Luck: An Observation. Of Traffic Accidents and Colonialism.

A traffic accident does not usually make national or world news unless it is unusually violent. This is the case regarding the accident near Toronto, Canada in which a driver in one car hit another killing a grandfather and his three grandchildren while sending the grandmother and great-grandmother to hospital.

The collision is said to have taken place at right-angles.

Allowing for the two vehicles to be the size of a normal SUV, and also allowing for a speed of about 100 kph, we can reasonably estimate a “time window” for the collision of three seconds.

If either vehicle had gotten to the intersection five seconds earlier or later than the other then four people would not be dead, two would not be in hospital, and one would not be facing 18 criminal charges.

Luck. Fortune. Fate.

Despite the “luck” factor in this accident, the driver will face serious punishment no doubt including incarceration.  Justice demands he suffer because the means for avoiding this event were his. He had broken some laws regarding speed and alcohol consumption and he will suffer the full brunt of the retribution.

But sometimes what we call “luck” relates to how we are born. The driver who killed four people was “lucky” to be born into a family with a net worth well over $1 billion.  Such luck did not excuse him from adhering to the laws of the society in which he lived.

Just because he was lucky enough to be born into material wealth did not mean he was exempt from other laws and conditions in his society.

Luck, though, is never really meaningfully discussed or analysed. Being lucky in the selection of one’s ancestors does not allow us to do as we please otherwise.

What about being unlucky?

If someone is unlucky enough to have been born in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Iraq or Mexico does that make it legal or moral to rectify the situation by illegally entering another country? What if that action materially diminishes the standard of living and life chances of least advantaged “aboriginal” members of the host society? Is it just “their bad luck”?

As we consider the idea of “luck” and then consider it further in the two contexts of a local traffic accident which directly effects a few families and major demographic shifts which could have historical significance for untold future generations we confront the limitations of our own ways of understanding.

We effortlessly and unconsciously shift our “interpretive schemes” from one “partially rational worldview” to another.

We place boundaries on which facts will be allowed, which disallowed, and what moral codes involved in making the determination of “appropriateness” in response.

We use the same words. With different meanings.

Chaos theory reminds us that even minor changes to the “initial conditions” can lead to massively different outcomes.

A five second delay can spare two families untold grief. Some ill-chosen words can lead to a continent in flames.

Where is the boundary which separates luck from prudence?

Multiculturalism: Confucianism and Islam

The official Chinese ethics exam asks the question: “If your mother and your girlfriend are both in a burning building and you can only save one, then who do you save?” The correct answer is “your mother”. The reason? Not to save your parents is a “crime of non-action”. The deeper root? Confucianism. The highest Confucian virtue is “filial piety“.

The contrast with the West? In the West there is no “duty to rescue” unless it arises from special situations. Parents in the West have a “duty of care” to their own children. In strictly Christian contexts it is called “stewardship”. It certainly does not extend to strangers and may not extend to parents. In Confucianism it is ethically permitted to sacrifice children for the good of the parents.

The BBC report speculates further on the “sexism” of the question. This is a cultural variant within the West and unless the claim will be that “anti-sexism” is an inevitable ethical human universal — something which will be dealt with in the future in these pages — then it only represents a culturally specific viewpoint.

Islam

Saudi Arabia is going to head up the UN Human Rights commission. This is a fascinating choice. The US State Department sends congratulations while not bothering to mention that in Saudi it is mandatory for Christians to pay a special tax imposed on “unbelievers” (the Jizya), women cannot drive cars, and a 21-year old man who was sentenced to death for blogging in support of atheism when he was 17 was told that after he is beheaded his decapitated body will be publicly crucified. Saudi Arabia is also likely to be charged with war crimes for the way it is carrying on the fight against Jihadist rebels in Yemen. Saudi has previously been charged with sending fighter planes to bomb refugee camps. Recently the Saudi Air Force also bombed a Yemeni wedding party.

Saudi also has a very impressive wall along its northern border to keep out any of the “Syrian Migrants” who are inundating Europe.

Saudi Border Wall

Saudi Arabia has agreed to accept exactly “zero” Syrian refugees. It has, instead, offered to build 200 mosques in Germany so the Syrian Sunnis can learn the Wahabi version of Islam practiced in the Kingdom.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the time has come to start making room for the influx. One person, a 51-year old nurse, may have to vacate her home of 16 years to make room for the inflow. Here is another approach to ethics. We are not being asked to pick between family and friends, or between generations, but between those who live in our own village and strangers.

The Confucian hierarchy places “village mates” above “strangers” in case there is any doubt.

Each of these represents a “coherent” ethical system. They cannot be made “mutually consistent”. Another one of those “cultures are all the same at high enough levels of abstraction” matters. This is the “fallacy of the fourth term” or the related “fallacy of composition” which characterises much of the rhetorical verbiage which accompanies most of modern political discourse.

We may wish to speculate a bit on how this relates to the overall theory of Multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is not universal. It is not even coextensive with Western Culture. It is a particular subvariant of Marxist Idealism which arose in the West and has never been accepted anywhere else.

This analysis is coming. It will be part of the section on Jürgen Habermas

Europe’s Moral Duty to Migrants. And Her Own Children

Prologue

This is the first of several comments on what is transpiring in Europe. The following is written as events are unfolding so quickly it is impossible to keep all the details both current and accurate. The last time anything this transitional happened was when the USSR came to an end. In some ways what is happening in Europe is the reverse. Thus the decision to use a number of linked posts rather than just one which is proving to be unwieldy and far too long.

The events are so complex and each one needs detail to cover it fully. The challenges which confront Europe and the world involve a vast array of factors. Historical, predictive, ethical, cultural, identity, and economic. Pundits will focus on one or two and leave the others to be inferred or assumed as being able to “sort themselves out” through some other means.

The crisis has three major features. The first is the emotional aspect, the second the moral aspect, and the third is the logical aspect – the appeal to reason. How do we “feel”, what “should” be done, and does it make any sense to do it? These are the three kinds of appeals described by Aristotle in The Rhetoric: Emotions. Values. Reason. It is appropriate to use a “Western thought paradigm” to approach this situation.

The first – feelings – is fed by media stories of people fleeing for their lives trying to escape what is clearly a deeply troubled part of the world. The focus of this is emotional, personal, and aided by photographs and anecdotes. The second deals with the idea of “doing the right thing” – an ethical dimension – which has its own justifications and sources of origin. The third deals with reality in a more dispassionate and pragmatic fashion. Can Europe stem this tide in any case? Will this influx irreversibly change European culture and the hopes and dreams of “ancestral Europeans”? Is resistance futile whether or not resistance is prompted by feelings or ethics?

Much of what is being written is produced with major references only to one of these three factors and from the viewpoint of only one of the interested parties in the drama.

What we get is “political rhetoric” when what we need is “political science” – which also has its some of roots in the work of Aristotle. The difference is to be dealt with in detail elsewhere. For now suffice to say the fully articulated “scientific paradigm” should contain all possible “rhetorical narratives”.

What is attempted here does not rise to this level. It is not in any way synoptic but rather a halting attempt to draw attention to the most obvious of the factors from the viewpoints of those who are presumed to be most directly at risk in the unfolding drama. The main focus of the Western media is on those who are entering Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and northern Africa. Relatively little attention is being given to the people already living in Europe whose lives are manifestly going to be massively disrupted.

No analysis at all has been done on how the future of Europe will be changed. The construction of a single nuclear power plant or wind farm requires years of “environmental impact” study. There are “good reasons” for this since these will change the ecological environment for generations to come. It is important to have a good assessment of the social and cultural costs these “benefits” may bring.

Shutting to borders to West Africans during the Ebola outbreak was likewise “reasonable” despite no studies at all having been done on what would happen to the already in-situ European population without them.

So what makes the decision of Angela Merkel and other EU leaders – and by that status the Western World itself – to put one and only one response option on the table? What will happen to Europe and the West if her act of apparent “emotionally” and “morally” justified generosity has hugely destructive consequences which only “reason” could have anticipate? Are consequences “unanticipated” because “no human can be expected to know” or because “we do not choose to know”?

We have a computer gaming industry which has the equivalent of Simulation Models for virtually all historical and imaginary scenarios the authors can conjure. Many academic social science departments are engaged in Simulation Modelling as well. If simulation models are good enough for the Climate Change lobby why not for the Population Change one?

And then there are our elected officials. Constitutions and laws and oaths of office are not software packages. They require constant monitoring and tweaking to work properly. For those of us who use portable computers there is even the possibility our own preferred operating systems are not perfect. With software we call the help line. For political leadership we need the people we elect to be “trustworthy”. People of “Good Character”.

The captain of an ocean going vessel will sometimes have to move to port, sometimes to starboard, sometimes go slow, and sometimes go fast. We need to trust the captain to know where “home” is and to steer by the fixed stars (for political leaders, “reason”) to bring us safely through times of trouble. Steering by the lights of each passing ship is not an option.

Our political leaders are, today in the West, ruling because they have sworn allegiance to the protection and preservation of a nation, a country, and a set of ideals. They do not rule absolutely by Divine Right. They are not empowered to change our nation and the world forever without so much as a referendum to validate this endeavour.

The same EU which demanded relentless economic austerity from European nations like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland is not demanding not even the slightest demands from the German decision to let in hundreds of thousands of culturally alien people from the Middle East. Why?

Angela Merkel is not a Tsarina. Not a Kaiserin.

The “demographic” assault on the European “social ecology” is being ruled by emotions and pleas to morality while the iron discipline of the Eurozone Bankers shunned any and all appeals to sentimentality?

Greece has just re-elected the Syrzia party.

There is also a secondary agenda with this comment. It is to show the extraordinarily intricate and complex thing that “human social identity” really is. The people who are entrusted with being leaders of large social groups (cities, states, provinces, countries, corporations, etc) are almost totally untutored in social history, political science, and the humanities generally. Ignorance often leads to incompetence. When those who are incompetent do not know they are incompetent the damage they do is even greater. When such people influence the path of history itself the danger is incalculable.

Western Europe and the EU are presently in the midst of a crisis. It is a flood of people who are entering the EU but primarily heading towards Germany and other countries with high levels of social welfare, generous benefits, and social stability.

The debates – and therefore the posts which will follow this one – involve several aspects. This list may change. It is flexible. It is presented here to provide a sense of what will be attempted.

The first is terminology: are these people “migrants” or “refugees” or “illegal aliens” or “displace persons” or “invaders” or “colonists” or “opportunists”? Are all of these categories and more represented?

The second involves motivation: the motivation imputed to the flood of people will determine both the label and the appropriate response. The motivations include physical safety, religious freedom, social welfare benefits, better future options for the children of those coming in, the establishment of a new kind of non-European society, a sanctuary for those in temporary exile who wish to return to their own homes one day, and so on.

The third set of debates involve moral obligation: Are those in Europe morally obliged to disrupt and perhaps destroy their own cultural traditions in order to accommodate any and all who come? This will involve a discussion of moral philosophy as well as the introduction of the theme of Cultural Marxism. It will also treat the “European” nature of “European Values” with closer attention.

The fourth involves inevitability: since Europe is unwilling or unable to defend itself is the best course to make peace with the bringers of the new cultural reality? Will these newcomers repair the demographically depleted Europe and restore the economy, if not the culture, to its former glory?

The fifth relates to eligibility: Is anyone at all welcome or only those fleeing from Islamist terror? Does this mean Christians and other non-islamics  are more welcome than any others? Since Islamic law treats all outside that faith as second-class citizens then are they given the highest priority?

Sixth: are women, children and the elderly to be given preference? The largest single group is young adult men travelling alone.

The seventh deals with how the burden on the European nations is to be carried. Since Angela Merkel is not in charge of the EU does she have the moral authority to demand – as she has done – that other nations “do their share” when she has neither established the moral foundation of their “obligation” in the first place nor is in possession of the coercive power to compel their obedience in the second. The seventh relates to the ability of the EU to endure this ordeal intact.

The eighth relates to the survival of Western Culture in the European Continent. Is Europe going to become non-European? If Europeans become cultural refugees where will they go?

The ninth will address the long-term options which are available – whether they are seen as politically viable or not. Is Europe doomed as a place where the “aboriginal culture” of “indigenous Europeans” can flourish? What choices are available?