“The Cultural Transplant” by Garett Jones

Jones’ thesis, in a nutshell, is “immigration, to a large degree, creates a culture transplant, making the places that migrants go to a lot like the places they left.” In other words, assimilation is overstated and cultural transmission works in both directions.

This short book is filled with data, charts, and citations of various academic research. As Jones is quick to point out, not all cultural attributes are equally important for a country’s economic success. One that matters is the degree of trust within a community. He cites a study that found, “current trust attitudes back in the ancestral homeland did a very good job predicting trust attitudes of Americans…. Forty-six percent of the home-country attitude toward trust survived…. Looking only at those fourth-generation immigrants, people whose great-great-grandparents were the most recent ancestors to live their full lives overseas… [the authors found] the same 46 percent persistence.” Trust attitudes are sticky and culturally determinant. “Some attitudes from the ancestral country get transplanted to the second generation, and some don’t. But among the attitudes that substantially survive migration, many matter for the wealth of nations: savings rates, views on trust, and views toward government regulation and personal responsibility.”

Another focus of Jones’ book is Deep Roots research, the idea that culture is so sticky that you can tell a lot from a peoples, on average, by looking at their distant ancestors. This is a theory that claims that lineage, and not geography, matters most. “For both State History and for Agricultural History, migration-adjusted scores are twice as good as migration-unadjusted scores for predicting a nation’s prosperity in 2000…. If you’re trying to guess a nation’s income per person in 2002, the migration-adjusted tech measure handily beats the migration-unadjusted measure. The relationship is always at least twice as strong, and the year 1500 migration-adjusted tech measure explains well over half of all cross-country income differences today.” So, the traits that matter most for predicting contemporary economic success are how far back legible state formation occurred, when agriculture started, and, foremost, the degree of technological proficiency and innovation within a community by the year 1500. Jones is quick to add, “The key trait we’re interested in is always the comparison between the migration-adjusted scores and the migration-unadjusted scores…. Cultural transplant theory predicts stronger migration-adjusted relationships.”

After many more cross-country comparisons, Jones digs deeper with a case-study of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. “Outside China, every country with a majority that’s of Chinese descent is strongly capitalist, strongly market oriented, and prosperous: Taiwan, Singapore, tiny Macau, and Hong Kong…. China is, by far, the world’s poorest majority-Chinese country…. Taiwan, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong—those four Chinese-majority countries appear to be grafting China’s Deep Roots of prosperity, China’s high SAT [State-formation, Agriculture, Tech] scores from 1500, China’s legacy of good governance and competent bureaucracy, and China’s legacy of Confucian culture onto multiple lands…. All are among the top 10 percent of richest countries per person; all have higher average incomes per person than Australia or Canada or France. And none have natural resources to thank for their prosperity. Their best geographic feature is excellent access to the ocean.” Furthermore, Jones brings in the rest of the Chinese diaspora, “Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines—people from China moved to all these nations, usually thinking they’d move back. But they often ended up staying, though typically keeping up some degree of Chinese cultural practices and retaining the Chinese language…. And on average, first-, second-, and third-generation Chinese immigrants wound up much richer, more prosperous, and better educated than the indigenous populations in the countries they moved to…. Across Southeast Asia, there’s a strong relationship between the Chinese share of the population and current prosperity.”

Finally, Jones admits to what the research has yet to figure out. “We know pretty clearly that culture persists and that culture substantially survives migration, but we really don’t know exactly why it persists.” Nonetheless, he concludes, “My most important claim—that culture persists and, to a substantial degree, survives the process of migration—is backed up by the types of evidence that have a lot in common with good experiments. Since 1500 people have moved around the world, and they’ve tended to carry much, often most, of their economic heritage with them from their old countries…. Looking at shorter time horizons, the second-, third-, and even fourth-generation descendants of immigrants around the world today hold political and social attitudes a lot like those in the countries their ancestors came from long, long ago…. On average, migrants make the places they move to a lot like the places they left…. If a country wants prosperity and peace over the next century, it’s prudent to choose an immigration policy that raises its Tech History score; that imports cultural attitudes that are friendly to competent governance, markets, and individualism; and that gives some attention—but nowhere close to overwhelming attention—to the risks that often accompany greater cultural and ethnic diversity.”

“The Idiot” by Elif Batuman

Batuman’s turn at auto-fiction is lightly amusing with academic flourishes peppered throughout. The plot details the narrator, Selin’s, first year at Harvard. She is a typical freshman. “I was thinking about the structural equivalences between a tissue box and a book: both consisted of slips of white paper in a cardboard case; yet—and this was ironic—there was very little functional equivalence, especially if the book wasn’t yours. These were the kinds of things I thought about all the time, even though they were neither pleasant nor useful. I had no idea what you were supposed to be thinking about.”

Much of the novel focuses on Selin’s complicated relationship with a senior boy from her Russian class, Ivan, with whom she has fallen in love. “I wanted to write back right away, but he had waited a whole day, so I knew I had to wait at least that long.” Her dorm-mate, Svetlana, is always giving out advice, “I get that you despise convention, but you shouldn’t let it get to the point that you’re incapable of saying, ‘Fine, thanks,’ just because it isn’t an original, brilliant utterance. You can’t be unconventional in every aspect of life. People will get the wrong idea.”

Selin visits a campus shrink for more advice. “I told him my theory. Most people, the minute they met you, were sizing you up for some competition for resources. It was as if everyone lived in fear of a shipwreck, where only so many people would fit on the lifeboat, and they were constantly trying to stake out their property and identify dispensable people—people they could get rid of.” Through the challenges of her first year, she also lives by her own heuristics. “My policy at the time was that, when confronted by two courses of action, one should always choose the less conservative and more generous.” She often philosophizes to herself. “There were lots of ways things could have turned out, and you had to memorize the particular one that was real. Or . . . did you? Was there only one way the world could have turned out? If you were smart enough, could you deduce it? A tiny part of me held out the hope that you could.”

Selin ends up spending the summer teaching English in Hungary, primarily because Ivan is from Budapest. Ivan also philosophizes, in his own way. He also really likes Dostoevsky and is a fan of Raskolnikov, “What’s so bad, practically, about killing an old woman who nobody likes? Personally, that old woman makes me really mad. I see women like that on the train all the time. They always expect you to give them your seat. Sometimes I’m reading, and it really makes me mad that I have to give her my seat so she can just sit there and think nothing.” Selin wonders how much of Ivan’s personality is tied in with the Hungarian national character. “How did you separate where someone was from, from who they were?” She is young, in love for the first time, and trying to figure it all out. “But, to me, nineteen still felt old and somehow alien to who I was. It occurred to me that it might take more than a year—maybe as many as seven years—to learn to feel nineteen.” 

“Critique of Judgment” by Immanuel Kant (translated by Werner S. Pluhar)

This is the final of Kant’s three treatises in his series of critiques. This book is divided into his critiques of the judgment of aesthetics and the judgment of teleology. But to start, Kant waxes on his theory of judgment, in general. For Kant, judgment is a bridge between the subjects of his first two critiques, “Judgment will bring about a transition from the pure cognitive power, i.e., from the domain of the concepts of nature, to the domain of the concept of freedom…. Judgment in general is the ability to think the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, principle, law) is given, then judgment, which subsumes the particular under it, is determinative…. But if only the particular is given and judgment has to find the universal for it, then this power is merely reflective…. Determinative judgment, [which operates] under universal transcendental laws given by the understanding, is only subsumptive…. Reflective judgment, which is obligated to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal, requires a principle, which it cannot borrow from experience.”

Regarding the judgment of aesthetics, Kant begins, “What is merely subjective in the presentation of an object, i.e., what constitutes its reference to the subject and not to the object, is its aesthetic character…. When the senses present things outside me, the quality of the space in which these things are intuited is the merely subjective [feature] of my presentation of them (and because of this [feature] I cannot tell what such things may be as objects in themselves), and because of this subjective reference the object is moreover thought as merely appearance…. That subjective [feature] of a presentation which cannot at all become an element of cognition is the pleasure or displeasure connected with that presentation…. Not all aesthetic judgments are judgments of taste, which as such refer to the beautiful; but some of them arise from an intellectual feeling and as such refer to the sublime.”

Kant continues on about aesthetics, its subjectivity, and its necessary relationship back through the subject, “He will talk about the beautiful as if beauty were a characteristic of the object and the judgment were logical (namely, a cognition of the object through concepts of it), even though in fact the judgment is only aesthetic and refers the object’s presentation merely to the subject…. Since a judgment of taste involves the consciousness that all interest is kept out of it, it must also involve a claim to being valid for everyone, but without having a universality based on concepts. In other words, a judgment of taste must involve a claim to subjective universality…. In their logical quantity all judgments of taste are singular judgments…. There can be no rule by which someone could be compelled to acknowledge that something is beautiful. No one can use reasons or principles to talk us into a judgment on whether some garment, house, or flower is beautiful…. Beautiful is what, without a concept, is liked universally.”

Kant contrasts aesthetic beauty with the sublime, “Suppose we call something not only large, but large absolutely [schlechtin, absolut], in every respect (beyond all comparison), i.e., sublime. Clearly, in that case, we do not permit a standard adequate to it to be sought outside it, but only within it. It is a magnitude that is equal only to itself. It follows that the sublime must not be sought in things of nature, but must be sought solely in our ideas…. That is sublime in comparison with which everything else is small…. In order for the mind to be attuned to the feeling of the sublime, it must be receptive to ideas…. It is a dominance [Gewalt] that reason exerts over sensibility only for the sake of expanding it commensurately with reason’s own domain (the practical one) and letting it look outward toward the infinite, which for sensibility is an abyss. It is a fact that what is called sublime by us, having been prepared through culture, comes across as merely repellent to a person who in uncultured and lacking in the development of moral ideas…. We say that someone has no feeling if he remains unmoved in the presence of something we judge sublime.”

Kant returns to the concept of taste. “Taste lays claim merely to autonomy; but to make other people’s judgments the basis determining one’s own would be heteronomy…. Following by reference to precedent, rather than imitating, is the right term for any influence that products of an exemplary author may have on others…. Taste is precisely what stands most in need of examples regarding what has enjoyed the longest-lasting approval in the course of cultural progress…. Taste needs this because its judgment cannot be determined by concepts and precepts…. A judgment of taste, just as if it were merely subjective, cannot be determined by bases of proof…. The fact that others have liked something can never serve [the subject] as a basis for an aesthetic judgment.”

Finally, Kant discusses the nature of fine art. “What is essential in all fine art is the form that is purposive for our observation and judging, rather than the matter of sensation (i.e., charm or emotion). For the pleasure we take in purposive form is also culture, and it attunes the spirit to ideas…. Ideas, in the broadest sense, are presentations referred to an object according to a certain principle (subjective or objective) but are such that they can still never become cognition of an object. There are two kinds of ideas. One of these is referred to an intuition…. The other kind is referred to a concept…. Rational ideas are transcendent concepts; they differ from concepts of the understanding, which are called immanent because they can always be supplied with an experience…. An aesthetic idea cannot become cognition because it is an intuition (of the imagination) for which an adequate concept can never be found. A rational idea can never become cognition because it contains a concept (of the supersensible) for which no adequate intuition can ever be given…. I think we may call aesthetic ideas unexpoundable presentations of the imagination, and rational ideas indemonstrable concepts of reason.”

In the second section of his treatise, Kant lays out his critique of teleological judgment. He suggests, “Organized beings are the only beings in nature that, even when considered by themselves and apart from any relation to other things, must still be thought of as possible only as purposes of nature. It is these beings, therefore, which first give objective reality to the concept of a purpose that is a purpose of nature rather than a practical one, and which hence give natural science the basis for a teleology…. An organized product of nature is one in which everything is a purpose and reciprocally also a means. In such a product nothing is gratuitous, purposeless, or to be attributed to a blind natural mechanism.”

Kant concludes with man’s purposive role within nature, “Now in this world of ours there is only one kind of beings with a causality that is teleological, i.e., directed to purposes, but also so constituted that the law in terms of which these beings must determine their purposes is presented by these very beings as unconditioned and independent of conditions of nature, and yet necessary in itself. That being is man, but man considered as noumenon. Man is the only natural being in whom we can nonetheless cognize, as part of his own constitution, a supersensible ability (freedom) and even cognize the law and the object of this causality, the object that this being can set before itself as its highest purpose (the highest good in the world)…. His existence itself has the highest purpose within it…. Now if things in the world, which are dependent beings with regard to their existence, require a supreme cause that acts in terms of purposes, then man is the final purpose of creation…. Only in man, and even in him only as moral subject, do we find unconditioned legislation regarding purposes…. For the moral principle that determines us to action is supersensible. Hence it is the only possible [thing] in the order of purposes that is absolutely unconditioned as concerns nature, and hence alone qualifies man, the subject of morality, to be the final purpose of creation to which all of nature is subordinated.”

“Paradise Lost” by John Milton

I found reading Milton’s epic poem much more relevant when I saw it as an allegory for his travails during the English Civil War. One can see why so many readers are surreptitiously attracted to the character of Satan. After all, Milton was a Cromwellian Puritan who felt betrayed by the restoration of the monarchy. Even without that background, the lyricism of the words on the page, as he spins the tale of mankind’s fall, is transcendent. In epic Greek fashion, Milton begins with a proem of sorts, “Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit/ Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste/ Brought death into the world, and all our woe,/ With loss of Eden, till one greater man/ Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,/ Sing heavenly Muse….”

Satan, already banished in hell, gives a rousing speech to his minions about how he would rather stay there than be restored to heaven, forced to resubmit to God’s rule, “Suppose he should relent/ And publish grace to all, on promise made/ Of new subjection; with what eyes could we/ Stand in his presence humble, and receive/ Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne/ With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing/ Forced hallelujahs; while he lordly sits/ Our envied sovereign, and his altar breathes/ Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers,/ Our servile offerings? This must be our task/ In heaven, this our delight; how wearisome/ Eternity so spent in worship paid/ to whom we hate….” Satan’s scheme quickly turns to the corruption of man, “To waste his whole creation, or possess/ All as our own, and drive as we were driven,/ The puny habitants, or if not drive,/ Seduce them to our party, that their God/ May prove their foe, and with repenting hand/ Abolish his own works….” As Satan reconnoiters the Garden of Eden, he stumbles upon the weak link, “One fatal tree there stands of knowledge called,/ Forbidden them to taste: knowledge forbidden?/ Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord/ Envy them that? Can it be sin to know,/ Can it be death? And do they only stand/ By ignorance, is that their happy state,/ The proof of their obedience and faith?”

Alone in the Garden of Eden, Satan comes upon Eve, in the form of the serpent, ready with his best arguments to tempt her, “Shall that be shut to man, which to the beast/ Is open? Or will God incense his ire/ For such a petty trespass, and not praise/ Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain/ Of death denounced, whatever thing death be,/ Deterred not from achieving what might lead/ To happier life, knowledge of good and evil;/ Of good, how just? Of evil, if what is evil/ Be real, why not known, since easier shunned?/ God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just;/ Not just, not God; not feared then, nor obeyed:/ Your fear it self of death removes the fear.” Adam, reunited with Eve, immediately senses all that has gone wrong, “O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear/ To that false worm, of whomever taught/ To counterfeit man’s voice, true in our fall,/ False in our promised rising; since our eyes/ Opened we find indeed, and find we know/ Both good and evil, good lost, and evil got,/ Bad fruit of knowledge, if this be to know,/ Which leaves us naked thus, of honour void,/ Of innocence, of faith, of purity….” Finally, the archangel Michael foretells mankind’s fate to Adam and gives him hope for the future, “This having learned, thou hast attained the sum/ Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars/ Thou knew’st by name, and all the ethereal powers,/ All secrets of the deep, all nature’s works,/ Or works of God in heaven, air, earth, or sea,/ And all the riches of this world enjoyed’st,/ And all the rule, one empire; only add/ Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith,/ And virtue, patience, temperance, add love,/ By name to come called Charity, the soul/ Of all the rest: then wilt thou not loath/ To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess/ A paradise within thee, happier far.”