Humanism

This post is a summary of Chapter 7 of Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus.

Humanism is the dominant religion of the modern age. It underpins how we see the world, the stories we tell and our perceptions of goodness, beauty and truth. Rather than exalting a higher power, humanism places homo sapiens at the centre of the universe. By drawing their own purpose and sense of self, human beings can create meaning in an otherwise meaningless world. This world-view predominates in Western and secular societies today, even among the nominally religious.

In the past, humans believed in a world order governed by deities and spirits. Every man, woman and child had a role to play and laws to follow, but their destiny was not theirs to decide. While lacking in agency and power, humans believed life was worthwhile so long as they played their part. In traditional religious societies, laws and political power came not from people but from above. Reality was objective and priests and kings were its arbiters. The old view claims humans are unique but inherantly flawed therefore requiring guidance in their every action.

The Scientific Revolution uprooted the old belief systems. Discoveries in biology and physics revealed the world was random, and in effect purposeless. While most of the world was nominally religious, by the 1800s, many – in Europe particular – no longer let faith guide their lives as it had before, thus Nietzsche’s proclamation that ‘God is dead’.

Philosophers like Rosseau, Voltaire and Kant believed that human will gives meaning to an otherwise meaningless world. What you choose to do in life should not be God’s decision, or your parent’s, but yours. Our inner world is rich and alive – demons and angels exist not outside us, but within. People should be free to do as they please and love whom they please, so long as they do not harm others. Murder is a crime, not because holy texts say so, but because it infringes on another’s right to live. Art is what people agree it is. Legitimate power comes from the masses, not from above.

The 19th century saw three strains of humanism develop:

• Liberal humanism: individual rights are paramount. History is a gradual progression of scientific knowledge and individual freedoms. Every human is unique. Voters know best. The customer is always right. Beauty is the in the eye of the beholder.
• Socialist humanism: collective rights are paramount. History is a story of different groups oppressing others for their own gain. Humans are products of their environment. Politics, economics and art should serve the greater human good.
• Evolutionary humanism: rights are irrelevant in the march of history. Humans are unique, but not all are equal. Politics, economics and war are engines of natural selection and human destiny is survival of the fittest. Art and beauty are objective.

The 20th century saw humanist ‘wars of religion’ fought worldwide. Socialism came close in the 1970s, but ultimately liberal humanism prevailed, and dominates the modern world.

Today’s world runs on the principles of democracy, human rights, individualism and a free market. Swathes of people may cling to older religions and worldviews, but liberal humanism dominates the world’s institutions. The greatest innovations of the past century, including modern medicine, computer science and feminism, stem from the liberal humanist tradition.

Sources: Yuval Noah Harari – Homo Deus

See Also:

• Yuval Noah Harari
  • Sapiens
• Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?
• Evolutionary Humanism
  • Fascism
    • Falangism
    • Turanism

America’s Empire and the Twenty Years Since 9/11

On the 11th of September, 2001, members of terror group Al Qaeda hijacked two US passenger planes and flew them into the World Trade Centre in New York City. 2,997 people died and US foreign policy changed irrevocably. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in history. Twenty years and two wars later, the USA enters the twilight of its superpower years.

The Second War World War ended dreams of German world domination, but it also helped end the British Empire. After fighting two world wars on their soil, the old empires of Europe were exhausted. In the following decades, their colonies in Africa and Asia gained their independence. Britain, who had ruled a quarter of the world’s people, resigned from its place as a global superpower and its two wartime allies – the United States and the Soviet Union, took its place.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the USA became the world’s undisputed superpower. The nations of Eastern Europe, now free from the shackles of Soviet-enforced communism, embraced American-style liberal democracy, and it seemed for a time the rest of the world would follow suit. Capitalism, democracy and mass media would unite the world and there would be no need for wars. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama called it ‘The End of History.’

But it wasn’t. Wars continued, most notably in former Yugoslavia and Kuwait. In Afghanistan, the rebel factions who had defeated the Soviets with American support turned on each other. In 1996, the Taliban seized the country.

Al Qaeda began as an Arab volunteer force that fought the Russians in Afghanistan. They saw themselves as Jihadis, protecting the Muslim world against aggressors like the Soviet Union. In the 90s, now based out of Afghanistan, they turned against the other remaining superpower.

Al Qaeda saw the encroachment of the USA’s political and cultural influence across the Muslim world, particularly after the fall of the USSR, as a threat to Islamic civilization. They deplored American support for dictators, its pursuit of Middle Eastern oil and, in particular, its support for Israel, a Jewish state on Arab land. As Al Qaeda could not match the military might of the USA and its allies, they turned to terrorism.

Their attack on the World Trade Centre shattered hopes of world peace and the security of the United States. The Bush Administration demanded the Taliban government hand over Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. They refused, and the United States invaded.

The Bush Administration also used the post 9/11 climate of fear and nationalism to invade Iraq in 2003 – a country with no link to Al Qaeda – on the false pretence of its leaders harbouring ‘weapons of mass destruction.

Both Afghanistan and Iraq fell quickly, but the US military found themselves bogged down supporting flimsy new governments and fighting vicious insurgencies. The Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies fought a practically invisible enemy for over twenty years.
If anything, the USA’s ‘War on Terror’ justified Al Qaeda’s worldview. The fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq birthed a climate of war and instability, giving rise to the Islamic State – a militant group who committed genocide from 2014 – 2016, while in Afghanistan, the Taliban rose once more. US special forces killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

At home, a recession hit in 2008, from 2016 the political divide reached its widest since the Civil War and, in 2020, a global pandemic hit that exacerbated all its problems.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2020 was overdue, but it was also clumsy and rushed. In a matter of months, the USA pulled out its military, and the Taliban took back control, this time with the millions of dollars worth of tanks and guns the US left behind. For the second time, the US has lost a war to an underequipped and canny opponent in a decades long insurgency.

Empires do not last forever, nor do superpowers. While the US has wasted its resources and reputation fighting the War on Terror, rival China has built its strength and bided its time.

The USA spent over 780 billion dollars on the War on Afghanistan. When they invaded in 2001, the Taliban controlled 90% of the country – they now control 100.

See Also:

• Empire
• The World’s Strongest Militant Groups (2018)
• The 2010s

Taiwanese Aborigines

Taiwanese aborigines are the original people of Taiwan. They settled the island over 6,000 of years ago. Today, most Taiwanese are of Han Chinese ancestry – the 569,000 aborigines are 2% of the population. They belong to around 20 different tribes.

The Austronesian language family began in Taiwan. In ancient times, settlers from Taiwan took to the sea. Their descendants became the modern inhabitants of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Polynesia. Of the 9 subdivisions in the Austronesian language family, 8 are exclusive to Taiwan. The descendants of those who remained are the modern Taiwanese aborigines.

Taiwanese aborigines did not consider themselves a single people but as members of one tribe or another, such as the Truku or Atayal. Some lived in the island’s western plains, where most Taiwanese cities stand today, others in the wilder, mountainous west.

The plains tribes lived in bamboo villages. They grew millet, fished and hunted deer. When the Dutch colonised Taiwan (Formosa) in the 1600s, mass-scale Han Chinese immigration assimilated the plain tribes. The modern Taiwanese census does not recognise the 200,000 or so plains aborigines as a separate people.

The mountain tribes had little contact with settlers until the 19th century. Headhunting was a common rite of passage. In some tribes, if a man did not take an enemy’s head in his life, he would not pass into the next. Mountain tribes hunted wild game and had facial tattoos. They traded pelts and camphor to Han settlers in exchange for guns and iron.

In response to raids, the Japanese invaded Taiwan’s interior in the 1890s. They considered the aboriginals barbarians to be vanquished, and over the next forty years, cowed the indigenous tribes one by one.

When the Sediq rebelled in 1930, Japanese authorities bombarded them with artillery and killed 600.

Taiwanese aborigines fought as specialist jungle troops for Japan in WW2. One of them, Terumo Nakamura, did not surrender until 1974.

The Kuomintang dictatorship that ruled Taiwan from 1945 – 1987, pushed a vigorous assimilation campaign through interrmarriage and education.

Bunun people, c.1900.

The Yami people live on Orchid Island off the coast of Taiwan. In 1982 their government dumped nuclear waste on the island, which the Yami have protested since.

Aborigines have been a minority since the 1700s. In modern, democratic Taiwan, they face higher mortality, poverty and unemployment than Chinese-Taiwanese. Of their twenty known languages, ten are now extinct, the rest endangered. Those who move to the cities risk losing their culture, those who stay face poverty.

In the 1860s, European missionaries exploited aboriginal animosity for the Han colonial system to win converts. Today, most aborigines are Christian.

In the 21st century, Taiwan has begun to embrace its aboriginal heritage as a means to distinguish it from mainland China. Aboriginal groups have made been slowly reviving their culture through tourism and education.

In 2016, Taiwanese president Tsai-Ing-Wen, herself of aboriginal descent, officially apologised on behalf of the government for historic oppression of the aboriginal community. She declared August 1st Indigenous People’s Day.

Sources: Cultural Survival, Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs and Steel (1997), New York Times, Taipei Times.

See Also:

• Taiwan
• The Ainu
• Ruc People
• Polynesian Migrations
• Taiwanese Negritos

John Prine – That’s How Every Empire Falls

This is a song written by RB Morris and recorded by folk singer-songwriter John Prine (1946 – 2020), who died from COVID-19 earlier this week, age 73. Its cryptic lyrics tell how moral rot destroys the soul of a man and a nation from within. It featured on Prine’s grammy-winning 2005 album ‘Fair and Square’.

John Prine is from Maywood, Illinois a suburb on the outskirts of Chicago. While working as a mailman, he wrote songs and played at local bars, which caught the ear of Kris Kristofferson. Prine then opened for Kristopherson in New York and released his first (self-titled) album in 1971. Its standout track is Sam Stone. Arguably his best, it tells a sobering tale of  Vietnam veteran’s struggle with heroin addiction. Through both tune and spoken word, Prine’s songs often touched deep subjects, others were lighter and humorous.  All told stories with a personal touch. He wrote most of his own songs with That’s How Every Empire Falls being a notable exception.

Prine never broke the mainstream, but in his life attracted a dedicated fanbase and was an icon in folk circles. His biggest fans included Johnny Cash, Roger Waters, Bruce Springsteen, Bill Murray and Bob Dylan.  In total Prine received 11 Grammy nominations and won three, including a lifetime achievement award in 2020, a few months before he died.

‘That’s How every Empire Falls’ is not his best, or even most popular song, (I personally love Lake Marie) however in the context of his death, and the state of America right now, it is certainly the most prophetic.

Lyrics:

He caught a train from Alexandria, just a broken man in flight
Runnin’ scared with his devils, sayin’ prayers all through the night
But mercy can’t find him, not in the shadows where he calls
Forsaking all his better angels: That’s how every empire falls

The bells ring out on Sunday morning like echoes from another time
All our innocence and yearning and sense of wonder left behind
Oh gentle hearts remember, What was that story? Is it lost?
For when religion loses vision, That’s how every empire falls

He toasts his wife and all his family, the providence he brought to bear
They raise their glasses in his honor although this union they don’t share
A man who lives among them was still a stranger to them all
For when the heart is never open, That’s how every empire falls

Padlock the door and board the windows, put the people in the street
“It’s just my job,” he says, “I’m sorry,” and draws a check, goes home to eat
At night he tells his woman, “I know I hide behind the laws”
She says, “You’re only taking orders”: That’s how every empire falls

A bitter wind blows through the country, a hard rain falls on the sea
If terror comes without a warning, there must be something we don’t see
What fire begets this fire, like torches thrown into the straw?
If no one asks, then no one answers: That’s how every empire falls

See Also:

• Pitchfork – Life, Death and John Prine

Saparmurat Niyazov

Saparmurat Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from 1991 – 2006. Brutal, eccentric and narcissistic even for a dictator, he impoverished his oil-rich country and built one of the world’s most extensive cults of personality.

Turkmenistan was the least developed and least inhabited of the Soviet Republics. Oil and gas were discovered in the 1900s and when the Soviets took over they forced the nomadic Turkmens into cities along the desert’s edge, mainly to Ashgabat, the capital. Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Niyazov general secretary of the Turkmen Republic in 1985, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, he became its president.

Niyazov was born in 1940.  His father died in the Second World War and an earthquake killed his mother when he was seven. After a lonely childhood, he studied engineering in Leningrad and joined the Communist Party in the 60s, where he demonstrated a flair for intrigue and a lust for power.

As president, Niyazov ruled with an iron fist. He called himself ‘Turkmenbashi’, father of all Turkmens, and a declared himself a ‘national prophet’. Turkmenistan’s natural gas reserves – which produced $3billion a year in a country of 5 million, was mainly funnelled to Niyazov’s offshore accounts. His constructions included a 75m high gold statue of himself that rotated to the face the sun, Central Asia’s biggest mosque, dedicated to himself, a 130-foot pyramid and a giant manmade lake. Niyazov claimed that all he wanted was a small and cosy house and only built his marble palace because ‘the people demanded it’. Though citizens received free power, internet access and contact with the outside world was forbidden.

For thirty years Niyazov controlled every fibre of Turkmen society. There were elections but his ‘Democratic Party’ was the only party allowed to stand with him the only candidate. Niyazov’s many decrees and proscriptions were mainly based on megalomania and personal grudges. These included:

• renaming all days of the week and months of the year, including one month after himself and another after his mother
• giving years names instead of numbers
• banning opera and ballet
• banning lip-syncing
• banning car radios
• banning beards and long hair on men
• banishing all dogs from the capital
• reducing high school to one year (to keep the people uneducated and compliant)
• closing all hospitals outside the capital

The Ruhnama was Niyazov’s bible. Meaning ‘Book of the Soul’, it contains a romanticised account of Turkmen history and Niyazov’s life, spiritual musings, poetry and life advice including a passage on the virtues of smiling. Aside from the Koran, all other books were banned. To gain a government position or driver’s license one had to take a 16-hour Ruhnama course and recite passages by heart.  Reading it three times, Niyazov claimed, would guarantee access to heaven.

Though Niyazov had been by a hardline communist before 1991, as president he replaced the ideology with his brand of Turkmen Nationalism. On the world stage, he was strictly neutral. World powers ignored his human rights record for access to Turkmen oil and gas.

Like most dictatorships, state torture, arbitrary arrest and disappearances were common and speaking ill of the leader a crime. Under Niyazov, homelessness and drug abuse abounded. He often bulldozed entire neighbourhoods in Asghabat without recompense and replaced them with pristine apartments of Italian marble that no one could afford.

Niyazov died of heart failure in 2006. His successor Berdamuhamedov, curbed the most ridiculous aspects of Turkmenbashi’s reign and extended high school to two years, but maintained his grip on power. According to Freedom House, Turkmenistan is one of the most unfree places on earth. Only Eritrea and North Korea surpass it.

Sources: Crisis Group, Freedom House, The Guardian, Global Witness, The Independent, The New Yorker