Experimental Blog # 224

Quotations from and comments on "Political Tribes" - Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua

"Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. < > Almost no one is a hermit. Even monks and friars belong to orders. But the tribal instinct is not just an instinct to belong. It is also an instinct to exclude. < > once people belong to a group, their identities can become oddly bound with it. < > They will sacrifice, and even kill and die, for their groups."
"In many parts of the world < > the group identities that matter most < > are not national, but ethnic, regional, religious, sectarian, or clan based."

"A striking fact about terrorists is that, unlike serial killers, they are not generally psychopaths. Most serial murderers, experts agree, exhibit traits consistent with diagnosable psychopathic personality disorders. By contrast, psychologists studying terrorism have struggled in vain for years to identify deviant or abnormal personality traits typical of terrorists."
"Indeed, there is now consensus among researchers that "terrorists are essentially normal individuals.""
"Very few people, no matter how angry, impoverished, or degraded, actually engage in terrorist activity. For most of us, it is incomprehensible that seemingly normal, likeable young men and women, often from loving families, could blow themselves up or participate gleefully in gruesome beheadings."

There are very informative and thought provoking chapters{close to one half of this book} specifically devoted to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Terror Tribes, and Venezuela.

The author's American chapters are entitled: "American Exceptionalism and the Sources of U.S. Group Blindness Abroad", "Inequality and the Tribal Chasm in America", and "Democracy and Political Tribalism in America". However, not all of this writing is entirely so informative or thought provoking. For instance, she writes a lot about the much talked about subjects of "race and racism", but not quite so much about the real significance of ancestry and related subjects.

None the less, Amy Chua has very interesting and thought provoking opinions and she expresses them very articulately.

Experimental Blog # 223

Comments and notes on "Istanbul" - A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes

This book contains over 600 pages of text and maps. In addition to this there are 29 pages of timeline, 66 pages of notes, 58 pages of bibliography, and 37 pages of index. It is indeed a "colossal undertaking ... a notable achievement."

"Legend has it that{in 657 BC} Byzas from Megara founds Byzantion as a Greek colony on the west side of the Bosphorus."
"Byzantion is renamed Constantinople"{in 330 AD}.
"After the sack of Rome{in 410 AD by Goths led by Alaric} and the collapse of the machine whose constituent parts - the army, tax collectors, loyalty to an idea - had kept the pax Romana operative, the West fractured."
"On 16 July AD 1054 < > Thus began the so-called Great Schism. The impasse would not be resolved until 910 years later in 1964."

A chapter is entitled "The City of Crusades AD 1090 - 1203"; of which there were four.

In 1453 the Ottoman Empire led by Mehmed II conquers Constantinople; which is now also called Kostantiniyye or Islam-bol.

"After the fall of Constantinople in AD 1453 it was Russia which took on the mantle of Orthodoxy."

In AD 1683 occurs the Great Siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed IV; but they are defeated.
"After the Viennese defeat{that is the Ottoman defeat at Vienna} < > The Russians, hearing reports of Ottoman distress, set off from Moscow with a million{!!} horses, 300,000 infantry and 100,000 cavalry." Don't these numbers sound too high to be true?

However, the author's many travels and other descriptions to the places, sites, and museums that she writes about make her book exceptionally interesting and vivid.