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins I don't think there's any evidence for this, and certainly no evidence that Thar is related to battlefield cohesion. Battle has always been about tactics, technology, and men & materiel. The relevance of a "RAWR! we are fierce!" culture to victory is unsubstantiated BS, claims of B movies and high school football coaches to the contrary. The Romans and Mongols weren't Thar and they militarily dominated neighboring Thar cultures with superior tactics and technology in a relatively low-tech environment. Bantu and Arab Thar people have always been relatively incompetent at war. So why are Thar cultures common? It's simple and has nothing to do with military prowess: high birthrates. Thar cultures displace non-Thar cultures with a flood of human beings. There are expansionist cultures and cultures geared to limiting the population to a sustainable level. The expansionists always over-run the sustainables, at least in the intermediate term. You can see this all over the world. In Africa Thar Bantu people have almost eradicated non-Thar indigineous cultures like the San over the last century. Thar Lebanon has overwhelmed non-thar Lebanese culture in just the last 50 years by way of birth rates. There are many, many examples.
  - neilk 19y ago
    Some of what you say sort of makes sense -- perhaps the subjugation of women is necessary for a high birth rate culture. But where do blood feuds and easily insulted honor come into this? I might guess it has to do with places where life is hardscrabble and one is more successful largely by having more sons out there herding more goats. Presumably there just aren't enough resources out there to make temporary economic alliances more important than long-term familial ties. Fierceness and honor might indeed be the most important thing, because without good marriages for your sons, and when your neighbors don't fear you, the clan is doomed. And then this strategy meets modern technology, and it gets really fun! But I offer this with a caveat: just-so stories about culture are dime a dozen.
- jsnx 19y ago
  "In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins..." That is true of modern warfare, as well. "If you have guns and your opponents have spears..." Sure, in an extremely asymmetric war, the folks with the missiles can relax the fierceness a bit. "Industrialization changed the balance." As war becomes more about tools, the economic efficiency of the underlying society matters more. However, very early in history it was the case that he with the best toys wins. Swords were never cheap, nor was the time it took to learn to use them. The importance of technology in pre-industrial societies can be understood by the frequency and severity of arms control in China and Japan. A bunch of motivated peasants with hoes are in a bad place vis-a-vis a few gentlemen with swords and steeds.
- andrewl 19y ago
  Robert Sapolsky has a short but interesting discussion of what leads to the development of warrior-class cultures and what makes them so common in his book "Monkeyluv and Other Essays on our Lives as Animals". The chapter is "The Cultural Desert." My brief, gross over simplification is that the local ecology is the driving factor: the warrior cultures (more thar-ish and more monotheistic) develop in deserts, while polytheistic, somewhat more egalitarian cultures develop in rain forests. He says "ours is a planet dominated by the cultural descendants of the desert dwellers. And "most evidence suggests that the rain-forst mindset is more of a hosthouse attribute, less hardy when uprooted." I'm not doing him justice. The essay, and the rest of the book, is classic Sapolsky: well-written, entertaining, and fascinating.
qaexl 19y ago
As I was reading this, I flashed back to the discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=91794 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=91794 about traffic jams. One person slows down, forcing people behind him to slow down. The whole thing ripples outwards depending on the traffic density. So it is with generations of "thar" dominant cultures, of blood feuds begetting blood feuds.
DanielBMarkham 19y ago
It's good to see an article that makes the case that cultural values are not completely relative. Some things just work better than other things. Stuff like private property rights, for instance. Perhaps "right" is the wrong word, perhaps it should be "effective". Whatever. For an interesting read along these lines, try "Culture Cult" -- excellent book.
jsearson 19y ago
Well, this is, first of all, racist. He doesn't want to use the Spanish term because he thinks it's "really not fair to saddle Spanish culture with the term." But it IS apparently fair to saddle Arabic culture with the term. Considering that Arabia was the birthplace of Algebra and underwent a renaissance that in large part made the European Renaissance possible, no, I don't think that's very fair at all. But even if I let this racist term go through, what is Thar, exactly? A good deal of time is spent talking about how it isn't various things-- honor, bushido-- but it isn't ever defined. Instead I get this list of things that are associated with the "mentality," a list that, among other things, describes Tokugawa Japan perfectly. As a side note, anyone who thinks Japan's is a culture of Bushido does not know Japanese history. The Bushido code was written by a samurai who never saw combat, whose father never saw combat, and whose grandfather, in likelihood, never saw combat. The Bushido myth is a propaganda piece for convincing daimyos to keep their samurai on the payroll. So we have a clearly racist document using a nonsense term to describe nothing. What, exactly, is this?
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  "What, exactly, is this?" It is a commentary on a way of life usually practiced by Arabs, but also commonly found in other places in the world. It is not a blanket statement about any race, therefore your charges of racism are total BS. You can be a member of a race and participate or not in a particular culture. Race is not culture. It's not a one-to-one relationship. To say that it is, ironically enough, racist. People are free agents and can choose to be anything they want. Cultures are fair game for all sorts of criticism -- we are really good at criticizing our own culture. Thank goodness we live in a world where criticism of culture is encouraged.
  - qaexl 19y ago
    I don't like how the original author failed to distinguish between Arabian culture and Muslim religion. Though they are intertwined, there are non-Arabian Muslim cultures as well. To add to DanielBMarkham's comment, though, Arabic culture centers around the language, not the ethnicity. Some of the original author's arguments are evidence of Muslim rather than Arabian origin. Lastly, just to throw more confusion into the issue, some of the Sufi sages were tortured to death by their Muslim bretherens as heretics, and they died with the same kind of aplomb the way the Buddhist monks were tortured to death. (Not all Arabs sacrifice themselves in hopes of attaining 72 virgins). The telling point would be to find a non-Arabian culture that encourages 'thar'. Unfortunately, I have not yet thought of an example off the top of my head involving an non-Arabian culture. The original author also vaguely discusses the rise of 'thar' culture sprouting on the internet without giving any specifics. I've been to forums where where people flame each other for sport. I remember the occasional tiffs here, and people trashing Reddit. I know Digg and YouTube comments are full of inanities. Not to mention the flames on blog posts and regular news articles when someone gets upset but clearly did not thoroughly read the article in question. It often seem to closely track the maturity level of the people involved: immature human beings don't know how to set good personal boundaries, whatever culture that might be.
tptacek 19y ago
I don't know about toxicity of value systems, but there's no more toxic form of debate than a semantics argument, which is what this essay devolves to.
- qaexl 19y ago
  That's fallacious. I'm getting tired of people bringing up 'semantic argument', soon to be followed by 'agree to disagree'. The toxicity of a 'semantic argument' comes from two or more people unable to emotionally get in rapport with each other and has little to do with the study and crafting of semantics itself.
uuilly 19y ago
I really enjoyed this article and I think he's largely right. Pride (thar) is the most overlooked variable in geo-politics. But he leaves out an important detail. The US provides much of the defenses for Europe and almost all of them for Japan. After Bosnia it is hard to conceive of Europe going to war alone. These places may be free of thar but perhaps it is only b/c a thar-ish country (The US) provided them with breathing room.
- JeffL 19y ago
  The US is not a "thar-ish" country. It is probably the farthest from "thar-ish" of all the major countries in the world if you judge by the importance placed on individualism over groups and disregard of what other people think.
  - uuilly 19y ago
    Agreed but the article said otherwise. It said japan and northern Europe achieved the highest marks for non-thar-ness. The US was criticized for minor thar. I merely asked whether a little thar was such a bad thing. Esp when two common traits of non thar countries are an inability to defend one's borders and two of the biggest US military bases outside the US.
weiser 19y ago
"..it's not hard to find poor societies or societies with long histories of oppression where the thar mentality is much less virulent. Instead, I argue that the thar mentality causes poverty, and causes or certainly reinforces the oppression in the society." the author then goes out to enumerate scenarios to argue how thar mentality might cause poverty. I agree, thar mentality can cause poverty. But again, poverty can cause thar mentality. Imagine you are poor destitute. All you probably have to defend is your honor, or that your wife (if u are lucky to have one) is not doing someone else. In the end, I dont know if thar mentality. causes poverty or vice versa. Maybe, they are both caused by some other factor. What I do know is that the Author needs to do a better job than this, Unless all he wants is to appease western cultural supremacists. In that case, he is doing exactly the right thing.
bayareaguy 19y ago
If you are interested in this sort of thing, you may enjoy James Bowman's "Honor" (http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/honor http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/honor). I particularly like the way Bowman avoids the trap of having to provide a specific definition of honor by instead explaining various notions of honor in cultural and historic contexts.
geezer 19y ago
amazing how nobody here sees the 800lb gorilla. our response to 9/11 is the classic thar mentality. "But thar is one of innumerable cases where the "natural" response to a problem is the one that will make the problem worse in the fastest possible way." Our natural response to retaliate, and in the process, attack the wrong country....so thar
- pg 19y ago
  I wish it was even that high-minded, but though the people who planned the invasion of Iraq exploited these attitudes, they were not themselves motivated by them. Powerful groups wanted the US to attack Iraq before 9/11 made US voters easy to convince.
  - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
    Read "The Gathering Storm" for an argument to topple Saddam made before we went in (but post 9-11) There is a long list of reasons which I won't go into here. 9-11 was the tipping point in terms of domestic politics, no doubt. It also seems to be the tipping point in terms of strategic policy. There's an interesting discussion about why democratic nations go to war. If there is a mixed number of reasons and a volunteer army, which are the actual reasons we fight? I just read read a blog entry by an Army 1st Lt. killed last year who made the argument that he was joining up to stop oppression. To do something and make a difference. I also hear a lot of folks talk about leaders with supposedly bad intentions who "got us into this." So when a president and congress vote on something, and people volunteer to do it, is it possible to assign any one reason to why it's being done? Perhaps I'm splitting hairs. Probably get downmodded again for this comment. Have at it, then.
    - aswanson 19y ago
      You should not get downmodded for difference of opinion, but frankly, I think thinking in these simplistic terms (good vs. evil, us right, them wrong) has led us into military adventurism and disasters, including the current one. This is not 1938, Saddam was not Hitler, and dissenters were not Chamberlains. They were thinkers. How people who were alive and had a front row seat to Vietnam let this happen escapes me. It was very clear from the mixed reasons given, along with the silencing of dissent and rush to attack that there were ulterior reasons for invasion. Coupled with the quotes from senior admin officials "cakewalk", "oil will pay for it", "done in a few weeks", and the end of this fiasco was as clear and predictable as day to me. But I digress. And feel free to disagree.
run4yourlives 19y ago
I originally enjoyed this little essay, but the more I thought about it, the more certain things bothered me: 1. The word Thar: He doesn't want to saddle the Spanish, but is more than happy to saddle the Arabs. This is bad form and almost racist. Every culture in the world practices "Thar", why the disdain for Arabs? 2. Ignoring European "Thar" - With the exception of the Former Yugoslavia (Muslims - interesting), the author basically ignores the many examples of this in European societies, from Italian, Greek, Spanish, Russian. Hell, the Mafia is basically built on this, and last time I checked it's alive and well - but it doesn't even get mentioned. (FYI, I'm southern Italian... my grandparents are as "backwards" as can be sometimes.) 3. The real reason the west no longer follows "Thar" is because of the Age of Enlightenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment). Because it's only a few generations old (having happened in the 1800's) and was centered in Europe - by extension North America - it has simply taken time to reach other parts of the world. Namely, the mid east and Africa. This is the reason that Thar - which enlightenment rejects - is still so prevalent in these societies. 4. The Bushido code IS "Thar". The fact is that Japan up until the end of WWII embodied "Thar" to a degree of perfection seen nowhere else on the planet cannot be excused away by a "remorse shine" in a doctor's office. In fact, had the doctor been a true practitioner of Bushido, he would have killed himself long ago. The remorse shrine is a symbol of cowardice consistent with reason - imported from North America after WWII. (I'm not suggesting either one is correct) This shows more than anything that the doctor is conflicted between the notion of an insult to his honor, and the understanding that real sacrifice should not be required. This is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at pinning Arabs and Muslims with the moniker of backwards-stone age people that need "educating". If this is what qualifies for advanced cultural thinking in the US, its no wonder you're losing in Iraq. >"It's considered bad form in many circles to criticize another culture's values. " Perhaps the author would do well to follow the advice of his peers.
- Retric 19y ago
  Reading what you wrote I could not help but think of "What You Can't Say (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)" There is a recent idea that criticizing other cultures is a bad idea and or bad form. However, cultures are unique so Thar and "honor" are separate concepts so not all cultures have "Thar". EX: Some early cultures in Europe practiced human sacrifice however over time that went out of style etc. In other words cultures are different, but we should not talk about how these differences may be good or bad at generating wealth? In the modern world attempting to keep doing the same job your entire life will often fail. Doing your fathers job the same way he did is not going to work. And doing the same thing as your great grandfather in the same way he did is a really bad idea. However, it seems like bad form to criticize cultures who think sons should continue in their father's foot steps. At the same time it seems obvious that such cultures would on average be less likely to do well in the modern world. Anyway, rather than defending the essay I would just ask you to read it again after "What You Can't Say" and see if you react in the same way. I think the he is trying to talk about a vary specific kind of "honor" vs attacking specific culture as a whole.
nanijoe 19y ago
This article should have been published in the National Enquirer. I can't think of any other demographic that would fall for the crap this guy is trying to sell.
jsnx 19y ago
Both the code of Bushido and the less culturally specific "Texas Justice" mentioned in this article arose in similar circumstances -- cultures that are war-like, family-centric and deeply conservative. Bushido, however, likes to put on the face of self-censure, and therein lay the real difference. Neither seppuku (suicide with a helper) nor harikari (the solo version) were matters of "killing yourself if you get super pissed and can't find anybody else to kill" (as per Real Ultimate Power). They were a means of averting the wrath of an indiscriminate government, which would punish your entire family if you failed to make up for your shame in the appropriate way. Of course, your family would not be happy about this -- the option of "do it yourself or your family gets it!" drives a wedge between the family and the individual, strengthening the position of the central government by a large margin. With a government so strong that it can even make people kill themselves, who needs to go around enforcing one's honor by wildly killing people? The strength of the government encourages order, both discouraging revenge and the slights that lead to it. Disputes go through "official channels" and people have confidence in their resolution. In lieu of "the rule of law", people are more inclined to take justice into their own hands. When there is no law to cover a certain trade or group, honor killing often reasserts itself. Consider Asian gang members in San Francisco who traffic in narcotics -- when one cheats another, they have no one to turn to for dispute resolution, so it's killing time! So many things are bundled up in that article -- misogyny, honor killing, notions of honor, backwardness, privilege -- but it is important to acknowledge that "Texas Justice" (lolz) is present whenever the sheriff is absent, weak or corrupt. Take a bunch of "Enlightenment" people, put them out in the middle of nowhere with some guns and, voila, you've got Thar!
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  bullshit. the author either knows nothing about the subject or never saw the experiment deployed
  - jsnx 19y ago
    It would nice to know what exactly you disagree with, and why you disagree.

51 points by akkartik 19y ago

pg 19y ago

He's roughly correct. Yet if warrior societies are so bad, why are they so common? The answer is that they used to work. In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins, even if they're outnumbered 10 to 1. So for most of history warrior aristocracies have controlled territories way out of proportion to their numbers. Industrialization changed the balance. If you have guns and your opponents have spears, it doesn't matter how fierce they are. The traditions of warrior socities may be obsolete, but it seems provincial to call them "toxic." Members of those societies would be equally contemptuous of our traditions. For example, our lack of loyalty. We're nicer to women, but would we be as willing to die to save a friend? We're more sensitive, but are we as honest?

DanielBMarkham 19y ago
Are we as willing to die to save a friend? Are we as honest? Yes. In fact, no matter what your opinion of the current politics vis-a-vis Iraq, it seems that not only would we die to save a friend, we would die to save an enemy, or an idea. We've done it time and again. As far as I know, no other culture is like that. As far as honesty, societies with "thar" mentalities are some of the most dishonest societies on the planet, whereas western societies a lot of business can be conducted on just a handshake. Ever try a handshake at a bazaar? I think western civilization stacks up quite well against those questions. It's not a relative thing -- certain ideas make cultures better than other ones. Societies are all not equal -- that's a late 20th-century mode of thinking that's non-operative. But perhaps I read too much into your response.
- aswanson 19y ago
  Ever try a handshake at a bazaar? I've tried them with people working on my car transmission, my real estate agent, and various/sundry people in my path I thought I could trust. I would trust a stranger at a bazaar more than any of those parasites.
  - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
    You would trust a random person in an open-air market more than you would trust a trained, certified, bonded, licensed real-estate agent? Care to think that over a bit more? Perhaps phone a friend?
    - Xichekolas 19y ago
      I'd trust the Real Estate agent to not kill me... but I certainly think the random person at the market's interests are more aligned with my own than any real estate agent's interests are. Real estate agents want the house to sell quickly at the highest price possible (to increase both their deal throughput and commission). This serves neither the buyer (who should be looking for lowest price of whatever it is he wants) nor the seller (who gets to pay an absurd commission for what amounts to secretarial work). So yeah, this is completely off topic, but at least the person in the open air market just wants to sell something, and by being there you must want to buy it, so I don't see the swindle.
      - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
        Maybe off-topic, but interesting, at least to me. So the person in the market is unknown to you. He has something, you have something. You trade, life is good. But how do you know when you give your money you'll get something? How do you know it's the thing you asked for? How can you be sure the trader isn't just trying to lure you back to some back room where you can be mugged or worse? While haggling at a bazaar can be great fun, there's a lot of risk involved. Financial transactions do not like risk. That's why we don't sell houses using the bazaar format. I'd like to point out that houses sell and are bought for all kinds of reasons aside from price. So I believe your reply to be a little weak in that regard. Whatever the case, the position of "real estate agent" in our society confers all kinds of things. If the house is not the seller's, then you are covered. If the agent runs off with your down-payment, you are covered. If the agent knowingly misrepresents the house, you are covered. In fact, the idea is that the risk is reduced to simply: is it worth what I am paying for it? Financial markets like this. There's no problem with multiple parties all having somewhat conflicting interests. Financial transactions occur when parties find some subset of aligning interests in which to trade around. Not total alignment -- that doesn't exist. Once you have enough alignment for a trade, you've got to reduce risk. Some of these cultures, for instance, refuse to use a banking system, believing it to be immoral. While I deeply respect the right of any individual to believe any dang thing he wants, cultures that do things like ban banking, private property rights, etc. greatly increase the risk during financial transactions. That's why I'd never get involved in Russia, for instance -- never can tell when the ruling party might decide just to take over your entire business. You can't have a highly-functioning society like that.
- pg 19y ago
  I was talking about the honesty of the ruling military aristocracy. I wouldn't put a lot of trust in the honesty of a merchant in a warrior society, because merchants are usually a despised class, and behave correspondingly despicably.
qaexl 19y ago
Interesting. However, the author did point out a culture similar to 'thar' values without its toxicity -- Japanese bushido. It may have helped that the bushi-class outlawed the use of guns for a good while, and they were essentially warrior-bureaucrats. As a counterpoint to what I just said, the original Bushido code was codified by a ronin, and the most recent literary work on the Bushido code, the Hagakure was written when the Japanese warrior class was already on their way out ... and the author thought the greatest shame was to meet his death in soiled underwear. Like any career path in any culture, you'll find people who obediently obey the well-worn paths. The warriors of a warring culture is no less the same. They were fertilizer then, and they are fertilizer now. And there's always the minority who are aware of their cultural blinders. The old initiations were meant to give this gift of awareness to the perceptive. In the old days, these were the warchiefs or the shaman; today, they are the military apprentices and the hackers.
- pg 19y ago
  Japan at that stage seems to have had a kind of degenerate warrior culture, where warriors still ruled, but because there were no really dangerous enemies left, etiquette was starting to replace effectiveness. Something similar was happening in the France of Louis XIV-- which was likewise a better place for women than the France of Charlemagne.
akkartik 19y ago
"In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins, even if they're outnumbered 10 to 1.. Industrialization changed the balance." I'm not sure who's more 'fierce' between the Romans and the Germans. Technological advantage existed long before industrialization: the macedonian pike, the persian archers, the roman phalanx. Has anybody read "The Fates of Nations" by Paul Colinvaux? Recommended. Especially if you've read Guns, Germs and Steel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fates_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fates_of_Nations
- pg 19y ago
  I'm not sure who's more 'fierce' between the Romans and the Germans. That's why I said fiercest and most cohesive. There's no single word for it, but the key to winning in ancient warfare was never to run away. Ancient battles usually lasted one day and continued till one side broke, whereupon a rout ensued. So the way to win was to be willing to stay at your post and fight to the death. If you were willing to, you didn't have to. Perhaps the closest thing to a one-word recipe would be "steadfast." There is always technological advance, but the examples you give are really more social than technological.
  - akkartik 19y ago
    I consider the way of life Macedon constructed -- allowing superior funding and training of armies -- a technological/logistical advantage accompanied with more rapidly-evolving tactics. You call it just 'social'. It is a minor disagreement. I agree: For most of history battles were not based on technological advantage against superior numbers, but were simple wars of attrition between increasingly equal opponents in numbers and technology. (That mindset culminated in WWI.) Warrior aristocracies did control territories out of proportion of their numbers. Especially in times of peace, when subjugating their own populations. Being more steadfast can't defeat 10-1 odds (that requires significant technological advantage), but it was still worth a lot. --- I wasn't sure how to talk about cohesiveness. Cohesive can be just stubborn persistence, or it can be more harmonious tactics. Technology always has a social component. For the macedonian pike to arise you needed the social infrastructure around it that allowed Philip to train soldiers, then send them out to become battle-hardened defending trading routes from pirates. (That's a pretty common pattern, and explains why islands often grow into great powers; the right social infrastructure for warlike technology often arises after trade for several generations.) But by no means is it so simple a matter as just being more steadfast. I can't think of a single battle that was won against 10-1 odds in numbers without technological advantage (including dramatically superior generalship and training). In fact, it's battles like in WWI or involving General Marlborough that relied on steadfastness and attrition because there was no other advantage, of technology or of generalship or of numbers.
Alex3917 19y ago
"Industrialization changed the balance." Faith in brands has replaced faith in our neighbors. If honor is obsolete, it's because the individual is obsolete; corporations (and government) have eclipsed the individual as the primary change agents in people's lives. Who cares if my spouse is unfaithful as long as I can trust Apple and Coca-Cola. </cynicism>
run4yourlives 19y ago
>Yet if warrior societies are so bad, why are they so common? Because they aren't "bad". They seem foreign to our intellectual understanding, but they are a successful way to run a culture. For an example, witness the current US practice of "Thar" after 9/11. Honour is an effective device when moving a society into action.
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  I'm sure you are not suggesting that the average overall culture of 300+ million people changed after 9-11 to include things like honor killings, oppression towards women, clans instead of families, etc. I mean, that would be a miracle of miracles. Cultures change only slowly over time, right? And you can't be suggesting that societies that adhere to things like, say, no banking, enslaving half the population, anti-rationalism, etc are successful ways to run a culture? Perhaps you are confusing stagnation with things that most any person would agree to be good: modern medicine, free markets, ability to form private contracts, etc. These aren't values that are owned by one society that somehow we arbitrarily use to judge other societies. These are good ideas that occur time and time again no matter what the original culture. Some cultures work better than others. Some cultures are better at things like feeding their people, making them happy, and understanding the universe than others. Everything is not more or less the same.
gills 19y ago
I don't know, toxic seems like the right word after reading the conclusion. The bulk of this piece is a build-up to his final warning that "advanced" cultures must be vigilant to avoid slipping [back] into warrior-esque social dogma. What the author describes is the most basic form of a pattern which can emerge in societies at any level of advancement. The metaphorical problem is the implicit assignment of hierarchy and title, whereas a successful and fluid society will only grant these things explicitly as a result of behavior beneficial to all.
kingkongrevenge 19y ago
> In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins I don't think there's any evidence for this, and certainly no evidence that Thar is related to battlefield cohesion. Battle has always been about tactics, technology, and men & materiel. The relevance of a "RAWR! we are fierce!" culture to victory is unsubstantiated BS, claims of B movies and high school football coaches to the contrary. The Romans and Mongols weren't Thar and they militarily dominated neighboring Thar cultures with superior tactics and technology in a relatively low-tech environment. Bantu and Arab Thar people have always been relatively incompetent at war. So why are Thar cultures common? It's simple and has nothing to do with military prowess: high birthrates. Thar cultures displace non-Thar cultures with a flood of human beings. There are expansionist cultures and cultures geared to limiting the population to a sustainable level. The expansionists always over-run the sustainables, at least in the intermediate term. You can see this all over the world. In Africa Thar Bantu people have almost eradicated non-Thar indigineous cultures like the San over the last century. Thar Lebanon has overwhelmed non-thar Lebanese culture in just the last 50 years by way of birth rates. There are many, many examples.
- neilk 19y ago
  Some of what you say sort of makes sense -- perhaps the subjugation of women is necessary for a high birth rate culture. But where do blood feuds and easily insulted honor come into this? I might guess it has to do with places where life is hardscrabble and one is more successful largely by having more sons out there herding more goats. Presumably there just aren't enough resources out there to make temporary economic alliances more important than long-term familial ties. Fierceness and honor might indeed be the most important thing, because without good marriages for your sons, and when your neighbors don't fear you, the clan is doomed. And then this strategy meets modern technology, and it gets really fun! But I offer this with a caveat: just-so stories about culture are dime a dozen.
jsnx 19y ago
"In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins..." That is true of modern warfare, as well. "If you have guns and your opponents have spears..." Sure, in an extremely asymmetric war, the folks with the missiles can relax the fierceness a bit. "Industrialization changed the balance." As war becomes more about tools, the economic efficiency of the underlying society matters more. However, very early in history it was the case that he with the best toys wins. Swords were never cheap, nor was the time it took to learn to use them. The importance of technology in pre-industrial societies can be understood by the frequency and severity of arms control in China and Japan. A bunch of motivated peasants with hoes are in a bad place vis-a-vis a few gentlemen with swords and steeds.
andrewl 19y ago
Robert Sapolsky has a short but interesting discussion of what leads to the development of warrior-class cultures and what makes them so common in his book "Monkeyluv and Other Essays on our Lives as Animals". The chapter is "The Cultural Desert." My brief, gross over simplification is that the local ecology is the driving factor: the warrior cultures (more thar-ish and more monotheistic) develop in deserts, while polytheistic, somewhat more egalitarian cultures develop in rain forests. He says "ours is a planet dominated by the cultural descendants of the desert dwellers. And "most evidence suggests that the rain-forst mindset is more of a hosthouse attribute, less hardy when uprooted." I'm not doing him justice. The essay, and the rest of the book, is classic Sapolsky: well-written, entertaining, and fascinating.

qaexl 19y ago

As I was reading this, I flashed back to the discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=91794 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=91794 about traffic jams. One person slows down, forcing people behind him to slow down. The whole thing ripples outwards depending on the traffic density. So it is with generations of "thar" dominant cultures, of blood feuds begetting blood feuds.

DanielBMarkham 19y ago

It's good to see an article that makes the case that cultural values are not completely relative. Some things just work better than other things. Stuff like private property rights, for instance. Perhaps "right" is the wrong word, perhaps it should be "effective". Whatever. For an interesting read along these lines, try "Culture Cult" -- excellent book.

jsearson 19y ago

Well, this is, first of all, racist. He doesn't want to use the Spanish term because he thinks it's "really not fair to saddle Spanish culture with the term." But it IS apparently fair to saddle Arabic culture with the term. Considering that Arabia was the birthplace of Algebra and underwent a renaissance that in large part made the European Renaissance possible, no, I don't think that's very fair at all. But even if I let this racist term go through, what is Thar, exactly? A good deal of time is spent talking about how it isn't various things-- honor, bushido-- but it isn't ever defined. Instead I get this list of things that are associated with the "mentality," a list that, among other things, describes Tokugawa Japan perfectly. As a side note, anyone who thinks Japan's is a culture of Bushido does not know Japanese history. The Bushido code was written by a samurai who never saw combat, whose father never saw combat, and whose grandfather, in likelihood, never saw combat. The Bushido myth is a propaganda piece for convincing daimyos to keep their samurai on the payroll. So we have a clearly racist document using a nonsense term to describe nothing. What, exactly, is this?

DanielBMarkham 19y ago
"What, exactly, is this?" It is a commentary on a way of life usually practiced by Arabs, but also commonly found in other places in the world. It is not a blanket statement about any race, therefore your charges of racism are total BS. You can be a member of a race and participate or not in a particular culture. Race is not culture. It's not a one-to-one relationship. To say that it is, ironically enough, racist. People are free agents and can choose to be anything they want. Cultures are fair game for all sorts of criticism -- we are really good at criticizing our own culture. Thank goodness we live in a world where criticism of culture is encouraged.
- qaexl 19y ago
  I don't like how the original author failed to distinguish between Arabian culture and Muslim religion. Though they are intertwined, there are non-Arabian Muslim cultures as well. To add to DanielBMarkham's comment, though, Arabic culture centers around the language, not the ethnicity. Some of the original author's arguments are evidence of Muslim rather than Arabian origin. Lastly, just to throw more confusion into the issue, some of the Sufi sages were tortured to death by their Muslim bretherens as heretics, and they died with the same kind of aplomb the way the Buddhist monks were tortured to death. (Not all Arabs sacrifice themselves in hopes of attaining 72 virgins). The telling point would be to find a non-Arabian culture that encourages 'thar'. Unfortunately, I have not yet thought of an example off the top of my head involving an non-Arabian culture. The original author also vaguely discusses the rise of 'thar' culture sprouting on the internet without giving any specifics. I've been to forums where where people flame each other for sport. I remember the occasional tiffs here, and people trashing Reddit. I know Digg and YouTube comments are full of inanities. Not to mention the flames on blog posts and regular news articles when someone gets upset but clearly did not thoroughly read the article in question. It often seem to closely track the maturity level of the people involved: immature human beings don't know how to set good personal boundaries, whatever culture that might be.

tptacek 19y ago

I don't know about toxicity of value systems, but there's no more toxic form of debate than a semantics argument, which is what this essay devolves to.

qaexl 19y ago
That's fallacious. I'm getting tired of people bringing up 'semantic argument', soon to be followed by 'agree to disagree'. The toxicity of a 'semantic argument' comes from two or more people unable to emotionally get in rapport with each other and has little to do with the study and crafting of semantics itself.

uuilly 19y ago

I really enjoyed this article and I think he's largely right. Pride (thar) is the most overlooked variable in geo-politics. But he leaves out an important detail. The US provides much of the defenses for Europe and almost all of them for Japan. After Bosnia it is hard to conceive of Europe going to war alone. These places may be free of thar but perhaps it is only b/c a thar-ish country (The US) provided them with breathing room.

JeffL 19y ago
The US is not a "thar-ish" country. It is probably the farthest from "thar-ish" of all the major countries in the world if you judge by the importance placed on individualism over groups and disregard of what other people think.
- uuilly 19y ago
  Agreed but the article said otherwise. It said japan and northern Europe achieved the highest marks for non-thar-ness. The US was criticized for minor thar. I merely asked whether a little thar was such a bad thing. Esp when two common traits of non thar countries are an inability to defend one's borders and two of the biggest US military bases outside the US.

weiser 19y ago

"..it's not hard to find poor societies or societies with long histories of oppression where the thar mentality is much less virulent. Instead, I argue that the thar mentality causes poverty, and causes or certainly reinforces the oppression in the society." the author then goes out to enumerate scenarios to argue how thar mentality might cause poverty. I agree, thar mentality can cause poverty. But again, poverty can cause thar mentality. Imagine you are poor destitute. All you probably have to defend is your honor, or that your wife (if u are lucky to have one) is not doing someone else. In the end, I dont know if thar mentality. causes poverty or vice versa. Maybe, they are both caused by some other factor. What I do know is that the Author needs to do a better job than this, Unless all he wants is to appease western cultural supremacists. In that case, he is doing exactly the right thing.

bayareaguy 19y ago

If you are interested in this sort of thing, you may enjoy James Bowman's "Honor" (http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/honor http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/honor). I particularly like the way Bowman avoids the trap of having to provide a specific definition of honor by instead explaining various notions of honor in cultural and historic contexts.

geezer 19y ago

amazing how nobody here sees the 800lb gorilla. our response to 9/11 is the classic thar mentality. "But thar is one of innumerable cases where the "natural" response to a problem is the one that will make the problem worse in the fastest possible way." Our natural response to retaliate, and in the process, attack the wrong country....so thar

pg 19y ago
I wish it was even that high-minded, but though the people who planned the invasion of Iraq exploited these attitudes, they were not themselves motivated by them. Powerful groups wanted the US to attack Iraq before 9/11 made US voters easy to convince.
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  Read "The Gathering Storm" for an argument to topple Saddam made before we went in (but post 9-11) There is a long list of reasons which I won't go into here. 9-11 was the tipping point in terms of domestic politics, no doubt. It also seems to be the tipping point in terms of strategic policy. There's an interesting discussion about why democratic nations go to war. If there is a mixed number of reasons and a volunteer army, which are the actual reasons we fight? I just read read a blog entry by an Army 1st Lt. killed last year who made the argument that he was joining up to stop oppression. To do something and make a difference. I also hear a lot of folks talk about leaders with supposedly bad intentions who "got us into this." So when a president and congress vote on something, and people volunteer to do it, is it possible to assign any one reason to why it's being done? Perhaps I'm splitting hairs. Probably get downmodded again for this comment. Have at it, then.
  - aswanson 19y ago
    You should not get downmodded for difference of opinion, but frankly, I think thinking in these simplistic terms (good vs. evil, us right, them wrong) has led us into military adventurism and disasters, including the current one. This is not 1938, Saddam was not Hitler, and dissenters were not Chamberlains. They were thinkers. How people who were alive and had a front row seat to Vietnam let this happen escapes me. It was very clear from the mixed reasons given, along with the silencing of dissent and rush to attack that there were ulterior reasons for invasion. Coupled with the quotes from senior admin officials "cakewalk", "oil will pay for it", "done in a few weeks", and the end of this fiasco was as clear and predictable as day to me. But I digress. And feel free to disagree.

run4yourlives 19y ago

I originally enjoyed this little essay, but the more I thought about it, the more certain things bothered me: 1. The word Thar: He doesn't want to saddle the Spanish, but is more than happy to saddle the Arabs. This is bad form and almost racist. Every culture in the world practices "Thar", why the disdain for Arabs? 2. Ignoring European "Thar" - With the exception of the Former Yugoslavia (Muslims - interesting), the author basically ignores the many examples of this in European societies, from Italian, Greek, Spanish, Russian. Hell, the Mafia is basically built on this, and last time I checked it's alive and well - but it doesn't even get mentioned. (FYI, I'm southern Italian... my grandparents are as "backwards" as can be sometimes.) 3. The real reason the west no longer follows "Thar" is because of the Age of Enlightenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment). Because it's only a few generations old (having happened in the 1800's) and was centered in Europe - by extension North America - it has simply taken time to reach other parts of the world. Namely, the mid east and Africa. This is the reason that Thar - which enlightenment rejects - is still so prevalent in these societies. 4. The Bushido code IS "Thar". The fact is that Japan up until the end of WWII embodied "Thar" to a degree of perfection seen nowhere else on the planet cannot be excused away by a "remorse shine" in a doctor's office. In fact, had the doctor been a true practitioner of Bushido, he would have killed himself long ago. The remorse shrine is a symbol of cowardice consistent with reason - imported from North America after WWII. (I'm not suggesting either one is correct) This shows more than anything that the doctor is conflicted between the notion of an insult to his honor, and the understanding that real sacrifice should not be required. This is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at pinning Arabs and Muslims with the moniker of backwards-stone age people that need "educating". If this is what qualifies for advanced cultural thinking in the US, its no wonder you're losing in Iraq. >"It's considered bad form in many circles to criticize another culture's values. " Perhaps the author would do well to follow the advice of his peers.

Retric 19y ago
Reading what you wrote I could not help but think of "What You Can't Say (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)" There is a recent idea that criticizing other cultures is a bad idea and or bad form. However, cultures are unique so Thar and "honor" are separate concepts so not all cultures have "Thar". EX: Some early cultures in Europe practiced human sacrifice however over time that went out of style etc. In other words cultures are different, but we should not talk about how these differences may be good or bad at generating wealth? In the modern world attempting to keep doing the same job your entire life will often fail. Doing your fathers job the same way he did is not going to work. And doing the same thing as your great grandfather in the same way he did is a really bad idea. However, it seems like bad form to criticize cultures who think sons should continue in their father's foot steps. At the same time it seems obvious that such cultures would on average be less likely to do well in the modern world. Anyway, rather than defending the essay I would just ask you to read it again after "What You Can't Say" and see if you react in the same way. I think the he is trying to talk about a vary specific kind of "honor" vs attacking specific culture as a whole.

nanijoe 19y ago

This article should have been published in the National Enquirer. I can't think of any other demographic that would fall for the crap this guy is trying to sell.

jsnx 19y ago

Both the code of Bushido and the less culturally specific "Texas Justice" mentioned in this article arose in similar circumstances -- cultures that are war-like, family-centric and deeply conservative. Bushido, however, likes to put on the face of self-censure, and therein lay the real difference. Neither seppuku (suicide with a helper) nor harikari (the solo version) were matters of "killing yourself if you get super pissed and can't find anybody else to kill" (as per Real Ultimate Power). They were a means of averting the wrath of an indiscriminate government, which would punish your entire family if you failed to make up for your shame in the appropriate way. Of course, your family would not be happy about this -- the option of "do it yourself or your family gets it!" drives a wedge between the family and the individual, strengthening the position of the central government by a large margin. With a government so strong that it can even make people kill themselves, who needs to go around enforcing one's honor by wildly killing people? The strength of the government encourages order, both discouraging revenge and the slights that lead to it. Disputes go through "official channels" and people have confidence in their resolution. In lieu of "the rule of law", people are more inclined to take justice into their own hands. When there is no law to cover a certain trade or group, honor killing often reasserts itself. Consider Asian gang members in San Francisco who traffic in narcotics -- when one cheats another, they have no one to turn to for dispute resolution, so it's killing time! So many things are bundled up in that article -- misogyny, honor killing, notions of honor, backwardness, privilege -- but it is important to acknowledge that "Texas Justice" (lolz) is present whenever the sheriff is absent, weak or corrupt. Take a bunch of "Enlightenment" people, put them out in the middle of nowhere with some guns and, voila, you've got Thar!

DanielBMarkham 19y ago
bullshit. the author either knows nothing about the subject or never saw the experiment deployed
- jsnx 19y ago
  It would nice to know what exactly you disagree with, and why you disagree.