Review: Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution

Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution by Emma Griffin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Good, and thought-provoking, but with a couple of holes

(It's really 3.5, and I may move it down to 3, since Goodreads, like the Amazon who has majority ownership in it, doesn't allow half-star ratings.)

A very interesting revisionist look at the lives of the working class in the Industrial Revolution.

Griffin, while acknowledging that some aspects of said people's lives worsened, primarily in the matter of child labor, that, on the whole, on average, it brought betterment even before Victorian-era social reforms.

As part of this, she says that some problems associated with the IR, such as irregular/seasonal unemployment, actually carry over from pre-IR, or maybe proto-IR, times and that the IR itself did not worsen them and may have ameliorated them.

Where does she get these ideas? Diares, some eventually published as pamphlets, booklets or books, from working men, and even a few working women, of this era.

As far as those direct benefits?

Griffin lists:
1. More money;
2. More sexual freedom (primarily for men);
3. More literacy;
4. More religious freedom and empowerment.

More money is obvious.

The sexual freedom connects in part to that, in part to increased geographic mobility and shortening or ending of formal apprentice periods. Result? More premarital sex, even premarital pregnancies. In what would certainly shock the virtue and mythmaking of modern American religious conservatives, by 1800, about 1/3 of British brides were pregnant at their weddings. Add in those who had already given birth to that "ill-conceived" child, illegitimate births that parish registries didn't record, the occasional "founding" that fell between the record-keeping cracks, and the occasional, or bit more than occasional, abortion, and half of 1800-period British women got pregnant before marriage.

More literacy? That came from occasional night schools some women taught at home, reading schools of various sorts founded by congregations in the Methodist movement (and eventual denomination), and guilds and other workingmen's groups forming their own educational support programs. The result? In part, those diaries, booklets, etc., some of which ran to 25,000 or more words when published.

Religious and social freedom? It in part came from the Great Awakening, which hit Europe as well as America, producing Methodism in England and Pietism in Germany. At the same time, Griffin argues that a bit more money for workers in the IR, and a bit more self-awareness, led workers to help fuel the Great Awakening, by being more literate, including on bible study, and challenging Anglican vicars.

It's indeed an interesting read. I'm still not fully convinced. It's true that the working class's lot may have risen compared to its past. But, Griffin dodges a couple of issues.

First, directly related to that, she doesn't address whether or not income inequality rose during the IR, if so, how much, and whether we shouldn't weigh that in the balance against the reported benefits.

Second, per stereotypes of dirty London and its coal-driven smog, she ignores environmental issues related to the IR, and how much more those affected the working class than the upper class. As part of that failure, she doesn't address life expectancy issues. (My bits of Googling tell me that child mortality in Britain declined throughout the 1700s, but adult mortality remained unchanged. I can't find any breakouts by economic class, at least with a brief search.)

The lack of data issue cuts other ways, too. Griffin indicates that the IR seemed to give the working class more money. But, again, we're not given any data. I don't know how much is available, but there has to be some.

Finally, there's a philosophical issue. A logical issue, to be  more precise. A logical fallacy issue, to be more precise yet.

It's called "survivorship bias." In other words, we don't know how representative these diarists are of the British working class as a whole.

In other words, it's a good anecdotal people's history. But, it's not more than that.

The diary-based writing keeps this book near four stars. But, per what I just said, it's not quite there.


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Russell Brand and not voting

Russell Brand's BBC interview is drawing a lot of fire, from his statement that we're creating a more permanent, more worldwide, more entrenched underclass, through his statement we need some sort of revolution, and finally at his thoughts on not voting in a democracy. I take the written quote from the Guardian's summation of the interview:

"Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people. A system that is apathetic, in fact, to the needs of the people it was designed to serve."

It seems that progressives (one friendly Texas blogger, I know of) as well as conservatives are jumping on this one.

Sorry, but I'm with Brand, and I'm not alone.

About a decade ago, the Dallas Morning News had interviews with a lot of ’60s era civil rights activists from the Dallas area. You know what? A number of them felt like Brand, and said they hadn't voted in years, if not decades.

I agree with Brand, overall. The Guardian's columnist nuances the issue:

Should Brand be taken to task for rejecting the vote in this context? Yes and no. No, because his rejection clearly resonates with, and is reflective of, a growing sentiment in wider society where, in fact, actual majorities in our liberal democracies do not vote - not because they are apathetic, but because of the abject apathy of a broken political system in the face of the crisis of civilisation. Yes, because simply disengaging from the prevailing political system is another extreme reaction that is, in fact, part and parcel of the very system it purports to reject. Because the more the majority disengages, the more a decreasing minority is able to dominate the political class.

Sadly, big bucks from both the Republican and Democrat (sic on purpose) parties hope more people agree with him, and get apathetic not just about the act of voting, but about politics in general.

However, it appears Brand is NOT apathetic about politics in general. Or let's hope not. Back to the Guardian:

That does not mean the solution lies within the prevailing political paradigm. Brand's call for revolution, for a fundamental political, economic, cultural and cognitive shift, is on point. But rather than entailing disengagement resulting in anarchy, this requires the opposite: Engagement at all levels in order to elicit structural transformation on multiple scales through the overwhelming presence of people taking power back, here and now. 

Agreed. At the same time, at some point, it requires having specific goals, specific "toolkits" for working on those goals, prioritizing goals, and making other strategic decisions.

In short, we need people taking back power, but we don't need the Occupy mythical nonsense of "leaderlessness," nor the Adbusters/Anonymous mentality behind it.

Anyway, back on point, speaking of focus.

I support the act of not voting. I've done it before, myself, where both "mainstream" parties' candidates in a certain election were that unappealing and I had no third-party option.

Heck, Brand is British, and he's got a wider variety of options that might be electorally meaningful, being in a parliamentary system, even if the House of Commons is like the US House with first-past-the-post single-member districts.

Halloween urban legend time!

Ooohhh, we could start new urban legends?

Why not, since schools are cancelling Halloween events either from costume safety worries, food safety worries, or church-state issues, on the ground Halloween promotes religion. (Yes, mush-headed school administrators, you're actually right, there. Today's version of Halloween does promote the religion of hypercapitalism, aka Mammon.

"Daddy, is it true that bad people stick peanuts in Halloween candy to make them go into anaphylactic shock?"

(And, I could up this story one further, too.)

"Daddy, is it true that bad people put wheat gluten inside apples to make them go into celiac attack so they have to have intestinal quadruple bypass surgery?"

(Or, I could up this story TWO further.)

Picture young Evan Joseph McCarthy, talking to mom Jenny about trick-or-treating:

"Mommy, is it true that bad people put wheat gluten inside apples to give you autism? Is it true that people hide needles tainted with thiomersal inside candy to give you autism?"

Actually, Jenny McCarthy showing up at my house dressed as herself, today, would probably scare me. Not because she's ugly, but because I would know a torrent of nonsense was about to come out of her mouth.

So, let's have more.

"Mommy, it is true that a galloping horseman, man and horse both rabidly foaming at the mouth, might take his head off and throw it at me in the middle of a dark country night?"

Well, kind of, darling daughter. But Ted Cruz does that all that time, not just on dark country nights.

Meanwhile, from the college world, political correctness on Halloween costumes is even worse than at the K-12 level perhaps.

Don't wear any costume that portrays any group as overly sexualized? Or otherwise even starts to play into stereotypes? Nth-wave feminists, whether inside the Atheism Plus movement or not, probably love this one.

"Mom, is it true that if I wear the wrong Halloween costume at Big State U., I'm guilty of 'privilege'?"

"Sorry, dear, but yes you are. That includes being in a costume with those old 'mom jeans.'"

Speaking of the Atheism Plusers, what if someone like that showed up in a costume that fueled religious stereotypes? Or a Christian fundamentalist did similar in a costume that fueled stereotypes of non-Christian religions?

Oh, and on the lighter side? Parents, when you want to have fun after you do your post-Halloween candy theft from your kids?

Blame the chupacabra.

Have fun trick or treating!

Should Texans vote AGAINST Prop 6?

Fellow progressive blogger Harman on Earth rounds up good reasons for clicking the "no" on Nov. 5 or in early voting.

Why?

Briefly, there's really nothing in the proposition itself to push for conservation efforts, and North Texas and the Hellhole, namely snootier DFW and Houston suburbs, aren't doing anything about it on their own, and didn't during this summer's drought. 

Here's a nugget:

The Texas Water Development Board confirmed that some households in the Fort Worth area have provided irrigation of landscaped yards through the winter months in spite of the drought. In 2011, the state’s driest year on record, much of Fort Worth’s public water, estimated 45 percent, went to landscape watering. By contrast, the City of San Antonio estimated 25 percent of public water was used for watering and landscape purposes for the same period.

The Metroplex and Greater Houston as a whole as a whole use about 40 percent more per capita than not just dryland El Paso, but also as Austin.

Harman notes there's weasel words about how the TWDB should "undertake" to fund water conservation projects, too.

So, unless the state gets power to trump municipalities in times of water crises, we don't need a bill that's going to finance pipelines to big cities and call it "water project."

I agree that the state is woefully behind on what it needs for funding water projects for a growing economy and growing 21st-century population. However, sometimes the good can be the enemy of the best, and with what were already limited strivings for more conservation work weakened further in the final version of the legislation that put this issue on the ballot, I wouldn't object in any way if others voted "no," even if that would lead to tea party folks' crowing.

Mu to free will

And to determinism, too.

For those of you not familiar with this word “mu,” I’m not being a cow with a French accent. Rather, I’m “unasking a question,” so to speak. The word comes from Zen Buddhism.

If you’re read the magisterial “Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter, of course, you ARE familiar with the word.

Anyway, by “unasking the question,” the word says that the premises upon which a question is based are false.

And, in the case of free will VERSUS determinism, I believe that is very, very true.

First, per Dan Dennett, and many other students of Gilbert Ryle and others, there is no such thing as a little “Cartesian demon” in the middle of our brains, choosing what thoughts in our minds rise to the level of consciousness. Rather, although Dennett at least, here as elsewhere, overextends Darwinian parallels, different subselves are competing, if you will, for which one of them rises to the top. Arguably, more fragmentary sub-subselves are a level lower, but I’m not going to do a Hofstadter-type eternal expansion! Of course, dissociative identity disorder is a case of extreme lack of connection between these subselves.

In short, there’s no “Cartesian meaner” running the projector of a movie theater.

However, Dennett doesn’t go to the logical next step, even though I know he full well knows it IS the logical next step.

If there is no Cartesian meaner generating consciousness, then there’s no Cartesian free willer generating consciousness-level free will. (Or, pace Massimo Pigliucci, no "Cartesian volitioner.")

Now, per David Hume living comfortably every day despite his inability to “grasp” a “self,” we, too act “as if” we have conscious free will. But, that doesn’t mean we actually do, contra the Massimo Piglicccis of the world.

But, just because we don’t have conscious free will, even of a fairly weak sort of compatibilism, doesn’t mean that it’s all determinism, contra the Jerry Coynes of the world. Certainly not in his neo-atomistic physicalist, "hard" determinism.

Nor, pace Massimo, do we have to go down the route of dualism if we reject conscious volitionism. That's especially true if:
A. We see something like free will as developing as an emergent property;
B. We reject "hard" physicalist determinism, too;
C. We see whatever this "quasi-free will" is, and a "softer" psychological determinism as being two endpoints on a continuum, and not two poles of a polarity.

As for what this means?

How “free” or how “determined” our actions are is a case-by-case basis issue, and it depends on which subself seems to be in the saddle at the moment, and how determined or not a particular aspect of that subself is.

I wish we, both amateurs and professionals of the philosophical world alike, could move beyond the “free will VERSUS determinism” issue. It has religious-type moral baggage, at least to a degree, on the free will side, on issues of guilt and responsibility. More and more, it has scientism baggage on the determinism side. Beyond, Jerry Coyne's a good enough scientist, or he should be, that he should know that quantum theory, if nothing else, undercuts the stance of people like him. It’s so unproductive. But, I’m not holding my breath.

On the free will side, in comments within his latest post on the matter, Massimo admits the issue of guilt and responsibility is why he continues to defend free will VERSUS determinism (or other attacks, or "attacks").

(A)ny talk of free will and consciousness being illusions is a threat to humanism, since among humanist's cardinal principles are that we are responsible for our actions and that we can use reason as a guide to life.

Well, then, per the ways in which I've previously chastised Joseph Hoffmann, humanism, whether explicitly secular or not, without embracing scientism, needs to embrace scientific advances.

Massimo also, which I hadn't noticed until this late-2013 update, mischaracterizes my postion on free will:

Several readers of course brought up dualism, even accusing me of being a crypto-dualist. Here is Gadfly:

"If there's no Cartesian meaner, there's no Cartesian free willer."

True enough, but this assumes that the only way to meaningfully talk about volition (again, my and others’ preferred term instead of the metaphysically loaded “free will”) is in dualistic terms, a position that has been rejected pretty much by all compatibilist philosophers, from Dennett down.

Actually, no, it doesn't assume that.

Per my whole line of reasoning, it assumes that, as currently expressed, this is an outdated issue. Rather, speaking of Dennett, I mean just what Massimo quoted me as saying. If something akin to Dennett's multiple drafts theory of consciousness is true, then we simply can't talk of a unitary volitional self. Per the detailed outline I list above, it assumes that the degree of volition involved with a certain action must be determined, as best we can, on an action by action basis.

There's nothing dualistic about that, whether in the broad idea of substance dualism or the narrower idea of property dualism, on my part, nor do I assume Massimo entertains such ideas on his part. The only idea I entertain about Massimo is that, in fair part because he doesn't buy into multiple drafts or subselves ideas, he's wedded to traditional ideas about volition for the wrong reasons.

That said, he does admirably refute, again, the nonsense that Jerry Coyne spouts in support of dualism. And he's right that science currently has little to say on this issue. And, per the likes of him, John Horgan, myself and many others, likely will have little to say about this issue for decades if not longer. My thoughts, Dennett's, and others, on the nature of consciousness, are psycho-philosophical theories untestable now or any time soon.

And I'm sorry that, for whatever reasons, Massimo inferred I thought he was a crypto-dualist. My stance on a multiple drafts and multiple subselves view of consciousness is entirely compatible with the non-dualistic emergentism that's central to Massimo's views on human consciousness. We just arrive at different finish lines.

That said, a regular, tendentious commenter on his blog has inferred, from the post above that Massimo is a full-blown dualist, and thinks that emergentism pretty much necessitates dualism. That's a far bigger error that Massimo's incorrect inference.

Anyway, speaking of Massimo's take on Coyne? Ian Pollack, writing a guest post at Massimo's blog, appears to move a step in this direction, with an analytic philosophy type approach that includes saying Coyne is ... insufficiently reductionistic, of all things, in his use of language.

Here's the core of his thoughts:

So how would I tackle the issue of free will/volition?

Suppose I am driving along an undivided highway when the stray thought
comes into my head that I could steer into the opposing lane, resulting
in a horrible, deadly accident.

Of course, I don’t do so, because... well, I like living and I don’t
much want to kill others, either. And I just washed my car. But I could
have done it.

...Wait, was I right to say that I could have done it?

Yes and no. As we have seen, the pivotal word in that sentence is
“could,” and “could” has at least two meanings that are relevant to the
question of free will.

Meaning #1 maps physical possibility, and in this case returns the clear
answer “No, the physical state of the universe was such that you could
not have steered into oncoming traffic, as evidenced by the fact that
you did not, in fact, do so. QED.” Jerry sees this clearly, and I have
absolutely no argument with him.

Meaning #2 of “could” maps counterfactual statements. To say that you
“could” have done something in this sense is (roughly) to say that IF
circumstances had been otherwise, a different outcome would have
resulted. Meaning #2 returns the answer “Yes, you could have steered
into oncoming traffic, if you had wanted to.”

Meaning #2 is what people actually mean by “could,” most of the time.

If you’ve been sleeping through this post, pay attention now, because
the entire click of compatibilism lies in this realization.

Proposition #1: “No, the state of the universe was such that it was physically impossible for you to have steered into oncoming traffic.”

Proposition #2: “Yes, you could have steered into oncoming traffic (if you had wanted to).”

However, to my mind, he still fails. He addresses only the Coyne-type physicalist determinism, not "softer" versions, first. Second, he's committed to the "versus" stance, continuing to defend a compatibilist version of free will versus determinism.

For more excellent thoughts in this general vein, I strongly suggest Walter Kaufmann's book "Beyond Guilt and Responsibility."

And, for broader background, here's a bit of information on where we are at on studying consciousness issues in general.

And, per a reader, this take on Benjamin Libet's famous experiments is in general line with what I'm saying.

Ted Cruz vs Terry Gross, Krugman vs WTO, and other news bits

NPR's Fresh Air host Terry Gross said today,"I don't think Ted Cruz is that connected to Christian conservatives."

That's despite this piece showing just how much he and his dad are plugged into dominionist theology.

Mad yourself? Fresh Air's Twitter account is here. And webmail is here.

I mean, along with a few true liberal friends of mine, I've long said NPR stands for Nice Polite Republicans, but that's just ridiculous. Especially when Gross's webpage claims:

Gross, who has been host of Fresh Air since 1975, when it was broadcast only in greater Philadelphia, isn't afraid to ask tough questions. 

Yeah, right. Like that "tough" statement above?

Note: This isn't an opinion/commentary issue of whether one agrees with Cruz, or dominionist theology, or not. It's a straight news issue of being informed, or not.

NPR, if it's not just for Republicans who want to think they're liberal, is also for neoliberal Democrats, the Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, Meyer-lemon squeezing ones, who also want to think they're liberal.

Beyond NPR in general, I just listen to Gross on the Waco NPR station when I'm driving. (I can't quite pick up WRR, the Dallas classical station, until I get closer to Waco itself.) But, she's never floated my boat. In fact, I find her, again along with some of my friends, an easy object of parody.

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Someone bigger-named and better-known than me touts my idea of carbon taxes domestically, plus carbon tariffs on imports from places like China, to address the "free rider" issue on global warming. And, like me, says he thinks WTO regulations allow it. And, like me, says, the hell with the WTO if it doesn't.

That "someone"? Paul Krugman, in this book review. The review is in depth, and the book itself sounds good. And, in my opinion, carbon cap-and-trade's been a failure in Europe. Business knows that carbon taxes are a better way of addressing this, and, businesses who don't import cheap crap from China know that carbon tariffs on imports is a way to force other countries to play along.

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If you missed it last night, PBS' "Frontline" had a good episode on multiple-antibiotic-resistant germs. It promises a spring follow-up on how CAFO agriculture and its antibiotic use play into this. It's scary, as is news that came out during the government shutdown that we may have salmonella bacteria that now resist 165-degree meat temperature on properly-cooked (theoretically, at least) chicken.

I may, at some point, contribute money to PBS again. But, I doubt I'll ever contribute to any local NPR station, nor the specific affiliates that produce most of its programming.