Spain the High School Dropout

Clarissa has a short post on an analogy by one of her students, comparing Spain to a high school dropout:

After Spain expelled the Jews, it became similar to a high school dropout who constantly lags behind everybody else, can't keep up with any intelligent conversation, and has to do trivial things just to survive.

I am reminded of the rhetorical trope used by many rabbis in my youth that any country that expelled its Jews immediately went into decline. Spain (really Aragon and Castile) expelled its Jews and it fell from being a great power. Unfortunately for this theory 1492 was also in the year that Spain began its conquest of the New World. The wealth of the New World (particularly the world's largest silver mine in Peru) would eventually fund Spain's domination of the European continent for the next century.

Of course in an exercise of the power of unforeseen consequences, this conquest of the New World would eventually become the downfall of Spain, causing Spain to fail to industrialize. Worse, this wealth ended up strengthening the monarchy making it impervious to democratic reform (much as oil in Saudi Arabia protects the Saudi monarchy).

In the end, I do think the Early Modern Spanish government can be compared to a modern high school dropout, not because it expelled its Jews, but in how it was corrupted by outside funding. Like the modern high school dropout who assumes that he can live off of public welfare as if money could simply be produced and has no incentive to knuckle down and get an education, the Spanish monarchy saw money as something that could just be produced out of the ground and never bothered to reform itself until it was too late.   

(See Secular Theodicy.)

Meeting Patrick Rothfuss

Last night I went with Lionel Spiegel to meet Patrick Rothfuss, who was speaking at a Borders in Northern Virginia. For those of you who are not familiar with him, Rothfuss is one of the leading fantasy writers today. My only hesitation in putting him in the league of Tolkien as one of the greatest fantasy writers ever is that he has only written one book so far, the Name of the Wind. I will say that Rothfuss' Kvothe is the most interesting lead character in a fantasy since Thomas Covenant. Fantasy is a genre that usually focuses on building interesting worlds, populated by odd side characters to take over the story, leaving the main character trapped in the role of hero. It is Rothfuss' gift as a writer that can create a world as interesting as he does with so many great side characters and still have them play second to Kvothe.

I went to the bookstore simply for the pleasure of meeting a man whose work I so admired in the flesh and to hear him talk about his work, perhaps even to catch an unguarded slip as to what is going to happen in his next book, Wise Man's Fear, which fans have been waiting three years now for. What I was completely unprepared for was how much fun Rothfuss was in person as he mixed responding to questions with reading various pieces of his, including a pathologically hilarious gerbil story and yes the prologue of his next book. Writing is a solitary task and one has no reason to expect authors, even those who can create personable characters, to have it themselves. Watching Rothfuss, I was struck by the fact even if he lacked the romance cover long red hair of Kvothe, (in fact the original cover for the book was dropped because it looked too much like a romance novel) here was Kvothe, with all of his wit and charm, in the flesh. Even if I am unable to convince you to try reading a nearly 700-page work of fantasy, I would still recommend, if you have the chance, going to see Rothfuss on his book tour. He is worth it all for himself and if I cannot convince you to read him, seeing him perform might.

I will be circumspect as to what Rothfuss spoke about as he asked at the beginning that there be no video recordings for fear that something could come off the wrong way and end up on Youtube. (The speech was an adult affair, though hardly smut for smut's sake, and not for children, even if Name of the Wind is perfectly fine.) There were a few things that I think should be alright and worth mentioning. Rothfuss spoke passionately about the value of fantasy as speaking its own truth even as a work of fiction. He challenged the assembled group of, assumingly, fantasy lovers, as to what meant more to them, Narnia or Peru. (Asking forgiveness from my friend who studies Early Modern Peru, I must confess that I raised my hand for the former.) I asked him what he would advise aspiring fantasy writers as to how to avoid the trap of rewriting Tolkien and turning out clichés. (Another of Rothfuss' strengths is how he took a story with a hero going to magic school to learn to be a wizard that could have so easily turned into a cliché and made it stand on its own as something clearly within the fantasy tradition and yet so original.) His advice was to start off at the age of twelve and read a fantasy book a day. (At least that is what he did.) If you understand the genre you can work with it, know what has already been done and avoid repeating it.

If I have talked about how talented Rothfuss is, I would end by noting what a nice person he is as well. After speaking, he posed for a picture with the entire crowd and stayed to sign books. It was close to an hour by the time I got to him and there were still plenty of people behind me. These are people who have already bought the book and will likely buy the sequel no matter what. Rothfuss has nothing to gain, particularly as he does have better things, like his newborn son and the mother of his child, to deal with.

I went back and forth as to whether to bring my copy to be signed. I picked it up off a library used pile. In the end, I agreed to bring it; Rothfuss was a fellow follower of the vow of poverty known as graduate school and I do have Wise Man's Fear on pre-order whenever it comes out. Rothfuss was kind enough to sign it to Izgad. (It is easier to say and remember than Benzion.)

History 112: Brave New World of Economics (Part I)

For the past few sessions we have been focusing on the religious changes occurring during the early modern period. Today I would like to move into the realm of economics. By way of transition I would like to consider the thesis of Max Weber that Protestantism led to the rise of Capitalism. What do people like Martin Luther and John Calvin have to with Capitalism? Justification by faith, reading the Bible and rejecting the Pope and many of the sacraments may all be very nice things, but they do not appear to have anything to do with economics. You have just come into some money, what do you do with it? If you are a Catholic you might give it to the Church to buy Masses for yourself, to support monasteries and to adorn your local cathedral with gold adornment. Come the Reformation and you are now a Protestant; no more lavish Masses, no more cathedrals full statues to that saints (that is all papist idolatry now), no more gold crucifixes adorned with jewels. So what are you going to spend your money on? How about buying shares in a boat going to India. This is Max Weber. As we have seen from our reading, there are Catholic merchants, so things are a bit more complicated than Weber had it; Catholics are also involved in this economic revolution.

The discovery of the New World and the Age of Discovery profoundly affected life in Europe. It was not just a matter of some explorers traveling to some place that no European had been before and planting a flag in the ground. Different countries were affected in different ways. Spain and England offer useful contrasts in this.

Spain hit the monetary jackpot with Mexico and Peru as Hernan Cortez and Francisco Pizaro respectively conquered the Aztec and Incan empires. This was one of the worst things to ever happened to Spain and it was the ruin of Spanish civilization. You have heard stories of lottery winners whose lives were destroyed by winning; the same was true with Spain. People in the sixteenth century did not see things this way. The rest of Europe salivated as Spain was able to spend itself to its heart’s content; war in the Netherlands, sure thing, Spanish Armada, not a problem. Starting in the seventeenth century, though, Spain went into a decline that they never recovered from.

How could finding so much gold be a bad thing? First you should consider what gold is actually worth. You understand that paper currency has no utilitarian value and in of itself is absolutely worthless. If President Obama would decide to try boosting his approval ratings by handing out a million dollars to every single American, no one would actually be helped by it. We would simply have inflation. At the end of the day gold is really no better. Like paper currency gold has little utilitarian value in of itself. Gold from the New World brought no real wealth back to Spain. It gets even worse. Where was the biggest share of this gold going to? The Crown. Regular Spaniards did not benefit from this. Furthermore now that the Spanish monarchy was completely self sufficient, monetarily speaking, it had no need to reform itself. Previously we learned about Charles I needing parliament in order to raise funds. If you are Philip II you have no such problems and can rule as an autocrat to your heart’s content. A modern example of this is Saudi Arabia where the house of Saud is completely protected by their wealth in oil and can safely ignore any call to reform either from the West or from their own people.

England, on the other hand, had a very different experience. For example, they came to Jamestown in 1607 looking for gold. They did not find any. Probably one of the greatest things ever to happen to them. How can this be? Once the colonists, those who survived the first few years, realized that they were not going to find gold they settled down and started growing tobacco. While we know now that smoking is addictive and causes cancer and are paying the price for the introduction of tobacco into European culture, tobacco is an actual product with real value. England therefore received something that was actually worth something. More importantly they developed a culture of trade. They become a model of Max Weber’s Protestant work ethic. Spain on the other hand, as the Catholic country par excellence, become a model of Weber’s Catholic non mercantile culture.

(To be continued …)