Daphne's opinion, indeed.
A few people on this blog seem to think that the views expressed in my Sunday article ‘If God provides, we needn’t bother’ are just ‘my opinion’. They are writing in with ‘their opinion’, which they think equally valid, having just pulled it off the top of their heads without any reference to social and economic history. I’ve posted a few beginner’s links on the Protestant work ethic, Max Weber, John Calvin, and a few articles beneath the post itself, because I really can’t believe that there are grown men and women in this country who have no inkling of these things. There are the most incredible lacunae in our national minimum curriculum, not that I expect Maltese schools to teach their pupils that the Protestants had a more positive attitude to work and that’s how they ended up better off financially. That’s the trouble when religion gets in the way – you never hear about The Other Side.
The Guardian, 6 October 2007
Matt KeatingThe Protestant work ethic is alive and well
So the Protestant work ethic is not the glib misnomer we all thought it was. Nations in which Protestant Christianity is the main religion have the highest employment rates, says a study published this week in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Controversial stuff, given that humans have used religion to ramp up conflicts for centuries.
The study, by economist Horst Feldmann from the University of Bath, was based on data from 80 countries. Employment rates in Protestant-prevalent states – such as the US, the UK, Denmark, Sweden and Norway – is around 6% higher than countries in which other religions are practised by the largest proportion of the population.
Other elements that affect the labour market are factored in, including regulations and tax. And in this respect Feldmann also finds that female employment rates are around 11% higher in Protestant nations too. The explanation? The legacy of the early Protestant church.
“In the early days, Protestantism promoted the virtue of hard and diligent work among its adherents, who judged one another by conformity to this standard,” says Feldmann in a statement. “Originally, an intense devotion to one’s work was meant to assure oneself that one was predestined for salvation. “Although the belief in predestination did not last more than a generation or two after the Reformation, the ethic of work continued.” This obsession with the virtue of drudgery imbued the culture, education and institutions of those nations in which Protestantism became the main religion and was “conducive” to the rise of modern capitalism, he continues. “It stimulated entrepreneurial spirits and helped to assimilate workers in the factory system.”
A little bit of buzzing around on the internet and I’ve found the research paper to which the opinion post in this piece refers.
Protestantism, labor force participation, and employment across countries – The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Oct 2007 by Horst Feldmann.
14 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
You were very right about your analysis of protestantism:however,you were very wrong in your alternative energy article in the Independent a few months ago:it is not enough to do research of what others(including pseudo experts)think:you need to have studied and deeply understood technology and engineering to form an informed opinion in this area.I would love to hear about your ideas about nuclear energy!
[Daphne: Cynicism about global warming and climate change as something uniquely 20th-century and uniquely man-made is not ‘my opinion’ but one shared by others far better qualified to speak about the subject than I am. Please see the links below. There are many, many more but I’m besieged by deadlines and a little distracted. You won’t get my views on nuclear energy because I don’t have any. In fact, weather and global warming per se don’t interest me at all. I find them deadly dull and boring. It is the public affairs process – the communications process, if you wish – that surrounds this issue which captures my professional and personal interest. People have been led to believe that climate change is a new phenomenon, rather than the natural state of the world from its inception. Those who have turned global warming/climate change into a political mission of self-justification (Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth) or actual industry have no incentive to let people know that climate change is older than humanity itself, because they want people to believe that their actions are causing all the problems.
You yourself are an exemplar of this with your statement that in order to understand climate change, you have to study technology and engineering. No, it is also important to study archaeology and those areas of history that give you access to documents recording the weather and its effect on society and the economy, or at least to have access to the research and knowledge of those who have done so. It is not a coincidence that the archaeologists and historians are conspicuously absent from this debate, which is dominated worldwide by scientists speaking only about the second half of the 20th century and the first eight years of the 21st. Throughout the history of humanity, and doubtless even in prehistory, whole cities and even civilisations were wiped out because of the effects of changes in climate. We are now less vulnerable to climate change, and not more so. Crop failure or a year with no rain – or with too much rain – no longer spells famine in Europe, but it still does so in other parts of the world. The challenge is to address what has always been a fact of life, rather than trying to blame it on the conspicuous consumption of the west as an excuse for delaying doing anything about non-consumption in the Third World.
Al Gore has made it his mission – and this is what I find so fascinating, the success of his campaign – to give the western world a giant guilt trip about consuming too much and risking the apocalyptic end of the human race. Boiled down to its essence, his message is not much different from that of the religious sandwich-board-wearers of yore, who insisted on proclaiming that the end of the world was nigh unless we changed our ways. The most amusing, and accurate, comment on Al Gore and his message was, unsurprisingly, in South Park: a cartoon Gore trawling through the hick towns of the US warning people of the very real terrors of the ManBearPig, a monster which would devour them if they weren’t careful. God, how I laughed.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/09/eaweather109.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1833902.stm
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/nonsense_of_global_warming.html
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/the_myth_of_dangerous_human_caused_climate_change.html
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24126123-5012321,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4449527.ece
http://www.globalwarmingarchive.com/History.aspx
Tragically, we’re far from being a “Switzerland in the Mediterranean”. We’re more akin to a “Taliban in the Mediterranean”.
The loyalties of our members of the house lie (first and foremost) with Canon Law as opposed to Civil Law and to make matters worse they actually flaunt it!!!! Our own constitution makes reference to a particular religion; and there are armies of crusaders willing to ostracise the infidel through charismatic (what an oxymoron!!!) movements and organisations like the Gift of Life.
Also, we seem to be stuck in the middle ages. Most of the houses are decorated in baroque style, our food portions are definitely baroque, there seems to be a national fetish with car spoilers (adequate word, indeed) and while we’re at it, some cars look like a leaf out of “The Baroque Guide to Excess and Tastelessness”; and as I said before, we have the inquisition and the crusaders who are willing to shed their own blood to defend Catholicism.
Doesn’t look and sound like Switzerland to me . . . . . . .
Of course it’s highly understandable that Gore got nicknamed Al Bore…..
LOL!
You are also right about Al Gore:once he even claimed he invented the internet!My comment is not about climate change:it is about when you wrote in the Malta Independent some months ago about solar and wind energy being useless.
Regarding Protestantism,although it started out on the right track,it is now losing its way on subjects such as homosexuality:the Catholic Church although wrong on the subjects of priests marrying and condom use is adhering to the Bible on this issue of homosexuality which cannot ever be considered normal and acceptable only tolerable because nature does create what most people call abnormalities
[Daphne – I thought you were referring to my article/s on climate change. Alternative energy equipment is more expensive to buy and more environmentally damaging to produce than any savings or environmental benefits there are to be gained, even in the long run. Just imagine what it will take in terms of environmental cost to actually manufacture solar heating units for every household on the planet. I do now have a solar heater on the roof, however, and my main complaint is that the water smells of heated rubber. The internal issues of the various churches don’t interest me at all, no more than do the committee meetings and procedures of clubs and associations. It’s their affair what they do about homosexuality or women priests or celibacy. I really don’t care. My only interest lies in where these rules and teachings impinge on life for others outside the church, or those who have no choice but to belong (as in Islam). If Catholics want their priests to be celibate, who cares? If the priests don’t like it, they can leave. If the congregation doesn’t like it, they can leave too. I am offended by your suggestion that the church is against homosexuality because it is ‘adhering to the bible’. I imagine you mean the Old Testament, which is replete with the sorts of things we have long considered heresies and which are in direct conflict with the New Testament. The church is not against homosexuals. The church is against all sex that does not take place between a man and woman who are married to each other. The church condemns homosexual sex in the same way that it condemns sex outside marriage or sex with a condom: it is deliberately not open to life (but then so is the infamous rhythm method) and it does not take place between people married in a Catholic church. Your reasoning re tolerance rather than acceptance is pointless. What are you going to gain by refusing to accept others on the basis of their homosexuality? On the other hand, you stand to lose a lot in terms of friendship. I honestly can’t believe there are still people around who see the sexuality before they see the person.]
You will, of course, always get a small percentage of scientists who question the effects of global warming (that is the earth is warming up is not in itself controversial; it is a measured and scientific fact – the average Earth temperature is going up and so is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere).
You will always find a small percentage of people who think differently than all the rest and posting a couple of links to their articles does not necessary make them right or special – after all, there is still a sect in the US that believes the Earth is flat and pictures from outer space are just a conspiracy; so there is always a divergence about everything in the world.
The majority of scientists believe that global warming will have very serious ramifications for all of us, especially the poorer and lower-lying countries. The difference of opinion is about the ‘when’ not the ‘if’.
[Daphne – Nobody is questioning the fact that the world is warming up, not even me. The point at issue is whether this would have happened anyway, without millions of people running cars and breathing. Historical records and archaeological evidence demonstrate quite clearly that climate change is a fact of life whether you have industry, cars and billions of people or not. The climate change fanatics are trying to present the flux as a recent phenomenon, and NEVER refer to the fact that there were massive climate changes throughout history and prehistory. Did you read the link I posted to The Sunday Times article about the discovery of the weather logs kept by Captain Cook and Lord Nelson? Did they fake those records to sabotage Al Gore 300 years down the line, do you think? I’m an archaeologist by training, so my perspective is a little longer. The most I found in my reading through myriad articles is the admission that human beings have accelerated climate change in the 20th/21st century – a very brief reference that made a pleasant change from the endless nagging about how human beings cause it in the first place. Climate change is going to happen no matter what we do or don’t do. The great flood of ancient Middle Eastern legend – which gave rise to the biblical account of Noah and his ark – is likely to have been based on a real climatic catastrophe that wiped out an entire civilisation, living on in a narrative passed down the generations by the survivors. This is just narrative evidence. There’s actual, real hard archaeological evidence of cities abandoned because the surrounding terrain turned into a dustbowl, or left desolate when crop failure caused by drought killed off the entire population. Do you know that North Africa and Libya were, 2000 years ago, lush places with trees, forests, grass and water, capable of supporting thriving cities? Look at the ruins of those cities now: they’re standing in the desert, or in bleak arid terrain. It didn’t happen because of cars or heavy industry.]
You are not supposed to drink solar water heater water!Although very useful and cheap and mediterranean countries have adopted solar water heating in a big way the main problem today is how to generate electrical energy from solar and wind resources:you will be surprised to see what is happening outside Las Vegas in the desert and in Spain using both solar mirrors to generate steam in a big way and produce 25 Megawatts of electric power.
[Daphne – I said ‘smell’ not ‘taste’. I don’t drink it. I take showers in it, and the ‘chemical’ smell of the water is at times overwhelming.]
Re: climate change
What I find objectionable is this new attitude that since the world is warming up anyway, we might as well continue how we are – like it is a lost battle.
You are right, of course, in the fact that there have always been climate changes. What there hasnt been are changes which appear to be linked to a huge increase in the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse glasses in the air. This is a new phenomenon, uncharted territory, one that has not yet really been tested or experienced before – and to be blunt, why take the risk at all and continue like nothing is happening?!
We appear to be playing with fire if we dont do something about this and continue with our livestyles; it does look like a lost battle, I admit, because of the magnitude of the problem. What I find unacceptable (and illogical) is the attitude that since the problem is so big and because we are yet unsure of the technicalities, we might as well do nothing and not even change little things in our lives that help.
[Daphne – Changing the little things in our lives doesn’t help at all, no matter if armies of us do it. We do it for our own conscience, nothing more. It doesn’t actually achieve anything except the feel-good factor. The point is this: we are expected to make huge sacrifices without the guarantee that it will be worthwhile in the end. A bit like religious belief, don’t you think?]
So continue aggravating the problem? A bit like the person who is so heavy in debt that he continues to spend; seeing he will never get out of debt anyway.
Not sure your statement is correct, anyway. The US produces 25% of CO2; if Americans change their lifestyles (they are already starting to do this because of the oil prices) it will indeed result in some change. Simple maths, or should I say math.
[Daphne – Your comparison isn’t quite right. Instead of spending more than you need to survive, when you are in debt, you should use the money to reduce the debt. And one day it will be cleared, failing which you will have to declare bankruptcy. There is a way out. With climate change, there isn’t. To use your analogy, even if we all use solar heaters, it will be like contributing cents towards a debt of several million. Might as well use the cents: in personal economic terms, it’s called opportunity cost. What do we have to give up in the here and now for ourselves so as to have a hypothetical benefit that we won’t even notice, for the world in general?]
Re : Climate change, a note from a environmental-social expert
As an expert and a researcher, I cannot say both of you are right or wrong, but can show how your opinions (like many scientists) are really based on your cultural way of life. Maybe it is better if you look how the social sciences and more particularly the cultural theory of Thompson can contribute to developing shared understanding of your controversies to climate change approach. Also, I would like to remind you that controversies often betray the presence of differences in basic values, beliefs and assumptions.
For me, it is most interesting to consider how your way of life faces issues such as scarcity, growth, technology, and the management of needs and resources. So I make a classification as done in Cultural theory:
Holland: Egalitarian.
Egalitarians believe that resources are given and finite, so that needs have to be reduced to ensure a reasonable supply of resources. Scarcity is perceived as a depletion of resources, due to overexploitation of nature. The solution is to change people’s life-style and to opt for small-scale technology.
Daphne: Fatalist
Fatalists regard both their needs and their resources as unmanageable. Their management strategy involves coping with an environment over which they have no control. Nature is perceived as a lottery-like cornucopia, where resources might be abundant, but it has to be seen whether and when they will be available. Chance may bring it their way.
I also want to stress that current scientific knowledge does not provide sufficient argument in favor of one of your particular perspective. One reason is that uncertainties about the various interactions between man and the environment are still very large, leaving room for different interpretations of the available data. Another reason is that most of the environmental problems of today are not merely technical but strongly value-laden. Therefore, from a scientific point of view, I think it is advisable to involve different perspectives in any decision. An additional argument for doing so is the fact that basic assumptions and perceptions influence the outcome of the analysis probably more than anything else does.
[Daphne: Thank you for contributing the last paragraph, which is about right. But as for your assessment of me as a fatalist – well, I am the opposite of a fatalist, and this is amply demonstrated by much of what I write. I don’t believe in either fate or destiny, and famously so (or infamously, depending on how you look at it). Though I do know that chance plays a certain role in all our lives – a chance meeting at a party or an airport that leads to a job or a marriage – intelligent behaviour, guts and carefully calculated risk play an even greater role in success. I believe that we are all responsible for what happens to us, barring accidents that are beyond our control, and that we should use every ounce of our being to make the best of our lives and the most of our gifts and abilities. I have gone through life turning setbacks into opportunities with successful results, so that even though I left education at 17 and had three children by the age of 24, which is the classic recipe for disaster, I am now well ahead of my contemporaries and through my own efforts rather than piggy-backing through marriage, parents or inheritance. I put myself through five years of university education while looking after three primary-school children and working for various publications. I consider laziness and apathy to be unforgivable ‘crimes’, and I can’t bear people who whine and do nothing about their lives.
I think that we make our own luck and our own disasters depending on the kind of decisions we take, whether they are intelligent decisions or not. I do not think anything in life is a lottery except the circumstances of our birth and possible accidents or tragedies involving deaths or maiming, or serious illness. All other matters of chance can be used to our advantage or dealt with in some other way. I do not regard either my needs or my resources as unmanageable, but rather the opposite, as you can see from this brief description. I think they are ultra-manageable, and I manage them down to the last detail. If I didn’t do that, it would not be possible for me to publish 17 magazines a year when other magazines are produced by a fully-staffed office with an army of people, who generate fewer editions with far less reading-matter inside them. And I do this while still attending to other business, running my household, and planning new projects – hardly the life of a fatalist who sees things as being beyond her control. I’m a capitalist, a pragmatist and a meritocrat who admires achievers and respects entrepreneurship. I would actually like to put a rocket under fatalists and other ‘mentally floppy’ people.]
@Daphne: You remarked – “Changing the little things in our lives doesn’t help at all, no matter if armies of us do it. We do it for our own conscience, nothing more. It doesn’t actually achieve anything except the feel-good factor. The point is this: we are expected to make huge sacrifices without the guarantee that it will be worthwhile in the end. A bit like religious belief, don’t you think?”
This is from a 2004 paper written by a noted anthropologist, on the subject of what might be a return to paganism – earth worship – in developed societies:
“Religious production in recent years suggests not only that many religions are becoming more environmentally friendly but also that a kind of civic planetary earth religion may be evolving, manifested in events like ‘Earth Day’.”
Environmentalism fills a void in very secular societies. The clamour to change our behaviour lest the earth turn on us and destroy us all is little more than the 21st-century equivalent of the appeasement practices of ancient religions: child sacrifice for the alleviation of drought; virgin sacrifice to calm the god of thunder, and so on. It’s no coincidence that environmental movements are strongest in the more economically developed and less religious regions of the world. Some people commenting on this blog, and on The Times’ comment-boards, have a serious inability to make connections between cause and effect when it comes to social developments.
Re: Climate change – a note to Daphne
My comparison and classification for your approaches to climate change (better to say environmental protection from a more top approaach) is nothing related to your personal lifes or altitudes, it is only different idea from a complete different perspective: an anology from a social theory! Your ideas for natural resource management can be different than your approaches to life; which is also valid for most of the scientists including me. However, your perspective to climate change is more close to fatalist approach rather than hierarchist, egalitarian, or individual perspective.
[Daphne – It isn’t: the fatalistic approach is the one that accepts we are all doomed and because of that, we have to change our ways. Non-fatalists like me don’t think we’re all doomed, and we think that what all this is about is a sublimation of some primeval need to appease the angry Gods of Rain, River, Sun and Flood: if we make the required sacrifices, they will not slay us with fire, brimstone and a couple of whirlwinds.]
Dear Mr Scientist, thank you for gracing us with your knowledge, I don’t know what we would have done without it. Yet i think Daphne is right when she likens environmentalism with religion. Environmentalists often like to ride their moral high-horse when talking about the environment, accusing capitalists of destroying “their children’s home”.
God forbid such tree-huggers existed at the time of the Industrial revolution! We would be writing by candle light. I know little about science, so excuse my ignorance, but I’m sure the air has become slightly dirtier. But this seems petty when compared to the massive improvements in standards of living. People live longer and more comfortably. They also have more money to spend and more things to spend it on. Thanks to technology man has been able to progress. The trend will remain upwards unless impeded by the religion of ecology that failed leftist intellectuals (such as Al Gore) seem so proud to support. We are being told not to buy cars with big engines, but buy eco-friendly ones, or if you want to please the green gods even more, catch the bus. Why should a person who can afford a ferrari, has worked hard for one and always dreamt of driving one not be allowed to get behind that wheel and floor the pedal? How much damage can it possibly cause to the ozone-layer? Ridding the man of this chance would cause much more harm than the ‘good’ caused by him not driving it. Maybe I don’t like the sight of the ghastly Toyota Prius or those eye-sore solar panels- or is visual pollution not on the agenda anymore?
Thank God green parties haven’t taken off yet.
[Daphne – Amen to that.]
re: Ian
Great contribution. It reflects everything that is wrong with (Maltese) society: ill-placed sarcasm, greed, and the legendary inability to think long term.
What’s so greedy about enjoying what one’s worked hard for? Isn’t the crazed environmentalist equally greedy when imposing his religious beliefs on everyone else? Trying to be a busy body and interfering with everyone else’s lives? Don’t smoke, use the bus, recycle, spend more money to buy “eco-friendly” goods…the list of commandments is endless. Would you believe, yesterday someone wrote on the Times website that events like Notte Bianca are bad for the environment and that we shouldn’t support them. Give us a break will you, please.