Deconstructing Niall Ferguson's 6 'Killer Apps'

Taking on a badass historian's argument over how the west gained – and now stands to lose – its edge in the world

Scottish historian Niall Ferguson has always been a provocative figure. Derided by many as a cultural chauvinist and a defender of western imperialism, he is equally praised as a prescient voice of honesty in a cultural realm permeated by political correctness. Over the course of his academic career, he has consistently positioned himself as a bête noire of the academic mainstream, be it by challenging orthodox ‘truths’ about the First World War (specifically that the war was largely the result of British belligerence) or taking unpopular stances such as supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq or being, in Eric Hobsbawm’s words, a “nostalgist for empire.”

Fergie is in typically fighting form in his lecture at the Edinburgh TED Conference in July 2011. The lecture, based on his recent book Civilisation: The West and the Rest, attempt to explain the social and economic factors that set the western world apart from the rest of the world. Admittedly, there is something grating in his “I’m right and you’re not” tone in both the book and his lecture. Nevertheless, his basic assertion that ‘the west’ (specifically Europe, North America and Australasia) achieved its current – albeit now challenged – supremacy in the world by way of six ‘killer applications’ is a remarkably watertight argument.

Where Ferguson clashes with the more ‘politically correct’ scholars in regards to the ascendancy of the west is in his downplaying of the role of imperialism and colonial-era exploitation of the non-western world in achieving its edge. As Ferguson explains in his lecture at the Edinburgh TED Conference, empire cannot have been the primary reason because, in his own words, “empire was the least original thing the west did.” If imperial exploitation had indeed been the deciding factor, then the Ottomans, the Mughals, the Khmers and the Aztecs would have retained their edge into the modern world rather than have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

Secondly, Ferguson notes that the western world achieved its peak level of divergence from the non-western world in the 1960s and 1970s – well after the western powers had shed their colonial possessions. One of the most unsettling realities of post-colonial Africa in particular is the fact that many African countries (although certainly not all) enjoyed higher GDPs and standards of living under European colonialism than they have under self-rule. Were imperialism the primary culprit in the ‘great divergence’, in Ferguson’s words, surely this would not be the case

No, empire is not the cause of western supremacy. If anything, the style of empire patented by Europeans during the industrial era and beyond was a result of these societies’ advancements than a cause thereof. So what, then, gave the west its systematic edge? Ferguson identifies six ‘killer apps’ of western civilization – deceptively simple concepts with complex coding behind them – which he believes set the western world apart from the west. In his defence, he uses non-western as well as western sources in his argument. Moreover, he postulates that these ‘apps’ are very much open source and that the ‘resterners’ are starting to beat the westerners at their own game.

In his TED lecture, Ferguson challenges the listeners to add their own to the list or argue against any of the existing six, adding in his characteristic hubris that “You’ll be wrong.” You’re on, Fergie! But first, let’s look at the six that he proposes.

1)      Competition

This one is straightforward enough. China, for example, held a systematic edge over the west in terms of civilizational development for many centuries, but a lack of forces in any position to compete with the monolithic stats structure of imperial China held it back when trailblazing commerce-driven economies in Europe began flexing their muscle around the world. Similarly, it was a lack of competition in the former Soviet Union and Maoist China that saw these realms continue to stagnate in the post-colonial world. It was not Buckingham Palace that did the grunt work of British expansionism. It was the likes of the East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company that did the job.

Some scholars have suggested that seed of Japan’s successful modernization in late 19^th and early 20^th century far ahead of China, Korea and other Asian civilizations was sewn with the bifurcation of imperial and political power between Kyoto and Edo (present-day Tokyo) thereby breaking the monopoly of power by the Kyoto aristocracy orbiting the imperial throne. In a similar fashion, the rise of modern China was presaged by the emergence of politically separate and economically dynamic entities in Hong Kong and Taiwan, which ended up serving as its post-Mao models.

2)      Scientific Revolution

This one again is a no-brainer. The western scientific revolution was of course made possible by advances in science and mathematics achieved in the non-western world, but by the time the industrial revolution took hold in Western Europe and North America scientific progress had stagnated in much of the rest of the world. In fact, as the scientific revolution began to take hold in Europe in the 16^th century, the Islamic world, which had long held the edge, had already begun to take the reverse course, as seen in the destruction of Taqi al-Din’s observatory in Istanbul in 1580 at the behest of Ottoman clerics who considered it immoral to inquire into the mind of God.

Fortunately for the ‘resterners’, this scientific divergence is well on its way to being overcome, particularly in the case of East Asia. At the same time, however, many leading scientists in the west have raised concern about a growing ‘war on science’ in the west. This has largely been viewed as an American phenomenon, where Christian fundamentalism has long been vocal in its mistrust of and distain for the scientific community. However, Richard Dawkins and others contend that phobia of science in western society goes well beyond the American Bible Belt and threatens to stymie scientific progress in places that, like the Islamic world, once held an undisputed edge.

3)      Private Property Rights

It’s not the democracy; it’s private property rights. This, Ferguson argues, is why countries like Canada and the US leapt ahead of Latin America, where land ownership was, and in many places still is, overwhelmingly dominated by a small white minority descended from the conquistadors. Private property rights, he asserts, has the result of magnifying the potential for economic growth by giving individuals greater incentive to develop their lands and engage in the economy. The prevalence of private land ownership in places like post WWII South Korea and Taiwan presaged these countries’ economic ascendancy while command economies like the USSR and China stagnated.

This third app might also offer a window into why so many of Canada’s First Nations have stagnated in the modern world. Under the Indian Act, reserve land ownership is the exclusive domain of band councils, essentially resembling miniature versions of old Soviet republics. Fortunately, hard-won land claim settlements by many First Nations have led to greater economic clout, according them the opportunity to circumvent the lack of this particular app in achieving prosperity and higher quality of life. In this case, private control over resources could well prove tantamount to property rights.

4)      Modern Medicine

Like the scientific revolution, modern ‘western’ medicine evolved out of advances achieved in the non-western world. The largest hospital ever built remains the one constructed a millennium ago in Cairo at a time when western medicine remained mired in the dark ages. Nevertheless, it was the advances achieved in the western world in the 19^th and 20^th centuries that gave human beings the longevity and robustness they currently enjoy in much of the world, while those society that have resisted it have done so at great detriment to their own people, as demonstrated by the South African government’s mercifully brief flirtation with unscientific ‘cures’ for HIV/AIDS.

Fortunately for humankind as a whole, modern medicine has ceased to be a ‘western’ phenomenon and has become more or less universal, and the result has been staggering improvements in life expectancy and infant mortality rates worldwide. Moreover, innovation in medicine has ceased to be a western monopoly. If anything, the greatest resistance to ‘western’ medicine in the world today is to be found in the western world itself, where a phobia of doctors converges with religious fundamentalism and faddish alternative healing modalities to pose a potential threat to medical progress.

5)      Consumer Society

C'mon! Do we really need this one? Alas, it would seem that we do. Japan was the first non-western country to develop a modern-day consumer society in the early 20^th century, which paralleled the country’s economic growth and improvement of living standards, and every society since that has made the jump from underdeveloped to developed status has also embraced various forms of this now largely ubiquitous phenomenon. When it comes down to it, human beings want their creature comforts – and this requires App #5.

The alternative to the consumer society, as Ferguson points out, was what Mohandas K. Gandhi proposed for India, which was essentially to universalize poverty. It scarcely needs saying that while the Mahatma remains a deeply revered figure in present-day India, few – if any – Indians would seriously advocate a return to his economic ideals. Indeed, the most vociferous critics of modern capitalism have generally all been products of their respective country’s economic elites who had already benefited from existing consumer societies. And while App #5 does appear to be out of control in much of the west, deleting it entirely would invariably be have disastrous social consequences.

6)      Work Ethic

This one is without doubt the most problematic of all – and perhaps the most difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, statistics on hours worked and worker productivity speak to an overwhelming correlation between economic clout, standard of living and work ethic. This is not however an assertion that laziness on the part of non-western societies caused them to stagnate, although plenty of westerners have hinted at this. Human beings are extraordinarily industrious when they feel they have something to gain from their labour. The New Economic Policy implemented by Lenin in the USSR in the early 1920s allowed farmers to generate profit from small plots of land, plots which ended up producing far more food than all the collective farms put together.

As Ferguson points out, Max Weber postulated that ‘work ethic’ was a Protestant phenomenon. Needless to say, the ascendancy of the Tiger Economies of East Asia long put this argument to rest, and indeed now Asian statesmen like former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew can be heard equating work ethic with ‘Confucian’ values. However, improved worker productivity has been shown to be universally correlated to the viability of vertical mobility and the capacity of societies to improve working conditions and infrastructure. Work ethic is, in sum, an indicator of the health of a society – not an innate characteristic that some societies lack and others possess.

The verdict?

It’s tough if not impossible to argue against any of these. Ferguson notably does not include democracy on this list, and on this I’m in agreement with him. After all, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and others achieved First World levels of economic clout and material prosperity under authoritarian rule and modern China appears to be well on its way to doing the same, while India stagnated for decades under democratic governance. Democracy, it would seem, facilitates the process. The overall correlation between material affluence, economic stature and democracy is self-evidence and indeed countries like South Korea have seen accelerated since becoming multiparty democracies. Nevertheless, democracy fails to make the cut.

App #7?

If I were to add a seventh ‘app’ to this list, it would be universal primary education and mass literacy - and in particular female literacy. MIT economist Huang Yasheng, who also presented at the Edinburgh TED alongside Ferguson, notes in his comparison of the economic trajectories of modern China and India that during the Cultural Revolution of the late-1960s, when China was at its most dysfunctional, it was still maintaining higher levels of economic growth than India under the democratic rule of Indira Gandhi. Clearly China held a systemic advantage that cannot be explained by Ferguson`s six apps, as all six of them were categorically under siege in China during this time.

The reason, he argues, is human capital, specifically the vast divergence in literacy levels between the two countries, as well as a pronounced imbalance between male and female literacy rates in India. It was this more than anything that paved the way for China`s post-Mao ascendency, and likewise the gains made by India on this front since the 1980s that presaged its now-impressive growth. Virtually every society that has made the jump from have-not to have status has paved the way through prioritizing education. High literacy rates certainly do not guarantee economic growth, as seen in the stagnation of many post-Soviet republics in spite of near-universal literacy, but I would challenge anyone to produce an example of a country that succeeded without it.

Over to you, Niall.

Ten Essential English Language Books About Japan

Yesterday I got my first writing gig in over two years with a magazine for which I was once a regular contributor – Tokyo Weekender. A monthly magazine produced in Tokyo and geared for the city’s Anglophone expatriate community, Weekender was one of the most fun gigs ever. As a Weekender contributor, I got a chance to write about pretty much everything you can imagine – finance, real estate, health and wellness, travel, sports and the ins and outs of Japanese culture. Weekender helped sharpen my writing skills at a time when I was a whole lot less experienced than I am now and gave me a chance to write about topics that I probably never would have otherwise. It was always a pleasure, and having been away from Japan for over three years now, getting the nod from them to write yet more material about Japanese culture is a real honour.

Japan is a place that has impacted me greatly. I’ve spent a total of six and a half years of my adult life there, including stints as a research scholar, an English teacher and an editor-proofreader-translator for a translation firm in Tokyo. It’s the place where I began my freelance writing career, a place that continually fuelled my creative fires and a place that still occupies a lot of intellectual and psychological real estate in my mind – even after three years back on the terra firma of Canada. It was a great country in which to be a writer, and indeed it took my quite some time to find my stride again as a freelancer after returning to my native country. And it goes without saying that Japan has been even more on my mind since the terrible events of March 11 of this year, making me feel more compelled than ever to write about the place.

I’m also far from the only westerner to have this experience. Somebody once told me that Japan was the world’s most written about country, and while I have my doubts about this (How would you even calculate this?), the amount of writings purporting to explain the place is nothing short of phenomenal. Look up Japan on Amazon.com and you get 324,424 results. That’s a lot of ink. Part of that is that Japan is a big, wealthy and influential country in the world, but there’s definitely more to it than that. Japan’s beautiful and beguiling traditional arts and culture, fascinating and complicated history and always intriguing modern day idiosyncrasies continue make the country an absolute goldmine for the expatriate scribbler. Just when you think the well has been exhausted, another bucket of fresh ink is dredged up from the bowels of the Japanese archipelago.

There are literally thousands of English language books out there that purport to explain Japan to the outside world. Many of them are not particularly good and some are frankly annoying, particularly after you’ve stayed in Japan long enough to realize that many of the west’s stereotypes about the place hold little water in reality. However, there are some truly wonderful books about Japan that I would recommend to anyone planning on spending any time in the country or is otherwise desirous to learn more about this fascinating country. Here are my top ten – in no particular order.

A Lateral View by Donald Richie

At 87, Donald Richie is the granddaddy of ex-pat raconteurs in Japan. A US navy purser and medical officer during the Second World War, Richie first crossed paths with Japan during the postwar occupation, and never really left. He is best known in the west as an expert in Japanese film and is famous for having introduced Akira Kurosawa to western audiences. A Lateral View: Essays on Culture and Style in Contemporary Japan was published in 1992 and spans several decades of life in Japan’s capital city. While much of the content is a tad dated now, particular as regards gender roles and societal expectations, his shrewd observations of social grammar and captivating snapshots of Tokyo life throughout the decades makes this a must-read.

Embracing Defeat by John Dower

It is rare that an academic treatise is so captivating that you’re compelled to read it from start to finish. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II is one such read. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning volume, MIT historian John Dower tells the story of the short but profoundly transformative six-year period of US occupation following Japan’s defeat in World War II and its political, economic, cultural and psychological legacy on the part of the Japanese people. For anyone looking to understand the lingering ghosts of the war, the unresolved constitutional issues and the cultural insecurities that continue to bedevil Japan, this book is highly recommended reading.

Inventing Japan by Ian Buruma

If the year 1945 was a year of enormous consequence for Japan, the year 1854 was at least as consequential – and perhaps even more so. With the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry’s ‘Black Ships’ in Edo (Tokyo) harbor in that fateful year demanding that Japan open its borders for trade, the country was transformed from an isolated, inward-looking pre-industrial domain into a country scrambling to catch up with the western powers. In Inventing Japan, Anglo-Dutch historian Ian Buruma examines that transformation as it played out over the period from 1854 to aftermath of the Second World War and how the forces set in motion by the Black Ships still underpin the country today.

Green Tea To Go by Leza Lowitz

While the canon of western writings on Japan has for the most part been overwhelmingly male-dominated, some of the most offbeat English language writings on the country – particularly in the fiction category – have been written by women. American ex-pat poet and short story author Leza Lowitz is one of the best known contemporary female writers in the ex-pat crowd, and her story collection Green Tea To Go: Stories from Tokyo is an absolute delight. Her stories delve deep into the masks of manners and unspoken truths that characterize Japanese social grammar, which she brings to the fore by way of a motley assortment of frazzled business executives, political extremists, self-conscious yakuza gangsters and lovestruck English teachers. Cultural difference made fun.

For more on Leza Lowitz, who is also a Tokyo-based yoga instructor, check out her website.

Losing Kei by Suzanne Kamata

Bicultural families may be a dime a dozen anymore in Japan’s larger cities, but expatriate parents of bicultural children in Japan still face challenges in a society long characterized by its racial and cultural homogeneity. One such issue is that of child custody following a divorce, wherein Japanese parents are overwhelmingly favoured in such cases and incidents where the foreign parent has effectively been denied access to their child are well known. In her debut novel Losing Kei, ex-pat American author and gaijin supermom Suzanne Kamata tells the poignant tale of an American woman who fights to regain access to her son following her divorce from her Japanese husband.

For more on Suzanne Kamata and bicultural parenting in Japan, check out her wonderful blog, Gaijin Mama.

Hitching Rides with Buddha by Will Ferguson

Canadian readers know Will Ferguson as the wise-ass satirist behind such books as Why I Hate Canadians, Bastards and Boneheads and Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw. However, it is little known to most Canadians is that the Calgary author first cut his teeth as a writer during his years in Japan as an English instructor. Originally released under the title Hokkaido Highway Blues, Hitching Rides with Buddha is the hilarious and fascinating diary of Ferguson’s hitchhiking journey from southern Kyushu through Honshu to the far northernmost tip of Hokkaido. Delightfully self-deprecating and refreshingly cliché-free, the book paints a picture of an endlessly quirky country made up of ordinary yet surreal characters plying Japan’s highways.

Lost Japan and Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr

Of all the authors on this list, Alex Kerr is arguably the most ‘Japanese’, not only due to his impeccable fluency in Japanese but also for the fact that his writings fit more within the context of Japan’s own cultural commentators and social critics than within the ranks of ex-pat lit. Lost Japan was originally written in Japanese under the title Utsukushii Nihon no Zanzō (美しき日本の残像, "Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan"), with which Kerr became the first foreigner to win the Shincho Gakugei literary prize (the Japanese equivalent of the Booker Prize) in 1994. The book examines in loving detail the traditional art forms for which Japan is renowned, while also lamenting the demise of much of Japan’s cultural and environmental splendour by a development-obsessed elite.

Lost Japan, however, was to be but a warm-up punch for Kerr’s most provocative book to date, Dogs and Demons (犬と鬼, “Inu to Oni”), a book that amounts to a declaration of war on Japan’s political and business mandarins. Published in 2001 after nearly a decade of research, the book paints a disturbing picture of a country besieged by wasteful pork-barrel projects that rack up debt while destroying the country’s mountain, rivers, coastlines and traditional architecture, at the behest of corrupt bureaucrats in collusion with big business and elected officials.

While the book was slammed by some overseas critics as anti-Japanese, Dogs and Demons proved extremely popular in Japan, where it helped generate a groundswell of opposition to the practices excoriated in the book and a shift toward restoring traditional villages and old urban neighbourhoods, especially in Kerr's beloved Kyoto. Kerr remains an in-demand public speaker in Japan and has become something of an overseas tourism ambassador for the country. You can read the interview I did with Alex Kerr in early 2008 on the author's official website.

The Japan We Never Knew by David Suzuki and Keibo Oiwa

In what can only be described as a literary mid-life crisis, renowned Japanese-Canadian biologist and environmental crusader David Suzuki embarked on a journey to the heart of his ancestral homeland in the mid-1990s. Together with cultural anthropologist Keibo Oiwa, Suzuki sets about dismantling the clichéd picture of Japan as a homogenous cookie-cutter society. The Japan We Never Knew examines little known communities within Japan such as the Ainu (Hokkaido’s aboriginal people), the Okinawans, the Burakumin (the descendants of Japan’s former ‘untouchable’ cast), the Zainichi Koreans (Japanese-born ethnic Koreans) and other ethno-cultural groups, as well as a cast of environmental activists, educational reformers and others unafraid to rock the boat in famously conformist Japan.

The Japanese Have A Word For It by Boyé Lafayette De Mente

It is often said that in order to understand a culture you have to have an appreciation for the language that goes with it. And nowhere is this adage truer than in Japan, whose native language is replete with colourful expressions and concepts found nowhere else. The Japanese Have A Word For It explains such quintessentially Japanese concepts as wa (和, “harmony”) and the relationship between honne (本音, “deeply held beliefs”) versus tatemae (建前, “publicly stated opinions”), while also delving into some of the language’s more colourful insults and bedroom talk. An excellent introduction into the linguistic underpinnings of Japanese society and culture.