Charlemagne, Marx, and Everything (with Apologies to Douglas Adams)

Pepin the Short's Favorite Son

Charlemagne (the emperor, not the rapper), born in the 8th century CE and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) until his death in 814 CE was the first "universal" monarch since the collapse of the [unholy] Roman Empire centuries before.

In fact, all Europeans -- and their colonial descendants such as yours truly -- each and all descend from Chuck I (and also from Mohamed but let's not tell that to the flag-wavers). In other words, if you see a white person, he has the genes of Charlemagne in him. One could argue that Charlemagne, through his sexual choices and activities, has influenced every white body since, therefore every white person has been affected by Charlemagne.

Or not. Because to so argue would be fallacious. Like a turtle on a turtle on a turtle on a turtle on a turtle, this becomes absurd in the extreme; the claim that A before B = A causes B has multiple problems with it.

First, Our DNA

Consider basic genetic theory. Each of us share 50% of our DNA from two genomes -- one from the male, the other from the female. Mathematically, that means we have 25% from each of our grandparents, 12.5% from our great grandparents, 6.75% from our great great grandparents, etc. At what point does the math become insignificant and we can discount Charlemagne's influence in my (white guy) life? Much sooner than one may think, in fact. It's not that the percentages become smaller and smaller till they are insignificant; the problem is that genetics can become insignificant within only two generations. In other words, if my maternal grandfather had red hair, there was a 50% chance that his daughter would have red hair, correct? Incorrect. Red hair is a recessive gene, so it must a) be matched with another red hair gene to manifest itself physically, and b) like any other gene, can disappear within the next generation. In other words, even if the daughter did carry the recessive and invisible red hair gene, once she mated with a male who had no red hair gene, there was a 50% chance that the red hair gene would not be copied and that gene be lost -- forever. Except for the X gene, which everyone has, and the Y gene, which every male has, the random mixing and matching of genes through replication means that our ancestor's genes may in fact not be within our code.

Now, genes are not politics. Charlemagne's unification of the HRE influenced Europe for a few hundred years, but other political powers tore the HRE apart, separated its member states into new states, made some states disappear, created some out of thin air, etc. My point here is not that the HRE no longer exists and therefore Charlemagne's influence is gone, but that reductio ad absurdum -- like the turtles on each other's backs -- the Emperor's influence became less and less significant as other powers and entities stretched out their powers. Just because a) we know of Charlemagne and b) there exists today something that looks like the ancient Frankish kingdom we today call France does not mean that Charlemagne affects France today.

In logical argument, there are two forms of cause -- proximal and ultimate. The proximal cause is the action that immediately precedes the event. The ultimate cause is something far down the line that affects some action that affects some action that affects some action until the proximal cause exists. Just because the ultimate cause comes before the event does not, however, mean that the ultimate cause caused the event.

Quiz time: What caused the Katrina disaster?

Hot water over the Gulf Stream
Earth's 23.4% off-axis rotation
Andrew Jackson's victory in New Orleans
Industrialization and increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
Corruption at the state and parish level
Incompetence at FEMA
The Coriolis effect
The failure of the levees

One could argue, reductio ad absurdum, that the earth's rotation caused the disaster because without that variation, not only would we not have seasons, but the equatorial area of the planet would always be superheated while the poles would be supercooled which would have prevented life as we know it from evolving anyway, which means that Andy Jackson would never have been around to defeat the British in 1815 (the English would have evolved on their own; they really are aliens), which means the city would likely not have become a major transportation center for the continent (which was otherwise controlled by the non-existent Americans expanding westward and purchasing Louisiana from the non-existent French (which would be a good thing, we have to admit)), which means that the parish would never have needed to build a levee system because building a city in a bowl next to an ocean is just a stupid idea anyway, which means that the funds from the Corps of Engineers would have never been used for purposes other than they were intended (to maintain and strengthen the levees) and the Superdome would have never been built in the bowl next to an ocean, which means that that when the waters did heat up (which they wouldn't have anyway because of that 0% axis) and the rain fell, the waters would have simply rushed into the swamps where water is supposed to go anyway and no one would be stuck in the Superdome without A/C for over a week before being transported to Houston and beyond.

So. Did the earth's axis cause the Katrina disaster? No, of course it didn't. There were multiple combining errors building up to the man-made disaster we know as Katrina, but the earth's odd tilt is not one of the causes.

Going back to our original twargument:

Then soon after:

"You don't have 2 use them as examples, an unknown person can affect everything."

Second, some definitions

can (v.1)

Old English 1st & 3rd person singular present indicative of cunnan "know, have power to, be able," (also "to have carnal knowledge"), from Proto-Germanic *kunnan "to be mentally able, to have learned" (cognates: Old Norse kenna "to know, make known," Old Frisian kanna "to recognize, admit," German kennen "to know," Gothic kannjan "to make known"), from PIE root *gno- (see know).

Absorbing the third sense of "to know," that of "to know how to do something" (in addition to "to know as a fact" and "to be acquainted with" something or someone). An Old English preterite-present verb, its original past participle, couth, survived only in its negation (see uncouth), but see also could. The present participle has spun off as cunning.

affect (v.1)

"to make an impression on," 1630s; earlier "to attack" (c.1600), "act upon, infect" (early 15c.), from affect (n.). Related: Affected; affecting.

everything (n.)

late 14c., from every + thing.

every (adj.)

early 13c., contraction of Old English æfre ælc "each of a group," literally "ever each" (Chaucer's everich), from each with ever added for emphasis. The word still is felt to want emphasis; as in Modern English every last ..., every single ..., etc.

Compare everybody, everything, etc. The word everywhen is attested from 1843 but never caught on; neither did everyhow (1837)

Essentially, the claim that someone as famous (in the Western world, in Western thought) such as Karl Marx affected everything in the late 20th century errs in the misunderstanding of several of these words and the meaning of cause and effect.

Third, a brief overview of Karl Marx

class struggle
economy and history

Communist Manifesto

Jewish Question

Capital

That's brief enough. In the 20th century, forces allied themselves around ideologies that claimed to be Marxist but which were only totalitarian power grabs disguised as Marxism. That's a discussion for another day. But what did happen is that Marx and Engels did write and give enough public addresses to galvanize untold numbers of working class so that when the modern age developed with the renting of the Westphalian nation-state in the late 19th century, people like Lenin took advantage of these revolutions to grab power, murder tens of millions, and threaten to destroy other nation-states such as England and Canada (and the US, I haven't forgotten about them) because power corrupts. But Marx did not advocate for the murder of tens of millions or the nuclear annihilation of the planet's population. He didn't design an education program such that the Khmer Rouge would use on its captives; he didn't advocate for the agricultural disasters of Stalin and Mao. These were independent choices by individuals who might have claimed some association with an idea called Marxism, but were independent decisions made by sociopaths who would have created the hell that was the 20th century anyway. Further, though one may argue that it was the adulteration of Marx's ideology that masqueraded as economic theory for the USSR for 70 years and thereby affected the West's reaction to militarization, this reaction is itself not a result of Marxism but only a reaction to world-wide Communism [sic]. But to claim that the baseball flying 400 feet after it was hit off an ash bat after it was thrown at 90 mph from the pitcher's mound was the result of the pitcher's early childhood love of catch with his dad is just too much.

It's important to remember, too, that capitalism predates Marx, and of course was the focus of his critique. Though so-called capitalist states defended their ideologies during the Cold War as such, capitalism would have surely continued in some form with or without Marxist criticism

Cold War (or, per the NeoCons, World War III) map of Communist [sic] states

Though hundreds of millions have lived within boundaries of pro-Marxist countries, not each demonym is necessarily affected by that government's economic or political practices. Mongols living in their yurts can live and die without be "affected" by Marx, even though the live within the geographical boundaries of a strongly Marxist state. Further, even though the planet was largely identified by pro- and anti-Marxists states and their allies, some areas were otherwise ignored. Tonga, for example, is still a monarchy and has never had a pro-Marxist government. That it was (and is) nominally an ally of the West during the Cold War means little to the argument that Tonga was "affected" by Marx -- to argue that non-causality is a causality is silly. And this is still only within the political/economic realm. Within the other domains of human activity, Tonga's relationship with Marx, his ideas, or the delineation of the planet during the Cold War was simply a non-event.

Note, too, that the assumption about Marx immediately opened up a discussion of economic systems "after World War I." That's fine. Certainly economic theory has been influenced (but not wholly) by that discussion. But not physics or astronomy; not love and the desire to learn and our need for food and water; neither Amish sewing practices, folk dance of the Zulu tribe, nor the religious teachings of the Copts were affected. The perspective of Marx on the "big" ideologies of politics, economics, and militarization are a framework influenced by living in a materialist society, including an academic one, where economics and politics are seen as more valuable than Zulu folk dancing. To the Zulu, they're not.

Another example. Obviously, nothing before Marx was affected by him because time cannot flow backward. So, Shakespeare was unaffected by Marx, of course. Today, in 2014, I can read King Lear without being affected in any way by Marx. Now of course, I could read and interpret my favorite play through a Marxist/materialist theoretical lens, and some scholars do. But I don't have to. I can read it on paper unaffected by Marxist economics, in a book published by a printer in New York unaffected by Soviet militarization, read with my literacy background because I went to such-and-such private and public primary and secondary schools which were unaffected by Marxist politics (notably, America's public education system was founded before Capital and the Manifesto were published; even though what we know as public education is far from its Dewian ideal, it is not a result of Marx or his teachings, no matter what those on the Religious Right want to argue). My experience with Shakespeare, then, has been not affected by Marx. At all. Marx has not affected everything.

In sum, no one affects everything, unless one is a god or Dr. Who (and some people argue that Dr. Who is a god. I'm not going there because I really don't care). The enthusiastic responses to my facetious remarks can be seen as I saw them -- the enthusiasm of youth, believing that one person can change the world. We have two options: one person can force through violence of thought or body to change another man's life; or one person can change herself, and invite another to discuss, learn, try, fail, try again. One at a time. It's all rhetoric.

Much of this discussion hinges on words, definition of words, limitations of language, and assumptions of ideas that we eventually often outgrow. Just as a teen wants to know "What happened before the big bang?" we want to know how everything can be explained in one simple beautiful answer: we are trained to look for patterns of connections, of causes and effects; but sometimes these connections just really aren't there. We want to find an unbroken thread of cause and effect so all our questions will be answered -- our brains are designed that way. But the adult answer sometimes simply is, "There was nothing before the big bang."

And finally this:

"Now what is known as ‘Marxism’ in France is, indeed, an altogether peculiar product — so much so that Marx once said to Lafargue: ‘Ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste.’"- Letter to Bernstein, 1882.

Thank you for your patience, your indulgence, and your creativity. These are what make friendships worthwhile, and worth maintaining.

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