Timothy Birdnow

Here is an interesting essay. It explains how Catholicism made the West completely dominant in world affairs.

From the American Conservative:

"Schultz and his team drew on 20 of these cross-cultural experiments (including several "natural” experiments, such as the likelihood that a diplomat at the U.N. from a given country would call on diplomatic immunity to get out of a parking ticket) to sketch a psychological profile of the Western mind. They found that on average, Westerners are more individualistic, more trusting of strangers and public institutions, more likely to donate anonymously, less concerned with the opinions and judgments of their peers, less likely to cheat or bend rules (especially for the sake of friends and relatives), and far less tolerant of nepotism than those from other parts of the world.

This will come as little surprise to anyone who has lived both in and outside the West. It also won’t shock psychologists, who have even invented an acronym to label this unique psychological type: "W.E.I.R.D.”—Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Developed. But in contrast to past research, which tended to emphasize the gap between Europe and the rest of the globe, Schultz and his team have focused their attention on differences within Europe itself. They have found that WEIRDness is not uniform across Europe. Some European populations are far WEIRDer than others. What explains this variation in WEIRD psychology? Schultz provides a simple answer: the date at which a region first fell under the influence of the Catholic Church. To predict how civic-minded, individualist, and trusting a population is today, you need only check whether a Catholic bishopric had been established there by the 7th century AD." End exerpt.

This is a fascinating read; be sure to read the entire article.

The article discusses the concept of extended family and how that is a pre-Western concept. It was the Catholic Church that worked to break the clannishness of social systems:

"Family structure is the link that connects Catholicism to social trust. Most of us are not inclined to think deeply about this. If you are an American, the fact that your kids will leave their childhood home when they grow up to establish their own households is utterly banal. The expectation that your son will only be married to one wife at a time, or that your daughter will not consider marrying her cousin, is so obvious that it is rarely articulated. Yet these commonsense assumptions are not human universals. Most traditional cultures expected their sons and daughters to continue living on their parents’ estate after marriage. In imperial China, for example, it was common practice for all of a family’s sons, as well as its wives, children, and concubines, to live together with their father and mother in one giant community until both parents had passed away (daughters were sent to live with the in-laws). Likewise, cultures that accept polygamous marriage are far more common than those that prohibit it. From the Western point of view, even odder is a marriage practice common to many cultures—like most in the modern Middle East—where parents eagerly arrange marriages between their nephews and daughters.

Marriage practices like these are not just cultural trivia. Schultz’s research advances the claim that these differences have decided the fate of entire civilizations. Those who marry within their families, marry more than one wife, and live together in large communities of extended kin learn from an early age that they are embedded in powerful networks of extended relations. Varied terms are used to describe these networks: among the Romans, they were known as gen; among the Scottish, clans; among the Norse, lines; in Arabia, tribes; in China, lineages; in Sicily, cosca. These kin-groups are the central organizing unit of their societies. A clansman in need turns first to kinsmen for succor and relief. A clansman wronged turns first to kinsmen for revenge. To live in a clan is to equate the family honor with personal interest. These societies put the family before the man and the community behind the clan. Healthy civic life is hard to sustain in such a restricted social world. There simply is no sense of shared civic identity that can supersede the claims of private family interests. In this respect, ancient Rome and modern Warizstan have more in common than either does with the modern West.

For this, Westerners have the Catholic Church to thank. In the early days of Europe’s darkest age, the Church waged a tireless war against the clans of Western Europe. The first step was broadening the doctrinal definition of incest to include marriage to almost all kin relations. Starting with the Synod of Agde in 517 AD, more than 15 synods on the subject were held in France, Spain, and Northern Italy over two centuries."

End excerpt.

And this touches on a point I made at American Thinker many years ago:

"The rulers of Byzantium and the Middle East also relied on religious leaders as sources of political legitimacy. What separates the Catholic experience from its Orthodox and Islamic counterparts was the increasingly weak influence Catholic leaders had on secular leaders as the Middle Ages came to a close. The waning authority of the Church had powerful economic effects. In Byzantium, the Arab kingdoms, and the Ottoman Empire, religious leaders retained more than enough political power to frustrate financial and technological innovations that threatened to violate religious doctrines or subvert their cultural authority. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt themselves to unwelcome changes."

End excerpt.

In other words, the division between Church and State created a much more liberated type of social order, one that emphasized the rights and responsibilities of the individuals. There was no Oriental despotism as in the Islamic World and at the same time the Church and state imposed a type of control over the clan and family that was not seen in less organized societies. In other words, both the tribe and the Imperium were equally unworkable under the sysstem of shared power.

All of our material benefits, including our capitalist system, stem from this dichotomy. Capitalism was a natural outgrowth of a system where Caesar and the Priests were competitors; it is a system that maximizes the unfettered actions of individuals in their own interests. You wouldn't have that in any other system, because invariably the State sees a benefit in controlling economic activity.

But now we are throwing all this away. Neo-socialism, atheism, the tribal nature of modern "intersectionalism", etc. are restoring the ancient ways of doing things. In the end we should not be surprised if we return to the bad old days.

Anyway, read the whole article.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:15 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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