My definition of the term “conjuration” in the context of extending logico-linguistic analysis to the social is the phenomenon of using descriptive phrasing in order to prescribe. That is, descriptive phrasing used descriptively informs the interlocutor that X is true, but descriptive phrasing used prescriptively directs the interlocutor to make X true. For example, imagine that your boss says to you about your upcoming trip to Japan: “You’ll land in Osaka on the 15th, and then you’ll take the train to Kyoto on the 20th.” Is that a description of what you’ll do, a prediction? Before I answer that question, imagine instead that your boss says (again to you): “John will land in Osaka on the 15th, and then he’ll take the train to Kyoto on the 20th.”

The key insight: The former utterance is such that the utterance itself is what makes the utterance true. It’s only in your boss saying to you that you’ll do X that you’ll do X. By contrast, the latter utterance isn’t like that—well as long as John isn’t there to hear it.

So yes, the former utterance is a description of what you’ll do, a prediction, but only under the assumption that your boss has the right kind of power. That is, the former utterance, which uses descriptive phrasing prescriptively, is an incantation, a conjuration. The words conjure up what they describe.

It’s important to stress that the same linguistics forms (e.g., “X will Y”) are used both descriptively and descriptively-prescriptively. The linguistic forms are the same between the typical usage of “John will go to Kyoto on the 15th” (which is informative) and the typical usage of “you will go to Kyoto on the 15th” (which is directive), but the substances are different. It’s also important to stress the linguistic universality: That descriptive-prescriptive ambiguity, which I’ll give more examples of below, is shot through English, Japanese, and every other natural language.

Examples:

1. Uttered from father to son when the son is crying: “Boys don’t cry!” (Stop crying!)
2. Uttered from mother to daughter: “Men are the breadwinners, and women are the homemakers.” (Become a homemaker.)

If person A gives a generalization about a category of people, person B gives a counterexample (which is an exception to the supposedly exceptionless generalization), and then person A defines away the counterexample, then that’s the famous no-true-Scotsman fallacy: “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge,” person A says. “But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman, and he puts sugar on his porridge,” person B replies. “But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge,” person A replies to the reply.

Contrary to the mainstream, though: Whether person A’s no-true-Scotsman move is fallacious depends on their definition of the term “Scotsman.” If their definition is, say, “has a Scottish passport,” then yes, their move is fallacious: Person B’s uncle Angus, who puts sugar on his porridge—that fact isn’t in contention in the dialogue given above—either has a Scottish passport or not. And if he does, then he’s an exception, a counterexample. He disproves the generalization. But what if person A’s definition isn’t like that? What if person A’s definition is instead identity-related? For example: “No Christian believes in polytheism.” “But my uncle John is a Christian, and he believes in polytheism.” “But no true Christian believes in polytheism.” There’s nothing fallacious about that. Put differently: “Your uncle John believes in polytheism? No Christian believes in polytheism, definitionally speaking, and thus he’s not a Christian.” The term “Christian” in that context is a group identity that’s defined in part as excluding polytheists from the group.

The question of whether to believe in polytheism is of course much more profound than the question of whether to put sugar on your porridge—that’s why the idea of denying polytheists the right to identify as Christian is so much easier to take seriously than the idea of denying people who put sugar on their porridge the right to identify as Scotsmen—but the logic is the same: The no-true Scotsman (or “no-true-Christian”) move is fallacious only insofar as the definition of the term for the category of people isn’t an identity. Otherwise it’s just person A being inclusive and person B being exclusive.

See below for elaboration on non-tautologically and tautologically true generalization about people:

1. The analytic vs. the synthetic
2. Breadwinners and homemakers

In The Poverty of Historicism (1944), Karl Popper argued against “historicism,” which is a term that he popularized for an influential system of arguments among the social scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries—(at least the spirit of) historicism is still influential in the 21st century, which is why I’m motivated to write about it, but Popper himself lived from 1902 to 1994 and in writing about historicism he was pushing back against an influential way of thinking among his 20th-century contemporaries that came from Hegel, Comte, Marx, Spengler, etc.

In explaining one of the aspects of historicism, Popper brought up an insight that I’ve long considered to be of great importance: that when met with a generalization about, say, men or women, whites or blacks, most people interpret the generalization not scientifically, but socially or politically. That is, most people interpret generalizations in the social sciences not descriptively, but prescriptively: not as scientific propositions, but as rightist or conservative social or political moves. For example, if you make the dangerous argument that the most brilliant, ambitious philosophers and scientists have always been and will always be men, that no woman can match what the best men do in that regard, then most people will interpret you not as arguing for a scientific proposition that’s either true or false, but as making a social-political rightist-conservative move that’s either good or bad. “You obviously want to keep women in their place,” the typical leftist-liberal modern pushback goes against what’s interpreted as your reactionary move against the threat of female power. “Being a misogynist, you obviously don’t want to let women get to the top.”

Judaism is matrilineal in that if your mother is Jewish, then you’re Jewish. That is, Jewish identity passes through the mother and into the child. It doesn’t matter whether your father is Jewish—at least it doesn’t matter in and of itself, for simply having a Jewish father doesn’t automatically make you Jewish. It’s only your mother’s identity that (automatically) matters.

There are four possibilities:

1. Non-Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. Not (automatically) Jewish.
2. Jewish father, Jewish mother. (Automatically) Jewish.
3. Non-Jewish father, Jewish mother. (Automatically) Jewish.
4. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. Not (automatically) Jewish.

By analogy: White-American identity is bilineal in that if both of your parents are white, then you’re white. There are again four possibilities:

1. Non-white father, non-white mother. Not white.
2. White father, white mother. White.
3. Non-white father, white mother. Not white. (For example, Barack Obama, with his black father, is famous as the first black president of the United States of America, despite his white mother. The identities of white and black are such that white + black = black.)
4. White father, non-white mother. Not white.

Consider that for the Jews, the Jews are in-group and everybody else is out-group. Consider also that marrying endogamously is marrying in-group and marrying exogamously is marrying out-group.

Those considerations are just about the definitions of the terms “in-group,” “out-group,” “endogamy,” and “exogamy.” But with those definitions in mind, consider that the matrilineality principle among the Jews categorizes anybody with a Jewish-in-group mother as also being Jewish-in-group, which in turn makes that person Jewish-endogamy-eligible. By analogy: The bilineality principle among “the white Americans”—somehow the phrase “the Jews” looks and sounds normal but the analogous phrase “the white Americans” doesn’t—categorizes anybody with both a white father and a white mother as white-in-group, which in turn makes that person white-endogamy-eligible. The question of whether you’re Jewish or white is in part a question of endogamy-eligibility.

What are the reasons, though, that Jewish identity is matrilineal and white-American identity is bilineal? On Jewish identity, consider that mothers pass down tradition more reliably than fathers—at least that’s a plausible hypothesis or explanation. That is, matrilineality makes sense because a child with only a Jewish mother is more likely to take on Jewish tradition than a child with only a Jewish father. Consider the extremes: Somebody with no Jewish lineage except their mother’s mother (or mother’s mother’s mother) is more likely to have been given at least a modicum of Jewish tradition than somebody with no Jewish lineage except their father’s father (or father’s father’s father).

There are also other plausible reasons for why Jewish identity is matrilineal. For now, though: What about white-American identity? Why is white-American identity bilineal?

The Jews, the Christians, and many other groups have tried to come to terms with modernity after the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. The problem analyzed: (1) Judaism, Christianity, and the other great religions have many advantages, but (2) most people who are good at thinking scientifically are bad at thinking religiously and (3) thinking scientifically is no longer optional for most groups—going along with modernity and thinking scientifically is part and parcel to fighting a modern war. That is: Without enough science, your nation dies because it can’t defend itself. But with enough science, your nation’s religion dies because science kills religion. There are only a few exceptions. For example, the Amish have avoided modernity. They’re lucky to live in America. The American military keeps them safe.

There’s something analogous in health. The modern diet, with its powerful stimulants on the individual level (e.g., coffee, sugar), is in turn a powerful stimulant on the group level. That is: Coffee, sugar, etc., when popularized and used on a mass scale, make for a powerful economic stimulant. But there’s a problem: They’re unhealthy. That too is a problem of modernity.

What if most of the individuals in group X aren’t Y, but everybody (or almost everybody) who’s Y is in group X? If there being individuals who are Y is bad in some way, then should we blame group X? Should we hold group X responsible for the influence of that minority of individuals? Most of the individuals in group X aren’t Y—that’s the hypothetical that we’re working with here—but without group X there would be no (or almost no) individuals who are Y. Something genetic-memetic about that group results in a minority of individuals who are like that, and that minority may have a disproportionately strong influence.

By analogy: In a beehive, the majority of the bees are workers: ~90%. There’s also a minority of drones: ~10%. And besides the workers (which are sterile females) and the drones (which are males), there’s one queen (which is the non-sterile female). The workers, the drones, and the queen work together. Without the beehive, which is the “group,” there would be no queen, which is the special “individual.” With no beehive, there’s no queen. If you don’t want there to be a queen in your backyard—for whatever reason—then you shouldn’t want there to be a beehive. If you kill the queen without killing the beehive, then the beehive will spawn another queen and you’ll be back to where you were before.

Why was there rising antisemitism in late-19th-century Europe, and how did the Jews react to it? Most significant in explaining the rising antisemitism is that there was rising nationalism at the same time and in the same places—well, most significant besides the emancipation of the Jews, which started with the French Revolution. The rising antisemitism was in part a symptom of the rising nationalism. Many Jews of that time reacted to the antisemitism-nationalism with Zionism, which is a kind of Jewish nationalism: not, say, the Jewish-German or Jewish-French kind of nationalism, but the Jewish-Israeli kind of nationalism.

Rising nationalism culminated in the World Wars. At the end of World War One, there were four empires in ruins: the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. From those ruins emerged many nationalities who wanted their own nation states. The Zionists agreed with the zeitgeist of the time: that each nationality should rule itself instead of some nationalities ruling over other nationalities. The antisemitism-nationalism was antisemitic only insofar as the Jews, who were their own nationality, were living among other nationalities. The Zionists agreed: The Jews too should separate themselves. The Jews too should have their own nation state. Most important to understand is that it’s not that the Jews were singled out. For example: Analogous to the anti-Jewish sentiment in, say, Germany and Austria after World War One, there was anti-ethnic-German sentiment at the same time and for the same reason. That is, there was anti-ethnic-German sentiment against the ethnic Germans living outside of the new borders of Germany and Austria. There was hatred against every nationality living outside of its own nation state. Zionism’s answer to the Jewish question was to treat it as one of the many national questions.

Other Jews of that time reacted to the antisemitism-nationalism with Marxism, which argued that it’s not national distinctions that matter but class distinctions. For example—according to Marxism—a German proletarian can relate to a French or Russian proletarian more than they can relate to a German bourgeois. People should identify not with their nationality but with their class.

To go back to the emancipation of the Jews: Emancipation led to a different, non-nationalism-based antisemitism. The ghettoized Jews, segregated from the Christian majority in where they lived and given only a few options for work (e.g., moneylending), were tolerated most of the time. Only here and there did violence break out. But emancipation led to an explosion of Jewish influence on Gentile society, which in turn led to an explosion in the intensity of the Gentile’s long-standing love-hate relationship with the Jews. Pre-emancipation, the love-hate relationship was: “The Jews are useful to the economy, e.g. in doing the moneylending. But we’re jealous of how much money they have.” Post-emancipation, the love-hate relationship came to a head because of the newfound Jewish influence in science, philosophy, music, etc. Emancipation desegregated Jewish influence. It freed the Jews to make much more wide-ranging contributions. But it was only some of the Gentiles who appreciated that. Many Gentiles, especially in Germany, argued that the Jewish “contributions” were in fact not contributions at all. The old antisemitic-anticapitalist argument, which was that the traditional Jewish economic success was fraudulent, was extended. The new antisemitic argument charged the Jews with fraud not only economically but also in science, philosophy, music, etc.

With all of that said: The Jews reacted to the rising antisemitism in late-19th-century Europe, which (as I explained above) was because of nationalism and emancipation, in several ways:

1. Some Jews gave up on Europe and left. Most of those Jews went either (a) to America or (b) to what later became modern Israel.
2. Other Jews didn’t give up on Europe. (a) Some of those other Jews swam with the current of emancipation, despite its at-least-short-term antisemitic effect. They believed in assimilation. For example, the Jewish-German assimilationists believed in thinking, feeling, and acting German. Antisemitism was because of incomplete assimilation. Antisemitism would die with complete assimilation. (b) Other Jews who didn’t “give up” on Europe—well, they did give up on the society of Europe—swam against the current of emancipation. They retreated back to the ghettos. They ghettoized themselves anew. The outside world used to be shut to them, but when it opened up they didn’t like what they saw. They shut it back out themselves.
3. Some of the Jews who swam with the current of emancipation swam against the current of nationalism. Marxism was popular among such Jews.
4. Among the Jews who agreed with nationalism, there were (a) the assimilationists, (b) the non-assimilationists, and (c) the Zionists. For example: (a) The “Jewish-German” assimilationists downplayed or even got rid of the “Jewish” part of their identity. They wanted to be “German” like everybody else—at least that’s what they wanted in public, for in private many of them kept their Jewish identity. (b) The “Jewish-German” non-assimilationists were comfortable with being “Jewish-German.” They wanted to keep both parts of their identity. And (c) the “Jewish-German” Zionists sidestepped the question. They gave up on Germany.
5. In reply to the antisemitic-anticapitalist argument, which had long charged the Jews with economic fraud, some Jews (in the majority) argued for socialism and other Jews (in the minority) argued for capitalism. The socialist Jews in effect replied: “Yes, our people have been greedy. They’ve been exploitative. Antisemitism was for that reason unavoidable. But that’s only because of capitalism. If we get rid of capitalism, then we get rid of the possibility for that greed and exploitation.” And the capitalist Jews in effect replied: “No, our people haven’t done anything wrong. In fact, our people’s economic success has been everybody’s economic success. Capitalism brings everybody more wealth than they’d otherwise have.”

1. Jewish identity is such that you’re either “Jewish by birth” or “Jewish by choice.” The former is traditionally matrilineal: If your mother is Jewish, then you’re Jewish. You’re a born Jew. But some especially liberal sects of modern Judaism make an exception: Even if your mother isn’t Jewish, you’re Jewish as long as (a) your father is Jewish and (b) he raised you Jewish.
2. The traditional or prototypical Jew is a Jew born and raised: His father is Jewish, his mother is Jewish, and he’s raised Jewish and only Jewish. But there are plenty of variations: (a) There are people born Jewish but not raised Jewish. (b) There’s also the opposite: people raised Jewish but not born Jewish. Those are the aforementioned Jewish-father-raised, Jewish-motherless people accepted as Jewish in the especially liberal sects. (c) There are even Jews who were neither born nor raised Jewish. Those are the converts.
3. The converts. Conversion is akin to adoption. You’re “adopted” into the Jewish “extended family.” There are two problems with conversion: (a) It’s rare for people to truly internalize and bring into themselves at the deepest level a culture that they didn’t grow up with. And (b) you can convert to Judaism, yes, but you can’t convert your blood to, say, Ashkenazi blood. The Jews have been incredibly successful in religion, business, philosophy, and science, but thinking that converting to Judaism would give somebody without any Jewish blood the advantages of being Jewish would be akin to thinking that giving up a black baby for adoption to a rich white family would give the black baby the advantages of being white. Of course that would only give one side: the white-cultural advantages. Any white-biological advantages would stay closed to the child. And that analogy is about adoption at birth. Adoption as an adult is even less likely to give any kind of privilege or advantage. Imagine a 30-year-old black man who was raised in a poor black neighborhood being suddenly adopted into a rich white family. He may learn something, sure, and he may teach his adoptive family something as well. But ultimately adults just don’t change very much.
4. The Jews are by and large an extremely stubborn people because the modern-day Jews descend from countless generations of people who refused to convert to Christianity despite persecution. The Jews who converted out took their blood with them.
5. Anybody can say that they’re Jewish in the same way that anybody can say that they’re a native speaker of, say, Japanese. That’s because anybody of any race could conceivably be Jewish and anybody of any race could conceivably be a native speaker of Japanese (or of course of any language). There’s no way to disqualify somebody of either of those qualities by appearance only. There’s nevertheless prejudice or strong association with appearance: Some appearances (e.g., racially Japanese-passing, which is a subset of Northeast Asian) are rare among Jews in the same way that some appearances (e.g., white, black) are rare among native speakers of Japanese. By contrast: It’s not the case that anybody can say that they’re, say, Northeast Asian, white, or black. Race isn’t something that you can convert into or learn. It’s set in stone at birth.
6. It’s possible for anybody of any race to convert to Judaism, which makes it impossible to describe Jewish identity as that of a “racial group.” It’s also possible for any Jew to say that they’re not religious without that making them no longer a Jew, which makes it impossible to describe Jewish identity as that of a “religious group.” What, then, are the Jews? What kind of group are they?
7. The meme that the Jews are the “chosen people” works alongside the matrilineality principle: Christianity is more a religion of choosing, and Judaism is more a religion of being chosen. In Judaism, the matrilineality principle is such that being born to a Jewish mother makes you Jewish whether you agree with that or not. That is, Judaism is such that most Jews don’t choose (to be Jewish)—that’s in contrast to Christianity, which always gives the individual the choice of what to do identity-wise—but are chosen (to be Jewish). Of course there’s also theological foundation to the meme that the Jews are the “chosen people,” but the most parsimonious psychological and sociological explanation is the above: that the matrilineality principle, which is central to Jewish identity, is a principle not of choosing but of being chosen.

The Jews have been blamed not only for being greedy and exploitative capitalists, but also for being radical socialists and communists. There are many other examples of that kind: The Jews have been criticized for being too rich (e.g., in Western Europe in the 19th century), and they’ve been criticized for being too poor (e.g., in Eastern Europe at that time).  They’ve been criticized for assimilating, and they’ve been criticized for not assimilating. They’ve been criticized for not having a state (before the founding of modern Israel), and they’ve been criticized for having a state (after the founding of modern Israel). Etc.

Antisemitism, which has kept itself relevant for millennia, is the ultimate shapeshifter. It cynically and opportunistically flip-flops its arguments in order to justify anti-Jewish sentiment no matter what.

Well, at least that’s the popular understanding in the 21st century. However, on capitalism and socialism: It’s actually not so much of a contradiction that the Jews have been strongly associated with the excesses of both capitalism and socialism. After all, many of the most influential of the early socialists were Jews born into rich families. They saw that much of the antisemitism around them was about the Jews as evil capitalists, and their reaction, tragically, was to turn that onto its head: They became socialists, which was in effect an apology for the evil capitalism of their fathers. The Jews had long been on the cutting edge of money and the market. They contributed in a major way to the evolution of capitalism in Europe. For that, the Gentiles should have been appreciative. After all, capitalism brought unprecedented wealth (not only to the upper strata of society, except perhaps temporarily, but to every strata of society). And of course some Gentiles were appreciative. But enough weren’t, and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries many assimilated Jews, again tragically, took to heart the anticapitalist, antisemitic arguments of their Gentile peers.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) is the quintessential example. Despite being Jewish himself—well, despite being a born Jew, which contrasts with his childhood baptism—he was extremely antisemitic. He saw the Jews as the scourge of Europe. To Marx, the Jews were “capitalists” in the worst sense of the term: shamelessly greedy and exploitative.

For centuries, the Jews had been on the cutting edge in the practice of capitalism, which was a great contribution to Europe (at least in the long term). And then suddenly, the Jews were on the cutting edge in socialist theory, which threatened to undo (and eventually did temporarily undo, with untold tragedy as the result) the misunderstood capitalist contributions of their people. Thus: There’s no mystery in why the Jews are popularly associated, at first glance in an inconsistent/contradictory way, with that pair of opposites: capitalism and socialism.

1. Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a “self-hating Jew” in that he was a Jew who thought of the Jews as having used capitalism to take advantage of European civilization. He was a repentant Jew.
2. Tangentially: The term “self-hating Jew” is confusing because it hides the distinction between the individual and the group. It’s possible for a Jew to “love” themselves as an individual but “hate” their group. Marx may have had as much confidence in how good he was (as an individual) as he had in how evil they were (as a group that he didn’t identify with). In fact, that brings me to another distinction that the term “self-hating Jew” hides: that between identifying as (which is what the individual does) and being identified as (which is what’s done to the individual). Marx didn’t identify as Jewish—his father converted to Christianity before he was born, he was baptized into the Lutheran Church as a child, and he “converted” to atheism as an adult—and thus he probably didn’t think of his criticism of the Jews as being about himself. That’s despite the fact that in history, he’s identified as Jewish. That is: Marx was a Jew who hated the Jews, but he didn’t think of himself as a Jew.
3. The Jews of the late 19th and early 20th centuries reacted in various ways to increasing anti-Jewish sentiment: socialism, Zionism, etc. Socialism was tempting because much of the anti-Jewish sentiment at the time was ultimately anti-capitalist sentiment. The Gentiles thought of the Jews as greedy and exploitative. Socialism was a way of apologizing for that. It was a way of saying: “Yes, we Jews took advantage of the market. But we’ll get rid of the market, which is a vice, and then we’ll never be able to do that again! Indeed, nobody will ever be able to do that again.”
4. It’s a sad story because (a) socialism is absurd in theory and catastrophic in practice and (b) capitalism is nothing to apologize for.