A supposed inherent inability of Muslims to live in secular democracies

This is a very flawed article where Shadi Hamid asserts that Islam is somehow so different from any other religion in the world that it really precludes Muslims from living happily and stably under a secular democracy.  I don't think you can ever make a very sound argument by generalizing about billions of people (and separating them clearly from other billions), and you certainly are in murky waters if you're assuming that certain explicit tenets of a religion or philosophy are uniformly held and obeyed by all of the people who were born into it.  But I don't really want to get into that.  I just wanted to point out a few of Hamid's factual or reasoning errors.

One is the danger of relying too much on present-day polls of what role Muslims in different countries think religion should play in government.  The results of a poll today aren't just dependent on some timeless principle of the religion of the respondents, but rather on a whole host of evolving social, economic, and historical factors.  I would assume that, for many Muslims of the 20th century living stably under secular governments (Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, most of West Africa) or wishing for the same, there was not much of a religious bent to whatever disagreements they might have had with their government.  No, the rhetoric from both leaders and citizens for most of the 20th century had to do with economic and political systems, pan-Arab or even pan-Muslim cultural identities, freedom of speech, ethnic separatism, dictatorship vs. democracy, etc.  So to say that right now the trend toward public support for Islamic law (after decades of corrupt secular governments) is something timeless and innate to Islam is naive.  Beyond this, I assume that if you asked Christians in many of the countries polled (Africa's fanatical Christian belt, but also the US itself), you would find very high support for running the country along "Christian" lines, whether this means more intact families, making abortion illegal, or suppressing the rights of non-Christian groups.  Case in point is the rugged commitment to anti-gay laws in many predominantly Christian countries.

An outright inaccuracy is Hamid's assertion that "ISIS has changed the terms of the debate, because other Islamist groups in recent decades have not been able to govern. They have not been able to build states, and ISIS has."  I would simply cite in response the governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia and much of the Arabian peninsula, the Taliban until 2001, Hezbollah in parts of Lebanon, and Hamas, which I believe would all be considered Islamist groups, and which all have clearly built or maintained states and governed them for a long time.  So I'm not sure what Hamid is getting at here, but his assertion is fundamentally wrong. 

All that said, I agree with his definition of Islamism as "the attempt to reconcile pre-modern Islamic law with the modern nation-state".  And I think he is correct in defining as a major challenge for our era this question:  "How do Muslim countries adapt Islamic law or sharia to a modern context?"  But just as important is how Christians, especially in Africa but also elsewhere, negotiate the lines between a liberal vision of human rights and the diverse values of Christianity.

Likewise, I agree with Shadi Hamid's claim that Western-style secular democracy is not now universally ascendant, nor is it destined to prevail over other ways of thinking and governing.  Hamid says that "there’s something lacking in Western democracies, that there’s a sense of overarching meaninglessness in political and cultural life in these countries".  I can agree with this (though I wouldn't say it's a sentiment universally shared by everyone in those democracies), and I can agree with Hamid's drawing attention to the potential appeal for many of more dramatic ways of living and thinking, be they Islamic martyrdom, white supremacist apocalyptic visions, or revolutionary Marxism.  But it's precisely because I agree with this point that I worry that characterizing secular democracy's discontents as a purely Muslim group is misleading in a very literal sense; such a focus would wrongly lead us to continue to surveil and demonize Muslims in Western countries, while leading us away from keeping an eye on the full range of anti-democratic passions and movements that can put our people and our society in danger.  Hamid himself admits that classic liberalism "doesn’t necessarily fill the gap that many people in Europe and the U.S. seem to have in their own lives, whether that means [they] resort to ideology, religion, xenophobia, nationalism, populism, exclusionary politics, or anti-immigrant politics. All of these things give voters a sense that there is something greater."  Hell, I myself am known to question rational modernity, and I'm not a religious fundamentalist of any stripe.

Even short of the purely destructive extremes of human behavior that seem to satisfy urges that secular democracy can't, there are many people in the US and elsewhere that want a larger role for God (ie Jesus, Shiva, or Ram), or a particular ethnic identity, or some other non-democratic force in their lives and their society.  Like Hamid, I don't necessarily see this as a universally bad thing, but rather something to negotiate and find limits for that don't hurt anyone.  In the US it's of course not acceptable to generally impose any one faith on others, but there are local jurisdictions that depart from strict liberal democracy by making concessions to the group identity and customs of Amish, Hasidic Jews, Inuits and other indigenous groups, even mainstream or evangelical Christians that allow their small towns to mix prayer and public spaces.  Across broad swathes of Africa there are laws and de facto customs inspired by Christianity, which are probably often harmless but can boil over into oppression of gays or sectarian massacres of Muslims (think central Nigeria, where Christians and Muslims trade off massacres).  Hamid doesn't seem to be considering these African cases much, focused as he is on juxtaposing mainly Third-World majority-Muslim countries with mainly wealthy majority-Christian or -atheist countries.  This merits a discussion of its own, because it could suggest (as I would assert) that the key factor in determining one's adherence to and affinity for secular democracy is not so much one's religion but rather one's residence in a relatively prosperous, stable country, versus living in an impoverished, corrupt setting with low access to education and other public goods.  But we'll not get into that here.

To close, I think it's much more useful to understand the limits of secular democracy, and its sway on the human spirit, not in terms of just saying "Muslims are different" but in fact as something that affects everyone, a challenge that must be addressed and adapted to if democracy and liberalism are indeed to prevail over our baser instincts.

The Parasite Economy

Here is an article from an entrepreneur (and inheritor of a family business) describing the far-ranging noxious effects of what he calls the parasite economy.  He defines the parasite economy as that subset of businesses in any field that systematically underpay their workers and rely on public aid to make up the difference between their low wages and a living wage.  The author shows how in many sectors there are some businesses that operate in the honest economy, paying enough for their workers to live on and thus further stimulating the economy through the purchasing power of those workers, and then there are other businesses that pay barely enough for workers to afford rent and unhealthy food.  These latter not only don't offer the larger economy the benefit of workers' expanded purchasing power, but they in fact suck resources from their competitors, who are paying taxes to subsidize the low-wage enterprises.  His recommendation is that only through aggressive laws protecting working rights, first and foremost a $15/hr minimum wage, will all businesses A) act responsibly with regard to wages, and B) be put on the same footing, so that honest businesses paying a living wage aren't obliged to compete with unscrupulous ones that bilk their workers and receive subsidies from the rest of us.

This is the same author (Nick Hanauer) I cited a while back urging his fellow plutocrats to realize the folly of trying to keep the masses underpaid and disenfranchized.  He really seems to understand in a deep and nuanced way the issues he discusses.

On a similar note, here is an opinion piece from  my hometown newspaper discussing the larger implications of Uber and Lyft's business models, which the first author would class under the parasite economy model of precarious "gig" employment.

Economics of gardening

A few months ago I wrote about dumpster diving for food.  In that post, I also mentioned the relative economic payout of other scavenging-type activities you can do in your free time.  I forgot to mention gardening though.

Here is a pretty comprehensive article on the economics of starting a vegetable garden in your back yard.  It gives a lot of good advice, like recommending to focus on high-value, rare, low-space crops like special variety green beans, herbs, and tomatoes, as opposed to things like bulk potatoes, onions, carrots, melons, and sweet corn that take up a lot of space and would be better (and more cheaply) obtained at a farmer market, especially in high season.  I would add one other factor that especially comes into my consideration here in the developing world:  pesticide residues.  In the tropics, ertain crops like spinach, lettuce, strawberries, potatoes, and green beans receive a lot of pesticide, and they can get expensive if you buy them organic (here is a listing from the Environmental Working Group on the foods that tend to have the highest pesticide residues in the US).  These are the type of crops that I also tend to grow myself when I can in the tropics, to avoid subjecting my family to agrochemicals.  On the other hand, things like melons or sweet corn, even if they get sprayed a lot, you can peel and thus avoid a lot of the residue, while peppers and tomatoes you can wash easily with soap and water.

The bottom line from the article is that you may be able to save a little bit of cash by growing your own crops (and if you're tending them using time that you wouldn't be able to use earning more money), especially after a first-year outlay for tools.  But almost any such analysis I've seen concurs on that point that, more than the often-meager cash savings, the best reasons to garden are to get ultra-fresh, agrochemical-free food, produced in a low-carbon way that gives you a lot of exercise and pride.  Hence the health and wellbeing benefits are far more compelling than the money savings.

Pan-African passport

It looks like the African Union is in the works of establishing a pan-African passport that eventually all citizens of the African continent can use.  This sounds like a really cool project, though the article rightly warns against possible pitfalls of such a plan.

Architecture summer camp in Chicago

I wanted to share information about a summer camp for 6th-8th graders that sounds really cool.  It's aimed at Chicagoland youth who are interested, or might be interested, in learning about architecture.  Apparently there are still some spots open.

Petition for better police training

I recently become aware of a campaign that various civil society actors are leading in an effort to reduce murders of black civilians at the hands of law enforcement.  It urges the Department of Justice to expand and require training for police in deescalation (meaning getting even armed guys to drop their weapon and calm down, instead of cops' impulsively shooting suspects, armed or not) and implicit bias (that little subconscious thing we all have that impulsively makes us think black men are threatening and somehow deserving of a bullet).  Here's what I wrote the DOJ.  You can do the same using their contact form.

Dear Attorney General Lynch,
I am writing as a member of the citizenry who is tired of empty talk about curing racism in our justice system without concrete action.  I am requesting for universal training for existing and new police officers on the topics of implicit bias and deescalation.  I believe that if more officers were skilled at deescalation, and more of them aware of their implicit bias that leads them to practice deescalation with white suspects while shooting first at black suspects, then we would have fewer tragic deaths of civilians, both white and black.  At the very least, such training in deescalation and implicit bias should be a condition for receipt of any aid from the federal government, be that aid in the form of equipment, training, or funds.
I join the NAACP, the Root news site, and Bounce TV in this campaign calling for tying of federal funding for law enforcement to police training in deescalation and implicit bias.
Thank you very much.

Food culture in Haiti

This is a cool little photo essay about food culture in Haiti.  It's a side of normal, everyday life that you don't often get to see, what with all the media images of squalor and suffering in Haiti.

Books on the Asian giants

I just finished reading "India" by Stanley Wolpert.  It is a very readable overview of the history and culture of India (writ large to include Pakistan and to a lesser extent Bangladesh and other South Asian countries).  The author starts with a description of the grand geographic features of the subcontinent, and how they have shaped local climate and culture, then gives a 50-page "historical prologue", before delving into more detailed chapters on religion, arts, sciences, society, economy, and politics.  The author seems to be one of these old "India hands", or at least India buffs, whose enthusiasm with the cultural, historical, and religious realities shine through on every page.  So it's an enjoyable read, if often prone to sweeping generalizations, romanticizations of one or another aspect of the "Indian character", and the imprecisions inevitable in a book-length treatment of thousands of years of subject matter.  My edition has a 1991 copyright, but is surprisingly up-to-date right to the very moment of publication.  It looks as though there have since been a number of updated editions, through to 2009.  I would highly recommend it for anyone, like me, without much detailed prior knowledge of the Indian subcontinent.

With this I have finally finished reading a triduum of books that my father gave me for a Christmas sometime in the late 1990s, and that stayed on my bookshelf unread for at least a decade.  One was a history of Russia that I finished maybe two years ago (I don't know the exact title, since it's in my mom's house in Chicago now).  One was a Macrohistory of China, a great book that I wrote a blog post about five years ago.  And now I've read Wolpert's book on India.  Two decades after the fact, I've finally gotten the grounding in Asian history that my dear dad tried to give me that long-ago Christmas.  I feel much more knowledgeable, empowered even, regarding this continent that houses most of the world's population.

Sequela sequelorum

This is an article about the proliferation of sequels and franchises (especially of the superhero variety) in today's Hollywood.

I have often lamented this surfeit of sequels and superhero movies .  When reading the latest Atlantic article, I was thus hopeful that it might describe a downturn in this trend.  However, while the article does indicate that Hollywood's sequel-heavy model is not bearing as much fruit as studios want, the author's conclusion (I believe a sound one) is not that studios will in response begin to get away from sequels and big-budget franchise movies, but in fact that they are now obligated to double-down, pushing for fewer, even bigger-budget offerings in a gamble to maximize returns.  So it sounds like we're in for many more years of unimaginative, big-budget tripe from Hollywood.

Third World Green Daddy 62: Biking DC

Haul your bike down the stairs of your building, give it the old ABCQuick Check (air, brakes, chain, quick releases), and you're off.  The few blocks you have to ride on the street in Crystal City have only intermittent bike lanes, but the county government is slowly improving that, and drivers are mainly respectful of your vehicle.  Then through the tunnel under the commuter rail tracks, and you're on the Mount Vernon trail, with a straight shot to downtown DC.

The trail is passable almost year-round.  Rain is no problem, though the wind can be a doozy.  In fact, it seems like the weather patterns in northern Virginia are specially calibrated to be against you inbound in the morning, and outbound in the afternoon.  Some fall days after work going southbound, on the stretch parallel to the Potomac that skirts the big park where planes from Reagan National take off and land straight overhead, the wind can almost bring you to a full stop, even when you're pedaling full-force.  In spring the trail is beautiful, with green leaves budding and cherry blossoms emerging, but it's a harder ride, since it fills up with people.  In deep summer it clears out a bit as people go on vacation, or simply don't want to suffer in 90-degree humidity.  Fall is a great time to ride, since leisure joggers and bikers have gotten tired of using the trail, and the weather is cool enough that you just barely break a sweat.  But winter is probably my favorite time.  Very few people use the trail in winter, especially not to commute on bike, so you have it all to yourself.  Some days you may see a total of six other souls on the trail in four miles.  With a facemask, gloves, toe covers, and a light jacket you are as protected from the cold as you need to be, and on the one or two worst days of the year you can wear two pairs of pants.  I've never done much Chicago winter biking, and I'm not sure I'd be strong or brave enough to.  But winter biking in DC is a piece of cake.  

The only bummer is when it snows a few inches and stays cold.  The Mount Vernon trail seems to fall under various administrative jurisdictions, such that neither Arlington County (which has a nifty bike-lane snow plow they use within city limits), the State of Virginia, the National Parks, nor the DC city government keeps it clear of snow.  In a typical DC snow, weather warms up the next day or two, and the bike path melts clean within a week.  But a few lasting cold spells have kept me off the bike trail for weeks at a time, as my city bike can neither navigate the soft snow nor the ridged, hard ice that forms as intrepid riders open grooves in the snow and slush with their tires, only to have it refreeze at night.

Every day as you pass Reagan airport you can watch the tides rise and fall in the holding basins dug parallel to the Potomac, seeing how high the wet mark goes, or how many rocks are visible above the water.  Sometimes you'll be deafened by planes landing over your head as your path veers perpendicular to the runway at its head, or you can race planes once the trail turns 90 degrees again.  You can stop to pick mulberries at the bushes just north of the runway park, or squish over them on the trail for a few months in summer.  Days of rain or of heavy thaw draw your anger at the underpass of the highway, since the downspout pours right onto a low spot in the path that freezes over in the winter; clearly no consideration or regard for bikers was taken in the design of the highway.  Some times you get to see Metro trains, Amtrak trains, and motor traffic pass overhead at the same time on three consecutive bridges, as the bike path is their first jump before crossing the Potomac.

As you ride the special bike bridge over the river, the cross breeze sometimes feels like it will knock you down, but it never does.  If you're alone and not too self-conscious, you can whoop and yawp as you face the relentless winds.  Some afternoons you can gloat to see yourself going much faster than the Interstate-bound cars on your same bridge, just past a concrete divider.  On the rare occasions you get caught in a torrential summer rain, this is also the place to laugh and holler as your shoes fill up with sloshy runoff from your pant cuffs.  

Now you're finally on DC soil, a fancy landing and welcome site into a network of green, sprawling parks.  Be sure to salute Thomas Jefferson in his monument as you pass by.  Look to your left in the morning, and at just one point you'll see him framed between two pillars, his back set square to you.  Look straight ahead on the afternoon return trip, and you'll get him in profile, framed against white sky between another two pillars.  

There's a massive, weeping cherry tree in a crook by the river that blossoms two weeks before all the others.  Watch out for the other cherry trees lining this whole stretch like sentinels--black and bony in winter, surging slowly furry and pink in spring (every day a bit farther along), then a green, healthy monotony throughout summer before they get ratty and sheddy after their final orange hurrah in fall.  

Now you're starting to get into real city turf.  You can watch the condom-like scaffolding come slowly off the Washington Monument, though you must be sure to dodge the snaking lines of loafing tourists and iPad-gazers on the shared bike-pedestrian path.  Watch over years as the African-American History and Culture museum, Smithsonian's newest, goes from fenced hole in the ground to concrete parking garage to jutting, angular rusted-iron skeleton to lovely lattices, a cross between flower and factory.

Get off the sidewalk here, onto the street.  Sidewalk riding is prohibited in central DC, and you'll understand why when you see all the 8th-grade school visits, groups of matching T-shirts dozens strong filling up all available space.  Once you get past the burgeoning humanity in the tourist districts, you can get onto well-designed bike lanes that will take you from one end of the city to another, between gleaming new luxury high-rises and molasses-slow side streets of shade-splotched hostas and families on rowhouse stoops, from bearded young white pioneers to steel-smooth strutting wool suits emanating dreams and ambition.  A bike is a good vantage point to fall in love with this city.

"New" Colombia looking like the old

This is an insightful analysis from a few years ago, written by a friend of mine in Colombia.  In it, she looks at at certain version presented by the Financial Times of a "new", neoliberal Colombia, one that presumably leaves behind years of war to open itself up to well-meaning foreign investors in sectors like mining and oil.  The author of the blog post does a great job of questioning the assumptions and assertions of this narrative.  I'm a bit more blunt in my analysis--if the future of Colombia is to be extractive industries that enrich a few at the expense of the environment and livelihoods of the poor majority, then how is this different from the base conditions that fueled armed conflict and suffering for decades?

Making room for people of normal intelligence

This is an article that really made me think.  It discusses how we have shaped society in the US, and frankly in much of the world, such that people with high intelligence (or at least the academic credentials that we regard as intelligence) amass great advantage while the bulk of people are left out of society's bounty.  It's a new variation on an old theme of allotting society's resources and its value of human worth to certain people possessing a certain trait, and excluding others.  This has been done with race, socioeconomic status, gender...and now intelligence.

I somewhat shy away from the author's uncritical use of the term "intelligence", though he does say very clearly that he is defining intelligence as the type of SAT-measured, college-grades-earning ability that our society rewards handsomely.  He acknowledges that there are many other kinds of intelligence, but that what our society values is sheer academic skill.  (And while the use of "stupid people" in his title is eye-catching, he's really just talking about the rest of us that aren't ultra-brilliant, in other words people of normal intelligence or academic credentials).  For the purposes of the article, perhaps the distinction between intelligence and academic credential-acquiring ability is moot, but it's very important for me.  I have in fact met very few people I regard as unintelligent.  Many of those that I do consider as such are in fact society's winners, the supposedly intelligent, often white, middle- to upper-middle-income overachievers that are great at striving and parroting, but not necessarily very good critical thinkers.  In fact, by the mere dint of belonging to a hegemonic group within society, many academically "intelligent" people are less capable than others to challenge their own assumptions and think outside the box.  Conversely, many of the most witty, critical, brilliant people I've met do not have a very good formal education, have not scored well on tests or in school, and are deprived of the approval and the wealth of the society at large.  These are the people who manage to survive in conditions that would overwhelm many others, that are able to question dominant narratives that are so clearly inapplicable to their lives, and that can identify and name like few others the barriers society has erected to them and others like them.  That for me is intelligence.  In addition, kindness and solidarity have to be an element of intelligence.  I can't rightly call someone intelligent if they are mean, destructive, too small-minded to perceive the common struggle of humanity that all of us are called to contribute to.

Even in a less extreme example, I think most of us who work in offices can relate to how silly it is to reward people professionally for how academically intelligent they are.  In my case at least, and I'd assume in most people's cases, I have coworkers I consider really good, and those I consider as not being very good workers.  I define this based on how they work in a team, how agreeable they are to be around and collaborate with, and mainly just whether or not they do what is required of them by our office.  It hasn't even crossed my mind with most of these people whether or not they'd do well on the SAT test, but I would imagine that some would and some wouldn't, and how well they did on a test would probably have little correlation to how valuable and productive a member of the team they are.  This simple example gives the lie to the common practice of only hiring the academic standouts for many jobs.

In any case, the article framed things in a way I hadn't before.  My own reflection after reading is that, whether intelligence (especially in the academic sense that gets you a higher salary) is inborn or acquired, in either case it's unfair to discriminate based on it.  If it's inborn, it's not right because all people should be entitled to a dignified, fulfilling life, regardless of the traits they're born with.  If it's acquired, then it's unfair to penalize those who haven't had the same opportunity to acquire intelligence.

I feel that the author captured in words a set of values I've long possessed without having an explicit name for them.  I have always been repulsed by the disdain of the intelligent for others, especially as expressed in ironic, mean-spirited satire like the Darwin awards.  My wife has sensitized me to how ugly the word "stupid" is.  In Spanish it's almost profane, unlike in English where we throw the word around casually.  Nowadays we prohibit our kids from using "stupid" in the house, and we do the same.  In fact, the only time I use the word, and the only case in which I truly believe someone is stupid, is when they oppress or bully or hurt others.  The inability to accept other people, the desire to belittle or even eradicate them, shows such a lack of imagination and mental capacity that I have to call it stupid.  Ironically, those that most often draw my ire in this sense are usually people who deride or dehumanize others precisely because they believe they are more intelligent, and thus entitled to keep everyone else down.

An Economist article whose conclusions I agree with despite disagreeing with most of the subordinate arguments

Here is an article by the Economist on the myriad problems affecting the Middle East.  Despite its subtitle laying blame squarely on Middle Easterners for their ills, it is really mainly about what countries outside the Middle East can and can't do to improve the situation.  These are the conclusions I agree with--the author warns against simple solutions, especially the delusion that redrawing national borders can easily salve the wounds of the region, and (s)he says that Europe and the US should aim to cajole and contain within the current situation as opposed to striving for wholesale change in the different societies and government of the Middle East.

The argument I really can't get on board with is how the author backhandedly admits the role of mistaken US and European policies in the region's past, but then dismisses their importance today, jumping at the opportunity to blame Middle Easterners themselves for their woes.  First off, this is similar to saying that the US wasn't a prime driver in the Central American conflicts of the 1980s (or today's crisis of violence there that directly derives from those conflicts) because we did not directly engage troops there.  The tacit or sometimes aggressive support of the West for certain leaders in the region for the past decades created situations that directly gave rise to today's mayhem.

Obviously the people of a country or a region are ultimately responsible for what they do or don't do, both good and bad.  This is so obvious that I hope it wasn't the author's main point.  But to solve a problem, you need to fully understand its origin, and stopping at the observation that it's mainly Syrians shooting Syrians in Syria, or an autocratic Egyptian state structure oppressing Egyptians in Egypt, does not shed any light on the subject.   We all (Middle Easterners and outsiders) need to understand the role of Europe and the US in the Middle East's recent and not-so-recent past in order to arrive at any feasible solution.  The US supported Saddam Hussein for a long time before then turning on him and invading his country on the pretext that he still had weapons we might have helped him to develop.  This destabilizing invasion, our sacking of the Hussein government and military personnel, the arming of Sunni militias, and of course our support for Al-Qaeda's (and thus the Islamic State's) predecessors during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, are the major factors in the current conflict in Iraq and Syria.  Yeah, right now the US is playing it at arm's distance, but how can anybody reasonably argue that we aren't a major driver of the current situation because it's been a whole 13 years since we threw Iraq into chaos?

If you think 13 years is too long of a time horizon to think about in assigning blame and causality, then it will seem really outrageous when I link the British-US overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950s, our absurdly faithful support of the Shah's state terror apparatus for 25 years, and the resulting Iranian Revolution almost 40 years ago, to current turmoil in the Middle East.  But the Economist article itself points to Iran's destabilizing influence in the region, and this is due to a regime that was created as a response to our perversely cruel, inhuman, and very active involvement in Iran lo those many years ago.  I could dig back even deeper and give a similar story about British betrayal of Arabian aspirations, before they then did bequeath nationhood on the fiefs of a few backwards desert despots.

I know none of what I'm saying is new or particularly insightful, and I'm certainly no expert on it.  In fact, just reading myself makes me cringe, since this is all so 200-level that I sound like a silly college kid.  But I guess it's not that obvious, since the Economist, one of the world's publications of record, doesn't even give it a second thought.

240 years

Today marks 240 years of our great nation's existence.  It's been a hell of a ride.  Here's to 240 more--let's try to be a bit nicer to each other and our global neighbors, and not hurt or oppress anyone too much.

Management theory as snake oil?

We've all had bosses and work colleagues that devote themselves to reading the latest management literature, striving sincerely to make their organization more like whatever management theory is trending at the moment.  To me it's always seemed like so much hot air, despite my esteem for these colleagues and their very real management capability.  In fact, when I have had or seen very effective managers in my workplace, their aptitude seems more to me like the fruit of lifelong learning and thought, common decency, a willingness to think critically, in short like the fruit of of who they are and how they live, think, and work, that has nothing to do with whatever book of platitudes they've picked up at the airport recently.  However, having never gone to business school, nor managed other people myself, I normally refrain from explicit criticisms of the whole field of management theory.  Above all, I wouldn't want to offend the people who invest a lot of time and effort in pursuing an MBA, or reading management literature, by suggesting that it's all futile.

But here is an article from a long-time management consultant that lays out in a well-informed, detailed way what problems he sees in modern management theory.  He posits that most of us would be better prepared for a career in management by a degree in philosophy or the humanities.  My understanding from numerous news articles and opinion pieces is that many executives would agree with him; they want well-rounded people who are interested in learning, in critical thinking, and in the human condition generally, because these are the people who can really add value in a company.