The Fetishization of the Old

In about eighty years I will be dead, and in another eighty everyone who ever really knew me will be too.  I will be at risk of being forgotten; everyone alive now will be, but most importantly for me, I will be.  I would like to think that I will be remembered.  We all would.


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-Beatrice (F) and Benedick (M) and fiances; so are Hero (F) and Claudio (M).  The men are best friends, as are the women.  Claudio believes Hero is cheating on him and breaks of their engagement.  Beatrice tells Benedick, in retaliation for casting shame upon Hero, to kill Claudio.  Benedick eventually relents, and agrees to murder his best friend.
-Stradivarious string instruments are instruments made by Antonio Stradivari.
-"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."


The objects referenced above share three similarities.  

The first is that they're really old.  The first, a summary of a key plot point in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, was written sometime in the late sixteenth century.  The second, the most famous string instruments ever made, were constructed sometime around 1700.  And the third, the second amendment to the constitution of the United States of America, was adopted on December 15th, 1791.

The second commonality is that they are revered.  Shakespeare is widely considered to be the best author ever to have lived.  His works are required reading at almost every level of school, the subject of quite a lot of academic research, and the focal point of many theater festivals around the world.  Stradivarius violins sell for a few million dollars each, and cellos an order of magnitude above that--both an order of magnitude above the cost of other professional-level instruments.  The constitution has become the focal point for almost every public policy debate in Washington, by far the most ubiquitously cited source, and it was the interpretation of the constitution that rested at the heart of the recent supreme court case on Obamacare.  The second amendment itself has determined the balance of gun control laws in America, has been used to limit local attempts to ban certain guns and to determine which attempts to limit access to guns are allowed.

The third thing that these three old, revered works share in common is that they are ridiculous.  The plot twist  in Much Ado--typical of Shakespeare--relies on simultaneously one-dimensional and unrealistic characters, illogical plots, and obvious endings.  I mean, come on--kill someone because he thinks, with good reason, that his fiance is cheating on him?  Beatrice is absurdly out of line in an unrealistic way; Benedick is absurd for listening to her, and this is all supposed to be taken in stride.  Professional violinists don't show preferences for Stradivarius violins in double blind tests versus newer instruments.  And we as a country should be able to decide what the best gun control laws are and enact them democratically, instead of listening to vaguely worded commands about gun laws from people who lived two hundred years ago when we were in open rebellion against a foreign occupier and didn't yet have a reliable police force or army.  Instead of making decisions about what laws make sense in a country with internal security, a police force, and an army, we have to constantly make sure that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  Whatever the fuck that means.  All of Shakespeare's plays are like that, too, and the problem with the constitution is more general than the second amendment.

I could go on and on about the failings of Shakespeare and the constitution and Stradivarius violins, and at the bottom of this post I do*, but really I shouldn't need to: the Bayesian priors are pretty damning.  About half of the people born since 1600 have been born in the past 100 years, but it gets much worse than that.  When Shakespeare wrote almost all of Europeans were busy farming, and very few people attended university; few people were even literate--probably as low as about ten million people.  By contrast there are now upwards of a billion literate people in the Western sphere.  What are the odds that the greatest writer would have been born in 1564?  The Bayesian priors aren't very favorable.

And take a look at string instrument creation.  Not only does current society have much more expendable income and energy to devote to things like creating instruments, but we now have machines capable of cutting wood with micrometer level precision available to consumers; what are the odds, really, that the best violins have been made by a human hand in 1700?


The problem is much more systemic than plays and violins and laws.  Citizen Kane was finally unseated as the best film of all time and bumped to number two--still quite an achievement for an almost unwatchably empty film.  Old wines sell for ridiculous prices despite the lack of correlation between price and taste.  (See here for recently disgraced Jonah Leherer's attempts to salvage expensive win.)  The framers of the constitution are easily the most revered people in America and--importantly--those most often looked to for advice on public policy--despite being, you know, people with slaves who wouldn't understand a thing about the modern economy or technology or society.  I spent a fair chunk of my childhood trying to decide who the best ten baseball players ever were--how does Gehrig compare to Bonds?--even though any of the players from 1920 would flunk if forced to play against modern teams.  Again and again in our culture, the same theme pops up: we fetishize the old.

We like old plays and old movies and old wines and old instruments and old laws and old people and old records and old music.  We like them because they're old and come with stories but we convince ourselves that there's more: we convince ourselves that they really were better.  We don't just read stories about the framing of the constitution at bedtime, we use it as our guide for public policy.  We don't just like to listen to the Beatles but we convince ourselves that they are the best and that anyone who doesn't like them doesn't have good taste in music.  We don't just respect the old; we think that the old is right and that those who prefer the new to the old are wrong.

So why is it that we have become so enamored of things made in 1700?

There are many reasons.  One is that there is a whole lot of inertia in the system.  If Shakespeare is the most respected thing in 1900 then teachers will teach it in 1900 and academics will write about it in 1900 and if you're young in 1900 and want to be "in the know" and want to become an insider in academic literature, then, well, you'd better study Shakespeare; and so it's passed on from generation to generation.  Furthermore, once something acquires a label, it's very hard to dislodge the label--even if the label is as the best author ever and there are more and more authors every day giving the old one a run for its money (and then some).  I think there's one more reason, though, that we fetishize the old.  I was reminded of it about a month ago while in a taxicab heading toward the Atlanta airport, and I saw a billboard advertisement for a Church that said, superimposed on the pastor's face: "In these troubled times, some things never change."

In about eighty years I will be dead, and in another eighty everyone who ever really knew me will be too.  I will be at risk of being forgotten; everyone alive now will be, but most importantly for me, I will be.  I would like to think that I will be remembered.  We all would.  And if we as a society spend so much time looking backward, so much time romanticizing those who died two hundred years ago, so much time replicating traditions born hundreds of years ago, then the future doesn't look quite so divorced from the present.  And the thought that your society and your town and your way of life and maybe even you might be remembered in two hundred years doesn't seem quite so hopeless.

It's easy to get caught up in romanticization of the past and forget that it's the reason that 46% of Americans don't believe in evolution.
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This is not, of course, to say that Shakespeare should be banned.  Everyone should be entitled to read what they want.  But our laws should not be based on two hundred year old unchangeable documents, and schools shouldn't base their curriculum around analyzing Shakespeare; and next time you want to go see Citizen Kane playing in your local artsy movie theater, I think I'll pass.



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*: The recent ruling on Obamacare rested on the personalities of two judges--John Roberts and Tony Kennedy.  The reason that such an important case rested on personality instead of law or fact is because the vagueness of the constitution gives the justices free reign to rule as they wish.  Obamacare was originally believed to be extremely unlikely to be overturned, and then underwent a series of transitions in terms of likelihood of being overturned, peaking at almost 80% on Intrade, before being upheld.  And during this time, the constitution did not change; only one of the bumps even came from legal arguments in front of the court.  Instead a year of speculation over the personal opinions of John Roberts and Tony Kennedy occurred.  The constitution not only sets arbitrary and vaguely worded rules from a time when the nation was very different that are now almost impossible to change, but also allows people to judge the legality as they wish on almost any issue--even if they're a judge tasked with deciding whether a law will be upheld.  But, you say, wouldn't we become a police state devoid of free speech if we lost constitutional protections?  Look at the UK, whose constitution's main role is to establish a now-figurehead monarchy.  Look at almost any comparable country--it's not going to rely as much on their constitution as we do on ours.  If we want free speech--which we absolutely do--then let's have a law saying so.

Similarly, Shakespeare's non-comedies fix few of the flaws found in Much Ado About Nothing.  Romeo and Juliet are incredibly flimsy characters, and the plot is absurd.  (For those interested, the number of lines between when Romeo is first made aware of Juliet's existence and when he recites his first love sonnet about her is 32, and none of those involve any action on Juliet's part, let alone interaction between them.)  Sure, you could say that the play is attempting to highlight the immaturity of youth, but at that point you're attempting to cite the one-dimensionalness of the main characters of a work as a strength.

And Shakespeare isn't alone in being a shitty writer from hundreds of years ago.  The most ambitions woman in Pride and Prejudice has a life goal of marrying a rich, handsome man who is also intelligent--the thought that a woman could have a career or even hobby independent from her husband is outside the scope of the book.  And don't get me started on The Canterbury Tales.

Jewish Poker

“For quite a while the two of us sat at our table, wordlessly stirring our coffee. Ervinke was bored. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let's play poker.’

‘No,’ I answered. ‘I hate cards. I always lose.’

‘Who's talking about cards?’ thus Ervinke. ‘I was thinking of Jewish poker.’

He then briefly explained the rules of the game. Jewish poker is played without cards, in your head, as befits the People of the Book.

‘You think of a number, I also think of a number,’ Ervinke said. ‘Whoever thinks of a higher number wins. This sounds easy, but it has a hundred pitfalls. Nu!’”

Jewish Poker is one of “those” games, games that both players play as a joke, smirks on their faces as they announce numbers like “negative four” and “square root of pi” and “Ackermann function of one billion, one billion.” The rules are really no more complicated than Ervinke made them out to be: each player thinks of a (finite!) number, and whoever thought of the higher number wins. Players can reveal their numbers simultaneously, or one after the other, whichever they prefer.

“We plunked down five piasters each, and, leaning back in our chairs began to think of numbers. After a while Ervinke signaled that he had one. I said I was ready.”

The game is stupid. (That’s what I meant when I said it was one of “those” games.) It’s stupid no matter how you play it, but it becomes even more stupid when the numbers are not revealed simultaneously, because the second player can just add one to the number that the first player revealed.

“‘All right,’ thus Ervinke. ‘Let's hear your number.’

‘Eleven,’ I said.

‘Twelve,’ Ervinke said, and took the money.”

It makes sense that there should be a second-player advantage in a game like this, but somehow it seems a little strange, doesn’t it? Because, well, eleven loses to twelve, so why not pick a number higher than twelve? That’s a number that beats all the numbers eleven would have beaten, and would have had the additional advantage of not losing to twelve. Maybe it wasn’t going first that sunk him; maybe our narrator just played badly.

“I could have kicked myself, because originally I had thought of Fourteen, and only at the last moment had I climbed down to Eleven, I really don't know why. ‘Listen.’ I turned to Ervinke. ‘What would have happened had I said Fourteen?’

‘What a question! I'd have lost. Now, that is just the charm of poker: you never know how things will turn out. But if your nerves cannot stand a little gambling, perhaps we had better call it off.’”

Of course this logic doesn’t make any sense. If the narrator had said fourteen, then Ervinke, the clever bastard, would have said fifteen. No matter how colossal the number you pick, it’s always going to be smaller than your opponent’s could be.

“Without saying another word, I put down ten piasters on the table. Ervinke did likewise. I pondered my number carefully and opened with Eighteen.

‘Damn!’ Ervinke said. ‘I have only Seventeen!’

I swept the money into my pocket and quietly guffawed. Ervinke had certainly not dreamed that I would master the tricks of Jewish poker so quickly. He had probably counted on my opening with Fifteen or Sixteen, but certainly not with Eighteen. Ervinke, his brow in angry furrows, proposed to double the stakes.”

So, what if we try playing simultaneous Jewish Poker, each player writing down their number before revealing? Something’s still wrong. Depending on your level of mathematical sophistication, you’ll cram your paper with nines, or you’ll search the Internet for the fastest-growing function you can find, and call it on a trillion. (In fact, it’s probably better to cram your paper with ones; you can fit more in.)

Now this is starting to look like a weird version of Rock-Paper-Scissors. In fact, it looks a lot like Rock-Paper-Scissors, doesn’t it? In Rock-Paper-Scissors, each strategy loses to and beats one other strategy. In Jewish Poker, each strategy loses to and beats an infinite number of other strategies…

“‘As you like,’ I sneered, and could hardly keep back my jubilant laughter. In the meantime a fantastic number had occurred to me: Thirty-five!

‘Lead!’ said Ervinke.

‘Thirty-five!’

‘Forty-three!’

With that he pocketed the forty piasters. I could feel the blood rushing into my brain.”

So are all strategies equivalent here, like in Rock-Paper-Scissors? Can we pick “at random”? (Whatever that means…) That doesn’t seem right. Some strategies just dominate others. Surely “Ackermann of one billion, one billion” isn’t equivalent to “Negative one times Ackermann of one billion, one billion.” Yes, they’re both much smaller than infinity, but from experience, I can tell you: one will win you more games of Jewish Poker than the other.

Of course, maybe your opponent doesn’t know fancy concepts like the Ackermann function; maybe you’re just better at writing small. But those seem like silly constraints, independent of the game itself, forced upon us by our sad, physical existence. One could conceive of deities playing this game, deities that could conceive of any, any, number they wanted, unconstrained by the finite bounds of our universe, and somehow even they seem to have problems with this game. Every number is an infinitesimal grain of sand on the vast beach of infinity; every number is so, so much smaller than what could have been said.

And yet a winner must be declared…

“‘Listen,’ I hissed. ‘Then why didn't you say Forty-three the last time?’

‘Because I had thought of Seventeen!’ Ervinke retorted indignantly. ‘Don't you see, that is the fun in poker: you never know what will happen next.’

‘A pound,’ I remarked dryly, and, my lips curled in scorn, I threw a note on the table. Ervinke extracted a similar note from his pocket and with maddening slowness placed it next to mine. The tension was unbearable. I opened with Fifty-four.

‘Oh, damn it!’ Ervinke fumed. ‘I also thought of Fifty-four! Draw! Another game!’”

It’s possible to make versions of Rock-Paper-Scissors with more strategies, with each strategy losing to half of the other strategies and beating the other half. See Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock, for instance. (Like the original, except Lizard beats Paper and Spock and loses to Rock and Scissors; Spock beats Rock and Scissors but loses to Paper and Lizard.) There’s even a version with 25 elements. So is that what Jewish Poker is? The limit of these games, approaching infinity?

Well, no, because you can make games of Rock-Paper-Scissors with infinite elements and not suffer from Jewish Poker’s bizarre defects. Take, for instance, the following game:

-Each player says a number simultaneously.

-The number must be positive.
-If the difference between the two numbers is greater than one, the player who said the smaller number wins. Otherwise, the player who said the larger number wins.

After a bit of thought, it becomes clear that saying numbers greater than 2 is pointless: You might as well have said the number you just said, but minus 2. (For example, don’t say 2.7; say 0.7. That beats everything 2.7 would have beaten, but avoids losing to 0 through 0.7 and 2.7 through 3.7.) And now we have a kind of “cycle,” looping back to 0 when it reaches 2, of an uncountably infinite number of different plays, each one beating and losing to half of the other plays. That’s what we really wanted to see, when we talked about Rock-Paper-Scissors with infinite elements.

“My brain worked with lightning speed. ‘Now you think I'll again call Eleven, my boy,’ I reasoned. ‘But you'll get the surprise of your life.’ I chose the sure-fire Sixty-nine.

‘You know what, Ervinke’- I turned to Ervinke –‘you lead.’

‘As you like,’ he agreed. ‘It's all the same with me. Seventy!’

Everything went black before my eyes. I had not felt such panic since the siege of Jerusalem.”

So what’s Jewish Poker then? Well, I don’t really know, but I’d say it’s probably a game best left to the deities.

“‘Nu?’ Ervinke urged. ‘What number did you think of?’

‘What do you know?’ I whispered with downcast eyes. ‘I have forgotten.’”

The full story, by Ephraim Kishon, can be found here.

-Adam