"Yellow Vests"—New French Revolution?

Liberty Leading the People (revisited)

We will regretfully be taking a short research break this winter, as life's surprises pile up, leaving us little time to publish. Thanks to all our regular readers for your patience and support.

But first: a view from the catbird's seat of the latest protest movement to sweep France. Your humble author has lived among the French for many years, so… What is going on? Why are people so angry? Are these the rumblings of a new French Revolution?

Champs Elysées, Paris

A quick press round-up is in order.

Provisioning...or Mating?

Morality or Biology?  Those engaged in the culture wars tend to focus on the first; those combing through the genome, the second.  In 'Paternal Provisioning versus Mate Seeking in Human Populations,' Edward M. Miller offers us tantalizing insight into the why of some of our African brethren's puzzling behavior.  An exercise of historical interest, perhaps, to compare his conclusions with the anthropological observations of those who've gone before us.   

Says Miller [all emphasis ours]:

'In some species, males devote more effort to seeking mating opportunities. In other species, they devote more effort to assisting their offspring. In each species, males evolve to use the strategy that most promotes their fitness.

'[...] In warm climates, females typically can gather enough food for themselves and their children. In cold climates, hunting is required to survive winter, and females typically do not hunt (other than for easily captured small game). Hence, offspring survival requires male provisioning in cold climates. Thus, cold climate males were selected to devote more efforts to provisioning, and less to seeking matings. In warm climates, such male provisioning was not essential, even if desirable.'

Don't Fall on Me

Max Weber argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that adherence to this rebellious doctrine was largely the cause of Northern Europe's roaring economic success from the 17th century on.

Perhaps.  But where did this rebel belief come from?  Who thought it up?  Why did it gain such large favor in some places, just a bit in others, and still elsewhere none at all?  And why did it take on so many different faces?

Furthermore, what of the Catholicism that birthed it?  Who thought of that?  And the religion it sprang from?  And the one before that?

One theory is that our religions just fall on us out of the sky, like so many droppings from extraterrestrial spaceships.  We take no part in creating them, or shaping them, or rejecting or accepting them.  They arrive by conquest at sword-point, or else they just drift in like pollen on the breeze, floating into our ears and infecting our souls.  No choice at all, conscious or not.

Were someone to take up the contrary position--that we humans have a very great deal to do with what sky-friends we ascribe to--he might want to start his evidence hunting by looking at some maps.

Let's help him out.

Plant biodiversity, Human biodiversity

The author of this blog today had the rare treat of hearing a talk given by a Nobel prize-winning economist.  The first such laureate, apparently, to be equipped with a uterus.  This anatomical oddity so excited our city fathers they invited her across the pond to shine her light on a conference hall full of Southern Frenchmen.  And women.

Policy was what she came to talk about, or as she put it, 'Community Organization of Common Pool Resources.'  Forest management, to be exact.

Who best to manage forests?

Surprise surprise, says Ostrom, government control is not the be-all end-all.  Local user groups can and have managed their forests just fine.  But not all users in all countries do it equally fine.  Some do it markedly less fine than others.

Why?