[ExI] Prudes, Protestants, Progress, and Profit

[Lee Corbin]

PJ writes

>> revolting aspects of American mass culture. So
>> there is certainly no "low-minded" disdain for fun here.
> 
> But let's be clear on the high vs. low: you can have the lowest
> minded, most prurient fun anywhere.  Take "Girls Gone Wild":
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_gone_wild  [for the uninitiated...]
> 
> The difference is "Girls Gone Wild" wouldn't exist in a European
> country, except in a supervised and taxed red light district and done
> by professionals, not amateurs too drunk to realize the consequences
> of immortality on DVD.

Oh, their time is coming. From Stockholm to Hannover, things
are really loosening up.

> It's America's repression that brings out the aggressive,
> naughty swing of the pendulum.  [And let's face it, if it
> wasn't shocking, most teenage girls wouldn't want to do it.]

Your example of "lowest minded, most prurient fun anywhere",
"Girls Gone Wild", is relatively new. The American puritanical
repression you speak of hasn't been felt much at all since the
1950s. Certain not in the last 30 years (1978 to now).
So while yes, repression can indeed bring out overreaction
(especially in political situations) it doesn't seem to work in
explain lowering moral standards, i.e., more lascivious conduct.
Do you have any clear-cut historical examples?  E.g., Roman
debauchery that got going in the late republic is never seen as
a *result* of the the strict morality of the early republic.

You're right about "if it wasn't shocking [those] teenage
girls wouldn't want to do it".  But each new shock level,
almost by definition, has to top the old one. It's the
*existence* of an old envelop that inspires any
new "outrage", not repression.

>> But my main question of interest is still:  Could it
>> be that American *and* European (let's not forget
>> where the Puritans and Mr. Calvin and so on
>> really originated) has contributed to European/
>> American world economic and military domination.
>> *That* is the key question---for it seriously posits
>> that a certain prudishness and seriousness is an
>> historical ESS.
> 
> I will recommend again that you look at Max Weber's "The Protestant
> Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism."  Synthesize this with Diamond's
> "guns, germs and steel" and...

Well, I'm pretty familiar with both those theses. (Incidentally, 
though he made very many interesting and valid points, Diamond's
major explanations of the causes behind the quite real "Guns, Germs,
and Steel" phenomenon have been rebutted very powerfully, viz.,
both the "geography as destiny", and the horizontally large latitudes
of the east fostering cultural exchange (the western hemisphere grew if
anything even more rapidly than the eastern one, despite having a laughably
small latitude extent  http://www.leecorbin.com/EastVsWestCiv3.html).)

> ... and I think you've got an answer that might interest you.

Au contraire, I think *you've* got an answer that would interest me  :-)
Or at least a conjecture in mind.

> The Dutch, while Calvinist, were always a more tolerant lot
> than the English Puritans,

Oh yes, the Puritans to the north loved mocking both Dutch
industriousness and cleanliness and their "loose morals":

      "The Dutch keep their houses cleaner than their
       bodies, and their bodies cleaner than their souls."

> who just loved persecuting the smallest infraction and hated
> anyone who wasn't just like them.

With regard to morals, another blow to your 'repression->rebellion'
hypothesis. The Puritans held sway for a very, very long time---
until the 20th century, I'd say. The first big loosening of their
grip followed the upheavals caused by WWI, I would say.

A larger question is the objective one:  was their temperament,
their intolerance, their fear and revulsion towards the alien, an
ESS?  Their demographics, their industry, their cultural sway
swamped their contemporary evolutionary competitors. Hence
the subject line: how much do progress and profit depend on
prudery, pace Weber's claims?  (By the way, many of Max
Weber's claims have also been severely and persuasively rebutted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber#Critical_responses_to_Weber

> Again, look at the overall effect of Puritanism, not just the numbers.
> Its effects were much more wide ranging than the simple population
> demographics might suggest, since the sect apparently disappears.
> First of all, the Puritans split into many groups, which we know now
> as Congregationalist, Presbyterians, Baptists, etc. -- pretty much
> most American Protestant sects that weren't Anglican/Episcopalian or
> direct-from-Germany Lutherans or Anabaptist/Mennonites.  The
> "children" of the Puritans brought us ideas like Manifest Destiny,
> abolitionism, Transcendentalism, the "Union" (as opposed to the
> Confederacy) and if I think about the lot of them, the only one who
> was having any self-admitted fun was Walt Whitman.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_whitman
> And he was punished for it!

Thanks for the splendid description. Quite.

> Indeed, American exceptionalism is a direct result of the Puritan's
> belief they were literally building the New Jerusalem and if everyone
> didn't tow the line, they wouldn't accomplish it.
> 
> Related to this: The first books written and published in the New
> World, not including the Bible, were a uniquely American form called
> the Captivity Narrative.  These were stories about "civilized" people
> kidnapped by an "uncivilized" enemy or "other."  And they were written
> by Puritans.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captivity_narrative
> 
> New England Puritan Mary Rowlandson's memoir of surviving an Indian
> attack, her and her children's abduction and her return to her shaken
> community laid the groundwork for American storytelling forever.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rowlandson

Neat.  I had not long ago read the very fine book "Mayflower"
that masterfully details King Philip's War including the cultural
aspects and ultimate impacts on both the Indians and the whites,
but hadn't a clue about this particular connection between the story
of Mary Rowlandson and the American mindset (up till the mid
20th century, that is).

>> Well, okay, but did the northern Puritanism actually win
>> out?
> 
> Yes.  We live in a post-industrial society that resembles the Union
> North, as opposed to the agrarian South.  The North had more
> resources, was more aggressive in spreading its cultural influence and
> it had the greater motivation to do so.  Guns, germs and steel, baby.
> Guns, germs and steel.  And Puritanism.

Well, okay, I'm persuaded.  But only, as I say, as far as the
18th and 19th centuries go. As for *now*---e.g. "Girls Gone
Wild"---isn't it the southern, redneck approach to life (the exact
opposite of Puritanism) that's gaining ground?  Even in the last five
years it's shocking to see the extent to which Fox News, for
example, has given up on well-educated accents. As opposed
to even five years ago, everyone there now speaks with the folksy
"doin', workin', and thinkin'" speech patterns, not at all as TV
was from the 1940s to 1970. Fox News hasn't quite got down
to "ain't" and "it don't matter none"---but it's just a question of a
few more years.  And worst of all is the sad fact that the managers
at Fox know exactly what they're doing, what will resonate with
America now, what the latest generation of Americans want, what
will bring the biggest profit.

So I'm thinkin' that southern redneck culture, what was
so overshadowed in the 19th and early 20th centuries,
is takin' over.  The Puritan spirit is dyin' or dead.

>> Or did the nearly or approximately equal number of
>> southerners do equally well in having the most influence
>> on the culture America was to have?
> 
> Southerners weren't aggressive, self-righteous proselytizers early on.
> They were more tied to their land, with fewer industries and a weaker
> emphasis on education 

I agree with that so far...

> and even as their religious traditions morphed into more
> puritanical, "American" ones during the Great Awakenings,

I think that that happened much later. The south still was sunk
into redneck culture until, mostly, the last few decades when
there seems to have been some true reform.  But the redneck
culture---sexual promiscuity, "laziness", crudeness, relative
dirtiness, disorderliness, "manly pride", ease of being offended,
tendencies towards violence and drunkenness, etc. (think
"Dukes of Hazzard"---which originated among the Celts, was
driven to the edge of Europe, then to the American south,
has finally found its last refuge among inner-city American blacks,
whose culture is not African at all, but southern, right down to
their dialects which can be traced back to early Virginia and
from there to certain districts in northern England. 

If you can, do give Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and
White Liberals" a read, which describes (between the lines)
his own personal agony at seeing virtuous and productive
black institutions of the 30s, 40s, and 50s destroyed during
the 60s by the rampaging black redneck culture encouraged
by misguided federal policies. If you can't, at least read a few
reviews on Amazon to get his drift and some of the data.

Lee