Drive Has Always Been the Difference

 

 

 

 

Last month Google announced “Learn Your Way,” which they state will revolutionize the educational experience by providing you with content in different forms that suit your preferred learning style. Millions of users are already using various artificial intelligence tools to do just that, like an ever-patient and all-knowing sidekick who you can feed question after question about things you want to learn more about. These aids will only get better, faster, and cheaper, and probably at an accelerated rate. 

Many are observing this progress and predicting the demise of the university as we know it. After all, isn’t that what college is for? If I can learn anything I want, effectively and instantaneously and cheaply, why would I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and four years of my life instead? 

Leave aside for a second that the traditional university experience has many other purposes, so these are not perfect substitutes. What I want to probe today is that it’s always been the case that the difference-maker for anyone who wants to accomplish anything in life – get a good job, rise up in the ranks, have real influence in the real world – is the drive to want to learn and the discipline to put in the time to learn. 

I have a friend who is a professor and loves the topic he teaches. But he understands that his students are not like him. He spent years studying his area of expertise and is now spending his entire career teaching it, researching it, and soaking it in to his heart’s content. His students, on the other hand, are not on the same track; they just want the class to get the degree, and the degree to get the job, which will in 100 percent of the cases not be as a university professor. 

And that’s ok, for that’s how education works and that’s how sorting works. But, take this to the extreme and see how it can be problematic. If I told you you could go to school for four years, go through the motions of going to class and writing papers and studying for finals, and then get a good job after, well: my friend would be horrified, because it’s the learning that is inherently pleasurable and useful, but most people would take that proposition. 

But how does the world actually work? Does it function through performance and signaling and credentials? Or does it require that people actually do things, which entails knowing how to do them, which in turn entails taking the time to learn how to do them?

 In every generation, there are the go-getters who welcome tools like “Learn Your Way” from Google. They can’t wait to accelerate their knowledge acquisition and put it to productive use solving real problems in the real world. And, in every generation, there are others for whom education is transactional: if I make a show of the educational process, then I get a degree, and if I have a degree, then I can land a job, and if I have a job, then I get a seat in the room when the real decisions are being made. 

AI tools have merely accelerated both the go-getters’ ability to get ready for their future and the slackers’ ability to mime the educational experience. What will that mean for our future productivity and equity? Time will tell.

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Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "The Infinite Game," by Simon Sinek.

When we lead with a finite mindset in an infinite game, it leads to all kinds of problems, the most common of which include the decline of trust, cooperation and innovation. Leading with an infinite mindset in an infinite game, in contrast, really does move us in a better direction. Groups that adopt an infinite mindset enjoy vastly higher levels of trust, cooperation and innovation and all the subsequent benefits. If we are all, at various times, players in infinite games, then it is in our interest to learn how to recognize the game we are in and what it takes to lead with an infinite mindset. It is equally important for us to learn to recognize the clues when finite thinking exists so that we can make adjustments before real damage is done.

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Here are a couple of excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way," by Bill Bryson.

No king of England spoke English for the next 300 years. It was not until 1399, with the accession of Henry IV, that England had a ruler whose mother tongue was English. One by one English earls and bishops were replaced by Normans (though in some instances not for several years). French-speaking craftsmen, designers, cooks, scholars, and scribes were brought to Britain. Even so for the common people life went on. They were almost certainly not alarmed that their rulers spoke a foreign tongue. It was a commonplace in the past. Canute from the century before was Danish and even Edward the Confessor, the last but one Anglo-Saxon king, spoke French as his first tongue. As recently as the eighteenth century, England happily installed a German king, George I, even though he spoke not a word of English and reigned for thirteen years without mastering his subjects' language. Common people did not expect to speak like their masters any more than they expected to live like them. Norman society had two tiers: the French-speaking aristocracy and the English-speaking peasantry. Not surprisingly, the linguistic influence of the Normand tended to focus on matters of court, government, fashion, and high living. Meanwhile, the English peasant continued to eat, drink, work, sleep, and play in English.

The breakdown can be illustrated in two ways. First, the more humble trades tended to have Anglo-Saxon names (baker, miller, shoemaker), while the more skilled trades adopted French names (mason, painter, tailor). At the same time, animals in the field usually were called by English names (sheep, cow, ox), but one cooked and brought to the table, they were generally given French names (beef, mutton, veal, bacon).

Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian, Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarian's work is never done when he gazed at those gathered loyally around him and whispered: "I am about to - or I am going to - die; either expression is used."

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women," by Kate Moore.

Katherine could see that the powder got everywhere; there was dust all over the studio. Even as she watched, little puffs of it seemed to hover in the air before settling on the shoulders or hair of a dial-painter at work. To her astonishment, it made the girls themselves gleam.

Katherine, like many before her, was entranced by it. It wasn’t just the glow — it was radium’s all-powerful reputation. Almost from the start, the new element had been championed as “the greatest find of history.” When scientists had discovered, at the turn of the century, that radium could destroy human tissue, it was quickly put to use to battle cancerous tumors, with remarkable results. Consequently — as a life-saving and thus, it was assumed, health-giving element — other uses had sprung up around it. All of Katherine’s life, radium had been a magnificent cure-all, treating not just cancer, but hay fever, gout, constipation…anything you could think of. Pharmacists sold radioactive dressings and pills; there were also radium clinics and spas for those who could afford them. People hailed its coming as predicted in the Bible: “The sun of righteousness [shall] arise with healing in his wings, and ye shall go forth and gambol as calves of the stall.”

For another claim of radium was that it could restore vitality to the elderly, making “old men young.” One aficionado wrote: “Sometimes I am halfway persuaded that I can feel the sparkles inside my anatomy.” Radium shone “like a good deed in a naughty world.”

Its appeal was quickly exploited by entrepreneurs. Katherine had seen advertisements for one of the most successful products, a radium-lined jar to which water could be added to make it radioactive: wealthy customers drank it as a tonic; the recommended dose was five to seven glasses a day. But as some of the models retailed for $200 ($3,700), it was a product far out of Katherine’s reach. Radium water was drunk by the rich and famous, not working-class girls from Newark.

But her new surroundings didn’t improve her condition. Hazel had no idea what was wrong with her: the weight was dropping off her, she felt weak, and her jaw ached something rotten. She was so concerned that in the end she asked the company doctor at her new firm to examine her, but he was unable to diagnose her illness.

The one thing she could be assured of, at least, was that it wasn’t her work with radium that was the cause. In October 1920, her former employer was featured in the local news. The residue from radium extraction looked like seaside sand, and the company had offloaded this industrial waste by selling it to schools and playgrounds to use in their children’s sandboxes; kids’ shoes were reported to have turned white because of it, while one little boy complained to his mother of a burning sensation in his hands. Yet, in comments that made reassuring reading, von Sochocky pronounced the sand “most hygienic” for children to play in, “more beneficial than the mud of world- renowned curative baths.”

And from that strange white fog Martland now understood another critical concept. Sarah was dead—but her bones seemed very much alive: making impressions on photographic plates; carelessly emitting measurable radioactivity. It was all due, of course, to the radium. Sarah’s own life may have been cut short, but the radium inside her had a half-life of 1,600 years. It would be shooting out its rays from Sarah’s bones for centuries, long after she was gone. Even though it had killed her, it kept on bombarding her body “every day, every week, month after month, year after year.”

It is bombarding her body to this day.

And Grace Fryer was never forgotten. She is still remembered now—you are still remembering her now. As a dial-painter, she glowed gloriously from the radium powder; but as a woman, she shines through history with an even brighter glory: stronger than the bones that broke inside her body; more powerful than the radium that killed her or the company that shamelessly lied through its teeth; living longer than she ever did on earth, because she now lives on in the hearts and memories of those who know her only from her story.

But not everyone was pleased with the possibility of bringing the firm to its knees. The town "bitterly resented these women's charges as giving a 'black eye' to the community." Ottawa was a close-knit and folksy town, but the girls soon realized that when it turned against you, it turned hard. "They weren't treated too nice," commented a relative of Marie with understatement.

After all, Radium Dial had long been a valued employer. With the country in the middle of its worst-ever economic depression - what some were now calling the Great Depression - communities were even more protective of the firms that could give them work and wages. The women found they were disbelieved, ignored and even shunned when they spoke out about their ailments and the cause.

"Have you an opinion as to whether this condition is permanent or temporary?"

"Permanent," he answered swiftly. Catherine dropped her head: this is forever.

"Have you an opinion," Grossman asked now, "if this is fatal?" Dalitsch hesitated and "glanced meaningfully" toward Catherine, who was only meters from him. Grossman's question hung in the air, suspended in time. Five days ago, after the examinations in Chicago, Catherine's three doctors had indeed determined that her condition had reached its "permanent, incurable, and terminal stage." Yet the physicians, who in all kindness sought to spare her, had not told Catherin Donohue.

"In her presence?" Dalitsch now asked, uncertainly.

But he had said enough. He had said enough in the way he had paused. Catherine "sobbed, slipped down in her chair, and covered her face" with her hands. At first, silent tears ran down her cheeks, but then, as though the full weight of what he hadn't said hit her, "screamed in hysteria." She screamed aloud, as she thought of leaving Tom and her children; as she thought of leaving this life; as she thought of what was coming in her future. She hadn't know; she had had hope. She had had faith. Catherine had truly believed she was not going to due - but Dalitsch's face said otherwise; she could see it in his eyes. So she screamed, and the broken voice which had struggled to speak was now made powerful in her fear and distress. Tom "broke down and sobbed" at the sound of his wife's cries.

The scream was a watershed; after it, Catherine could not keep herself upright. She collapsed and "would have fallen had not a physician nearby caught her." Dr. Weiner had leaped to his feet to hold her up, and as he did so, Tom seemed released from his paralysis. He rushed to Catherine's side as she lay slumped in her chair. While Weiner felt for her pulse, Tom's concern was only for Catherine. He cradled her head with his hand, touched her shoulder to try to bring her back to herself; back to him. Catherine was sobbing hard, her mouth wide open, showing the destruction inside: the gaps where her teeth should have been. But she didn't care who saw; all she could see was Dalitsch's face in her mind. Fatal. This is fatal. It was the first time she'd been told.

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Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life," by Joshua Becker.

After minimizing, Chris and Dana felt called to adopt a Guatemalan girl. Adding Mackenzie to the family has been a wonderful blessing and they can’t imagine their lives without her. She is a beloved daughter and a full participant in their adventuring lifestyle. 

Shortly after the adoption, Dana and Chris discovered a passion to serve others overseas. In order to pursue that passion, they sold off even more things—all they had, in fact. 

Dana described it. “At the age of twenty-seven, we held an estate sale and sold everything. People would walk up to the estate sale and ask us who died. We’d just smile. Nobody had died, except maybe our former selves.” 

Over the next two years, Dana and Chris would work in ten different countries, becoming pioneers in the online church movement. 

Truth or Tribe

  

There could hardly be anything more important than truth, right? Most people wouldn’t dare say so. And yet we very often put “tribe” before truth. And perhaps we should. 

At the risk of picking at an old wound, let me share a story from the early months of COVID. We didn’t know much at the time, except that the virus was transmitted through the air and that it could kill, and that therefore masking and/or social distancing was deemed paramount. 

I recall a social media exchange with friends of mine in Philadelphia, where one, an avid runner, wondered if it was ok to go for a jog without having to wear a mask, feeling both the need to get out of the house and do a cherished activity lest they go stir crazy, and the pained request that they do so without having to put a cloth mask over their face while huffing and puffing down the street. 

Again, it was early days. So most people were aware that we didn’t know what we didn’t know, and were rightly erring on the side of caution. So I would’ve accepted any number of responses, such as: 

* “Sounds like it would be good for your physical and mental wellbeing so go for it, but be careful and try to stay away from people on your run”

* “I’d caution you to pick an odd time so there’s no one around you”

* “I don’t know, who’s to say how this virus spreads so I’d either not go or do so with a mask on”

Instead, there was very much a spirit of “how dare you act like those mask-deniers, you know better than to be like that.” You could say those things from a place of science (“the experts say mask up at all times”) or humility (“we simply don’t know, so don’t do anything potentially dangerous”). But you could also say those things from a place of tribalism (“our side listens to reason and does the right thing, while the other side is blatantly ignorant”). And it sure seemed like the venom was coming from the latter reason, lightly masked if at all in the former reason. 

Maybe this example is in too much of a gray area. So let me offer another, more stark example from the same era. I recall someone posting a picture of themselves kayaking solo on the river, wearing an N95 mask, and all of the friends commented positively along the lines of “that’s how you do it” and “way to set a good example” and even “that’ll show those anti-maskers.” Here the mask is truly unnecessary, since you are in the middle of a river far from any other human’s ability to cough or sneeze on you. And yet the solidarity with “wear a mask at all times” was more important than the common sense of “no mask needed when no chance of contracting or spreading the virus, so paddle away without covering your mouth.” 

To be clear, at the moment as well as with hindsight, I think mask mandates were important for a period of time, certainly during the earliest days of uncertainty as well as the subsequent days of rampant spread. As this was a public health crisis involving an infectious disease, communal efforts were more important than individual freedom. To blatantly deny the importance of universal participation, even coming from a place of cherished values like freedom and skepticism and comfort, was worthy of pushback and condemnation.

But I also believe in common sense, and in adapting to changing conditions and greater information, so I was fine with running outside without a mask even at the height of COVID, just as I was fine with people making their own decisions once the virus had subsided substantially. My point is not that masks were good or bad, but rather than we seemed to arrive at our conclusions and express our positions based on what tribe we were part of or wanted to not be seen as a part of, rather than our best understanding of the truth at any given time.

And I’m not sure that’s necessarily bad. As important as truth is, tribe is also important. Now, this can be taken to absurd measures that cause people to lose the plot, where the goal seems to be to express solidarity with your own and stick it to others, rather than doing what’s best for the greater good. But, in general, humans are social creatures and a certain amount of peer pressure to conform to what is right is healthy for our survival and thriving. 

Now, I’m not sure we have calibrated our “truth vs. tribe” meter correctly in these divisive days. Nor do I like when people act tribal and fudge the truth, but then claim that they are all about the truth. You can pick any number of hot topics to apply this lens to. I chose COVID because it is a recent thing we all went through, our very survival was on the line, and because of that there were many “truth vs. tribe” moments. 

What are your thoughts on this particular example? Maybe you’ve reacted with horror at my words, so engrained was it back then that to not mask was to court death and set a poor example for others. Maybe you look back on that time and think to yourself that, yeah maybe we didn’t know much back then but in retrospect masks weren’t as necessary for as long as we had them. Still others thought that masks were unnecessary from the beginning, whether right or wrong. I’m sure there are a range of perspectives on this. I can say that I’m probably one of the very few people on the planet who, during that era, was in rooms where I was the only one masked and also in rooms where I was the only one not masked. In other words, I hang with a pretty diverse crowd, on all issues including this one. It’s a good example that in life and death matters, we often choose tribe over truth. And, ironically, when we do so we often solidify our tribes by considering them to be based on truth, and other tribes to not value truth, even as we ourselves are devaluing truth to do so.

What Can You Do Forever

 

I recently finished watching “The Good Place,” starring Ted Danson and Kristen Bell. It’s a sweet and quirky contemplation following four protagonists, recently deceased and entering the afterlife, that explores what happens to humans after they die. Namely: do they end up in “the Good Place” or “the Bad Place,” how is that fateful decision made, how should it be made, and what happens when they get to their eternal destination. 

There may some spoilers ahead, so continue reading with that alert in mind. The show culminates with our four main characters successfully securing their spot in “the Good Place,” where they meet others lucky enough to make it, only to find that their new companions are miserable. It turns out an eternity of everything they could ever want is, well, soul-crushing. And, it turns out that the introduction of a new wrinkle, that at any time you can walk through a door and cease existing, boosts everyone’s spirits because it sets them all on a mission to do everything they ever wanted to do before they make that irreversible choice. Of course, even with that boost, eventually an eternity of everything they could ever want leads each of our four protagonists to decide that it’s time for them to walk through the door, and having made peace with themselves and their friends, they each proceed to do that. 

Amid the hijinks and character development, “The Good Place” touches on some long-scrutinized topics of eternal significance. Whether there is a heaven and hell is the purview, some might say the central premise, of many of the world’s religions. Indeed, what happens after we die, whether it is eternal bliss, eternal damnation, or eternal nothingness, should be something that we’ve worked out in our hearts such that it influences how we live on this side of glory, even if we can’t possibly know with certainty whether we’ve figured it out or not. 

I’ll leave that heavier religious exploration for another time, although I am going to try to go a little deep with today’s contemplation, which is this notion of what it’s like to do something, even something that is incredibly enjoyable, for literally forever. According to “The Good Place,” eventually it gets boring and unsatisfying, so much so that an eternity of nothingness is preferred. Which begs the question, is that true? And if so, what is the allure of heaven? 

From the standpoint of the main characters in this chaotic sitcom, “heavenly” meant everything from philosophy books and global travel to go-karts and celebrity gossip. Literally whatever was most pleasurable to our protagonists on earth was available to them in abundance in the afterlife. And yet they all eventually chose nothingness over continued existence in their own personal version of bliss. 

I think, from that perspective, it is true that even the most enjoyable things you can imagine and experience on earth will eventually become soul-crushing when done enough times. My own personal religious perspective is that we were made to enjoy ourselves on earth, which includes physical and intellectual and social and material things. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ascetic existence of a monk or a nun, but also that there’s nothing inherently wrong with earthly enjoyments. 

But, we were not made for these things to be our primary pursuit. My own personal religious perspective is that we were made fundamentally to worship God. He is that glorious, and to render Him that glory is literally the one thing we can do and desire to do for the entirety of eternity. 

If I may offer a flawed but perhaps instructive example from earth as a metaphor. Let’s say you are a die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan. I know many friends near and far for whom this is true. And they will tell you there is nothing more satisfying to not only watch their team succeed at the highest levels, but for them to be there to celebrate the accomplishment, and even better to do so with others similarly wired to exult in their beloved football team. Appropriate to Philly sports, that satisfaction is even sweeter when the team has experienced hardship than if it just sailed into and through the playoffs. 

Now let’s see how heaven compares to that. What if there was an object of worship that was more glorious than a professional football team, in fact indescribably glorious? And what if your ability to express and feel worship was not constrained by our earthly limitations of material resources and physical capability? And what if that worship came on the heels of the darkest setbacks when all seemed lost? And what if you could experience this bliss with the most amazing fellow fans, from all periods of history and all walks of life? 

And, finally, what if you were not limited by time? What if the celebration lasted forever, and your ability to enjoy the celebration also lasted forever? What if, in every fiber of your being, you were made for this exact act, to worship something truly glorious, to do so perfectly, with others, for ever and ever? That is what I believe. And while I am thankful for “The Good Place” to make me chuckle over what my personal version of “The Good Place” would look like (golf and cheeseburgers and Mozart would be pretty amazing for a very long time, not going to lie), and I am even more thankful for a far more glorious existence to come.

2025 Car Usage

 

 

 

The two photos above capture my 2025 car usage, which I'll only add a few comments:

* Philly is one of only a few US cities where a car is not absolutely essential, so you'll notice that even with our busy family life we only average about 2 trips and 7 legs a week 

* Driving somewhere and returning home would mean a ratio of 2 legs per trip, whereas my Philly ratio is closer to 3.5, demonstrating my intentionality in bundling trips (which saves gas as well as wear and tear on my car)

* Conversely, California and Florida, even in its biggest cities, require constant driving; in 2025, I logged 127 legs despite only being there a combined 24 days

Like Asher, the family car turned 10 this year and now has about 82,000 miles on it. Hopefully many more!

National Religion

 

By broaching the "r" word I may land myself in hot water from all sides, so I will tread carefully and ask for some grace. Let me start by defining religion fairly broadly, as a perspective that informs one's sense of important things like morality and life and death, which involves some level of faith, both in terms of belief in something or Someone, but also in terms of believing in something that you can't concretely prove to be true. With that as our working description of religion, it is clear some of us are religious and others would describe themselves as areligious, the former subscribing to some faith perspective and the latter rejecting anything that has to be left to faith and the unknown. 

And, in my circles and in the present day, there are many around me who would not describe themselves as religious in any way, and in some cases are deeply areligious in terms of actively rejecting any sort of faith tradition and choosing to believe only in hard science and testable conclusions. Such folks, naturally, tend to consider themselves to be well educated, committed to that which can be substantiated rather than that which would be deemed frivolous or unserious. 

But, looping back to my definition, which was intentionally written to be broad and yet I hope you would consider it to be fair, in this country there appear to be many religions, which people take seriously, at least seriously enough to make life decisions on, base their entire existence on, and even be willing to fight and sacrifice for. Just to a name a few, none of these are officially religions but wouldn't you say they adhere to my definition:

• Astrology
• Equality
• Football
• Freedom
• Guns
• Political affiliation

The point is neither to denigrate nor uplift these pastimes. It is simply to say that they are a form of religion, in that they involve a set of beliefs and stories that hold people together and guide how they move about the world. 

And, perhaps the real point I want to make in this post is, just like people get highly and rightly offended if we diminish their religion, so they react when you treat these things in the same way. None of these things are inherently bad, and in fact many would argue that many are inherently good. But I would argue that none are completely unassailable, and yet how tricky it is to push back on the edges of some of these things when warranted, precisely because others hold these things as truly sacrosanct.

It is good to have beliefs, and to believe in them strongly. I do hope that, as with religion, we are honest about places where those beliefs deserve to be challenged, and that we are open-minded enough to absorb and even welcome that pushback.

For Goodness' Sake Do Something

 

 

 

I have a degree from a top-ranked university and work a white-collar job, live in a big coastal city, and hang out with and consume a lot of content from white-collar workers with degrees from top-ranked universities living in big coastal cities. All of us would say we are trying to use our privilege, knowledge, and influence to do good in the world. And what that looks like will necessarily look different for different people. But I think it's important that, at least for some part of your life, it means doing something really tangible that contributes to good. Both to achieve some small good in this world, and also to gain a better understanding and appreciation of the hard, boring, and sustained work that it takes to do good in this world.

Maybe this sounds obvious, but how often do we not think to get involved in these ways, even look down on those who do and consider our own involvement to be beneath us? I recall a recent grad who came to me for career advice a few years back, when I was on the school board in my city, and when they mentioned their interest in urban education, I suggested they attend an upcoming public meeting, to see how "the sausage is made," so to speak. They looked at me with such a confused look, as if to say "what does a mundane school board meeting have to do with my interest in urban education." Which, of course, was confusing to me; the meeting I was inviting them to was, after all, urban education in action.

We who are cocooned in our "lattes and laptops" lifestyle need to get out there and do something. Attend a city council or school board meeting, or better yet run to sit in those seats. Sit on a board of a non-profit that provides direct services and volunteer regularly. Even better, don't post about it on social media: just do it, and not just once but over and over again. It may not be your life's work, but if you're not even on the playing field itself, how can you credibly say you're about doing good?

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind," by Yuval Noah Harari.

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.

Understanding human history in the millennia following the Agricultural Revolution boils down to a single question: how did humans organise themselves in mass-cooperation networks, when they lacked the biological instincts necessary to sustain such networks? The short answer is that humans created imagined orders and devised scripts. These two inventions filled the gaps left by our biological inheritance. 

However, the appearance of these networks was, for many, a dubious blessing. The imagined orders sustaining these networks were neither neutral nor fair. They divided people into make-believe groups, arranged in a hierarchy. The upper levels enjoyed privileges and power, while the lower ones suffered from discrimination and oppression. Hammurabi’s Code, for example, established a pecking order of superiors, commoners and slaves. Superiors got all the good things in life. Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained. 

Despite its proclamation of the equality of all men, the imagined order established by the Americans in 1776 also established a hierarchy. It created a hierarchy between men, who benefited from it, and women, whom it left disempowered. It created a hierarchy between whites, who enjoyed liberty, and blacks and American Indians, who were considered humans of a lesser type and therefore did not share in the equal rights of men. Many of those who signed the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders. They did not release their slaves upon signing the Declaration, nor did they consider themselves hypocrites. In their view, the rights of men had little to do with Negroes.

The American order also consecrated the hierarchy between rich and poor. Most Americans at that time had little problem with the inequality caused by wealthy parents passing their money and businesses on to their children. In their view, equality meant simply that the same laws applied to rich and poor. It had nothing to do with unemployment benefits, integrated education or health insurance. Liberty, too, carried very different connotations than it does today. In 1776, it did not mean that the disempowered (certainly not blacks or Indians or, God forbid, women) could gain and exercise power. It meant simply that the state could not, except in unusual circumstances, confiscate a citizen’s private property or tell him what to do with it. The American order thereby upheld the hierarchy of wealth, which some thought was mandated by God and others viewed as representing the immutable laws of nature. Nature, it was claimed, rewarded merit with wealth while penalising indolence.

Cowry shells and dollars have value only in our common imagination. Their worth is not inherent in the chemical structure of the shells and paper, or their colour, or their shape. In other words, money isn’t a material reality – it is a psychological construct. It works by converting matter into mind. But why does it succeed? Why should anyone be willing to exchange a fertile rice paddy for a handful of useless cowry shells? Why are you willing toflip hamburgers, sell health insurance or babysit three obnoxious brats when all you get for your exertions is a few pieces of coloured paper? 

People are willing to do such things when they trust the figments of their collective imagination. Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted. When a wealthy farmer sold his possessions for a sack of cowry shells and travelled with them to another province, he trusted that upon reaching his destination other people would be willing to sell him rice, houses and fields in exchange for the shells. Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. 

What created this trust was a very complex and long-term network of political, social and economic relations. Why do I believe in the cowry shell or gold coin or dollar bill? Because my neighbours believe in them. And my neighbours believe in them because I believe in them. And we all believe in them because our king believes in them and demands them in taxes, and because our priest believes in them and demands them in tithes. 

For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil. Be that as it may, money is also the apogee of human tolerance. Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively.

The insight of polytheism is conducive to far-reaching religious tolerance. Since polytheists believe, on the one hand, in one supreme and completely disinterested power, and on the other hand in many partial and biased powers, there is no difficulty for the devotees of one god to accept the existence and efficacy of other gods. Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels’. 

Even when polytheists conquered huge empires, they did not try to convert their subjects. The Egyptians, the Romans and the Aztecs did not send missionaries to foreign lands to spread the worship of Osiris, Jupiter or Huitzilopochtli (the chief Aztec god), and they certainly didn’t dispatch armies for that purpose. Subject peoples throughout the empire were expected to respect the empire’s gods and rituals, since these gods and rituals protected and legitimised the empire. Yet they were not required to give up their local gods and rituals. In the Aztec Empire, subject peoples were obliged to build temples for Huitzilopochtli, but these temples were built alongside those of local gods, rather than in their stead. In many cases the imperial elite itself adopted the gods and rituals of subject people. The Romans happily added the Asian goddess Cybele and the Egyptian goddess Isis to their pantheon. 

The only god that the Romans long refused to tolerate was the monotheistic and evangelising god of the Christians. The Roman Empire did not require the Christians to give up their beliefs and rituals, but it did expect them to pay respect to the empire’s protector gods and to the divinity of the emperor. This was seen as a declaration of political loyalty. When the Christians vehemently refused to do so, and went on to reject all attempts at compromise, the Romans reacted by persecuting what they understood to be a politically subversive faction. And even this was done half-heartedly. In the 300 years from the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violence of their own. Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.

Male chicks and imperfect female chicks are picked off the conveyor belt and are then asphyxiated in gas chambers, dropped into automatic shredders, or simply thrown into the rubbish, where they are crushed to death. Hundreds of millions of chicks die each year in such hatcheries.

Today, the earths continents are home to almost 7 billion Sapiens. If you took all these people and put them on a large set of scales, their combined mass would be about 300 million tons. If you then took all our domesticated farmyard animals – cows, pigs, sheep and chickens– and placed them on an even larger set of scales, their mass would amount to about 700 million tons. In contrast, the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals – from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales – is less than 100 million tons. Our children’s books, our iconography and our TV screens are still full of giraffes, wolves and chimpanzees, but the real world has very few of them left. There are about 80,000 giraffes in the world, compared to 1.5 billion cattle; only 200,000 wolves, compared to 400 million domesticated dogs; only 250,000 chimpanzees – in contrast to billions of humans. Humankind really has taken over the world.