Done with Intelligent Design?

After some discussions with colleagues, consultation of Google and blogs, and having read something by Stephen Jay Gould (and especially his NOMA principle) I now think I understand a bit about evolution theory. Gould makes it clear for me that the evolution of species and the "random" mutation of genes follows paths that are determined by on the one hand the innate tendency to survive in combination with genes mutation, and on the other hand the possibilities and opportunities given by the natural environment to the organism, giving advantage to certain mutations over others. This process doesn't follow a complete random process, but is influenced by the state of the organism, its fitness so to say at a particular moment in time, after many mutations and adaptations, and the state of the environment, determining what next mutation will win the battle to better survive. In a computer it is possible to imitate this process, of course on a very limited scale. Gould states that this has nothing to do with religious convictions. I'm not that far yet. But anyway I'm glad I don't have to be an atheist in order to believe that this is the case.

I also read that this scholar who allows me to accept (in scientific terms: "not to reject") evolution theory and keep my faith at the same time, has received much criticism from scholars who believe that he didn't understand, or, gave a misrepresentation of the "true and only" evolution theory. I think I have to do some further reading. I had a quick glance at Wikipedia's description of one of his fiercest critics, John Maynard Smith, where I read something about game theory, but I wasn't able to see any contradiction with Gould's work. I think I don't know enough about the material, and/or his critics were jealous because he was selling so well.

Enough so far.

Bread and gold

This week I attended a reading in which the symbolic value of bread and gold was discussed. I connected it almost immediately to the discussion with my co-blogger Robert (see comments to my second hospitality posting, starting with the etching by Rembrandt). Genuine hospitality is the hospitality appraised in so many tales and poems, in which:
- poor people offer the little they have, to strangers
- rich people humiliate themselves in helping poor and unimportant people
Poverty, need and soberness go together with bread, wealth, importance and luck with gold.
In these tales (see e.g. the Lady of Stavoren) respect for soberness and the value of bread is the real, genuine gold, whereas respect for “only” wealth and the value of gold is strongly disapproved. So you can compare the sober reception of guests in a monastery or poor people’s home with the value of “bread”, and the awe and impression experienced when treated as a VIP in a 5-star hotel with the value of “gold”.

The story of the Exodus in the Bible is fascinating because of the symbolic clues it gives to the values of bread and gold. Bread is what God’s people really need: it is given to them by the Lord, it only serves to feed, it is tasty and enjoyable, but perishable and not storable. Gold is what they, the ungrateful people, give to a fake god, the golden calf. After the manna, the heavenly bread, that God gave to His people, the golden calf was destroyed and Moses ordered that the people should drink its ashes, strewn over water (punishment and compensation) – please don’t bother about the question how gold can turn into ash after burning it - . God demanded that 3,000 of His people were killed because of this idolatry. After so much infidelity, He demanded a contract between Him and His people, and a precious arch was built for Him as His residence. Apparently they took much gold with them at their flight from Egypt, because enough gold could be collected to build a worthy arch, with the two famous golden angels on top of it.

Here we see how gold is something that is, contrary to bread, not perishable, not to be eaten, and to be given to those who are worth it, as an indication of dignity. Of course, if anybody deserves it, it’s God Himself.

Why are bread and gold so often linked together in poetry and tales? And not only in poetry and tales, but also in economy and warfare? Machiavelli said: “Men, steel, money, and bread are the sinews of war, but of these four, the first two are more important, because men and steel find gold and bread, but bread and gold do not find men and steel.” And the 18-century, also Italian, economist Ferndinando Galiani was also aware of the law of diminishing marginal utility. When somebody stated that a living calf is both nobler and cheaper than a golden calf, and that a pound of bread is more useful than a pound of gold, Galiani replied that "useful" and "less useful" are relative concepts, and depend on individual circumstances. For someone who is in need of both gold and bread, bread is more useful. Choosing gold over bread in this case would lead to starvation. But once the individual has eaten his fill of bread, gold would be chosen over more bread. (cited from here).

This makes clear that gold is something, once you tasted it, you never can have enough of. It is something very desirable, after you filled your stomach with bread.

In Roman Catholic celebrations of Christs’ sacrifice Christs’body Itself is transformed not into gold, but into bread, as the gift of God to the people. Bread is something given by God, gold is something that must be given to God, if we want to give Him something concrete and tangible.

Bread, wheat and gold are also very similar in colour. Gold raises the emotion of observing something beautiful and enduring. It is a “noble” metal, which never allies itself to other elements, no other element is worth to “marry” to it, one of the reasons it is used for wedding-rings. Grain and bread are also considered noble. My parents, who survived the famine winter, got furious when they noticed that I had thrown away a sandwich. I felt if it were a potato or a fruit, their anger wouldn’t be that big. Now that I write this, the comparison emerges in my mind between the loaves falling from the air after World War 2 on Holland, dropped by American planes, and the manna snowed from the air for the Israelites.

Maybe, from a psychological view, we can consider the relationship between bread and gold symbolising the relationship between man and God. Both precious, both having each other's appearance (as God created man according to His own image), but gold eternal and shining, and bread perishable and rude. Men who strive for gold, despising bread, although having plenty of it, will be punished, if not worse.

The problem is that we humans in cannot get satisfied with gold, and that for modern people gold is becoming more and more something that you need to acquire bread, instead of the other way around. Gold is devaluating more and more, even the supplies in Fort Knox are devaluating, and one can ask how much they are worth above the mere market value of gold, I think they lost all symbolic value gold has had in the past.

Economics study in a rational way human behaviour in exchange- situations. It doesn’t assess moral conduct, it simply observes how “gold” (“money”) is strived for as something we all want to have, more, far more, than we need, just (and this is becoming more and more the case) to ensure that as many people as possible will have bread. Apparently everybody wants to be a little god, showing his importance to everybody who can notice it. Success in life is measured in the possession of gold. As I read a long time ago (but I still remember it, but forgot place and author):

- yes, I think I do something useful in my life, I feel I contribute something;
- but why aren’t you rich, then?

Greed is the simple engine of a people’s wellbeing, it seems. I hope I’m wrong, and I am at least partially wrong. Because we use gold, as said, as a gift to what we find worthwhile. Like Machiavelli said: men and steel find gold and bread, but bread and gold do not find men and steel. Look at what rich people do in our societies, and you’ll know what I mean.

See also:

a song by Gemini;

a song by Walter Giardino

Gold, Money and the U.S. Constitution

Gold and bread with the Ancient Egyptians

The story of Caliph Ali

Jan Mankes exhibition

This weekend we paid a visit to the Assen Museum, where we enjoyed an exhibition of a number of paintings and drawings of Jan Mankes. This painter belonged to no school whatsoever (although his work reminds sometimes of the young Mondriaan) but was both in techniques and style his own master. At 30 he died of TBC. He must have done nothing else but painting and drawing because he left a big collection of paintings, drawings, etches etc. Especially portraits, landscapes, animals and flowers in vases were his favorite subjects. He is fascinating because of the Vermeer-like atmosphere in many of his paintings: serene, meditating, almost religious. He was married to the first female theologian in the Netherlands, Maria Zernike, both agreed in their religious viewpoints.

An unforgettable artist! (I hesitate to put the exclamation mark, which he certainly would have disapproved).

The Assen museum:

stabyhoun

For Robert I photographed this beautiful and vivid bronze statue of a "stabyhoun", the Frisian dog race, of which I am so lucky to own one. I will inquire about who made it.

Lack of time...

I got a number of comments, and I still have to answer them. I appreciate these comments very much as responses from over the oceans and borders to what I write down between these four little walls in my living room, from people whom I could have met in Leeuwarden or even in Hurdegaryp.
I want to open a new blog, containing my poems (in Dutch, halas!) that I first inserted between Goethes' translated poems in my Goethe-blog.
But, as the title says, I have little time, especially during the week I just closed off: it was a holiday week, and my spare hours that I use to blog during normal weeks had to be spent to other nice activities with my family. So please have patience for one or two days and I will respond to the appreciated commenters. In the meantime those who are interested, can read my second contribution to the depths of hospitality within hte hospitality industry (and comment on it of course).
I will post also fotos regularly. The digital camera makes fotolife really easy!

Rembrandt's "Good Samaritan": The hospitable Samaritan delivers the robbed man to the inn, paying the landlord well for his services. The dog probably symbolizes Rembrandt's opinion about the payment for hospitality. (Luke 10: 25-37)

Hospitality as interaction

How is it possible that a concept such as “hospitality”, which, as we have seen above, bears so many moral connotations, is so widely used as a characteristic of a service produced by one of the biggest commercial industries in the world? Indeed, raising the question of compatibility of “hospitality” and “profit making” often seems to be a waste of time in the eyes of many qualified and motivated hotel managers (Slattery, 2002). Nevertheless, problems may arise from ignoring the balance between making profit and offering genuine hospitality. These problems occur in hospitality companies on a daily basis, and have to do with stressing the buying aspect of the service. Some examples:
- checking liability of the guest before the check-in will take place at all;
- “impolite” guest behaviour (not belonging to generally accepted guest behaviour according to social norms), justified by the guest “because I pay for it”;
- Serving staff who see their job as a sequence of actions outside the interest of the guest, i.e. they focus on the operations, not on the way the guest perceives the service;
- Managers and supervisors who constantly emphasize the “profits” results of the employees’ work, and see hospitable behaviour as subordinate to “profitable” activities;
- Marketing staff and consultants who advise ways and methods to keep poor spenders out of the door and to attract big spenders.

These problems are often experienced as pure business problems, without any relation to a hospitality frame of reference. (references) In many instances the credo is that hospitality is needed to earn profit, thus turning it into a means for profit, which is exactly the opposite of the traditional hospitality concept which prohibits profit objectives (references). This attitude of upholding a hospitality image but practising a business culture can result in morally and socially undesired situations such as:
- causing guests to expect a genuine hospitable environment because it is promised by promotions, but giving them a buy-and-sell situation;
- causing disappointment of staff, asked to do overtime work and to pay other extra efforts, but feeling humiliated by guests who see them as mere paid servants, not as hosts;
- granting extra service to guests who spend big amounts, at the cost of service granted to less-spending guests, or at the cost of extra unpaid work by staff.

In order to clarify these seemingly contrary attitudes, often unconsciously united in one person’s mind, we may consider hospitality as a form of social interaction. In interaction people follow rules prescribing their roles, under certain conditions, one could consider interaction as a role play. If found convenient and both parties agree, sharing a norm allowing them to play a different “ritual” than one would expect outside these conditions, both guest and host will play a harmonious service production interaction which they are allowed to give the name of “hospitality”.

Let’s have a closer look at interaction. Man as a social being attaches meaning to interactions. Without these meanings the actions by means of which responding actions are elicited, will not result in interaction as intended by the actor, because the initiating actions are not recognized as interaction starters. These actions often take the form of symbolic actions, gestures, words etc. and can be responded by other symbolic actions, gestures, words etc. to indicate that the other wants to continue, close or change the interaction. This way social rituals develop as more or less prescribed sequences of interaction for specific situations. The sociological school of Symbolic Interactionism (Berger and Luckmann 1966, Blumer 1969, Goffman 1958) uses this perspective to explain social behaviour. Man lives, according to the symbolic-interactionists, in a perceived reality that he has to cope with. A part of this reality is social reality which the individual needs for acquiring knowledge about the reality he lives in. This knowledge is acquired and passed by through interaction. The interaction is steered by the actors’ self-concepts and the adjustments the inter-actors make to adapt to the roles they have to play. The symbolic-interactionists use the terms “role” and “ritual” not to use the theatre as a metaphor for social behaviour, but to demonstrate that human interaction exists for a great deal in genuine rituals or ritual-like sequences of exchange of meaningful activities: there is a scenario (the way norms and values prescribe certain actions in a certain sequence, recognized and acknowledged by the inter-actors) and there are roles (the set of expectations of each other held by the inter-actors).

For interaction to take place, at least two inter-actors are needed who recognize the meaning of each other’s behaviour because they share a minimum of norms and values connected to their interaction. We pre-postulate, that no interaction takes place without any intention, purpose or goal of at least one of the inter-actors. Even informal chats serve a purpose of at least one of the participants, the purposes or goals need not be rational or effective. In general any interaction purpose is intended to be self-directed, other-directed or directed towards the interest of society, group or organization, or contain a mixture of two or even three of these directions.

The intention with which an interaction is started, can also be negative, i.e. against or even damaging the other’s or the common interest. We call these interactions “hostile” interactions and most of them are against community norms and values, except those which are intended for law enforcement purposes.

This way, theoretically speaking, a vast number of possible interactions can take place. We can plot them in a two-axis diagram in which the axis represent the intentions of one inter-actor. In a harmonious situation the other inter-actor responds by positively “playing the game” in such a way that the interaction will lead to some outcome which is satisfying or at least meaningful to both inter-actors[1].
To illustrate the different intentions with which interaction can take place, we consider the intention “benefit for the other” and the intention “own’s benefit” as axes in a diagram in which types of interaction (according to their intention) can be plotted. We assume that the intention “benefit for the other” represents the community view on social reality, whereas “own’s benefit” represents the exchange view on social reality. We come back to these views later on.

Of course, interactions intentionally directed towards own’s and other’s damage will seldom occur and so the left down square will be filled with aberrant behavior. The left upper square is filled with altruistic interactions in which the inter-actor more or less tries to sacrifice himself for the other’s benefit. Hospitality interactions sometimes take this form, which are taken as examples of maximum hospitality (e.g. the good Samaritan, Luke 10: 25-37), or citizens in World War II who offered secret shelter to Jews, thus endangering their own lives. Usually hospitality interactions can be found in the right upper square of the diagram, together with business transactions. The typical business interaction is to be plotted close to the horizontal axis, indicating less attention for the other’s benefit (that’s his business, isn’t it?) and hospitality is plotted more in the middle or closer to the vertical axis. This is an indication that, looking at the intention, hospitality and selling/buying could belong to a same “family” of interactions. The diagram also intends to indicate that hospitality interactions differ in “degree of hospitality” in which the own-interest and the other-interest components have varying proportions. Mixtures of hospitality and business interactions might well be possible, but, as we will see in the next paragraph, are vulnerable for confusion when one inter-actor interprets the interaction as “business-directed” while the other inter-actor rather interprets it as more “hospitality-directed”, depending on views and situations.

In the rationale of this paper we noticed that managers and workers in hospitality industry might be motivated by “care for guests without concern for remuneration”, by simply pampering the stranger, as a fundamental attitude or personality trait, to pay efforts and hard work just for achieving the guest’s satisfaction as a reward. If that is the case, then they can manage to separate more or less the felt need for salary and profit on the one hand, and the felt need for recognition by the guest as a good host, on the other hand. In this view, slogans such as “the guest is paying our salary” might not be a good means to motivate hospitality workers. Concluding: we assume that in hospitality business the care for the guest is preferably not primarily linked to profit making or salary earning, if one wants to raise or maintain the quality of the service.. This is in line not only with our hypothesized inclination to hospitable behaviour as a personality trait of hospitality workers and managers, but also with some motivation theories, the clearest of which is the classical theory of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation by Frederick Herzberg (Herzberg, 1959).

[1] Therapists and behavioral trainers often use the method of “transactional analysis” which is based on harmony and possible differences in role perception of two inter-actors of themselves and of the other. In the host-guest encounter in the hospitality industry these differences often occur. (Berne, 1964): Games People Play. Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1964. Berne focuses on differences in attitudes people have in their interaction towards each other (Berne prefers the term “transaction”), we are focusing on intentions people have in their interaction. Both are relevant in constituting a meaningful inter- or transaction.

Consulted literature:

Berger, P.L. and Th. Luckmann (1966): The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books)

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B.B. (1959). The Motivation to Work (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Pinker, S. (2002).: The Blank Slate, Penguin Books, pp. 283-286.

Slattery, P. (2002): “Finding the hospitality Industry”, Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, vol. 1, no. 1: 19-28.

Challenge in red

Yesterday I bought a new camera, yes!! A "simple" HP-Photosmart M425, but far better than the mobilephone. That evening I read the blog of Evie Sears and was challenged because she did an appeal to post photos with the theme "red", in connection to her "February Photo Challenge". So this morning I was glad that there was some sun, and I could make my forst photo with my new camera: two wooden shoes ("klompen")that once were used by my son but are too small now, fortunately they were red. Then (we have a "study week" which means that no lectures etc. are given at school) I made a walk with my dog, hoping to come across something red. But in February only cars, commercial signs and traffic signs are red; there were also some red berries but they remind too much to Christmas.



I came across an orginal traffic sign in our neighborhood, forbidding to leave dog shit on the grass, painted by a little girl. When, with some feeling of disappointment I entered my house I saw a calabash that my wife had put next to the front door, cutely arranged with some other, non-red species in a little vegetable case, just for decoration. (Men wouldn't get the idea, but appreciate it when women take those initiatives). Then I first tried indoors with some books that really mean something for me, then in the garden. It was rather dark with steady rain so the light wasn't very ideal, but my little camera had no problem with it.



So in my enthousiasm I post not one single photo but a couple of them, please excuse me when I'm too eager.

About the books: you see the Bible, illustrated with Rembrandt paintings and etches (I'm a big Rembrandt-fan) that Janine got from het father when she left her parental home. Then you see a book of Goethe, the edition in Dutch that I translated from German (Dichtung und Wahrheit, or Fabrication and Truth or, more literal but less meaningful: Poetry and Truth), then two hermetic books with Christian wisdom from pre-Christian times (roughly said), Corpus Hermeticum and Asclepius, then a book with Frisian folk stories (Hûndert pûn klûnsjes), and a book describing in novel-form the history of philosophy.

By the way, I also looked for a red duck, but couldn't find one. Afer consultation of my guide "European Birds" I learnt that red ducks don't exist in our part of the world :-).