Prussification, Pirahãs and physiology. What have these got in common — and more to the point, what do the first two even mean? First things first: Typically, a columnist tells you what he or she thinks, or maybe uses the work of an expert, new or old, as a borrowed chord to sing a new song. But, as 2011 draws to a close, I thought I’d ask some of the most fascinating people I talked to, wrote about or read in the past year to riff about their “wow” moments — and to divulge what they are looking forward to in 2012.
If you thought of Prussia when you read “Prussification,” then you’re on the right track. A willingness to force its own solution on the European debt crisis marks the end of Germany allowing “its economic might to be directed according to French will,” said Michael Shaoul, chairman of Marketfield Asset Management, a New York-based mutual fund company. “We are,” he said, “arguably witnessing the most significant recasting of political power in Europe, and may one day realize that the Second World War and its post-war continuation did not ‘end’ with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but with the debt crisis of 2011.”
Will this newly assertive Germany (or weakened France) be good for Europe? It’s difficult to say, said Shaoul. But it adds a wrinkle to the idea that Europe is shuffling off into a dark age, much like the Roman Empire did, while China and other hardworking non-Europeans rise to dominate the world — a recurring theme in the media over the past year that strikes Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of arts and sciences at Northwestern University and editor-in-chief of the “Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History” as suspect.
As Mokyr points out, we must remember two vital things about the declinist drumbeat. It isn’t new — remember Oswald Spengler’s hugely influential 1918 book “The Decline of the West.” And it isn’t necessarily true — look at how Europe recovered from the devastation of World War II. Now look at how Europe managed this epic feat: Free trade and free-ish markets, powered by science and technology, civic society and religious tolerance. In short, Europe rediscovered the Enlightenment. If the new extremes of Europe’s left and right “can be beaten back,” said Mokyr — and he believes they can — “the European Miracle will survive the euro crisis, Greek bankruptcy, youth unemployment and its current crop of mediocre politicians.”
Complicating this, however, is the fact that geopolitics now has an extra and entirely new dimension: the Internet. As John Kindervag, principal analyst for security and risk management at Forrester Research, argued, “Nation states are still stuck in the era where there were enforceable physical borders, and they are taking their understanding of physical geographies and trying to use those models in a networked world. The Maginot line didn’t work in 1940, and drawing borders on the Internet won’t work in 2012 … The next generation of politicians and despots won’t care at all about land — they will want to control information and the mechanism to transport that information — the very Internet itself.”
The realities of cyberwar in 2011 are going to force a complete rethink of geopolitics and identity. Similarly, progress in science, especially in molecular and synthetic biology, is outpacing conventional moral reasoning, said Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Center for Neuroethics. But help is at hand: Oxford University Press will publish his “Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement” in July, co-written with fellow Oxford philosopher Ingmar Persson. “It will change the way we think about modifying human biology and set the agenda for morally enhancing human beings for the rest of the century,” he said. “Look out for it.”
Another evolutionary insight with revolutionary potential is the idea that basic grammar may not be innate and universal. As the philosopher and neuroscientist Patricia Churchland noted, “Field linguists have now shown that nothing touted as a universal is. Embarrassingly, for every candidate … some language or other is a counter-example.” The latest of these are the Pirahã (pee-da-HAN), a Brazilian tribe whose language, according to linguist Daniel Everett, does not contain recursion, whereby a clause is embedded within a clause — a quality previously considered not only universal but fundamental. As Churchland explained, Everett “thinks of language as a cultural tool, not unlike boats, spears and fire. The linguistic tools reflect local needs, resources and social practices. They evolve over time; they have a history.” Everett’s book “Language: The Cultural Tool” will be published early in 2012.
Finally, all this thinking — whether brilliant or banal — may exact a physiological cost, said Martica Heaner, a New York City exercise physiologist. “A brand-new area of research, ‘inactivity physiology,’ ” she said, “has revealed that the 10 [or more] hours of sitting that most of us do each day” can affect HDL cholesterol levels and decreased insulin sensitivity that can affect diabetes risk.
Unfortunately, Heaner said that “more exercise is not the answer.” We have to consciously get up and move throughout the day. So there you have it. Amid so much incredible change and insight into the human condition and the world, the most revolutionary idea of all sends us right back to our origins: We need to stand up … and walk.
If you thought of Prussia when you read “Prussification,” then you’re on the right track. A willingness to force its own solution on the European debt crisis marks the end of Germany allowing “its economic might to be directed according to French will,” said Michael Shaoul, chairman of Marketfield Asset Management, a New York-based mutual fund company. “We are,” he said, “arguably witnessing the most significant recasting of political power in Europe, and may one day realize that the Second World War and its post-war continuation did not ‘end’ with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but with the debt crisis of 2011.”
Will this newly assertive Germany (or weakened France) be good for Europe? It’s difficult to say, said Shaoul. But it adds a wrinkle to the idea that Europe is shuffling off into a dark age, much like the Roman Empire did, while China and other hardworking non-Europeans rise to dominate the world — a recurring theme in the media over the past year that strikes Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of arts and sciences at Northwestern University and editor-in-chief of the “Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History” as suspect.
As Mokyr points out, we must remember two vital things about the declinist drumbeat. It isn’t new — remember Oswald Spengler’s hugely influential 1918 book “The Decline of the West.” And it isn’t necessarily true — look at how Europe recovered from the devastation of World War II. Now look at how Europe managed this epic feat: Free trade and free-ish markets, powered by science and technology, civic society and religious tolerance. In short, Europe rediscovered the Enlightenment. If the new extremes of Europe’s left and right “can be beaten back,” said Mokyr — and he believes they can — “the European Miracle will survive the euro crisis, Greek bankruptcy, youth unemployment and its current crop of mediocre politicians.”
Complicating this, however, is the fact that geopolitics now has an extra and entirely new dimension: the Internet. As John Kindervag, principal analyst for security and risk management at Forrester Research, argued, “Nation states are still stuck in the era where there were enforceable physical borders, and they are taking their understanding of physical geographies and trying to use those models in a networked world. The Maginot line didn’t work in 1940, and drawing borders on the Internet won’t work in 2012 … The next generation of politicians and despots won’t care at all about land — they will want to control information and the mechanism to transport that information — the very Internet itself.”
The realities of cyberwar in 2011 are going to force a complete rethink of geopolitics and identity. Similarly, progress in science, especially in molecular and synthetic biology, is outpacing conventional moral reasoning, said Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Center for Neuroethics. But help is at hand: Oxford University Press will publish his “Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement” in July, co-written with fellow Oxford philosopher Ingmar Persson. “It will change the way we think about modifying human biology and set the agenda for morally enhancing human beings for the rest of the century,” he said. “Look out for it.”
Another evolutionary insight with revolutionary potential is the idea that basic grammar may not be innate and universal. As the philosopher and neuroscientist Patricia Churchland noted, “Field linguists have now shown that nothing touted as a universal is. Embarrassingly, for every candidate … some language or other is a counter-example.” The latest of these are the Pirahã (pee-da-HAN), a Brazilian tribe whose language, according to linguist Daniel Everett, does not contain recursion, whereby a clause is embedded within a clause — a quality previously considered not only universal but fundamental. As Churchland explained, Everett “thinks of language as a cultural tool, not unlike boats, spears and fire. The linguistic tools reflect local needs, resources and social practices. They evolve over time; they have a history.” Everett’s book “Language: The Cultural Tool” will be published early in 2012.
Finally, all this thinking — whether brilliant or banal — may exact a physiological cost, said Martica Heaner, a New York City exercise physiologist. “A brand-new area of research, ‘inactivity physiology,’ ” she said, “has revealed that the 10 [or more] hours of sitting that most of us do each day” can affect HDL cholesterol levels and decreased insulin sensitivity that can affect diabetes risk.
Unfortunately, Heaner said that “more exercise is not the answer.” We have to consciously get up and move throughout the day. So there you have it. Amid so much incredible change and insight into the human condition and the world, the most revolutionary idea of all sends us right back to our origins: We need to stand up … and walk.
