A journal of political, social, and other important, possibly even somewhat related affairs, including but not limited to: Central European Society, The European Union, HC Kometa Brno, American Politics, Film, and Beer.

20 January 2011

I Misread This at First

This article from Haaretz deals with the changes in the way the AK Party in Turkey is clamping down on alcohol in that country.

I was just a little confused at first about the Ankara Bar Association.....

08 January 2011

Two Articles that Caught My Eye

One reason the US tends to support the Israeli democracy over the various Arab thugocracies which surround it can be explained by these two contrasting articles. The first is here, where Prime Minister Netanyahu faced some fierce opposition to his handling of a forest fire that raged through parts of Israel. Apparently, this was a bit of a Katrina moment for the Israeli government, which was seen as trying to avoid responsibility for their handling of the fire.

The other article which came off the virtual wire is this one, wherein we read about the latest two conspiracy theories emanating out of various parts of the Arab world. Turns out those pesky Joooz are at it again, training the fauna of the Middle East to be Zionist fellow travelers. The most recent is a falcon, apparently sent from Tel Aviv University on either a routine migratory operation or (if you want the real truth that those wily hook-nosed beasts* are unwilling to give) a nefarious plot of espionage. Before that, of course, was the Zionist shark attacking tourists in Egypt.

The contrast of the two articles is jarring. On the one hand, we see Israeli citizens angry at, well, Israeli politicians. As a general rule, this is a healthy formula. You probably should be angry at your politicians, especially when they burn your home or burn your money. They are accountable in ways that Arab politicians simply do not have to be. It seems clear that the relatives of the 42 people who died in the fires are not planning to vote Likud in the next elections; but it is also clear that they have a choice. They are not inventing stories about how Fatah snuck in and set the fires; they are responding according to democratic custom, wherein those responsible for public services must explain their failures.

It is not important whether Bibi's handling of the fires was proper or poor to make this point, and your correspondent is in any case not well-read enough in Israeli domestic politics to evaluate the government's response to the situation. (I also haven't seen any reports from forest fire grievance groups that asked us to empathize with the angry fire, who was brought up in government housing by a single old flame working two jobs when she was knocked up by a bolt of lighting. But oh, the sparks that flew for a time!) Rightly or wrongly though, Netanyahu and his ministers are the accountable team. The shekel stops there.

On the other hand, a shark attack or a wayward bird on a scientific study are considered obvious links to the machinations of a foreign enemy. (Though seriously, if the falcon was a spy, would it really have "Tel Aviv University" on a tag on its leg? The Mossad can train a bird to fly into Saudi Arabia on a recon mission, but they aren't smart enough to keep the identifying marks off it?) When people have no responsible outlet (such as the democratic process) for their grievances, they latch on to scapegoats and conspiracies. If democracy is going to come to the Arab World, we're still in trouble if these are the people doing the voting. The democratizing process will be ugly, as it often has been.

* The Joooz, I mean, not the falcon-controlled press....

02 January 2011

Motivations, Human Nature, Christmas, and Social Science

The following essay has loads of organizational problems, I'm sure, but I've been thinking about some of this recently, and finally got a chance to put some of these thoughts on "paper." I hope that it's more-or-less clear.


Every year on the 26th of December, the church where I've attended Christmas Eve services holds a "swing" service, complete with swing versions of carols and non-traditional traditional music. It's a lot of fun, and the director of the music school that provides the swing orchestra is does a great job. They have a great soprano singing the some of the tunes, and the audience/congregation also gets a chance to sing along as well.


At the end of the service, they leave out an offering plate to help defray the school's expenses, as well as an offering plate for a Christian charity that helps poor people in Brazil. It's always a really good time, but it got me thinking about the multiple motivations we have for the things we do. Sure, the director of the music school as well as the soprano undoubtedly truly believe that they are honoring the Lord through their music, but they also derive joy from performing for a crowd -- and one that will pay them a little, to boot! Additionally, the congregation meets to worship, but we as congregants are also having a good time doing so.

The nature of voluntary action is one of complex motivations. Community bake sales to raise money for the family whose house burned down, or getting your friends together on a sunny Saturday in May to clean up a section of highway are likely relatively inefficient ways of solving these problems. Nevertheless, we continue to do them.

Some of this, it seems, may be linked to a sense of community: cleaning up the section of highway sucks when you're doing it alone, but with a handful of friends, it's exponentially more tolerable, and maybe even (I dare say) fun. The pleasure we derive from being outside on a nice day with friends, and knowing we're "doing the right thing" together helps to make our altruistic work a little less of a sacrifice (especially if someone buys us drinks that evening and puts our picture in the newspaper!) and a little more of a social outing. We're not bad as people for enjoying the publicity (and the drinks!), but we're maybe less altruistic than we were than if we were doing it alone, in the rain.

This essay by Russ Roberts (as well as the blog post here that links to this essay) started to pique my interest on these things. Our wants and desires are much easier to justify when we feel like we are doing something for some "greater good." It's not as though we are exactly selfish, but if our interests dovetail with the "right" thing to do, it undeniably facilitates our ability to do so. We like doing the right thing, especially if we personally benefit from doing so. To admit this is not to debase ourselves to animals, simply ex post rationalizing the chase after our carnal urges; rather, it demonstrates our difference from mere beasts, since we develop a code of ethics and conduct that allows us to choose the correct course. We are neither bestial, with only desires, nor angelic and altruistic. Our curse and our blessing is to thread this needle as human beings.

Our motivations, our incentives are more complex than we can grasp logically or arithmetically. One of the failures of social "science" is our inevitable inability to quantify this, and it is an error to implicitly assume that we can. In the course of studying civil organizations in this part of the world, I'm surprised by the professionalization of these organizations -- the people most involved in civil society are the ones being paid (often by governments or by the EU) to do so. Again, that's not to say that these people are "only in it for the money" (they're definitely not) but if there wasn't any money, it seems unlikely that there would be as many paid "volunteers" either. It makes it very difficult to unravel the motivations of these players as altruistic angels, or self-serving opportunists.

I remember a book from my childhood you could find in the basement in my church in Colorado called The Clown of God. It has a sort of Little Drummer Boy feel to it, about a spiritually impoverished juggler who has nothing but his colored balls and a desire to honor the Infant Jesus with a gift. So he juggles in an empty church before an altar for the Child. In the end, he discovers that the most altruistic feelings usually come in secret, and that God sees the purity or impurity of our motivations better than we do ourselves. This is why Christ instructs us, speaking in Matthew 6, to pray and donate to the poor in secret. Doing so provides a check on our bestial, acquisitive nature, and turns our moral compass back towards God. We can and should still enjoy a performance of Händel's Messiah, and it would be wrong to characterize Elvis' rendition of O Little Town of Bethlehem (to say nothing of his version of Take May Hand, Precious Lord!) as solely a profit-making enterprise of Colonel Tom Parker, but we should also recognize the twin aspects of our nature. It's unfortunately not a particularly scientific endeavor.