History: God’s Eye, Worm’s Eye, & Intermediate Levels, &
BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-06-28 Tu
FIRST: History: God’s Eye, Worm’s Eye, & Intermediate Levels:
Very nicely put by the extremely insightful Dominic Lieven:
Dominic Lieven: The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I & Revolution: ‘One way to impose some order… is… levels of analysis….
The God’s-eye view… one finds only long-term, structural factors… globalization and geopolitics, the European balance of power, and the dominant ideologies and values….
But it bears remembering that in 1914 war occurred after a diplomatic crisis lasting less than two weeks. If the archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated in June 1914, it is unlikely that Europe would have gone to war that year. A war postponed might have been a war avoided. Alternatively, a war fought two years later over a different issue might… have ended in German victory, thereby radically changing the path of subsequent European and Russian history….
Although the worm dominates my story most completely as regards July 1914, the crisis that took Europe to war cannot be studied on its own. It was the last—and in many ways the product—of a series of crises and developments that stretched back to 1905 and require the worm’s careful attention. Between the eye of God and the eye of the worm, there are intermediate levels…. They connect the structural factors visible in the stratosphere and the worms who made the decisions that ended in catastrophe. Obvious intermediate-level elements are the systems of government… the institutions…. How did decision makers understand the meanings of power and the nature of international relations?… How did they envisage a future European war? These questions underpin much… but lurk too far removed from the day-to-day… for the worm…. At the intermediate level, one needs to carefully probe terms such as “great power” and “balance of power”…. Above all, two elements dominated Russian foreign policy before 1914: The first was commitment to something called a balance of power. The second was a conception of Russian identity and of the Russian people’s place in Europe and in history. The poor worm cannot hope to delve into such matters as he pursues his narrative…
LINK: <https://archive.org/details/endoftsaristruss0000liev>
At the worm’s-eye level, history is one damn thing happening after another, and possible history's branch and branch and branch, with large and substantial difference between the possibilities: “a war postponed might have been a war avoided. Alternatively, a war fought two years later over a different issue might… have ended in German victory…”
At the God’s-eye level, history gathers possibilities back into a bundle of likelihood. Something like a major industrial war of national military and economic mobilization among the great powers in a context of defensive trench-warfare tactical superiority was very likely to happen in Europe sometime after 1900, and it was likely to massively destabilize all ancien régimes, and to substantially destabilize all others.
And at the intermediate level, there are transmission belts: how the structures influence the conceptual universes within which the deciders make their decisions, and then how those decisions carry and miscarry as they run up against technological-material-social realities.
This worm-intermediate-God framework overlaps with causally “thin” and “thick” history in ways I do not fully and properuy understand.
One Audio:
Jeff Schechtman & Brad DeLong: Podcast: WhoWhatWhy: ‘It’s always about the economy… <https://whowhatwhy.org/economy/its-always-all-about-the-economy/>
One Image: Frescoes in the Baths of Caracalla:
Very Briefly Noted:
Tarik Abou-Chadi: Podcast: The Transformation of European Politics <https://www.tarikabouchadi.net/podcast.html>
Livia Borghese & Jeevan Ravindran: Rome: Frescoes Dating Back to the Time of Hadrian Unveiled at Ancient Roman Baths<https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/rome-ancient-bath-fresco-caracalla-scli-intl/index.html>
Berkeley Department of History: Andrej Milivojević <https://history.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/visiting/andrej-milivojevic>
John J. Donohue & al.: More Guns, More Unintended Consequences: The Effects of Right-to-Carry on Criminal Behavior and Policing in US Cities: ‘Right-to-Carry concealed… generate[s] 29 and 32 percent increases in firearm violent crime and firearm robbery… facilitated by a massive 35 percent increase in gun theft… diminished police effectiveness… <https://www.nber.org/papers/w30190>
Ben Thompson (2015): Aggregation Theory <https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/>
Technology Trends: Marcus Aurelius: ‘Marriage and Children: Aurelius married his first cousin Faustina the Younger in 145… 13 children… one son and four daughters outlived their father… <https://www.primidi.com/marcus_aurelius/marriage_and_children>
Leandro Prados de la Escosura: Health, Income, & the Preston Curve <https://voxeu.org/article/health-income-and-preston-curve>
Twitter & ‘Stack:
Tarik Abou-Chadi <https://twitter.com/tabouchadi/with_replies>
Steven Beschloss: Liars for a Lifetime: ‘The ugly truth of Supreme Court justices who pretended they would not overturn Roe v. Wade…
Bret Swanson: Can the CHIPS Act Bolster Moore’s Law?
Noah Smith: The Biden Administration Has Dropped the Ball on Vaccine Development
John Scalzi: An author is telling other authors not to take political positions because…
Timothy Burke: Maybe Courses: The Whole Enchilada: ‘It’s not a class on the history of the world… [but] a specialized survey… [of the] particular literary form… [of] “universal history” as a genre…
Director’s Cut PAID SUBSCRIBER ONLY Content Below:
¶s:
Everything is rainbows and unicorns while the aggregators are building the market. But then the aggregator is a two-sided monopolist, able to squeeze both creators and the audience.
Figure the Emir of classical Samarkand, But without the clan-network attachments to the caravaning merchants traveling the Silk Road that kept him from squeezing as hard as he could.
Ben Thompson (2015): Aggregation Theory: ‘The best way to make outsize profits in any of these markets is to either gain a horizontal monopoly in one of the three parts or to integrate two of the parts such that you have a competitive advantage in delivering a vertical solution. In the pre-Internet era the latter depended on controlling distribution…. The fundamental disruption of the Internet has been to turn this dynamic on its head…. The most important factor determining success is the user experience: the best distributors/aggregators/market-makers win by providing the best experience, which earns them the most consumers/users, which attracts the most suppliers, which enhances the user experience in a virtuous cycle…. I suspect that nearly every industry will belatedly discover it has a critical function that can be digitized and commodified, precipitating this shift. The profound changes caused by the Internet are only just beginning; aggregation theory is the means…
Thirteen live births for Faustina Minora. She died at 45. Only 37% of children survived their father:
Technology Trends: Marcus Aurelius: ‘Marriage and Children: Aurelius married his first cousin Faustina the Younger in 145. During their 30-year marriage Faustina bore 13 children. Only one son and four daughters outlived their father: (1) Annia Aurelia Galeria Faustina (147–after 165). (2) Gemellus Lucillae (died around 150), twin brother of Lucilla. (3) Annia Aurelia Galeria Lucilla (148/50–182), twin sister of Gemellus, married her father’s co-ruler Lucius Verus. (4) Titus Aelius Antoninus (born after 150, died before 7 March 161). (5) Titus Aelius Aurelius (born after 150, died before 7 March 161). (6) Hadrianus (152–157). (7) Domitia Faustina (born after 150, died before 7 March 161). (8) Annia Aurelia Fadilla (159–after 211). (9) Annia Cornificia Faustina Minor (160–after 211). (10) Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus (161–165), twin brother of Commodus. (11) Lucius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus (Commodus) (161–192), twin brother of Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus, later emperor. (12) Marcus Annius Verus Caesar (162–169). (13) Vibia Aurelia Sabina (170–died before 217)…
LINK: <https://www.primidi.com/marcus_aurelius/marriage_and_children>
One of the most remarkable things about the 20th century is our extraordinary success in spreading life expectancy-increasing public-health and biomedical technology around the globe relative to our substantial failure in spreading the technologies of high economic productivity:
Leandro Prados de la Escosura 23: Health, Income, & the Preston Curve: ‘Life expectancy and per capita income growth behaved differently in terms of trends and distribution over the period. The relationship was particularly weak during the period 1914 to 1950. Separately, medical improvements and the diffusion of medical knowledge have been crucial drivers of life expectancy improvements across the world…
LINK: <https://voxeu.org/article/health-income-and-preston-curve>
Very, very important from Noah Smith:
Noah Smith: The Biden Administration Has Dropped the Ball on Vaccine Development: ‘I was totally surprised at how amazingly successful Operation Warp Speed was…. Given the Trump administration’s incompetence with respect to restoring U.S. manufacturing, and its general attitude of belligerence and empty self-aggrandizement, I expected OWS to be a boondoggle. Never have I been happier to be proven wrong…. Given the supply chain failures… I expected similar holdups in mRNA vaccine production…. Third, given the extreme dysfunction of the CDC… I expected the FDA to hold up release of even a fully safe and effective vaccine for far longer than it did…. But it has been over a year since that triumph, and in that time, the Biden administration has curiously dropped the ball on vaccine development…
LINK:
I being very quiet may help you avoid making some enemies, but it definitely keeps you from making any friends:
John Scalzi: An author is telling other authors not to take political positions because our job is to entertain, not alienate “half our readers.”… Basically: Nah. Don’t shut up, if you would prefer to speak. Also, as a human here on Earth in 2022, you’re in a bunch of “lanes” including “a political stakeholder who has opinions on events that affect their life.” You may decide that “lane” is the important one right now…. Living a life of never publicly expressing an opinion so as to never lose a sale seems enervating and futile to me…. Have you noticed that bestselling authors on social media tend to be a politically mouthy bunch? It’s almost as if their having a loud public political opinion did not impede their book sales! Curious, that!… You could lose readers by expressing opinions. You can also gain them…. You don’t have to express political or other opinions out loud if that’s not how you roll. Be who you are. But that is how you roll, don’t limit yourself because of worries about sales. I suspect you will also find being your authentic self is important in the long run…. You don’t need to be silent against your will, just for the sake of a sale…
LINK:
Ah. “Universal history”. “What happens when a historian or writer tries to describe the history of the world, whether limited to a particular time period or theme or encompassing literally everything that has happened to humanity in historical time?” The historian must decide on and then center an overly simplistic grand narrative. Thus the question becomes: what extent must that Grand Narrative then become the historian’s master, and to what extent can it be made to act as merely a helpful servant?:
Timothy Burke: Maybe Courses: The Whole Enchilada: ‘It’s not a class on the history of the world… [but] a specialized survey… [of the] particular literary form… [of] “universal history” as a genre which has been powerfully influential in structuring the West’s sense of itself and its own power and as such is a really troubled and troubling genre. Historians with an interest in global history, world history and comparative history are at some pains to distinguish what they do from “universal history” as a genre, though there are important points of disciplinary cross-over…
LINK:
Uii! The Empire really had bad luck with the son that did outlive Marcus Aurelius. At least the Byzantines allowed Empresses. And Henry tried with Matilda.