"This masterwork of interpretative history begins with a bold declaration: The Modern Age is the Jewish Age -- and we are all, to varying degrees, Jews.
The assertion is, of course, metaphorical. But it underscores Yuri Slezkine's provocative thesis. Not only have Jews adapted better than many other groups to living in the modern world, they have become the premiere symbol and standard of modern life everywhere.
Slezkine argues that the Jews were, in effect, among the world's first free agents. They traditionally belonged to a social and anthropological category known as "service nomads," an outsider group specializing in the delivery of goods and services. Their role, Slezkine argues, was part of a broader division of human labor between what he calls Mercurians -- entrepreneurial minorities -- and Apollonians -- food-producing majorities.
Since the dawning of the Modern Age, Mercurians have taken center stage. In fact, Slezkine argues, modernity is all about Apollonians becoming Mercurians -- urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. Since no group has been more adept at Mercurianism than the Jews, he contends, these exemplary ancients are now model moderns."
"At different times and in different places, there were tribes -- ethnic groups -- that specialized exclusively in providing services to the surrounding food-producing societies. They include Roma-Gypsies, various so-called “Travelers” or “Tinkers,” the Fuga in Ethiopia, the Sheikh Mohammadi in Afghanistan, and of course the Armenians, the Overseas Chinese, the Indians in East Africa, the Lebanese in West Africa and Latin America, and so on. I call them all “Mercurians,” as opposed to their “Apollonian” hosts.
... “Apollonian” societies, the way I use the term, are societies organized around food production, societies that consist mostly of peasants, plus various combinations of warriors and priests who appropriate peasant labor by controlling access to land or salvation.
... “Mercurians,” the way I use the term, are ethnic groups, demographically complete societies, that do not engage in food production, but live by providing services to the surrounding Apollonians.
In the modern world, Apollonians have to become more Mercurian -- more Jewish, if you will; but Apollonian values, peasant and warrior values, essentially, live on, of course. …
I distinguish between the majority of Mercurians, including Gypsies, who engage in small, non-literate pariah entrepreneurship; and those, like the Jews, who specialize, among other things, in the interpretation of written texts. With the rise of the modern world, the Gypsies have continued to ply their trade in the diminishing world of folk oral culture, while the Jews have gone on to define modernity.
In any case, the ways in which Mercurians and Apollonians regard each other are similar wherever one looks.
... The Overseas Chinese too are supposed to be clever -- too clever, perhaps. You can call on the usual anti-Semitic list: they are aloof, devious, unmanly, and so on. This is the way Apollonians describe Mercurians throughout the world.
And of course one could interpret these same qualities in a positive light. “Cunning” and “deviousness” may become “intelligence” and “a general commitment to the life of the mind.” … Mercurian views of Apollonians tend to be negative too: “soulfulness,” “courage,” and “earthiness” may become “stupidity,” “belligerence,” and “uncleanliness.”
In other words, the oppositions mind/body, intelligence/physicality, impermanence/permanence, non-belligerence/belligerence remain the same and are agreed upon by everyone involved. Everyone knows which traits are associated with which group; the difference is in the interpretation. …
One could say that Israel, and Zionism generally, is an attempt to abandon traditional Jewishness for the sake of Apollonianism with a Jewish face, as it were. …
Israel has been transformed from an attempt to get away from the ghetto into a new kind of ghetto, which is the only place you can say certain things. …
A central part of my argument is that the modern world has become universally Mercurian. Mercurianism is associated with reason, mobility, intelligence, restlessness, rootlessness, cleanliness, crossing boundaries, and cultivating people and symbols as opposed to fields and herds. We’re all supposed to be Mercurians now, and traditional Mercurians -- especially Jews -- are better at being Mercurian than anyone else."
"Most of Gellner's writing (discusses) the "great hump" or "great ditch", which divides the modern world from pre-modern civilizations.-- Links are mine, and I've added a paragraph break not in Shalizi's original -- ed.
On the far side of the ditch from us lies Agraria, a realm of "agro-literate polities" subject to "the tyranny of kings or cousins (or both)", consisting mostly of highly isolated, custom-bound, illiterate rural producers with magical, ritualistic, socially-oriented religions, dominated and exploited by "the red and the black," expert coercers and literate classes practicing various technically ineffective, self-confirming, meaningful or enchanted forms of cognition, which tended more towards universalism, rule-boundedness and scripturalism than did the folk-cults.
Those of us on this side of the ditch have "escaped from the idiocy of rural life" (a phrase he cheerfully took from Marx) through a lucky accident, a "miracle". Sometime about three or four hundred years ago, in an otherwise none-too-promising penninsula of Asia, circumstances conspired to bring forth a kind of cognition which was cumulative, technically effective, and of no value as either a social cement or an emotional comfort --- science .... This was combined with classes of people who were more interested in producing wealth (cf. Max Weber, of course, The Protestant Ethic and the 'Spirit' of Capitalism ) than in either theological or political disputes, and polities which, in exchange for tax revenue, were willing to let them alone. Wealth accumulated, and accumulated faster as technological progress became regular and accelerating; production became dominant (an unusual condition ... ). Socially, these societies are (at least relative to their predecessors) liberal, permissive, rich, powerful, secularized, engaged in "single-stranded" activities (e.g., in buying food we worry about taste and cost, not marriage alliances or the need not to alienate our grocer lest he not stand with us in the next feud), peaceful, atomized, economically unstable and culturally homogenous."
"I have not the slightest doubt that I am a conservative by thought, feeling and instinct, yet on a lot of the issues that define American conservatism, I barely move the needle from the zero mark on the dial. I have guns but only fire them down at the range once a month, for the satisfaction of it, and to develop confidence in handling them. I have never hunted with guns. I am only feebly religious — feebly episcopalian, in fact, which is feebleness squared! (In October of 2006, Derbyshire announced that he had abandoned Christianity altogether and now considered himself a Mysterian and a Deist.) Homosexuality? I don’t like it, and have got myself in a lot of trouble for saying so rather bluntly, but I wouldn’t criminalize it. Abortion? Pretty much the same. Creationism? Sorry, I think it’s pseudoscience. I’m fine with evolution.The links "Mysterian" and "rather bluntly" are Derbyshire's; the others are mine -- ed.
So — what kind of conservative am I? Taking a cue from my dinner-table accuser, I think the answer is: I’m a metropolitan conservative. Of all the ways humanity can be divided into two distinct subspecies, one of the oldest and most persistent is the metropolitan-provincial divide. The contrast between the busy sophistication of the metropolis and the relaxed simplicity of the provinces goes way back in human history, at least as far back as Greek comedy. ...
I think that there is more involved than just accidents of location. Most of us, in temperament and outlook, are either metropolitan or provincial, either blue or red. I myself was raised in a small provincial town, but I have spent most of my adult life in big cities or their shadows, and have a mostly metropolitan cast of mind. I dislike modern American liberalism very much, and believe it to be poisonous and destructive; yet I am at ease in a roomful of New York liberals in a way that, to be truthful about it, I am not in a gathering of red-state evangelicals. Setting aside our actual opinions about this, that or the other, I am aware that in the first gathering I am among people with whom I have, at some level, a shared outlook; and in the second gathering, not."
|
Apollonian
rural / pre-urban "food producing" / agricultural pre-Enlightenment pre-modern xenophobic non-mobile / stay-at-home illiteracy general inarticulate or not emphasizing articulateness intellectually simple or straightforward not physically fastidious occupationally inflexible not emphasizing reason not emphasizing intelligence lack of restlessness rootedness not emphasizing cleanliness not crossing boundaries (Not sure if this refers to physical or social boundaries) emphasizing cultivating fields and herds rather than people and symbols highly isolated custom-bound magical, ritualistic, socially-oriented religions dominated and exploited by expert coercers and literate classes technically ineffective, self-confirming, meaningful or enchanted forms of cognition tending towards universalism, rule-boundedness and scripturalism pre-, non-, or anti- scientific pre-, non-, or anti- capitalistic (in the formal or technical sense, not just "I'll swap you a basket of corn for a basket of fish") impermissive, intolerant of variation or "difference" "subsistence level" lacking in political power not secularized activities governed by social relationships subject to interpersonal violence and feuds highly social economically stable culturally inhomogenous. And very broadly Conservatism |
Mercurian
urban "non-food-producing" / non-agricultural post-Enlightenment "modernist" xenophilic mobile generally literate articulate intellectually intricate physically fastidious occupationally flexible reason intelligence restlessness rootlessness cleanliness crossing boundaries (Not sure if this refers to physical or social boundaries) cultivating people and symbols as opposed to fields and herds. less isolated less custom-bound beliefs less magical, ritualistic, and/or socially-oriented reduced domination and exploitation by expert coercers and literate classes increase in effective forms of cognition reduction in universalism, rule-boundedness and scripturalism science capitalism (in the formal or technical sense, not just "I'll swap you a basket of corn for a basket of fish") permissive, tolerant of variation and "difference" rich politically powerful secularized engaged in "single-stranded" activities "peaceful" - reduction in interpersonal violence and feuds atomized economically unstable culturally homogenous And very broadly Liberalism |
"The feelings of alienation, being an outsider, and knowing that your life is subject to forces beyond your control, as well as a sense of dogged survival, frequently associated with the Jewish sensibility and which all frequently crop up in Kafka's work would prove to be among the most widespread and common feelings among people of all religions and races in the uncertain 20th century. In a very real sense, Jewish sentiments have been made universal, and Kafka speaks to these feelings from the perspective of both a Jew and as a member of humanity in general."
I'm just beginning to study Traditionalism aka the Traditional School. It is not unusual for Traditionalists to be anti-Semites. It is interesting to note that the Traditionalist values are Apollonian values, while the "Jewish" values are Mercurian ones. Perhaps Traditionalist anti-Semitism is really anti-Mercurianism, targetted at the Jews as the obvious exemplar.
"Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos (1983)
True therapy for the therapeutic age. Percy shows that the best human life is being at home with our homelessness, not to mention that modern science, properly understood, need not have atheistic and materialist implications."
"Here's how Leo Rosten translates the Yiddish word (bulvan), which Rosten says is also spelled "bulvon": 'a gross, thick-headed, thick-skinned oaf. . . . No English word carries quite the sneer of bulvon, or quite the implicit devaluation of brute strength. . . . A bulvon has no sensitivity, no insight, no spiritual graces.' ...
(Kirk) Douglas' trick was showing us the best qualities of a bulvan, the stoic endurance of physical pain, as well a physical man's exuberance, lustiness, and strutting intensity."
"The key phrase in this book is “market-dominant minority.” The Chinese of the Philippines (and of Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, and several other places) are a market-dominant minority. So, though for considerably different reasons, are the whites of southern Africa, the Indians of East Africa, the Lebanese of West Africa, and the Eritreans of Ethiopia; so are the tall, pale-skinned elites of Latin America (except for those few countries whose indigenes were completely exterminated by the European conquerors). So were the Slovenes and Croatians of Yugoslavia, the Tutsi of Rwanda, the Jews of Weimar Germany....
Prof. Chua (even) develops a theory of anti-Americanism based on the concept of us as a market-dominant minority in the world at large. ...
(There is a) downside of being a market-dominant minority. It is astonishing, reading Prof. Chua’s case studies, how courageous and resilient some of these entrepreneurial minorities are. Landing in a strange country, they open little stores or set off alone into the bush as peddlers. After decades of hardship and risk, they attain wealth and, via crony capitalism or imperial patronage, some measure of power. Then comes the democratic backlash. They are killed and raped, their stores are burned, the survivors flee. Then, a year or two later, they are back — trading, peddling, dealing, bargaining, painstakingly building up again what was burned down. Speaking as a person with no commercial abilities whatsoever, I am in awe of these market-dominant minorities. And yet, of course, on the other hand, speaking as a person with no commercial abilities whatsoever, I find it all too easy to understand the resentments that build up against them among “sons of the soil.” Amy Chua gives a very telling quote from one of the latter, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia: ''If we don’t know how to work well or do business, at least we know how to fight well!' (Author’s italics.)"