Why Has Africa Remained So Underdeveloped? - The Importance Of Culture, Ethos, And Moral Discipline

What accounts for the economic differences between countries? Why are some countries rich and others poor? In the same forty year period during which China went from a poor, medieval, peasant society to a world economic and political superpower, Africa has regressed.  Most of the continent is more impoverished and underdeveloped than it was under colonial rule.  

A Chinese exchange student studied in the United Sates or a year in the mid-90s just as China was beginning to implement its most dramatic economic reforms.  At this time, before the economic revolution had taken hold, China was still a developing country as it had been for centuries.  As the West accelerated from the 19th to the 20th century and became an industrialized power, China lagged far behind.  

“We have culture”, said the student. “Thousands of years, many powerful dynasties from Xia Dynasty 4000 years ago.  Evolved religion, Confucius, art, philosophy, culture.  Why are we so backward?”

The young man only had to wait a few years to see how all this history and culture would provide the foundation for rapid economic development.  This development was principally due to the reforms started by Deng Xiaoping and enthusiastically endorsed and expanded by his successors; but there is no doubt that the cultural infrastructure of the country was the foundation on which these more practical changes was built.  

A culture built around Confucian principles of respect for elders and tradition, wisdom, loyalty, discipline, and trustworthiness more easily coalesced around newly-enunciated programs of national reform.  A culture which had millennia of ‘authoritarian’ Mandarin rule would not find the centralized programs of the Politburo intolerable, especially since the economic changes implemented promoted economic development.

The experience of Japan is no different.  The same rapid economic progress occurred when the Meiji leaders decided in 1868 to catch up with the modern world.

Lawrence Harrison, one of the first outspoken advocates for considering culture as an important factor in economic development recently wrote the lead essay for a conference on Culture and Economic Development sponsored by the Cato Institute. In it he said:

The "Confucian" countries (more accurately the countries strongly influenced by Chinese culture, which also embraces, in addition to Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and ancestor worship) all share substantially in the universal culture of progress: education, achievement, work ethic, merit, and frugality are all highly valued in the East Asian societies. Their economic success contradicts Weber's analysis in The Religion of China in which he asserts that rapid capitalist development is unlikely in China in large measure because of the absence of anything like the Calvinist "tension" caused by uncertainty about being of the "elect."

Many observers attributed the stagnation of the East Asian economies (Japan excepted) at mid-twentieth century to Confucianism, particularly to the influential role played by the Mandarin literati (Mao a prototype) and the low prestige that attached to economic activity in the Confucian scheme of things.

But all that was necessary to release the powerful education/achievement/merit/frugality undercurrent to perform its economic magic was encouragement from the political leadership, in the cases of South Korea and Taiwan stimulated by security concerns. The trigger for the magic in China was Deng Xiaoping's 1978 pronouncement, "To get rich is glorious," effectively marking the end of Mao's Marxist revolution.

Not only has China been dramatically successful over the last twenty years, but its diaspora population has thrived in every country in which it is a minority.  Chinese communities throughout East Asia (Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, etc.), the United States, and increasingly in Central Asia enjoy incomes, educational status, and economic influence far out of proportion to their numbers. Overseas Chinese are estimated to control 1.5 to 2 trillion USD in liquid assets and have considerable amounts of wealth to stimulate economic power in China. 

Harrison goes on to disaggregate ‘culture’ and suggests, based on his and others’ research that there are a number of characteristics which characterize successful cultures, whether as nations or communities living abroad:

Some economists have confronted culture and found it helpful in understanding economic development. Perhaps the broadest statement comes from the pen of [Harvard economist] David Landes: "Max Weber was right. If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes almost all the difference." Elaborating on Landes's theme, Japanese economist Yoshihara Kunio writes, "One reason Japan developed is that it had a culture suitable for it. The Japanese attached importance to (1) material pursuits; (2) hard work; (3) saving for the future; (4) investment in education; and (5) community values."

 

The Argentine scholar and journalist Mariano Grondona developed a ‘progress-prone, progress-resistant model’ of economic development – that is one which matched economic progress with prevalent cultural factors.  He had Argentina in mind for a country which was progress-resistant and the United States which was progress-prone; but expanded his research and conclusions more broadly.

[He devised] 25 factors broken down into four groups: Worldview, Values and Virtues, Economic Behavior, and Social Behavior. Of the most important in the Economic Behavior cluster are:

• Work/Achievement, which contrasts the progress-prone “Live to work” with the resistant “Work to live.”
• Frugality: “the mother of investment” vs. “a threat to equality.”
• Risk propensity: moderate in the progress-prone culture; low, with occasional adventures, in the progress-resistant culture.
• Competition: leads to excellence vs a threat to equality—and privilege.
• Innovation: the progress-prone culture is open to and quick to adapt innovation, while the resistant culture is suspicious of and slow to adapt it.
• Advancement: merit vs. family/patron connections.

Perhaps the more interesting research was carried out by Harrison and his colleagues at the Fletcher School at Tufts University (Culture Matters Research Project) to see how these general categories correlated or were associated with certain cultural factors, such as religion:

The data roundly validated Max Weber’s thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Protestant countries do better than Catholic countries in creating prosperity. To be sure, the averages for the Catholic countries are depressed by Latin America’s slow development, but even when one looks only at First World democratic-capitalist societies, Protestant countries do substantially better than Catholic countries with respect to prosperity, trust, and corruption.

More broadly, the analysis of religions suggests that Protestant, Jewish, and Confucian societies do better than Catholic, Islamic, and Orthodox Christian societies because they substantially share the progress-prone Economic Behavior values of the typology whereas the lagging religions tend toward the progress-resistant values.

 

Harrison cites the Nordic experience as an example of the importance of religion and culture to economic development:

All five Nordic countries—Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland—have a Lutheran background, even though few today are churchgoers. Lutheranism is the source of much of the Nordic value system that has produced high educational levels, extensive welfare programs, and high quality entrepreneurship symbolized by Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Volvo, Saab, and Ikea. The compatibility of economic efficiency and social spending in the Nordic context is apparent form the 2006 World Economic Forum ratings.

The Economist recently observed, "High taxes and generous welfare safety nets need not undermine competitiveness…Scandinavian economies are ranked high in the league…" (Sweden was number two in the world.)

The United States government surprisingly deals with the issue of religion and culture directly, and cites the research of Islamic researchers who suggest why Muslim countries (and Muslim communities within non-Muslim countries, such as Azeris in Georgia) lag behind.  With 19 percent of the world’s population, Muslims earn only 6 percent of its income. Why?

Unchangeability. Islam stands for unchangeability, and it defines and promotes a social system lacking capacity for adaptation, according to a frequently expressed view of Western scholars and secularist movements across the Islamic world. This explanation emphasizes that religion (Islam) is an obstacle to free thinking and innovation. The implication is that one must choose either “Mecca or mechanization” because the two are not compatible.

Communalism. Islamic civilization remained largely communalist even as Western Europe turned increasingly individualist, and communalist norms dampened incentives to develop capitalist economic institutions. Western thought espouses a strictly individualist economic morality, which encourages people to pursue their own ends without having to consider their social consequences, but a communalist morality focuses attention on collective needs. 

Public discourse. Islamic societies have reduced the role of public discourse, discouraging individuals from questioning. The relative openness of public discourse in the West helped create an engine of growth that the Muslim world failed to develop. New ideas tend to emerge in environments hospitable to free inquiry and experimentation. If it is risky to put forth new ideas, they will not be expressed.

Education. Some argue that Islam helped shape an educational system that limited curiosity and innovation. Traditional education, in turn, played a critical role in conditioning individuals to accept the social status quo. The impetus for changing any part of the educational curriculum
came largely from abroad. 

Timur Kuran and Anantdeep Singh of Duke and University of Southern California, respectively, studied the question of Islam and economic development in India  where Muslims are a significant minority, 

but lag far behind Hindus in per capita income.

 

Kuran and Singh cite two principle factors behind this lag – the waqf inheritance system and Shari ’a Law.   The traditional inheritance system which channeled money through inefficient family structures, inhibited the flow of financial resources to modern institutions; and while Hindus were investing in banks and other financial institutions and using their profits for further growth, Muslims did not, and their growth was stagnant.

Kuran and Singh also cite Muslim adherence to Shari ’a law which kept them out of the mainstream of British civil, contract, and criminal justice. 

Kuran identifies the absence in Islamic law of the concept of a corporation and two institutional bottlenecks that once seriously hampered economic growth in the Muslim world: the Islamic law of inheritance, which inhibits capital accumulation, and the waqf system, which locks vast resources into unproductive organizations designed to deliver social services.

Thirdly Kuran and Singh cite Islamic education as an obstacle to development – i.e. a religion-based educational system cannot possibly expose students to the more general learning of the modern world.

The issue of gender and the status of women in Muslim society has been raised by all researchers and considered by them to be a continual impediment to real economic progress.

Harrison and his colleagues ask the question “Can societies with cultural traditions reform or reject them to be able to move quickly into the modern world?”, and replies with the example of Quebec, a Canadian province which for decades had been no different from a Third World country.  Yet, in a relatively short time, it moved out of its restrictive past.  How did it do this?

• The use of an inclusive nationalism to promote unity, effort, and sacrifice.
• A process of "declericalization" in which the church's influence was drastically reduced, above all in education, over a five-year period (1961-66). Like Ireland and Spain, Quebec is sometimes referred to today as "post-Catholic."
• Massive resource allocation to education.
• Promotion of gender equality, particularly in the workplace.
• The creation of a modern, creative state that has spearheaded development ranging from Cirque de Soleil to advanced biotech industries. A "corporatist" approach bringing business, labor, the professions, etc. together with government for policy discussions has been generally successful.
• State-led efforts to reduce inequality.

In an article in the New York Times, Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, a book which focused more on geo-climatic factors in development than on the social ones raised in this blog post, cites those which he feels are as important or more important than socio-cultural ones:

Latitude, which has big effects on wealth and power today: tropical countries tend to be poorer than temperate-zone countries. Reasons include the debilitating effects of tropical diseases on life span and work, and the average lower productivity of agriculture and soils in the tropics than in the temperate zones.

Access to the sea. Countries without a seacoast or big navigable rivers tend to be poor, because transport costs overland or by air are much higher than transport costs by sea.

The history of agriculture. If an extraterrestrial had toured earth in the year 2000 B.C., the visitor would have noticed that centralized government, writing and metal tools were already widespread in Eurasia but hadn’t yet appeared in the New World, sub-Saharan Africa or Australia. That long head start would have let the visitor predict correctly that today, most of the world’s richest and most powerful countries would be Eurasian countries (and their overseas settlements in North America, Australia and New Zealand).

Obviously both geo-climatic and cultural factors play a role in economic development; and they are not the only ones.  North Korea, for example, is part of the East Asian cultural tradition which because of a powerful and perverse dictatorship has rejected it and gone underground.  One suspects that when the Communist regime in that country has had its day, that the same thousands of years of cultural history will re-emerge; but for now economic development is hindered by politics.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are Muslim but wealthy, although that wealth is derived from the ground and not from the same entrepreneurial spirit and energy of Asia.  Religion was the locus of culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, monasteries were the repositories of learning, religious art and music reigned; and it was not the counter-productive factor that it seems to be today. 

Islam in the centuries after Mohammed was the only bright light in the world, making advances in science and mathematics while Northern Europeans were still in caves; so the lesson is perhaps not what cultures were, but what they have become.

For years, the discussion of culture as a determining factor was verboten, largely because of relativist, Marxist-influenced academicians who insisted that all society was a question of economics, institutions, demographics, and control of the means of production.  These theories were co-opted by the Political Correctness advocates who said that to criticize a particular culture was to deny its inherent value.  Since all cultures are equal, there must be more secular answers to questions of economic and social progress than religion.

In conclusion, culture may not be the only factor contributing to or detracting to economic and social development, but it certainly is a very important one, and should not be dismissed for politically correct reasons. 

Scrambling For Beach Space At Coney Island Or August In St. Tropez - A Matter Of Culture, Not Money

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Coney Island.  A bit crowded in the summer.  Well, very crowded if the truth be known but still there's the ocean, Nathan's Famous, the rides, the beach, and getting away from it all. 

 

Arnie Czonka  was a pipe fitter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 'Why don't we go to Jersey?', asked his wife, 'those nice beaches like Neptune and Mantoloking'; but Coney Island had always been good enough for the Czonka family, a short subway ride from Bay Ridge, nice for the kids, plenty to eat. 

The Czonkas had come to America along with thousands of other immigrants in the great waves of the early Twentieth Century, lived in Lower East Side tenement for a generation before moving out to Brooklyn. Work at the Navy Yard had always been available and Arnie's forbears had worked as stevedores on the docks, then mechanics, forklift drivers, and then steamfitters and hydraulic press operators. 

Arnie was the last in the line of workers at the Yard.  His sons wanted to go to Harvard and the youngest, Petey, was the smartest kid in his class so maybe had a chance; but for the time being it was a workaday world for Arnie and his family, beer, sweat, and steel-toed boots. 

He was not exactly unhappy but when he sat with his wife and watched Travel Channel episodes in St. Tropez, Rimini, and Sardinia, he felt he was missing something - the good life, the sophisticated comings and goings of the rich.  Yachts, summer homes, skiing at Gstaad and Chamonix, lunches overlooking the sea on St. Bart's. 

'Some day, Arnie', Emma said. 'Someday your ships will come in', a favorite in joke, an intimacy between a happily married couple between whom there were no secrets. 

So, off they went to Coney Island for a week and stayed at the Sleep Inn not far from the beach, reasonably priced, few amenities, no view, but a pool in the back and free coffee and donuts for breakfast.  Arnie never really like this vacation week, the crowds were almost as noisy as the shop and he preferred Emma's pierogis to beach food; but it was an affordable getaway. 'Maybe next year we'll go to Jersey', he said. 

For decades the French have sniffed at the so-called American summer 'vacation', a week or two at some nasty beach, plastic buckets and chaise lounges, cheap hotels and bad food.  They, workers and aristocrats alike, knew how to vacation.  The all took the entire month of August and headed for the mountains or the Mediterranean. 

 

They would stay either in grand villas overlooking the sea or in small pensions on the small cobblestone streets not far from the harbor, streets with cafes, boulangeries, simple but good prix fixe restaurants, and Italian-style gelaterias.  One did not simply lie on the beach, but ate and drank well, swam in the morning, took long siestas, and had dinner as the sun was setting behind the hills. 

Of course this idyll has changed in recent years.  Successive conservative governments have sponsored reforms to France's generous social welfare schemes - the traditional four week vacation, thirty-five hour work week, and early retirement age among them - and the waves of African immigrants have turned much of Paris and all of Marseille into sub-Saharan enclaves.  The butchers are halal, the grocers Arab, pita more common than baguette, and head scarves and caftans seen far more than Hermes and Dior. 

Yet for most French, August is still summer vacation.  Four weeks is needed to unwind from metro, boulot, dodo, the grinding workweek at Renault or Michelin, the same lathe operators and steamfitters as in America but knowing how to enjoy life - a cafe-Cognac at the zinc around the corner before work, une blonde afterwards, and maybe a digestif after dinner. 

Emmanuel de la Rochefoucauld-Lafitte, heir to a title, a fortune, and homes in Paris and St. Tropez took his vacations whenever he pleased. The exodus to the south on August 1 was for others. He never tallied days in the Alps or weeks sailing off Cnossos.  His schedule was his alone, one of leisure and investments, nannies and chefs, chauffeurs and grooms.  

Emmanuel epitomized the best of French culture - he dressed in haute couture, dined five-star, was well-read and as familiar with Kant as he was with Verdi - and while he knew that his life was only for the privileged few, he saw it as a beacon, a hallmark, an ideal. 

He was doing what the French aristocracy had always done - led France and Europe in the art of high culture.  While few could match the lives of Emmanuel and his royal cousins, the example set by them would be followed, albeit with fewer resources, by the governed.  

Their wardrobes might not be filled with the suits and ensembles of Dior, Lanvin, and St. Laurent, but every Frenchman and woman would have one good, finely-tailored, trim, and artfully designed suit.  They might not dine at Paris's finest restaurants, but would still have a three course meal with une carafe de vin. They may not go to Biarritz for the summer, but would still have a leisurely, restful, varied time somewhere on the Mediterranean. 

Culture matters; which is why political leaders in Europe, seeing the rapid erosion of traditional Western values in their countries, have been forthright and adamant in their expression of cultural superiority. Giorgia Meloni of Italy, Marion Marechal of France, Viktor Orman of Hungary, Gert Wilders of the Netherlands, Alice Weidel of Germany, and Andrej Duda of Poland have all referred to their Greco-Roman, Christian cultural heritage and stressed the importance of retaining that ethos in the face of disruptive, antithetical cultural influences. 

 

The defeat of the Muslim Saracens by Charlemagne at Roncesvalles in 778 has been remembered as the moment when France saved Europe from cultural invasion.  Not only did the French beat a hostile invading force, it resisted the incursion and infection of a radically opposed cultural ethos.  From that day onward, France always referred to itself as la fille ainee de l'Eglise the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church.  

So, it isn't just that Armand Czonka and his family can't afford anything better than a Coney Island vacation, they wouldn't know what to do with a Cote d'Azur month.  Americans with more resources still jam cruise ships, showy hotels, and restaurants featuring international 'cuisine'.  They would never think of leaving the office for more than a week or two - something's likely to be gaining on them. 

Nothing against Coney Island - not for everybody, but as American a place as you can find.  A patch of sand, cotton candy, and a foot-long may not be a Frenchman's dream, but who said he should?  There is no way that America, despite the millions of tourists who visit Europe every summer will ever become European.  Culture is like an amoeba - it ingests, changes shapes and size, but always remains a globular bit of matter. 

America is the world's best example of such a cultural amoeba - the hodge-podge of people immigrating here become co-opted, assimilated, subsumed and integrated.  This obsession with diversity will soon dissipate and disappear. People are here to make a buck and that ethos will always remain. We have never had a culture per se to defend like the French.  Ours is society of procedure, flux, and reassembly. Europeans are right to worry about the loss of culture. 

Afraid Of Their Own Shadows - The Left Scurries For Cover As The Fascist Label Sticks To Them

Bob Muzelle was still incredulous that Donald Trump was in the White House.  Stunned in November after the election results were in, furious at the inauguration, and incensed at the President's six months of terror.

'Fascist' he shouted from the lectern at Duke University, condemning the man with renewed vigor and passion. 'In six months Donald Trump has installed himself as the emperor of a new, white, Aryan race of bullying thugs.  He has sent his Secret Police storming into homes in a modern-day Kristallnacht, herding occupants into cattle cars headed for concentration camps, the ovens of hate, sending responsible asylum seekers up the chimneys in smoke'

It was Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka all over again, he said, the dawn of another horrific, unconscionable era of Nazi hatred, virulent nationalism, and racist pogroms.  This cannot stand! 

He wiped his brow as the audience stood and cheered, raising their fists in solidarity and commitment to the cause. 

'A fine one' Bob's wife Karol said to him as she helped him from the stage, arm in arm walking through the throng of cheering students.  'You touched a chord'. 

Bob drew his wife closer to him and smiled.  Yes, he had sent a message not just to the students and faculty in the audience of Parker Hall but to America.  He had called out evil, boldly and assertively naming evil for what it was, here in the Oval Office, a Satanic incarnation, the embodiment of hatred. 

Of course by this time the President had so asserted his will, so forcefully made good on his commitments, and so stunned Washington with a revolutionary reform never before seen that Bob's fiery speeches were increasingly seen as the apoplectic death throes of a movement which had finally been outed for the sham it was. 

The black man on top of the social pyramid, innocent child of the forest, in tune with the primal environment of life, sensitive, intelligent, and spiritual? The coming climate Armageddon, scorched earth, incinerated forests, flooded cities, millions of Americans dying in a new Dust Bowl of their own making? A new sexuality defined by choice not chromosomes? An emptying of the national treasury in unaccountable giveaways? A toadying, otherworldly foreign policy? A cancelling of American history, reviling everything that has come before the present, a Pol Pot Khmer Rouge Maoist Year Zero?

'Bullshit' was the new meme outside of liberal coastal enclaves.  'Horseshit', Bob was told to his face as he pointed to a picture of George Floyd hanging where that of George Washington recently hung. 

Now, George Floyd, a black criminal who while resisting arrest contorted himself with such violence and hatred cut off his own air supply and died, was no hero but a confected one, a Francis Bacon distortion, a fabricated symbol of police brutality, white racism, and elitist privilege.  So when Bob's assailant drew up within inches of his face, and pointed to the hagiographic painting of the phony black martyr, the lid on the pressure cooker exploded.  Enough was enough. 

Bob of course treated the incident as just another example of right wing stupidity, a profound backwoods ignorance that was at the heart of the MAGA movement. Such outbursts were to be expected from such intellectual troglodytes. 

Nothing could have been further from the truth as outbursts such as the one Bob faced were happening throughout the country.  Americans were no longer intimidated by the Left.  The absurdity of their ideas, the demeaning, hostile dismissal of foundational principles, their gulag-mentality, and the arrogant presumption of righteousness was finally out in the open.  Donald Trump had simply called out the bullshit from the White House, blowing its cover, and giving free rein to the millions of Americans who had been the targets of liberal invective for so long. 

'Don't give up the ship, dear', Bob's wife said; but Bob had to admit to himself that he was a bit shaken by the George Floyd/Washington episode.  No one during the Biden years would ever have challenged him so.  He thought for a minute, shook his head clear of doubts, and concluded that such rabidness was not a sign of legitimate political anger but simply the bullying ignorance of the Right. 

The more Trump went on the offensive, calling out the stupid, ignorant, mindless ideas of the Left and whaling away at the downright stupidity of his most outrageously unhinged critics, the more ordinary Americans took up the cudgel and voted down arbitrary laws in states, counties, and municipalities.  Each victorious lawsuit against recalcitrant sanctuary city mayors, anti-Semitic colleges, and wasteful bureaucracies, energized Trump supporters and made borderline progressives pause. 

An op-ed piece in a mainstream newspaper called out the hypocrisy and the intellectual fraud of the Left:

The label 'fascist' should be placed squarely on those of the Left who with never a forethought, with no understanding of history and with seemingly no knowledge of the horrors of Nazism, the camps, the gas chambers, and the ovens, brand the President and his supporters as fascist.  They, the Left, are the fascists for their universal censure of criticism, their cancellation of present-day and historical figures with distorted, primitive, and self-serving argument.  The agenda of the Left is no different from Mein Kampf or the edicts of Stalin's politburo.  Hitler, Stalin, and the would-be dictators of the Left are all the same - they all want absolute, undeterred, unmitigated obedience to the notions of their addled minds

When Bob had finished reading the piece, he threw the newspaper out the window and watched it come apart in sections, floating down onto the passersby on K Street.  This ordinarily reserved, temperate journal writing this? 

Now, more objective observers quickly saw that with the election of Donald Trump, resentment of the elite, untouchable American political Left would come out in full force and flower and would be expressed from top to bottom, from the intellectual press to the Walmart greeter.  The time of intellectual fraud was over. Not only would the new President reform government and restore historical values, but he would call out the bald absurdity of the Left's suppositions.  It was no surprise that the op-ed piece and many like it were appearing in previously cautious journals. 

To top it off, invitations for Bob to speak were few and far between. At his last appearance at Brown University, formerly one of the claque of Ivy League schools in lockstep with the progressive agenda, the hall was less than half-full, and half of that half left before Bob was finished. 

'What's happening, Karol?' Bob pleadingly asked his wife. 'Have I missed something?'.

As much as she loved him, she had admitted to herself that he had.  In fact as his arguments became more and more unhinged, as he tangled himself in hateful invective, and the worst kind of virulent personal attacks, losing all sense of propriety and logic, she knew that his time was up.  America had had quite enough of his increasingly unhinged rantings. 

She had hesitated before, but now she didn't. She put her arms around her husband, looked him in the eyes, and said, 'Florida'.  

 

Apostasy, Bob thought. Treachery, and from his own wife.  Even the suggestion of giving up the good fight was casting his entire career into doubt.  The Freedom Rides, the Pettis Bridge, marching with Martin and Ralph, the black man...Didn't that matter?

Of course it didn't matter as the quick turnabout of the Donald Trump showed; for in one fell swoop, The President erased all the cant and idolatry of the Sixties. It was as if Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman never existed. 

This is the problem with legacy, the desire to leave something behind.  History has no favorites, and before you know it, wham, bang, thank you, ma'am, what you thought was not what you thought.  Bob never once in his life had second thoughts which is the problem with true believers.  At the end of their lives, finally realizing the futility of absolutes, the face the void as desperate as Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich. 

'Come on, Bob, let's practice.  Here's a sundowner I made especially for you'.