The Reticulator

Do we really want to bring back polytheism? Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley College prefers that to the one true God of monotheistic religions, in this LA Times article: Bring back the Greek gods : Mere mortals had a better life when more than one ruler presided from on high.

She is described as “professor emerita” so presumably she wasn’t born yesterday. But judging by the article, at least, she shows no awareness of things that need to be part of this discussion, and at the same time has set up some sort of strawman monotheism to knock down.

• What about Hitler-Nazi paganism? Those weren’t Greek gods, exactly, but Lefkowitz is claiming that polytheism is a lot more wonderful than monotheism.
• She writes approvingly: “Zeus, the ruler of the gods, retained his power by using his intelligence along with superior force.” Well, if she likes a God who doesn’t force himself on people, perhaps she needs to read about the self-abnegating god of the Christmas and Good Friday stories.
• She writes: “The existence of many different gods also offers a more plausible account than monotheism of the presence of evil and confusion in the world?” It does? It offers a plausible account of conflict (confusion) but if you’re going to recognize that such a thing as evil exists, you need a standard by which to say it’s evil, and that suggests monotheism more polytheism. In polytheism, who is to say that evil is evil? It’s just another side that’s opposed to your side.
• She writes: “The separation between humankind and the gods made it possible for humans to complain to the gods without the guilt or fear of reprisal the deity of the Old Testament inspired.” Huh? The knock against the transcendant god of Christian and Jewish monotheism is usually that it’s so separate from humans. So now transcendance means gods and people are buddies who get together to debate? But more seriously, how polytheistic gods can be more transcendant than a monotheistic god suggests to me that the good professor has not spent her many years thinking very hard about this issue, or reading much about it. And maybe she should read the story of Jacob, in which a human is actually praised for wrestling with god. A wrestling match among polythestic opponents is just a rumble, but a wrestling match between humans and god is an event of consequence.

Not that I’m your go-to guy for information on these topics. But Lefkowitz certainly is not. She raises some questions worth talking about, but she needs to dig a lot deeper before she starts presenting answers.

George Will, in his 22-October Newsweek article, made a good analysis of the cost-benefit of doing something about global warming. His article is as usual, educational. He compares the global warming zealots with Bush on Iraq:

Zealots say fighting global warming is a moral imperative, so cost-benefit analyses are immoral. Like our Manichaean president, they have a simple fixation: Are you with us or not?

I hadn’t thought of that one, although I do often mention how the nationalized health care zealots act from same hubris as George W Bush on Iraq.

But I have a nit to pick with Mr. Will. It’s in this section where he explains how if we really want to save lives, there is something we can do: Institute a 5 mph speed limit. (He doesn’t mention that a 5 mph speed limit would also reduce transportation fuel consumption.)

Recent loopiness about warming has ranged from the idiotic (an academic study that “associated” warming with increased Italian suicide rates) to the comic (London demonstrators chanting, “What do we want? Carbon taxes! When do we want them? Now!”). Well, you want dramatic effects now? We can eliminate what the World Health Organization says will be, by 2020, second only to heart disease as the world’s leading cause of death.

The cause is traffic accidents. The surefire cure is speed limits of 5mph. In 2008 alone, that would save 1.2 million lives and $500 billion in damages, disproportionately in the Third World, which will be hardest hit by increasing traffic carnage. But a world moving at 5mph would be, over the years, uncountable trillions of dollars poorer, which would cost some huge multiple of 1.2 million lives through forgone nutrition, education, infrastructure—e.g., clean water—medicine, research, etc.

The costs of such global slowing would be the medievalization of the world, so the world accepts the costs of velocity.

Now I can’t say I favor the idea of a 5 mph limit. That speed is getting dangerously close to the minimum I need just to stay upright on my bicycle. But I do favor some policies that would slow down the world’s personal transportation system, e.g. a substantial tax on fossil fuels (to be offset, of course, by countervailing tax cuts elsewhere). And Will is right, even if he exaggerates, about what that would cost us. So I would not favor something quite like what Will is mocking.

But that’s not the nit. The nit is that word “medievalization.” I don’t think these changes, whether in the extreme form held up to ridicule by Mr. Will or in more modest forms, would necessarily have to result in medievalization. He has picked the wrong word.

The medieval system was governed by a federated system of personal relationships rather than market relationships. It was a world of institutionalized personal loyalty and obligation rather than fee-paid-for-services-rendered.

A world with a slowed-down transportation system might be a more federated world, in both commerce and politics. It might be less Walmartized. People would shop more at local mom and pop stores rather than at distant shopping centers. People would work and entertain themselves closer than home, and local institutions might become more important at the expense of far-off celebrityland (Hollywood, Washington D.C.). So there would be changes — not all of which we would be able to predict. (Though I predict that central planners who think they can predict everything might have their influence diminished.)

But those changes would not need to be accompanied by a change to a system of lord-vassal relationships and fixed societal roles. Medievalization? It could just as easily result in LESS medievalization and MORE free market.