A Suitable Boy
By Vikram Seth
A book equal to Hugo in quotable quotes. My favorite quote among many to choose from: ‘Do not let the bee enter the garden that the moth may not be unjustly killed.’
On the author Vikram Seth: What he does to the color of a character is what Victor Hugo does to color a scene. Each compels you to read and re-read their works just for shear enjoyment of the mosaic of words; paintings upon the readers mind. There comes a point where the reader could care little for the plot as he is pleasantly lost in the picture. The following is an example of quips of drama, romance and humor that barely scratches the surface in representing my point.
• For the most part he treated the patient audience to a speech of exceptional banality. He soared and veered over a vast terrain, and assumed that his droppings would make an intelligible pattern
• Said the professor to the nephew , “economics, such a wasted subject. When are you going to switch subjects?” The nephew’s reply, “I can’t”. “Why not” retorted the Uncle. “I already graduated.”
• For a man who in his friendships and acquaintances looked upon religion and nationality as both significant and irrelevant…
• The joke about super human phenomena and 50 women sitting under a tree perfectly silent
As far as plot goes, this book does a masterful job in tying a Gordian Knot with strains of love, religion, family, politics, international business and then spends one lakh, (a thousand) pages drawing in tension based on loves’ intrigue. What is read on page one will be pulled through to page thirteen hundred and fifty. While the prime question is who Lata will choose as her suitable boy for marriage, there are strands of love’s intrigue between every character in the book. In this book love is not necessarily romance, in fact far from it. There are absolutely no steamy scenes. But it is always placing love on a condition with a mysterious sense of forgiveness. The churn is realized through profound superficial differences that are moored by a distinct sameness in each other. It is the drama of coming to an understanding of another that makes this book a compelling read. In the oneness of mankind, amidst all our differences there is a sameness that makes us One.
In this book as an American of 2012 views India, with its different attire, food, and religion as a very foreign country; we find underneath these veneers exists the very same human drama that plays out here in America. The author illustrates that in the differences between Muslim and Hindi are also sameness’s and friendships between families. And within families we all know too well that each child is a very different person from the next. One an athlete, the other an intellect. One a musician, the other an engineer. One socially energized the other an introvert. Yet what binds a family together in all this diversity is love. In this book the glue for that love is found in the character of Ma, the master puppeteer of a family displaying all the above traits. There is not a mother on earth that would not enjoy this short read of one thousand, three hundred and fifty pages. The question let on by the author is: does love need the crutch of tradition perhaps found in the bedrock of religion to maintain a sense of discipline when our love is on the lam? Or does religion become the agent of strife? Or does love prevail on its own on the basis of human nature. No man is an island.
What is it to be Indian? For the western reader, you certainly get to experience modern day India by living one year in the life of four intertwined families. In addition you get educated. The following conversation between Dipinkar and the Grand Dame at a dinner party is a profound academic existential interpretation of being Indian.
In a question put to Amit by the Grand Dame at a dinner party: What is all this about “being” and the birds and the boats and the river of life – that we find in Indian poetry – the great Tagore excluded; his fundamental construct of being is the square-the four stages of life – love, wealth, duty, and final liberation. Even the four arms of our ancient symbol, the swastika, so sadly abused of late…yes it is the square and the square alone that is the fundamental construct of our spirituality.
a. ..the elemental paradigm – and I would never have said construct – our ancient civilization is of course the Trinity … I don’t mean the Christian trinity…all that seems so crude somehow - but Trinity as Process and Aspect – Creation and Preservation and Destruction – yes the Trinity is the elemental paradigm of our civilization.
b. ---the primeval texture of Indian philosophy is that of Duality---yes Duality---The warp and weft of our ancient garment, the sari itself – a single length of cloth which yet swaths our Indian womanhood.
c. --- the intrinsic essence of our being here in India is a Oneness, yes, a Oneness of Being, an ecumenical assimilation of all that pours into this great subcontinent of ours. Its Unity that governs our souls, here in this ancient land.
d. ---No no no said the Grand Dame; Not Unity but Zero, Nullity itself, is the guiding principle of our existence. I would never used the term intrinsic essence – for what is an essence if it is not intrinsic?
I muse not only the fundamental elements of the four points of view, but the nuance in the framing of each view. I find that framing sort of dialogue in my every day life with Indians . It very much an Indian trait, where as we Americans are shorter on words to express ourselves.
The essence of Hindi, from the Gita:
2. Contacts with matter make us feel
3. Heat and cold, pleasure and pain
4. Arjuna, you must learn to endure
5. Fleeting things – they come and go
6. When these cannot torment a man,
7. When suffering and joy are equal
8. For him and he has courage,
9. He is fit for immortality.
10. Nothing of non-being comes to be
11. Nor does being cease to exist;
12. The boundary between these two
13. Is seen by men who see reality
The Muslim – Hindi cross over permeates the book. Mann (Hindu) falls in love with Saeda Bai (Muslim). Lata (Hindu) and Kabir (Muslim) fall in love. Mann and Frioz (Muslim) are best friends. Maheesh Kapor the head of the Prim Niva House (Hindu) And Nawab Sahib the head of the Batair House (Muslim) were best of friends and covered for each other in political and police scraps. Mann stays with Rasheed’s family (Muslim) and is embraced by all the Muslim villagers. The embrace is mutual. Maheesh Kapoor finds his primary constituency in politics to be Muslim and this is not a problem. The reader comes away from the book with a real sense that it has only been tradition, borne not in religious beliefs, but religious rituals, that is the chief protagonist to the divide between Hindu and Muslim. The most profound example is the religious ceremonies that happened to fall on the same date in 1952. Each celebrated the victory of their anointed one over some foe. In Bampur India this victory played out in real life rioting finding Mann coming to life saving rescue of Frioz against a Hindu mob. The people above all things that make the news at individual and family level have a deep and intertwined love for each other in their toils through life. There is an interdependency and from that need for one another is cultivated a deep respect and even love for each other. The differences are superficial. The sameness is not to be over looked.
While the title of the book drives a plot towards finding a suitable boy for Lata, the theme of the book is life in India in 1951/52. We all know India today to be ripped with politics and most would characterize Indian politics as corrupt. The prime issue of the year of 51 was the Abloishiment of Zamindars Act. Zamindars are akin to what we know in the West as Duke, Earls, the Irish simply called them landloards. Nawab Sahib a Muslim zaminder, the chief opponent of the Bill as this book describes it, was compelled to admit the question of competence. Most zaminders – himself alas, perhaps included – could hardly administer even their own estates and were fleeced by their munchis (the zaminders’ stong man) and money lenders. For most landlords the primary question was not how to increase their income but how to spend it.
As the storyline of the book, through character portrayal, the Anti Zamindar Actleads the reader to see the issue as Muslim-v-Hindu issue. However there were many Hindi landloards as well. Essenentially the Congress Party of India saw as a key to progress to give the land to the many as opposed to the few. Abolishment of zamandari meant reallocating land to those who worked it as opposed to those who inherited it. The following speech on the floor is a snippet of the Muslim-Hindu dichotomy around this issue. Begum Abida Khan, a Muslim Minister who resorted to God has her higher authority, to the House: O may tell you that the music (the debate) is not very pleasant: it is monotonous without being soothing. It is not the voice of reason or reasonableness but the voice of majority power and self-righteousness. You are dispossessing eight lakh (a unit of measure) people, and openly inviting communism. The people will soon find out who you are.
I am curious as to the ramifications of this Bill. India saw a monumental shift in the beginning of self rule towards communism. If it’s true that the zaminders were incompetent, was it smart to replace them with an equally incompetent government? Would drawing a parallel to Pakistan shed light on the answer? Did Pakistan take the same Abolition of Zamindar course? And finally, since India has progressed and Pakistan has not, how much relevancy does the Abolition of Zaminder (essentially feudal society) weigh? If I were to characterize India I would call it a Democracy, albeit with much corruption. If I were to Characterize Pakistan, it would call it a constant feud of people in a feudal society. I will say I have come to appreciate the Commercial Code we have in America. One that Obamacare violates.
The following quote summarizes it succinctly. Rasheed (Muslim) said to Mann (Hindu)…But I have lived in the village all my life, and I have seen the whole system. I know how it works. The zaminders – and my family is not so extraordinary to be an exception to this – the zaminders do nothing to but make their living from the misery of others; and they try to force their sons into the same ugly mold as themselves.
When the case is brought to the Indian Supreme Court, the petitioners suggest their referring to the American Constitution when looking at the delegation of authority. Apparently in 1951 and in this book, the Indian high court perceived it unconstitutional for government to delegate. Yet in America we have a complete body of administrative (delegated) law. I hoped to have read further that the delegation referred to in Zaminderi is outside any body of Indian law. What seems to escape our modern society is that many issues are too complex to for legislators and so they do delegate. It is in that delegation that a new version of zamindarism takes flight. Nancy Pelosi signed off on a Bill that she DID NOT Read. Obama signed a bill that he DID NOT READ. They have delegated this to HRSA, another alphabet soup agency that regulates how we live and do business. Yet like in India of 1951 the implementation of the bill is left to interpretation by ADMINISTRATORS. If this is unclear to the western reader, I point to the Affordable Housing Act that led to our crash of the American economy in 2008. The chief agents to this collapse were Fannie Mea and Freddie Mac, administrators of a short sighted bill. To my opening theme, let me reiterate it here. In our superficial differences we are ironically much alike.
Woven through the whole book is the poetic mind and expression of India. By page 227 the reader comes to appreciate the poetry and poetic expression, that I have found common with Indians. I turned back to the Table of Contents and note that it is in the form of a series of couplets…a trait running through the book. The Indian word ‘ghazhal’ is now a fond word with me. It is one of the principal poetic forms which the Indo-Persian-Arabic civilization offered to the eastern Islamic world. Ghazhals are a poetic form of rhyming couplets a refrain with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazhal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.
And finally to Lata’s choice: in a conversation with Malati, the summation of her choice in whom to marry drew on the mind of an Indian bride of the 1950’s. Interesting enough I saw the choice, though with varied nuance implanted by culture driven situation, to follow one common denominator. The real material question being who will bring me a good life, may outweigh to whom does my true love belong. The rationale being that from a good life, love could grow.
• Kabir was a Muslim and Lata’s true love. Being a Hindu in India in 1951 made the prospects of a life together impossible. But more-so what weighed on Lata’s decision was Kabir’s arrogant confidence. The arrogance came mostly from her interpretation of a good looking accomplished young man. This mesmerized her and thus immobilized her. She feared she would end up a meaningless addition to her husband.
• Amit was a well placed Hundu. Life with him would have been quite comfortable as Amit was well connected in high society Amit was lost in his poetry and novel writing and she feared that she would be lost in his life.
• Harseh was a hard working ‘blue-collar’ cobbler. He earned his educational credentials on his own. He came up through the ranks of the shoe factory he worked at. He earned all his promotions. He was confident and yet humbled himself before Lata.
So what is love here in the material world? In Kabir love struck her soul, there was a mystery of unconditional acceptance of the other. Upon the canvas of cultural difference that was rooted deep in tradition of the family that would only draw conflict. But more-so was the pedestal that Lata put not Kabir, but her love for Kabir on. Upon a canvas of conflict could she live up to her own expectations. She resigned herself to Harseh because first her mother would be happy, second she would have a comfortable life that she could adapt to. And finally she felt with the first to bases covered she could find a way to love Haresh. She surrendered her true love of her soul, phenomena of a separate reality. It would be a reality that she would touch in her own quite moments as she communes with God as a foundation of peace in her heart. She knew that no matter which direction fate would take her and Kabir, though it be in different direction, the love though never really allowed to see the light of day, would forever live on.
Dog eared pages:
Page 996: The Nawab Sahib frowned. ‘ Kapoor Sahib,’ he said, ‘ I am less concerned about my own house than those that depend on me. The people of Baitar expect me to put on a proper show for our festivals, especially for Moharram. I will have to keep that up in some fashion. I have certain other expenses – the hospital and so on, the monuments, the stables, musicians like Ustad Majeed Khan who expect to be retained by me a couple times a year, poets who depend on me, various endowments, pensions, God – and my munshi – who knows what else. At least my sons don’t make vast demands on me; they’re educated, they have their own professions, they aren’t
Page 1022: ‘Well,’ said Abdus Salam in passing, ‘ Pakistan was a good thing.’ Seeing Mahesh Kapoor looked shocked, he said, ‘For one things, with the Muslin League wielding so much power in an undivided India neither could you have got rid of princely states like Marh nor forced through the abolition of zamindari. Everyone knows this, yet but no one says so.
My comment: And this lay the difference in economic success between . Pakistan in 2012 still practices a version of zamindari, where as India’s system as corrupt as it me be accused of, does all it can to promote individual pursuit of happiness by taking away the barriers of fiefdom rule. In India there is no demand for a fealty towards what we western people term as Dukes or Earls. In India you are not bound to your master or your master bound to you as demonstrated in the dialogue on page 996.
Page 1023: “Well instead of getting a commanders battlecry or even a pragmatist’s plan, we got a speech about Unity of the Heart. We should think above divisions, splits, cliques! We must all pull along as a team, a family, a battalion. Dear Cacha Nehru, I felt like saying, this is India, Hindustan, Bhrat, the country where faction was invented before zero. If even the heart is divided into four parts can you expect is Indians to divide ourselves into less than four hundred?
Page 1036: ‘Im not., said Frioz, ‘In fact – and you’d better not tell anyone I said this – but I am not a great fan of Hussain. And Muawiyah, who got him killed, wasn’t as dreadfull as we make him out to be. After all, the succession was quite a mess before that, with most of the caliphs getting assassinated. Once Muawiyah set things up dynastically, Islam was able to consolidate itself as an empire. If he hadn’t , everything would have fallen back into petty tribes bickering with each other and there’s be no Islam to argue about.
Page 1081: Or perhaps it was that, refusing to be turned and off like a tap by requests for intercession, Brahma at last refused to deliver what was asked of him by millions of upraised hands, and therefore fell out of favor. It is rare for religious feeling to be entirely transcendent, and Hindus as much as anyone else, perhaps more-so, are eager for terrestrial, not merely post terrestrial, blessings
Page 1220: Mrs. Mahesh Kapoor was dead, and felt nothing, this ash of hers and sandalwood and common wood could be left to the doms at the cremation ghat to sift for the few pieces of jewellery which had melted with her body and were theirs by right. Fat, ligament, muscle, blood, hair affection , pity, anxiety, illness all were no more. She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas, she was Veena’s love for music, Prans’ asthma, Mann’s generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small un-rung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar’s great-grandchildren.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Friday, June 1, 2012
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Israel Test
The Israel Test
By George Gilder
What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishment? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down? This in a nut shell is the Israel Test. In summary, some people admire success; some people envy it. The enviers hate Israel. I found while reading the book that those who fail the Israel test do so not with just Jews or Israelis but with all those who excel beyond their capabilities. It is rather the many people who collectively despise the minds of the few that this book is about. For it is the critical thinking mind that produces the fertile ground to advance mankind and the multitudes that envy the wealth they so justifiably earned.
But it is really more than that and this book peels back the layers of the onion and provides a cross-sectional view effect and cause. Specifically he describes accomplishments of Jews and then concludes with their causes. In the process he takes a critical view on leftward leaning thinkers like Barak Obama as they are never a cause for success in the form of a nurturing perspective, however they may be the cause from a survival or self defense perspective. In the mind of Gilder, Barak Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad albeit one Sunni and the other Shea, find themselves of like minds. Notice both men advance their agendas, by attacking their opponent to distract from the flaws of their own agenda. With this thought in mind you can imagine the “pearl in store” for Israel and America and really appreciate what it is that is at stake should they lose their momentum.
The book does an amazing bit of enlightenment to readers not familiar with accomplishments of Jews in America, Jews in Israel, and then Jews of the world. Ironically, while the book is about Jewish contributions to the world and therefore their necessity in the world, it is just as much about the foundation of capitalism within a democracy that allows for a people to move mankind forward. There is always a nagging question on the readers mind, surely excellence cannot be the sole domain of Jews can it? Without a capitalistic economy on a free democracy, the world would be stuck in a time warp of pre-industrial revolution era. Where Islam had been until oil brought a new dynamic on world order. Gilder takes a high horse posture in his presentation of Jewish accomplishment to set the reader up for the test, to answer the opening questions of this review.
On capitalism Gilder writes, “What makes capitalism succeed is not chiefly it's structure of incentives but it's use of knowledge and experience... Under capitalism knowledge grows apace with wealth. Democracy without capitalism has no content, since no power centers outside the state can form and sustain themselves. Without capitalism and free trade, self determination is a pretext for constant civil war, as each shard of nationality is sharpened into a sword implanted in it's own holy specified agenda, presumably defended by the United States or the United Nations. The critical test for democracy is it's ability to free human energies and intellect on the frontiers of human accomplishment.” To test to see if there is something evidently in the human mind, even when carefully honed at Oxford or at Sorbonne, that hesitates to believe in capitalism?
The actual trial on Israel , a Test on mankind as Gilder calls it, of which is taking ample space above the fold on the front pages of world newspapers does not completely hold Israeli’s without flaw. But he demonstrates that not only could Jewish people make adjustments to their own mistakes they were able to for the first time in the history of Palestinian people provide for an improvement in their standard of living. Gilder provides statistics of the land prior to the State of Israel and then specifically illustrates that in the time post the 1967 Six Day War and prior to the 1987 intifada, Palestinians saw significant, 40% year over year, gains in their living standard as they worked side by side with Jews. The trial is not about a fight over a small piece of land, but rather the Muslim’s refusal to work for and acknowledge a Jew for his accomplishments. In this the Muslims fail the Test. At a higher level “The Test “is about all mans’ willingness to work for and in the graciousness of those few people that make the standard of life for all better.
Gilder at times may appear to come across as an “in your face Jew”. However he is everything but and you learn that what is in your face is likely your own denial that the facts. So what is in your face is not Gilder but your own subconscious as Guilder enlightens you with ample cause and effect to demonstrate the world’s dependence on our passing the Israel Test. Where Israel is at the apex of a test for man kind is the culmination of Jewish success second only to the United States against a world of Islamic hatred for them. In this gauntlet under the umbrella of the United States as US citizens Jewish entrepreneurial prowess was given birth in a new and modern world. They then made their pilgrimage to Israel and continued under the protection of Western powers to found a democracy underwritten by capitalism and perpetuated entrepreneurial contributions enhance the living conditions of mankind.
They did this on a small piece of unproductive land that laid fallow under Islamic rule for 1,500 years. Could this test be applied else where? Will time allow India to demonstrate the same prowess? Absolutely and the reason for this is India like many western powers that have found success, are based in the freedoms within democratic law that allow the engines of capitalism to produce the advancement required to meet the needs of a modern world. I bring India in to the equation so that you can read the book and when challenged by the word Jew simply substitute Indian. This is not to slight either peoples, but rather to help you over come the “Jew in your face” reaction and afford a little objectivity as the facts settle in. When you read Gilders final chapter on his own Israel Test, you will appreciate that it is not an insult to awaken to a need for recognition and acceptance of the hand that feeds you, whether it be America, Israeli, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian. Gilder’s Israel Test is just that wake up call.
My notes:
Page 26 after the Arabs refused all offers of land for peace in the wake of the 1967 war, the Isralies inherited it by default. Under Israeli management, economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza surged for some twenty years? And the number of Arabs grew for roughly one million to almost three million in some 261 new towns while the number of Jews in territories rose merely 250,000, settled on land not exceeding 2% of the area of the West Bank. As the Israelis spurred development, Arabs thronged in to participate in it. Between 1967 and the first intifada in 1987, Arab settlers moving in from Jordan and other countries out numbered Israeli settlers by a factor of ten.
Page 27 Hostility toward Jews stems not from any alleged legal violation or untoward violence but from there exceptional virtues. This is the essence of anti-Semitism.
Page 46. In the 19th century Jews purchased land in Palestine a barren land under Arab rule with a poor economy they built an economy that attracted Arab and Jew alike. Arab population surged to 1.35 million the Jews grew to 650 thousand. The peace-process brought millions of dollars in foreign aid which shifted Palestinians from entrepreneurs to codependent ghetto violent male gangs and welfare queens.
Page 59. The concept of economic autarky is the chief cause of the poverty in the world. No one can be rich alone. Wealth is an effect of sharing and collaboration between an elite of capitalists and the insurgent new business rising around them. It is an effect of willingness of the young and less educated or less talented to work for the educated and able. It is a product of apprenticeship and learning followed by entrepreneurial rivalry. The success of the Israeli economy is not an imbalance that crates invidious gaps, it is a gap that summons new energies and new wealth.
All capitalist advance generates imbalances and disequilibrium. Growth is an effect of the disequilibrating activities of entrepreneurs, the creative destruction unleashed by rate feats of excellence.
Page 75 by delving down deep in the atom we rise up to a level of mathematical abstraction only glimpsed in the previous experimental science of the visible world.
But we do not, as Von Neumann supremely understood, rise all the way up. As Kurt Godel demonstrated in early twentieth century, and Von Neumann’s Goedel's first interpreter and greatest prophet, repeatedly showed, the symbolic logic driving both math an science - the computer and the quantum - is ultimately axiomatic. It cannot prove itself in it's own term but must rely on a set of assumptions outside the system.
Wealth springs from the minds of men, and, above all from the minds of a relatively few men who operate at the nexus of word and world - on the boarders of math and manufacturer - in the realm of the algorithm.
Page 81 Mathematics ultimately would repose on a foundation of faith. The universe rests on a logical coherence that cannot be proven but to which men must commit if they are to create
Page 104 until 1957 Israel was a high wage, secure job economy. It's economy was not producing. The absence of competition was a result in part of virtually complete protection from foreign competition afforded by import and exchange controls
Page 106 in the mid 1980's Yitzhak Shamir followed Reagan’s example and shortly after the USSR folded and allowed millions of scientist Jews to flee ti Israel. Being anti communist and intellectual gave Israel the engine to jolt them to scientific achievement at first rate based on entrepreneurial capitalism. Their brain power drew in capital which produced technological advancement at pace with the United States.
Page 109. The same forces of freedom unleashed on Israel in the 1990's could well dictate that fortunes will disappear within a few generations. It is a rigid rule of capitalism lm that over funded banks, are disasters waiting to happen, while small sums in the hands of a few exceptional men can yield equally unexpected riches.
Page127 Von Neuman was the paramount figure of the twentieth century science because he was the li k between the pioneered of quantum theory and the machines that won WWII, that prevailed in the Cold War, and the enabled the emergence of a global economy tied together and fructified by the internet. The entire saga is one fabric, woven largely by Jews.
Page 139 the Arab-Israeli conflict everywhere understood (wrongly in my view) as an impossibility embittered dispute over absurdly small patches of geography. The promise of a global network seamlessly providing near-infinite bandwidth indifferent to application is the promise, like almost every major economic advance for the past two hundred years, to render geography trivial.
Page148 Biological beings partake of the Godel proof of the limitations of symbolic logic - it's dependence on axioms that it cannot prove. Like mathematics, biological science depends on and transcends an orderly cosmos of monotheistic faith.
Page 155 Biology is a set of living algorithmic entities. Compile the biological entities into a database and apply the algorithms, and you can find the pathways to the inner logic of life.
The algorithmic thinking that fuels such ventures comes naturally to the gifted few. Without permitting the gifted and diligent to emerge, prevail, create, and ultimately rule the cpanding heights, there is no way to have a successful system based on the algorithms of a new economy.
Page 155 the Talpion system needs to be captured verbatim in the review. The system has vaulted Israel and India in engineering prowess.
Page 165. The successful allocation of capital, like the launch of a new technology, is an elegant expression if the capitalist law that mind rules and matter serves, just as squandering of capital can create havoc far beyond that wrought by any scarcity of goods.
Page 167 in the Period fro 1984 - 1990 evry significant reduction in top marginal tax rates anywhere I. The world for which we have decent data: economic growth surged, inflation fell ( down to 11 percent by 1993$, and tax receipts rose. And Netanyahu's reduction in personal tax rates continues - to a planned 39 percent by year 2015 down from 60% in 1980.
Page 173 Crucial to Netanyahu's is the power as a global financial center to transform the economics of the Middle East. Israel can become the "Hong Kong of the Desert" ultimately reshaped the Chinese economy of it's own image when Deng Xiaoping mimicked it's free economics in his free-zone program. Even the Taiwan and Communist China became turned capitalist and most of Taiwan’s investment moved to the mainland. Under Netanyahu, Israel can become a similar force in the Middle East, reaching out ti Palestinians and other Arabs.
My challenge is why can't this same approach be made in Iraq, Iran or any other country in the Middle East? Is entrepreneurial spirit lacking in Muslim people? Or do their Imams subdue it? There exists an equal comparisons by analysis available between India and The Muslim world.
Page 184 Conspicuous weakness is a prime cause of war.
Page 195. Von Neuman was always concerned with dynamic processes and saw that economic systems could not achieve equilibrium outside an environment of growth. Capitalism by nature is a positive sum game, in which every transaction theoretically can yield two or more winners. As long as the exchanges are voluntary, they will not occur unless both parties believe they will gain from them
Page 197. Newman's message is that civilization depends on long time horizons in repetitive games. In a single exchange, the rational policy is predatory. If predatory action brings success, a player is never induced to extend the time horizon. By accommodating aggression, a nation invites it. Peace requires the imposition of penalties on aggression.
A crucial element in all games is the discount rate, which determines the time value of the reward, the terms in which one can trade benefits now for the benefits over the long run. In economics this factor is quantified as the rate is quantified as the rate of interest.
Capitalism works because if it's long time horizons and low discount rates that optimize behavior. The time element is crucial to the deepening of capital and the generation of positive sum games.
The more players focus on politics rather than on economics, the more the game tends to deteriorate. Without capitalism, democracy is a zero sum game that leads to conflict and war.
Page 217 Netanyahu told Congress after 9/11 that there is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states...Terrorist are not suspended in mid air. The train, arm, and indoctrinate their killers fro safe havens in terrorists countries.... Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, North Korea. Until the world community applies 100% of their policy to not feed them in any way from business to negotiating with them terrorism will flourish at some level.
Over all notion of land for peace is in opposition to this idea.
Page 237 with regard to Israel' s survival not only are they the canary in the coal mine, they are an integral part of the coal mine
By George Gilder
What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishment? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down? This in a nut shell is the Israel Test. In summary, some people admire success; some people envy it. The enviers hate Israel. I found while reading the book that those who fail the Israel test do so not with just Jews or Israelis but with all those who excel beyond their capabilities. It is rather the many people who collectively despise the minds of the few that this book is about. For it is the critical thinking mind that produces the fertile ground to advance mankind and the multitudes that envy the wealth they so justifiably earned.
But it is really more than that and this book peels back the layers of the onion and provides a cross-sectional view effect and cause. Specifically he describes accomplishments of Jews and then concludes with their causes. In the process he takes a critical view on leftward leaning thinkers like Barak Obama as they are never a cause for success in the form of a nurturing perspective, however they may be the cause from a survival or self defense perspective. In the mind of Gilder, Barak Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad albeit one Sunni and the other Shea, find themselves of like minds. Notice both men advance their agendas, by attacking their opponent to distract from the flaws of their own agenda. With this thought in mind you can imagine the “pearl in store” for Israel and America and really appreciate what it is that is at stake should they lose their momentum.
The book does an amazing bit of enlightenment to readers not familiar with accomplishments of Jews in America, Jews in Israel, and then Jews of the world. Ironically, while the book is about Jewish contributions to the world and therefore their necessity in the world, it is just as much about the foundation of capitalism within a democracy that allows for a people to move mankind forward. There is always a nagging question on the readers mind, surely excellence cannot be the sole domain of Jews can it? Without a capitalistic economy on a free democracy, the world would be stuck in a time warp of pre-industrial revolution era. Where Islam had been until oil brought a new dynamic on world order. Gilder takes a high horse posture in his presentation of Jewish accomplishment to set the reader up for the test, to answer the opening questions of this review.
On capitalism Gilder writes, “What makes capitalism succeed is not chiefly it's structure of incentives but it's use of knowledge and experience... Under capitalism knowledge grows apace with wealth. Democracy without capitalism has no content, since no power centers outside the state can form and sustain themselves. Without capitalism and free trade, self determination is a pretext for constant civil war, as each shard of nationality is sharpened into a sword implanted in it's own holy specified agenda, presumably defended by the United States or the United Nations. The critical test for democracy is it's ability to free human energies and intellect on the frontiers of human accomplishment.” To test to see if there is something evidently in the human mind, even when carefully honed at Oxford or at Sorbonne, that hesitates to believe in capitalism?
The actual trial on Israel , a Test on mankind as Gilder calls it, of which is taking ample space above the fold on the front pages of world newspapers does not completely hold Israeli’s without flaw. But he demonstrates that not only could Jewish people make adjustments to their own mistakes they were able to for the first time in the history of Palestinian people provide for an improvement in their standard of living. Gilder provides statistics of the land prior to the State of Israel and then specifically illustrates that in the time post the 1967 Six Day War and prior to the 1987 intifada, Palestinians saw significant, 40% year over year, gains in their living standard as they worked side by side with Jews. The trial is not about a fight over a small piece of land, but rather the Muslim’s refusal to work for and acknowledge a Jew for his accomplishments. In this the Muslims fail the Test. At a higher level “The Test “is about all mans’ willingness to work for and in the graciousness of those few people that make the standard of life for all better.
Gilder at times may appear to come across as an “in your face Jew”. However he is everything but and you learn that what is in your face is likely your own denial that the facts. So what is in your face is not Gilder but your own subconscious as Guilder enlightens you with ample cause and effect to demonstrate the world’s dependence on our passing the Israel Test. Where Israel is at the apex of a test for man kind is the culmination of Jewish success second only to the United States against a world of Islamic hatred for them. In this gauntlet under the umbrella of the United States as US citizens Jewish entrepreneurial prowess was given birth in a new and modern world. They then made their pilgrimage to Israel and continued under the protection of Western powers to found a democracy underwritten by capitalism and perpetuated entrepreneurial contributions enhance the living conditions of mankind.
They did this on a small piece of unproductive land that laid fallow under Islamic rule for 1,500 years. Could this test be applied else where? Will time allow India to demonstrate the same prowess? Absolutely and the reason for this is India like many western powers that have found success, are based in the freedoms within democratic law that allow the engines of capitalism to produce the advancement required to meet the needs of a modern world. I bring India in to the equation so that you can read the book and when challenged by the word Jew simply substitute Indian. This is not to slight either peoples, but rather to help you over come the “Jew in your face” reaction and afford a little objectivity as the facts settle in. When you read Gilders final chapter on his own Israel Test, you will appreciate that it is not an insult to awaken to a need for recognition and acceptance of the hand that feeds you, whether it be America, Israeli, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian. Gilder’s Israel Test is just that wake up call.
My notes:
Page 26 after the Arabs refused all offers of land for peace in the wake of the 1967 war, the Isralies inherited it by default. Under Israeli management, economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza surged for some twenty years? And the number of Arabs grew for roughly one million to almost three million in some 261 new towns while the number of Jews in territories rose merely 250,000, settled on land not exceeding 2% of the area of the West Bank. As the Israelis spurred development, Arabs thronged in to participate in it. Between 1967 and the first intifada in 1987, Arab settlers moving in from Jordan and other countries out numbered Israeli settlers by a factor of ten.
Page 27 Hostility toward Jews stems not from any alleged legal violation or untoward violence but from there exceptional virtues. This is the essence of anti-Semitism.
Page 46. In the 19th century Jews purchased land in Palestine a barren land under Arab rule with a poor economy they built an economy that attracted Arab and Jew alike. Arab population surged to 1.35 million the Jews grew to 650 thousand. The peace-process brought millions of dollars in foreign aid which shifted Palestinians from entrepreneurs to codependent ghetto violent male gangs and welfare queens.
Page 59. The concept of economic autarky is the chief cause of the poverty in the world. No one can be rich alone. Wealth is an effect of sharing and collaboration between an elite of capitalists and the insurgent new business rising around them. It is an effect of willingness of the young and less educated or less talented to work for the educated and able. It is a product of apprenticeship and learning followed by entrepreneurial rivalry. The success of the Israeli economy is not an imbalance that crates invidious gaps, it is a gap that summons new energies and new wealth.
All capitalist advance generates imbalances and disequilibrium. Growth is an effect of the disequilibrating activities of entrepreneurs, the creative destruction unleashed by rate feats of excellence.
Page 75 by delving down deep in the atom we rise up to a level of mathematical abstraction only glimpsed in the previous experimental science of the visible world.
But we do not, as Von Neumann supremely understood, rise all the way up. As Kurt Godel demonstrated in early twentieth century, and Von Neumann’s Goedel's first interpreter and greatest prophet, repeatedly showed, the symbolic logic driving both math an science - the computer and the quantum - is ultimately axiomatic. It cannot prove itself in it's own term but must rely on a set of assumptions outside the system.
Wealth springs from the minds of men, and, above all from the minds of a relatively few men who operate at the nexus of word and world - on the boarders of math and manufacturer - in the realm of the algorithm.
Page 81 Mathematics ultimately would repose on a foundation of faith. The universe rests on a logical coherence that cannot be proven but to which men must commit if they are to create
Page 104 until 1957 Israel was a high wage, secure job economy. It's economy was not producing. The absence of competition was a result in part of virtually complete protection from foreign competition afforded by import and exchange controls
Page 106 in the mid 1980's Yitzhak Shamir followed Reagan’s example and shortly after the USSR folded and allowed millions of scientist Jews to flee ti Israel. Being anti communist and intellectual gave Israel the engine to jolt them to scientific achievement at first rate based on entrepreneurial capitalism. Their brain power drew in capital which produced technological advancement at pace with the United States.
Page 109. The same forces of freedom unleashed on Israel in the 1990's could well dictate that fortunes will disappear within a few generations. It is a rigid rule of capitalism lm that over funded banks, are disasters waiting to happen, while small sums in the hands of a few exceptional men can yield equally unexpected riches.
Page127 Von Neuman was the paramount figure of the twentieth century science because he was the li k between the pioneered of quantum theory and the machines that won WWII, that prevailed in the Cold War, and the enabled the emergence of a global economy tied together and fructified by the internet. The entire saga is one fabric, woven largely by Jews.
Page 139 the Arab-Israeli conflict everywhere understood (wrongly in my view) as an impossibility embittered dispute over absurdly small patches of geography. The promise of a global network seamlessly providing near-infinite bandwidth indifferent to application is the promise, like almost every major economic advance for the past two hundred years, to render geography trivial.
Page148 Biological beings partake of the Godel proof of the limitations of symbolic logic - it's dependence on axioms that it cannot prove. Like mathematics, biological science depends on and transcends an orderly cosmos of monotheistic faith.
Page 155 Biology is a set of living algorithmic entities. Compile the biological entities into a database and apply the algorithms, and you can find the pathways to the inner logic of life.
The algorithmic thinking that fuels such ventures comes naturally to the gifted few. Without permitting the gifted and diligent to emerge, prevail, create, and ultimately rule the cpanding heights, there is no way to have a successful system based on the algorithms of a new economy.
Page 155 the Talpion system needs to be captured verbatim in the review. The system has vaulted Israel and India in engineering prowess.
Page 165. The successful allocation of capital, like the launch of a new technology, is an elegant expression if the capitalist law that mind rules and matter serves, just as squandering of capital can create havoc far beyond that wrought by any scarcity of goods.
Page 167 in the Period fro 1984 - 1990 evry significant reduction in top marginal tax rates anywhere I. The world for which we have decent data: economic growth surged, inflation fell ( down to 11 percent by 1993$, and tax receipts rose. And Netanyahu's reduction in personal tax rates continues - to a planned 39 percent by year 2015 down from 60% in 1980.
Page 173 Crucial to Netanyahu's is the power as a global financial center to transform the economics of the Middle East. Israel can become the "Hong Kong of the Desert" ultimately reshaped the Chinese economy of it's own image when Deng Xiaoping mimicked it's free economics in his free-zone program. Even the Taiwan and Communist China became turned capitalist and most of Taiwan’s investment moved to the mainland. Under Netanyahu, Israel can become a similar force in the Middle East, reaching out ti Palestinians and other Arabs.
My challenge is why can't this same approach be made in Iraq, Iran or any other country in the Middle East? Is entrepreneurial spirit lacking in Muslim people? Or do their Imams subdue it? There exists an equal comparisons by analysis available between India and The Muslim world.
Page 184 Conspicuous weakness is a prime cause of war.
Page 195. Von Neuman was always concerned with dynamic processes and saw that economic systems could not achieve equilibrium outside an environment of growth. Capitalism by nature is a positive sum game, in which every transaction theoretically can yield two or more winners. As long as the exchanges are voluntary, they will not occur unless both parties believe they will gain from them
Page 197. Newman's message is that civilization depends on long time horizons in repetitive games. In a single exchange, the rational policy is predatory. If predatory action brings success, a player is never induced to extend the time horizon. By accommodating aggression, a nation invites it. Peace requires the imposition of penalties on aggression.
A crucial element in all games is the discount rate, which determines the time value of the reward, the terms in which one can trade benefits now for the benefits over the long run. In economics this factor is quantified as the rate is quantified as the rate of interest.
Capitalism works because if it's long time horizons and low discount rates that optimize behavior. The time element is crucial to the deepening of capital and the generation of positive sum games.
The more players focus on politics rather than on economics, the more the game tends to deteriorate. Without capitalism, democracy is a zero sum game that leads to conflict and war.
Page 217 Netanyahu told Congress after 9/11 that there is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states...Terrorist are not suspended in mid air. The train, arm, and indoctrinate their killers fro safe havens in terrorists countries.... Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, North Korea. Until the world community applies 100% of their policy to not feed them in any way from business to negotiating with them terrorism will flourish at some level.
Over all notion of land for peace is in opposition to this idea.
Page 237 with regard to Israel' s survival not only are they the canary in the coal mine, they are an integral part of the coal mine
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