Eucatastrophe Reader

Finding Egalitarianism in the Most Unlikely Places

Created Equal by Joshua Berman REVIEW

Where do the most fundamental notions of a democratic State come from?  Athens or Jerusalem? Most American students of basic 7^th Grade Civics would say “Athens” but in many ways, the fundamental trajectory of liberty is rooted in the Pentateuch more than the dialogs of Plato (or so Joshua Berman would argue, convincingly I might add). Though the laws of the Pentateuch are said to come from a Divine source, their intention seems always to be to diminish the power of institutions, monarchies, tribal hierarchy, and oligarchy on the one hand and to empower “the common man” on the other.

Despite allegations to the contrary, the religion of the Pentateuch is not the opiate of the masses but its protein and carbo-hydrates.  “The new order articulated in these texts [the Pentateuch],” says Berman,

“stands in contrast to a primary socioeconomic structure prevalent at many junctures throughout the history of the ancient Near East: The divide between the dominant tribute imposing class and the dominated tribute bearing class.”

Berman takes an incisive look at the politics of the Mosaic Code, particularly as found in Deuteronomy and shows how pervasive its egalitarian spirit is. Indeed, a radical shift can be found in its very form. “The Bible speaks with many voices across many centuries, says Berman,

 “My point here is to tune into a certain egalitarian voice that reverberates across the tradition, particularly within the books of the Pentateuch.”

His chapter on “Egalitarianism” introduces the reader to the form of the Hittite Suzerainty Treaty, a form that always governs the relationship of two kings, and shows how in the structure of Deuteronomy, it is the common man who is regarded as the recipient king.  Berman insists that “the rejection of hierarchy is rooted in in a major theological shift.”

“In light of parallels with late Bronze Age suzerainty Treaties the Covenant narratives implicitly suggest that the whole of Israel – not its king, not its retinue, not the priests – bears the status of a subordinate king entered into treaty with a sovereign king, God.  . . . Thus we may posit to some degree the subordinate king with whom God forms a treaty, is, in fact, the common man of Israel. That every man in Israel is to view himself as having the status of a king conferred on him.”

When the Bible expresses an ambivalence about monarchies, it is largely because of a fear that they will marginalize the actual people and make the keeping of the covenant  “the king’s job” – something the authors are diametrically opposed to. Thus, not only are Israelite kings forbidden to do what kings of the ancient Near East did (multiply to themselves horses for chariots – i.e. build large militaries – multiply to themselves wives – i.e. build large foreign diplomacy commitments; and take over the functions of priests), the people themselves are given many of the tasks and responsibilities that kings traditionally did.Other traditional duties of kings are simply made automatic or given to the people themselves. This de-emphasis of the role of the king is mirrored by a similar de-emphasis of the role of tribal elders. “The two great thrusts of deuteronomic political thought,” writes Berman,

“– the rejection of the exclusionary power strategy and the concomitant rejection of the tribal hierarchy are integrally related.”

Israel does not need a king. It is an option. Tribalism is merely a mechanism for organization. In a way, clans are turned into a political version of a modern county within the Federal system.  At the heart of the theory is a system where each member reports to God and acts responsibly without coercive power having to be used to obtain that responsibility.

In his chapter entitled, “Egalitarianism and Assets,” the author shows how policies regarding land tenure, tithing, borrowing, interest, debt release, land redemption, and manumission of slaves all curtail the ability of wealth to buy power and use it to exploit common people. The community is not allowed to let people get in a state where they MUST borrow money at exorbindant interest or sell off their land indefinitely. And even if they could, the wealthy are not allowed to loan such monies at any interest at all.

Berman notes also for example, that Near Eastern Kings would forgive debts (often upon taking power) but they usually did so to curb the power of the nobility (to whom most debts were owed) that competed with them as well as to gain public popularity. They used the resources of their competition to buy loyalty from their desired allies (common people).  In Israel, this power was removed from the kings by establishing regular predictable points of debt relief. Similarly, Israelites were only allowed to sell their services for certain periods of time. They were not allowed to sell themselves. Israel was not designed to be a place where people owned people.  Inequality was acceptable only when it was the consequence of differences in merit as revealed by competition but not as a systemic structure created by those who wanted to maintain superiority in the absence of the effort required to maintain it.

In “Egalitarianism and the Evolution of Narrative and Egalitarian Technology,” we are confronted with the argument that the practice of expanding literacy and legal knowledge ran counter to Near Eastern practices of exclusivity whereby elites tried to protect their exclusive access to knowledge as ferociously as they protected their prerogatives in the world of power and wealth.

In a final chapter about the egalitarian influences on Biblical narrative, Berman makes the case that Hebrew literature is different from anything else in its time though it borrows many forms and archetypes and even stories. “Divine intervention in human affairs,” he writes of Hebrew literature,” is determined by the course of human action.” The actions of common people matter. Indeed, they matter as much or more than the actions of the “great leaders” who assert the right to rule. “Each member of the Israelite polity is endowed with great significance” says Berman. Everywhere you look. In its laws; in its economy; In its political systems; in its education system; and in its literature, the common man is elevated in status and importance and made to matter in ways that we see nowhere else in surrounding cultures.

It is a case of exceptionalism that Berman says makes the Bible not only revolutionary in its day, but in the contemporary world as well. In a way, the authors of the Pentateuch are to Hebrew culture what Howard Zinn hoped to be to American society when he wrote A People’s History of the United States. The irony is that few documents have been used to repress people quite so much as the Pentateuch; And yet this is somewhat analogous to the way that the Sermon on the Mount might have been used to launch a crusade or that Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail might someday be used to argue for Apartheid. Deuteronomy asks and answers the question: “How can the people be made to understand how much more important they are in the overall scheme of things than those who exploit them are telling them they are?”

For those of you interested in politics, economics, theology, or literature, this is a recommended read. For those interested in all those things and who love to drink them in one cocktail mixed, this book is a must read.

Question for Comment: In many ways, the Pentateuch grants greater respect to common men (but not women) in much the same way that the French Revolution or the Jacksonian Revolution gave more significance to common men but not women. Do you think that the trajectory of expanding the circle of significance to women is something the authors of Deuteronomy would celebrate today? We might imagine the leaders of the French Revolution and the Jacksonian Revolution being a little ashamed of themselves for not including women in their revolutions were they to re-incarnate today. Can we imagine the authors (or author) of Deuteronomy doing the same? Or is that dabbling in heresy?

“The Old South was ploughed under, but the ashes are still warm”

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz

“When time shall have softened the passion and prejudice, when the reason shall have stripped the mask from misrepresentation, then justice, holding evenly her seals, will require much of past censures and praise to change places.” Jefferson Davis

During the Middle Ages, there were monasteries that kept the documents of an earlier humanistic age safe, though mostly unread. And even so, there are people in the South that keep the Civil War alive under the surface of what appears to have been defeat. “The Old South was ploughed under, but the ashes are still warm” as the playwright Henry Miller once put it. Tony Horowitz’ Confederates in the Attic is a journalistic wandering into the world of a still simmering Confederacy. He interviews Civil War reenactors, museum curators, tour guides, Civil War battlefield park rangers, crackers, politicians, teachers, and historians of the period to explore the inner workers of that part of the South that might still be proud to call itself “unreconstructed.”

“In school I remember learning that the Civil War ended a long time ago,” says one of his subjects. “Folks here don’t always see it that way. They think it is still half-time.” “People like me. We’re the keepers of the past.” “We were raised Methodist,” amother explains of her family’s history, “But we converted to the Confederacy. There wasn’t time for both.” A Civil War reenactor he interviews points to a picture of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and says “When I read about them, I feel like man is a noble creature, like maybe humanity is just going through a bad patch.” “When I play a Northerner,” says a re-enactor who sometimes dons a blue uniform for reenactments, “I feel like the Russians in Afghanistan.” “American by birth,” Horowirtz reads on a baby’s t-shirt, “Rebel by the Grace of God.”

“They can remember the war all they want” says a black woman of the sorts of people who like to glorify the military exploits of their rebel ancestors, “so long as they remember they lost.”

Tony Horowitz has written a brilliant book about the tenacity and pliability of memory. History is a substance that does not modify itself so much in substance as in form. The hundreds of characters that file in and out of the narrative all have their uses for the History that they study, remember, fail to remember, and distort. Accuracy is not necessarily the primary aspect of value to the one remembering. “When I was younger, I could remember anything whether it happened or not,” Mark Twain wrote, “but I am getting old and soon I shall remember only the later.”

“History. N. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.” Ambrose Bierce, the Devil’s Dictionary

Question for Comment: Have you ever lost a battle that you were convinced you had the better argument in?

“It is our choices that show what we truly are far more than our abilities”

The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar is trying to take us into the world of research and experiment to help us ask better questions about the role that choice plays in our lives. In many cases, she is simply helping us to arrive at better answers to questions that are already very good. But here are some examples of some of the experiments she highlights.

Researchers put rats in water filled jars to see how long they will struggle before drowning (this is not a book for rat-lovers). Why, they ask, do some struggle and swim for many many hours while others give up in minutes? To help answer that question, they rescue a bunch of them several times so that all the rats in the experiment have the experience of being rescued before they are given the “real test”. Result, almost all of the rats will struggle and swim until they are exhausted. Conclusion. Rats chose to give up or not give up based on their perception of their experience it seems. Implications for you?

A second set of studies called “The Whitehall Studies” looks at the health of British bureaucrats as it is affected by their perception of control over their work. Conclusions? That when people have no control over their work lives – or no perceived control, their blood pressure goes up and over time, their life expectancy goes down. The same is true in studies done with people in nursing homes. Take away their autonomy and you take away something that extends life. In short, if you have to choose between a pay raise and autonomy, you might be better served by taking the later.

A third study – this one by two researches in India who wanted to look at the long term impact of arranged vrs. Love-based marriages. What they discovered is that when couples in the study married for love, they were happier at first but over time, their happiness with each other decreases. When couples are brought together by the rational process of two families who know them, their contentment with the arrangement starts low but eventually supersedes the contentment of those who found their “true loves” themselves. One has to challenge this finding by asking if it would be true in other cultures. Could, for example, an American parent really know their child’s unique personality and worldview (after they have been to college) well enough to make an informed choice for them?

In another research assignment the author conducted, she asked American and Japanese students to write what life choices they would want to make for themselves on one side of a card and what life choices they would want someone else making for them on the other. Without exception, she says, the American students fill up the side of the card that makes them the masters of their fate and can barely think of anything to write on the other side. Japanese college students distribute the volitional tasks much more evenly.

In her discussion of research she has done in Eastern Europe, she uncovers the difference between various definitions of freedom. There is freedom FROM coercion and freedom TO actualize and these are not always granted synonymously in society. What I conclude from her writing is that contentment is contingent on the ratio between those two types of freedom. If you have no one forcing you to go to a particular place on vacation, that is good. But if you do not have the economic freedom to go anywhere, is that freedom really benefiting you? She compares America, where something like 10% of the GDP goes to subsidies and transfers to European countries where something like 21% of the GDP is redistributed to provide choice for a wider spectrum of society. In short, in America, some people have way more choices. In Europe, more people have fewer as a general rule.

There is a good portion of the book that is devoted to explaining how people generally will conform their choices to their narratives of life or conform their narratives to their choices.. It can go either way. Why some choose to make the conversion one way and not the other is a matter of some interest to me and was essentially at the heart of my own Master’s Thesis research on American missionaries in the Ottoman Empire.

Another experiment I found intriguing (“The Marshmallow Studies” had to do with the way that children deal with dissonance. Experimenters brought children into a room with treats and asked them what their favorite was. After divulging, the children were told that they could have their favorite if they rang a bell after the experimenter left if they wanted but that they would get two if they waited for the experimenter to return without being called. Talk about torture. Follow up studies showed that the children with more control over their “I-want-it-NOW” impulses did better in life generally and were healthier, wealthier, and wiser in many ways. (One wants to argue with this study).

Another study I found interesting had participants playing a computer game that presented them with three doors to click. Clicking once, opened a door and clicking again allowed you to win or lose money. Each door allowed you to win or loose different amounts but each of them averaged out to a three cent gain each click. A participant was only given 100 clicks. The best strategy would be to open one door, any door, and use all ninety-nine remaining clicks in it. The catch was that every time you clicked in a door, the other doors would get smaller and begin to disappear. If you kept clicking in one door, your options would disappear and many people would waste many clicks keeping their options open.

A good part of the later half of the book is about consumer behavior and I think I have written enough to give you a taste of what the book has to offer if you CHOOSE to read it.

Question for Comment: What choices are you having a difficult time with right now? Why?