Creative Senior Moments Read online

  Every morning for 16 years, it was the first thing I heard. I was touched later to find the same quote in the private papers of Juliette Gordon Law, who founded the Girl Scouts. It is very typical of a Victorian education.

  I bet that if anybody had bothered to ask me how I felt, and if anybody had told Angelina that feeling is not what life is about, both Angelina and me would have become better persons.

  But it is not just a question of what kind of parents you have, it is mainly a question of culture. Victorian times were wary of expressing feelings except in the most conventional romanticism. European culture stayed like that a long time, American culture evolved faster due to several factors such as a very strong belief in psychology.

  I used to think that the US had a larger proportion of psychologists than any other country, but it is just not true: France and the US both have about one psychologist for 1500 people. France just does not have as many people telling you that confession is good for the soul, that you feel better when you talk or that you should let it all hang out. Maybe it is the result of just another Dallas effect.

  Sitcoms and soap operas have something in common: actors got to talk on the same sofa for several years, which threatens to be boring, so the least they can do is to “express their feelings.” Any restraint, and the show goes down the drain. So, since the 1950s, generations of Americans got used to these intimate spectacles of hate, love and pain where everybody suffers at the top of their lungs.

  In the 1980s, these shows came to Europe where they had two different effects. One, everybody thinks that expressing your feelings is the ultimate way of life. Nowadays, if you do not burst in violent tears, you are going to be suspect of a crime anywhere you go.

  Case in point. “The husband did it: he did not show any emotion.”

  Two: everybody, especially in Eastern countries, started thinking that every American lived like in Dallas, with a great mansion, expensive furniture and not much work to do. Dallas was such a success abroad that I remember being in a hospital in France where they changed the meal’s hour so that everybody could watch the show. It probably was the only major change that they had made in 200 years.

  I remember Polish miners saying that they thought they were OK until they saw Dallas and realized how well people lived in the US.

  They convinced me that Dallas, more than President Reagan’s efforts or the CIA plots ... it is Dallas that broke down the Wall.

  Politicians

  Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many to appointment by the corrupt few. G.B. Shaw

  If you are not interested in politics, it is too bad, because everything is decided without you. If you are into politics, you should not vent your frustrations by saying that “President Bush is stupid” or “President Bush should go to jail” or that “Mrs. Clinton got away with murder” or that “President Obama is not an American.” Such comments create young little fascists around you, and it is the last thing we all need. At the 2008 election, there were at least ten books on each side accusing the other of lying. I see the same books with a new cover in 2012. Who reads that stuff? Older fascists?

  If you need to vent your party’s frustration, do it in the shower.

  Yes, democracy comes with frustrating moments. But we cannot expect our children to respect our values if one half of the population is always demonizing the other.

  While Republicans and Democrats play tough games with each other, another society emerges, with hundreds of thousands of gang members, reminding me of the decadence of Rome: “About 20,000 violent street gangs, motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs with approximately 1 million members are criminally active in the U.S. today. Many are sophisticated and well organized; all use violence to control neighborhoods and boost their illegal money-making activities, which include drug trafficking, robbery, theft, fraud, extortion, prostitution rings, and gun trafficking.” (Annual Conference of Mayors in Chicago, June 10, 2006.)

  We have to keep in mind who the real enemy is.

  Democracy

  Genetics of Democracy

  Have you noticed that in any democratic country, votes pro and against are always so close to 50%? It is true most of the time, except when there is war or exceptional (good or bad) economic growth. Take the presidential elections in the USA after WWII. We will look at the popular vote, not at the results of the Electoral College. Only in five out of sixteen elections, the difference between popular votes was greater than 10%. The French, Belgians and Germans always had pretty close elections too, in terms of popular votes. However, these countries have seen big constitutional changes during the last 50 years, so we cannot compare the whole series. We can still look at Great Britain. The two major parties are always close: only three cases exceed 10% difference. Note that the election of the Prime Minister vs. the election of the US President are very different processes.

  In fact, the chances for the conservatives or the progressives to win are basically identical everywhere: most of the time, each party starts with 40% and fights for 10% more in any democratic country. Why is that? If, as some people think, the left wing (democrats or labor) represent the interests of the lower classes (i.e. blue collars compared to white collars, or poor and middle classes compared to the rich) and the right wing (republicans or conservatives) represent the opposite, then the left would always win, because we always got more poor people than rich people. But the votes never coincide with the social structure. This is important, because if we did not have two large groups attached to very different ideas, there would be no democracy: there would be no possibility to change.

  ***

  My guess is that the way we think in political matters is basically genetic. I guess that the chances of surviving if you are a conservative (for instance you are not going to try a new kind of mushroom even if you are starving, so you won’t be poisoned, but you might not survive) are equal to your chances of surviving if you are prone to change (for instance you are going to try these new mushrooms no matter what, so you will not starve, but you might get poisoned). After a long period of evolution, we end up with two major groups; one with set values, one who is ready for new adventures. The way politicians go about winning might therefore be childish and inefficient.

  Landslide votes are complex and cannot be explained by just one variable, be it war time of some mix of economic factors. The notes in the following tables are therefore not “explanations,” just a brief reminder of what was going on. Although a model “bread and peace” can explain a few elections, the voters’ mind remains too complex to predict: we are still better at explaining the past than the future (see for instance Hibbs, Public choice society, 2012).

  Table 1US Presidency, popular votes

  Table 2 United Kingdom general elections

  Of course I am not alone playing with this idea, see for instance in Behav. Genet. 2007, The genetics of voting: An Australian twin study by P.K. Hatemi et al.

  Stability

  Progress and Stability work hand in hand

  This really is such a platitude that we forget it all the time: there is no progress without stability. Politicians hate the idea because it involves longer terms than their reelection. So, after giving it lip service, they promptly turn their back to the truism. It is one of the greatest weaknesses of democracies: their vision never exceeds the next election. On the other hand, there is no other system allowing you to get rid of corruption, which is the weakness of non-democratic regimes.

  Corruption does not only affect how the government money is used and distributed, it paralyzes the lives of everybody. I remember a time when corruption was so high in Turkey (in the 1960s) that people who wanted to obtain their own passport had to pay bribes equivalent to several months of salary to get it. Corruption is high enough in Belgium that it affects the number of car accidents. It is the thesis of the author of Traffic: if people know that there is corruption and do not trust the system, they do not obey the law: corruption is the
n “indicative of a larger lack of faith in the law.” From Traffic: why we drive the way we do, by Tom Vanderbilt, 2008, p. 235

  When the Berlin Wall fell, everybody rushed in to do business with the new “free” Eastern countries, and our democratic countries did not pay attention to the rampant corruption left by the communist regimes. One generation later, everybody is still paying the consequences.

  ***

  The last time I changed my mind about politics was when we started having all these difficulties in Iraq. I heard on TV and on PBS radio the declarations of many important people who came back from Iraq and said: “We did not know whom we could trust.” Well, if you do not know whom to trust, you just occupy the country, but it is not what we came to do.

  I thought a lot about this. I had always resented General McArthur for allowing Japan’s Emperor Hirohito to stay in power and for keeping most of the old superior administration – all these guys were criminals and should have been punished.

  I now realize that if there is a void of political and administrative power, there is also chaos. I do admit that I was wrong about McArthur - reluctantly, very very reluctantly, but I admit it.

  Corruption

  I love Walmart. Sure enough, for its prices, but also because of the jobs it produces. You should have seen the opening week of the last Walmart here in Savannah: every employee was smiling. Many of the new employees had been looking for a job for a long time. I liked these smiles: I knew what they meant. I also liked the fact that Walmart carried the products of a nearby Alabama delicatessen. Their products were not sold here in summer because that small producer could not afford to buy refrigerated trucks. Now they got the strength of Walmart behind them. Good for them.

  What I am less fond of is Walmart CEO Mike Duke. He kept the mentality of his mentors.

  During the Cold War, bribery was a way of life, the cost of doing business abroad. I still remember how Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was led to abdicate after her husband accepted a million-dollar-bribe from the Lockheed Corporation. The minds were starting to change, not only in the US, but in many countries, realizing that paying bribes abroad was counter-productive. For Pete’s sake, even the Russians signed the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention! Lobbying to water down our anti-bribery legislation is a sign of old age, and I’m polite about this (see details in the Washington Post).

  The same Mike Duke, I heard, refused to follow the politics of McDonald who fights the terrible conditions met by pregnant pigs. There is no need to torture pigs, and the fight serves McDonald image. Burger King has similar pledges. See, the end of the Cold War: no bribery, cage free: signs of progress. Wake up, Walmart! Don’t linger in past ideologies!

  Nowadays, you need not only to sell cheap, you need an image. The image of Duke-Walmart is terrible.

  Time for fresh air.

  History

  Greed, Intolerance, Fear and Laziness

  I have been lied to. Because I was born in 1940, all I learned about history was divided into two philosophies. On the right, teachers concentrated on battles, heroes and kings. On the left, teachers tried to show some economic great design, where “the Establishment was oppressing the Masses.” The end result of any conflict depended on the particular little philosophical church of each professor; it had nothing to do with facts. It was a time, in the 1950s in Europe, where “historical materialism” was used as often as we use “political correctness” nowadays, and with the same hypocrisy. It polarized politicians, so our poor professors tried to give us the best of both visions.

  I was easily irritated as a child: I decided that I would not study history at all.

  If there was a control, I always wrote the same answer, saying that the efforts for peace of the people surrounding the kings or the tyrant were bound to fail. The population was heavily taxed and the economy was at an all time low. Misery was so great that there was unrest, especially at the border and in the rich plains (doesn’t every country enjoy at least one rich plain? If they don’t, these countries are not mentioned in textbooks.) The question could be about the Second Empire in Egypt, France under Louis XIV, or the birth of the United States. It did not matter to me, I always gave the same answer, and I always passed with honors. I think that my Professors appreciated that I looked as if I had thought this by myself: nobody ever remembered that I always gave the same answer no matter what. Ha! Fifty years later in Savannah, GA, I still find the same nonsense in textbooks, like the war of 1914-1918 is a consequence of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian Empire. Ha! We create a new generation of Americans that will be powerless at understanding the world.

  In the meantime, I researched what every little girl wants to know: things like what was the shape of Cleopatra’s nose, why Agnes Sorel, the mistress of a king of France, was always represented with one nude breast. And I had a fascination for false money, so I tried to check it in every period. If the professors were unwilling to amuse me, the least I could do was to make time to amuse myself.

  ***

  Consequently, when I was 20 years old, I was full of hopes for the world and full of illusions and I did not understand what makes kingdoms rise and fall. For example, I dutifully marched against colonialism, for the independence of African countries and their conquest of democracy. In the 1960s, believe me, that was quite a lot of marching. And what happened? Millions and millions of deaths happened, famine, rapes and the economy spiraling down everywhere in Africa. The future African rulers were educated in a panic in Paris, Brussels and London, so I came to know a number of them. Fifteen years later, practically all of them had met a violent death, the first generation of African intellectuals was wiped out. Am I saying that colonies were great? Of course not, it was time for these countries to forge their independence. But all these democratic marchings left me with the impression that what happened later was all my fault, the fault of people with good intentions who were never told how the world really ticks, never told that what dominates history is greed, intolerance, fear and laziness.

  You are allowed to laugh at the credulity of my generation, if I can remind you that your generation did exactly the same stupid mistake in 1989. Remember the Berlin Wall? How we were all going to be friends and there would be no more wars? We were going to teach the Russians the benefits of a free economy; I listened to excited talks for a whole week, nobody said a word about stability, about the legal system, about how to protect the rights of investors. It was like: “Let us do business together, let us teach free market economy to the ex-USSR,” as if free markets were not essentially depending on stability, as if corruption, the main evil of dictatorships, did not count any more. Result: most of that new economy is driven by the mafia and the world is more dangerous than ever. It is the Russian mafia that has been, in the meantime, teaching us a thing or two. And as anybody could have cared to predict, at the end of the day, all the deaths in Yugoslavia came from our illusions.

  I do remember the fall of the Berlin Wall with bitterness, because in the midst of all that joy, my mother was on her deathbed. One of the last things she said was: “It is a mistake, the Germans will come back.” All her life had been forged by two world wars and German invasions. You could not expect her to rejoice at the fall of the Wall, which had been in her mind not a symbol of communism - like it was for most Americans - but a handy protection against the next Prussian invasion.

  Case in point.

  You may think that greed, intolerance and fear explain all wars; it is a truism. Find me a textbook that says it outright. In the history of civilization, we make war because the gods are with us: Gott mit uns and God bless America are the descendants of the wars of Mesopotamia, justified when you won because the gods were with you: “In accordance with the ideological conception of war that existed in the ancient Near East, the unachieved or incomplete success of a military enterprise demonstrated that divine support for it was lacking.” (in: Hittites studies in honor of Harry A. Hoffner Jr, 2003; in a
chapter by Stefano di Martino and Fiorella Imparati: “More on the so-called Puhanu chronicle.”)

  ***

  Later on, the warmongers got smarter and learned to call for a victory even when they lost: at the time of the battle of Qadesh between Ramses II and the Hittites, both sides claimed victory. Napoleon did that in Egypt; his army met defeat after defeat, but he went home claiming victory with such confidence that when I was a kid, and probably still nowadays, French textbooks claimed that the campaign was victorious.

  Two thousand years ago, Romans claimed that they were bringing around the Pax Romana. It is a trick we used since then: pretend that you come to bring peace! Indeed, when I was in school in the 1950s, all battles in Africa were about bringing civilization and Christianity to poor retarded populations. Nowadays, it is all about defending American interests. We impose on our children visions of the world that have nothing to do with the coarse realities of life, and we do it generation after generation after generation, ever since writing has existed. How cool is that?

  Laziness

  Laziness is an interesting point because it works as a double edge sword. On one hand, laziness brings about creativity and creativity makes better weapons. If we were not lazy, the wheel would never have been invented. On the other hand, it is tempting to believe that many civilizations disappear when they get lazy and use slavery and cheap foreign hands to do the hard jobs, what nowadays we call “outsourcing.” Of course, there is no way to demonstrate this, as empires usually crumble under an accumulation of factors, but maybe outsourcing is an early sign of decline as it has been throughout history.

  Attila Returns

  This was in France. We had an exchange student from Hungary and I noticed she was squirming when a black student sat next to her. So after the lecture, I went to her and made small talk, and asked her if she was afraid of black people.