Cultural appropriation

One aspect of McCloskey's comment I did not deal with yesterday is what might be called the cultural appropriation argument. I didn't do that because I think cultural appropriation, while a high crime to the modern intellectual class, is no offense at all.

It occurred to me while I was waking up this morning that this will not seem as obvious to others as it does to me so I will explain. First, here is where McCloskey made a cultural appropriation argument,

Christians (starting it appears, with Jesus himself but certainly including the writers of the Gospels) mined the Hebrew Bible (called so by people who do not want to insult the Jews by calling their book the "old" testament) for anticipations of the coming of Christ, especially for example the book of Isaiah."

Note the possessive above: "their book." Short version, I don't think it is any insult to anybody for Christians to use Jewish scripture or to call it the Old Testament. (I have another factual objection to "old testament". As Benedict 16 says, the covenant between God and Israel was never revoked; it is still active and, therefore, there is nothing "old" about the old testament.)

But, to return to the more general argument about cultural appropriation, I have three kinds of objections here. I have an historical objection: given what we know of the historical origins of Jewish scriptures, objecting to cultural appropriation is not a cogent argument. I have a moral objection: I think most of our piety about cultural appropriation is misplaced. And I have a pragmatic objection: one of the markings of a healthy, thriving culture is that it freely makes use of good cultural ideas it can acquire from other cultures it comes into contact with.

I'm going to focus only on the historical aspect here (although the other two arguments will be hinted at).

Every thing we know about the archeology of the region where the scriptures were written tells us that these scriptures were created by wholesale borrowing of tales and concepts from other nearby cultures. The book of Genesis, to take an example that, as McCloskey put it, even slightly sophisticated biblical students know about, appropriates and rewrites the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish.

Archeologists digging up ancient Canaanite temples have discovered that these were built to the same layout and rules as described in the Bible. And there is no doubt whatsoever about which came first. The ancient Israelites appropriated much of their religious thought and practice from others. The beloved psalm that the King James beautifully, but inaccurately, renders as "If I forget they O Jerusalem. may my right hand lose its cunning," began life as a Canaanite hymn.

Further, there is no reason to think that the great warrior tales that make up the story of the David are anything but common tales of heroic behaviour that were brilliantly put together to make up the books (originally just one book) of Samuel. This process was not unlike the way similar tales were put together to compose the Iliad.

And "compose" is the right word. Just as the great classical composers did not invent new melodies but composed existing materials into great symphonies, the Jewish scriptures take religious concepts and stories from all over the ancient middle east and compose them into a new vision.

This composition was done, I believe, under the inspiration of God and he used this moment to give the world, which already knew him imperfectly, a new and better idea of who and what he is. Exactly how novel is an open question. There is certainly foreshadowing of the new vision in the elements these ancient scribes put together (how could there not be) to make up the new scriptures. But there is also something special that does not exist before.

To take a well-known argument, the first of the two creation stories in Genesis borrows the structure and cosmology of Enuma Elish but it changes crucial details of the moral theology of the earlier tale. In Enuma Elish, Marduk the great warrior who defeats the older generation gods, finishes the story by creating humans. He does so in order that these humans can be slaves to his bother and sister gods. In Genesis, God has no predecessors and creates human beings as an act of love. He creates us so that we may flourish and be happy.

That Christians would appropriate and read Isaiah in a new way— in a way that fills out our understanding of God and his interaction with the world—strikes me as entirely acceptable.



To anticipate some questions. Yes, I there there are limits on appropriation. We should adhere to copyright law. (Although I think current copyright law is excessive: Mickey Mouse should have been in the public domain for decades now and it is insane that initialisms can be copyright.) It would also be wrong for me to take the life events of one of my neighbours and make a novel out of them, unless I disguise them so well that no one can figure the origins out. On the other hand, I think public figures surrender much of this right to privacy. Joni Mitchell might, for example, feel a little peeved at the way her life and character were apparently used to create Jane in the movie Laurel Canyon—I say "apparently" because the makers deny this—but, however peeved she may be, I think she should not have any moral or legal argument against it. Likewise, I think it was a travesty that a British court sided with Stephen Spender against a novelist who had used Spender's life as a basis of his fiction. By extension, I think that the culture of any people becomes public property.

History in Northanger Abbey (1)

At some point soon I'm going to get to the crucial central chapter (Bk 2, Chapter one in this case).

There are two questions from the first half to deal with first though. The first is the extended discussion of history between Catherine, Miss Tilney and Henry Tilney in Chpater 14 of bk one.

It begins with a discussion of Radcliffe and Catherine's remark that Henry probably doesn't read novels. He asks her why she would think this and she replies:

"Because they are not clever enough for you—gentlemen read better books."

This is not just some fancy of Catherine's. Women read far more novels than men did, as is still the case. And just as the novel market today was criticized for being a lot of crap, so to the market of Austen's day. Sexists of the time argued that the trash was a consequence of the supposedly undiscriminating taste of women.

Nowadays, Sir Walter Scott is not read nearly as much as he was then but he was credited with making the novel respectable in much the same way that Christy Mathewson is often credited with making baseball respectable.

Scott wrote novels that men wanted to read. He knew that Austen was the better novelist but no one else did. His was the name to conjure with. And what Scott did was to introduce history to the novel. The moral pressure to put big important details, such as history, in novels was very real and Austen was determined to resist it. What does she make of history here?

Love and economics and Christianity

The more I read McCloskey, the more I like what she has to say. I have reservations and criticisms (not the least of which is that it could and should be shorter) but The Bourgeois Virtues is a book I recommend to anyone.

I think I have a better grasp on what is happening with McCloskey and Christianity now. The essence of her argument is that if you want to grasp what the love at the basis of bourgeois virtues is, the best place to look at is Christianity.

So far, so good, and I would argue absolutely true. But then the good liberal reflexes kick in and McCloskey has to throw in a big qualifier: That some other religions are potentially just as good a source for this understanding of love. And she is willing to go so far as to do a little Christian bashing and to distance herself from Christianity to give herself street credibility on this point.

Later when talking about economics and love, she uses the expression "economizing on love". She means by this that economists find they can't deny the place of love in human relations so they minimize it. I'd say that McCloskey "economizes on Christianity"; she realizes that any explanation of the bourgeois virtues cannot deny that Christianity has a place in the story. For starters it is simply the fact that bourgeois virtues, along with religious tolerance developed in Christian countries first; anywhere else we find these things it is in imitation of what happened in Christian countries first. If she has to acknowledge this, however, McCloskey is going to minimize it as much as possible.

This is funny

A guy named Dan Ariely, whom I know nothing about, has had some good fun with Google. Google, as most readers will know, helpfully finishes search requests as we are typing them out. This autofill is based on the most common requests. Anyway, he typed in these two partial sentences

1. How can I get my boyfriend to ...
2. How can I get my girlfriend to ...

and then recorded the most likely conclusions to those sentences as determined by Google. The responses he found are at the link below and they are funny.

But, before going there, I'd make the following (typical of me) observation: if seeing which questions are the most common dismays you, angers you or confirms your worst suspicions about others, you probably aren't going to be very happy in life. And, as far as this may seem from Jane Austen, the amiable person shouldn't be bothered by this information.

Here is the link.

A reply to Deirdre McCloskey

Deirdre McCloskey was kind enough to read the blog and write a nicely reasoned response to one of my earlier posts. She may well be right and anyone who drops by can decide for themselves. You can find her comment if you scroll down at this post.

That said, I still disagree.

Her first point is absolutely correct. Given the kind of book she wrote and her intended audience, it is absolutely correct to acknowledge "that all my readers are not Christians, and therefore not all of them will accept that God is love". But McCloskey is doing more than that. Let's return to the bit I cited before (with emphasis added):

Love, charity, caritas, agape is the greatest virtue of the three theological virtues in Christianity because it is the essence of the Christian God, so unlike his predecessors, at any rate in his opinion.

A Christian is someone who believes in the Christian God. Who believes that God is God. That passage doesn't just say that the writer respects the right of others to disagree. It also says more than that we Christians sometimes exaggerate the uniqueness of some claims that have been made on behalf of our faith. That passage says that the Christian God himself is mistaken about himself.

It's a perfectly reasonable argument for anyone to make. Just as it is perfectly reasonable for me (hypothetically) to argue that all prices should be set by a government committee. But if I did argue that, others would quite within their rights to wonder if I was still a libertarian.

It is possible and reasonable*, by the way, to argue that the words and motives of God as reported in the Bible reflect the understandings, hopes and prejudices of the people who wrote particular Bible texts. I, for one, very much doubt that God withdrew his favour from Saul because Saul didn't commit genocide against the Amalekites. I suspect that this text, written and redacted by people who had experienced the Assyrian invasion, amongst others, reflects the desperate desire for justice of a people who live in constant terror of violent invasion and is driven by a yearning for God but not the intention of God himself.

But note that I explained my reservations without attacking God himself. I think that is a big and important difference.

The second big point McCloskey raises is a subtle and complex one. She says she is:

"acknowledging what even a slightly sophisticated biblical student understands, that Christians (starting it appears, with Jesus himself but certainly including the writers of the Gospels) mined the Hebrew Bible (called so by people who do not want to insult the Jews by calling their book the "old" testament) for anticipations of the coming of Christ, especially for example the book of Isaiah."

I think the implication of her words "what even a slightly sophisticated biblical student understands" is that the view she is pushing is an established and respected one in biblical scholarship. I am sure that there is no veiled ad hominem hiding here. In any case, she is right, this interpretation is a respected view in scholarship. But is it what a committed Christian should be saying?

Lets consider a non-biblical story. There is well-worn anecdote about some Wall Street titan avoiding the consequences of the 1929 crash because he heard someone talking up stock tips, I think it might have been the man who shined his shoes but can't remember exactly. Anyway, the point is that he took this as a sign that market was no longer driven by anything vaguely resembling rationality and bailed out.

True? Hard to say. But let's suppose it is and let's imagine I was hanging around in October 1929 and I saw that guy get his shoes shined and overheard that conversation. If I were a journalist, I might even have gone and written the story out and published it. But my purpose, would not have been his. My story would more likely have been some human-interest piece about a Wall Street financial whiz trading tips with a guy who shines shoes. In a sense , it is the same story but what the story signified, would be entirely different.

Okay, now let's take it another step. Imagine, the titan never left his office. He read the my story in the paper and reached the conclusion that it was time to get out of the market. He does this even though my intent in writing the story and the facts I marshaled to tell it were actually meant to make a different point. We might say, he saw the real point of the story which I missed even though I wrote it. Someone smarter than me can look at a story I wrote and conclude, based on their deeper understanding of human life that I missed the point; that the real significance is elsewhere than where I found it.

Lets' replace the titan with Jesus and the story with Isaiah. Christians believe in Jesus. Christianity is not just a belief that this guy Jesus showed up and said and did inspirational stuff. It is a claim that this guy Jesus showed up because it was part of God's plan that he show up and that, further, this guy Jesus is God made man. Without insulting anyone else, we can say that we believe that when Jesus interpreted scripture, he saw the real point of the story even if that point differs from what the people who wrote and preserved the story thought it was about.

We can't really honour others right to differ from us if we think that the only way to do that is to not actually say what we believe in the first place.





*Reasonable and possible for me as a Catholic and it would also be reasonable and possible for McCloskey as an Episcopalian. If I were a member of a group that held that the Bible is a scrupulously accurate account of both history and of God's will, I'd be kicking myself out of that club by saying something like that.

Love and CS Lewis

Reading McCloskey and what she does with Lewis on love one of the things that strikes me is how much Lewis is invested in the idea that we have to ascend to love. It is almost as if we have to earn love by work and suffering. The objection to lust almost always seems to be that lust is too easy and that more refined people capable of fine discrimination should prefer "love" for the same reasons they would prefer wine to Coca Cola.

But is that the way grace works?

The assumption is that caritas is always a bigger or a higher thing than any of the other kinds of love. But why wouldn't it be a smaller or a lower thing? Why wouldn't it be the thing that allows us to reach higher instead of the thing we reach higher for?

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Amiability

Amiability necessarily comes into the mix when we start talking about beauty.

Beauty here meaning not a natural gift such as Ava Gardner had but something that can be achieved by practicing certain virtues. Austen would insist that these virtues are feminine; meaning by this that the best place to see these virtues in action is among women and not that men aren't capable of them.

And she would insist that amiability is part of the story. Readers of Burke will know that he connected the beautiful with love; the beautiful is the thing that makes us love.

But let's ask a rude question, are there girls who are not capable of being pretty? Catherine Morland comes off initially as a borderline case:

“Catherine grows quite a good–looking girl — she is almost pretty today,” were words which caught her ears now and then; and how welcome were the sounds! To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

But surely there are people who are incapable of even this.

Here I think Austen requires virtue from both ends. It is not just an achievement to be beautiful, it is an achievement to see it as well. And thus it is a moral failing in Darcy that he cannot see the beauty of the other girls at the first ball in Pride and Prejudice. We have to be amiable enough to see good in human beings generally.

To put it another way, if you walk into a room full of men and women and can find only one of them to be passably attractive, then you are a moral failure.