Month: September 2013

The latest study (pdf) from the International Monetary Fund indicates that persistent gender inequality in employment “is bad news for everyone, because it translates into lower economic growth – amounting to as much as 27% of per capita GDP in some countries”:

The potential gains from a larger female workforce are striking.

In Egypt, for example, if the number of female workers were raised to the same level as that of men, the country’s GDP could grow by 34%. In the United Arab Emirates, GDP would expand by 12%, in Japan by 9%, and in the United States by 5%. According to a recent study based on data from the International Labor Organization, of the 865 million women worldwide who could contribute more fully to their economies, 812 million live in emerging and developing countries.

Raising women’s labor-market participation rate boosts economic performance in a number of ways. For example, higher incomes for women lead to higher household spending on educating girls – a key prerequisite for faster long-term growth. Employment of women on an equal basis with men provides companies with a larger talent pool, potentially increasing creativity, innovation, and productivity. And, in advanced countries, a larger female labor force can help to counteract the impact of a shrinking workforce and mitigate the costs of an aging population.

In a review of The Inconvenient Indian, Michael Bourne notes that “at both the political and personal level Native people are far more visible [in Canada] than in the States”:

[Historian] Patricia Limerick offers a fascinating historical insight into why this might be so. As she notes, the fur trade was integral to the original exploration of both Canada and the US, but thanks to differences in climate and animal habitat, the American fur trade was pushed to the margins by the enormous inrush of farming settlers, whereas in Canada fur trading with Indians remained central to the national enterprise for much longer. By its nature, trade in fur tends to be less destructive of indigenous culture than farming. To settle a farming community, one has to rid the land of its previous occupants, either by killing them or driving them far away where they can’t steal one’s crops or livestock. Fur trading, no matter how corrupt or one-sided, remains a trade, a partnership between two groups, each of which needs the other.

(Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Roy F. Baumeister posits that “experts who deny free will are arguing against peculiar, unscientific versions of the idea, such as that ‘free will’ means that causality is not involved”:

The use of abstract ideas such as moral principles to guide action takes us far beyond anything that you will find in a physics or chemistry textbook, and so we are free in the sense of emergence, of going beyond simpler forms of causality. Again, we cannot break the laws of physics, but we can act in ways that add new causes that go far beyond physical causation. No electron understands the Golden Rule, and indeed an exhaustive study of any given atom will furnish no clue as to whether it is part of a person who is obeying or disobeying that rule. The economic laws of supply and demand are genuine causes, but they cannot be reduced to or fully explained by chemical reactions. Understanding free will in this way allows us to reconcile the popular understanding of free will as making choices with our scientific understanding of the world.

Reviewing Zibaldone, the massive new translation of Giacomo Leopardi’s notebooks, John Gray highlights the 19th century philosopher-poet’s critique of Christianity:

His sympathies lay with the ancients, whose way of life he believed was more conducive to human happiness. A product of the increase of knowledge, the modern world is driven by the pursuit of truth; yet this passion for truth, Leopardi suggests, is a by-product of Christianity. Before Christianity disrupted and destroyed the ancient pagan cults with its universal claims, human beings were able to rest content with their local practices and illusions. “Mankind was happier before Christianity than after it,” he writes.

Christianity was a reaction against corrosive doubt, a condition that took hold partly as a result of the habit of sceptical inquiry inculcated by philosophy: “What was destroying the world was the lack of illusions. Christianity saved it, not because it was the truth but because it was a new source of illusion.” This new illusion came in the form of a claim to truth that all the world had to accept: an inordinate demand that with the rise of the Enlightenment shifted to science, which has become a project aiming to dissolve the dreams in which humanity has hitherto lived. The result is modern nihilism – the perception that human beings are an insignificant accident in a scheme of things that cares nothing for them or their values – and a host of rackety creeds promising some kind of secular salvation.

Gerald R. McDermott examines the debate about how Moses spoke, focusing on the passage in Exodus that finds him hesitating to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, telling God that he is “not eloquent” and – as McDermott translates the Hebrew – “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue”:

Most commentators have taken [these phrases] to refer to stuttering. But some of the rabbis, who wrote about this story for centuries in the Mishna and Talmud, didn’t think so. The eleventh-century rabbi Abraham Ibn Izra thought Moses had a speech impediment, but not stuttering. The rabbi wrote that Moses could not produce all the normal sounds with his tongue and lips.

… Other Jewish interpreters thought the Hebrew phrase “heavy of tongue and mouth” meant that Moses’ speech was just fine, in fact eloquent. Some said it meant he spoke slowly and carefully, without the glibness characteristic of frivolous persons. A first-century Aramaic translator said the Hebrew word for “heavy” really meant “deep,” so that Moses was profound in his speech. Another rabbinic interpreter said that Moses was not tongue-tied but humble, recognizing that his brother Aaron was a better speaker.

Still others have thought that Moses’ problem was linguistic. According to Sigmund Freud, Moses was Egyptian and could not speak Hebrew. Other historians have suggested that Moses knew both languages but spoke Hebrew with a heavy accent.

In an interview about his new short story collection Between Friends, Amos Oz reveals his philosophy on happiness:

Happiness is a big word. Happiness as a human condition is something I never believed in. I think there are moments of happiness. I don’t think there is a lasting happiness. I think this is unthinkable. In the Jewish tradition we have no less than six Hebrew words for joy: “simcha,” “alitzut,” “chedva,” “tzahala”, but no proper word for happiness and perhaps rightly so. Joy is something that comes and goes. The idea of everlasting happiness is alien to me. I don’t believe in it.