Skin in the Game

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  The difference is marked in that Christian Aramaic uses different words: din for religion and nomous (from the Greek) for law. Jesus, with his imperative “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” separated the holy and the profane: Christianity was for another domain, “the kingdom to come,” only merging with this one in the eschaton.* Neither Islam nor Judaism have a marked separation between holy and profane. And of course Christianity moved away from the solely spiritual domain to embrace the ceremonial and ritualistic, integrating much of the pagan rites of the Levant and Asia Minor. As an illustration of the symbolic separation between church and state, the title Pontifex Maximus (head priest), taken by the Roman emperors after Augustus, reverted after Theodosius, in the late fourth century, to the bishop of Rome, and later, more or less informally, to the Catholic Pope.

  For most Jews today, religion has become ethnocultural, without the law—and for many, a nation. Same for Armenians, Syriacs, Chaldeans, Copts, and Maronites. For Orthodox and Catholic Christians, religion is largely aesthetics, pomp, and rituals. For Protestants, religion is belief without aesthetics, pomp, or law. Further East, for Buddhists, Shintoists, and Hindus, religion is practical and spiritual philosophy, with a code of ethics (and for some, a cosmogony). So when Hindus talk about the Hindu “religion,” it doesn’t mean the same thing to a Pakistani, and would certainly mean something different to a Persian.

  When the nation-state dream came about, things got more, much more complicated. When an Arab used to say “Jew” he largely referred to a creed; to Arabs, a converted Jew was no longer a Jew. But for a Jew, a Jew was simply defined as someone whose mother was a Jew. But Judaism somewhat merged into nation-state and now, for many, indicates belonging to a nation.

  In Serbia, Croatia, and Lebanon, religion means one thing at times of peace, and something quite different at times of war.

  When someone discusses the “Christian minority” in the Levant, it doesn’t amount to (as Arabs tend to think) promoting a Christian theocracy (full theocracies were rare in Christian history, just Byzantium and a short attempt by Calvin). He just means “secular,” or wants a marked separation of church and state. Same for the gnostics (Druids, Druze, Mandeans, Alawis, Alevis) who have a religion largely unknown by its members, lest they leak and get persecuted by the dominant majority.

  The problem with the European Union is that naive bureaucrats (those fellows who can’t find a coconut on Coconut island) are fooled by the label. They treat Salafism, say, as just a religion—with its houses of “worship”—when in fact it is just an intolerant political system, which promotes (or allows) violence and rejects the institutions of the West—those very institutions that allow them to operate. We saw with the minority rule that the intolerant will run over the tolerant; cancer must be stopped before it becomes metastatic.

  Salafism is very similar to atheistic Soviet Communism in its heyday: both have all-embracing control over all of human activity and thought, which makes discussions about whether religion or atheistic regimes are more murderous lacking in pertinence, precision, and realism.

  BELIEF VS. BELIEF

  We will see in the next chapter that “belief” can be epistemic, or simply procedural (or metaphorical)—leading to confusions about which sorts of beliefs are religious beliefs and which ones are not. For, on top of the “religion” problem, there is a problem with belief. Some beliefs are largely decorative, some are functional (they help in survival), others are literal. And to revert to our metastatic Salafi problem: when one of these fundamentalists talks to a Christian, he is convinced that the Christian takes his own beliefs literally, while the Christian is convinced that the Salafi has the same oft-metaphorical concepts that he has, to be taken seriously but not literally—and, often, not very seriously. Religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and, to some extent Shiite Islam, evolved (or, rather, let their members evolve in developing a sophisticated society) precisely by moving away from the literal. The literal doesn’t leave any room for adaptation.

  As Gibbon wrote:

  The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.

  LIBERTARIANISM AND CHURCH-FREE RELIGIONS

  As we mentioned, the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate tried to revert to ancient paganism after his father’s cousin Constantine the Great made Christianity a state religion almost half a century earlier. But he made a fatal reasoning error.

  His problem was that, having been brought up as a Christian, he imagined that paganism required a structure similar to that of the church, ce genre de trucs. So he tried to create pagan bishops, synods, and these kinds of things. He did not realize that each pagan group had his own definition of religion, that each temple had its own practices, that by definition paganism was distributed in its execution, rituals, cosmogonies, practices, and “beliefs.” Pagans did not have a category for paganism.

  After Julian, a brilliant general and valiant warrior, died in battle (heroically), the dream of returning to ancient values ended with him.

  Just as paganism cannot be pigeon-holed, the same applies to libertarianism. It does not fit the structure of a political “party”—only that of a decentralized political movement. The very concept doesn’t allow for the straitjacket of a strong party line and unified policy with respect to, say, court locations or relations with Mongolia. Political parties are hierarchical, they are designed in a way to substitute someone’s own decision making with a well-defined protocol. This doesn’t work with libertarians. The nomenklatura that is necessary in the functioning of a party cannot exist in a libertarian environment fraught with fractious and vehemently independent people.

  Nevertheless, we libertarians share a minimal set of beliefs, the central one being to substitute the rule of law for the rule of authority. Without necessarily realizing it, libertarians believe in complex systems. And, since libertarianism is a movement, it can still exist as splintered factions within other political parties.

  NEXT

  To conclude, beware labels when it comes to matters associated with beliefs. And avoid treating religions as if they are all the same animal. But there is a commonality. The next chapter will show us how religion does not like fair-weather friends; it wants commitment; it is based on skin in the game.

  * The Egyptian Copts have been increasingly persecuted by Sunni Muslims, but the Coptic Church stands against the creation of a self-governing state somewhere in Egypt, using the argument that it was “not Christian” to want a political entity in this world.

  Symmetry, symmetry everywhere—Belief requires an entry fee

  It is when you break a fast that you understand religion. I am writing this as I am ending the grueling Greek-Orthodox period of Lent, which, for the most part, allows no animal products. This diet is particularly hard to keep in the West where people use butter and dairy products. But once you fast, you feel entitled to celebrate Easter; it is like the exhilaration of fresh water when one is thirsty. You’ve paid a price.

  Recall our brief discussion of the theological necessity of making Christ man—he had to sacrifice himself. Time to develop the argument here.

  The main theological flaw in Pascal’s wager is that belief cannot be a free option. It entails a symmetry between what you pay and what you receive. Things otherwise would be too easy. So the skin-in-the-game rules that hold between humans also hold in our rapport with the gods.

  THE GODS DO NOT LIKE CHEAP SIGNALING

  I will always remember the church altar in Saint Sergius (or, in the vernacular, Mar Sarkis) in the Aramaic-speaking town of Maaloula, even if I live 125 years. I visited the church a few decades ago, sparking an obsession with that ancient and neglected language. The town stil
l spoke at the time the version of Western Aramaic that was used by Christ. At the time of Christ, the Levant spoke Greek in the coastal towns and Aramaic in the countryside. For those into Talmud, Western Aramaic corresponds to “Yerushalmi” or “Palestinian Aramaic,” as opposed to the Babylonian Aramaic closer to what is now Syriac. It was mesmerizing to see children speak, tease each other, and do what children usually do, but in an ancient language.

  When a town holds the remnants of an ancient language, one needs to look for vestiges of an ancient practice. And indeed there was one. The detail that I will always remember is that the altar in Saint Sergius has a drain for blood. It had been recycled from an earlier pre-Christian practice. The appurtenances of the church came from a reconverted pagan temple used by early Christians. Actually, at the risk of upsetting a few people, it was not that reconverted: early Christians were sort of pagans. The standard theory is that before the council of Nicea (fourth century), it was common for Christians to recycle pagan altars. But there turns out to be evidence for what I always suspected: Christians and Jews in practice were not too differentiated from other Semitic cult followers, and shared places of worship with one another. The presence of saints in Christianity comes from that mechanism of recycling. There were no telephones, fax machines, or websites financed by Saudi princes to homogenize religions.

  “Altar” in spoken Levantine and Aramaic is still maḋbaḣ from DBH, “ritual slaying by cutting the guttural vein.” It is an old tradition that left its mark on Islam: halal food requires such a method for slaughter. And qorban, the Semitic word QRB for “getting closer (to God),” originally done via sacrifice, is still used as a word for sacrament.

  In fact, one of the main figures of Shiite Islam, the Imam Hussein son of Ali, addressed God before his death by offering himself as sacrifice: “let me be the qorban for you”—the supreme offering.*

  And his followers, to this day, show literal skin in the game during the commemoration of his death, the day of Ashoura, engaging in self-flagellation that leads to open wounds. Self-flagellation is also present in Christianity, as commemoration of the suffering of the Christ—while prevalent in the Middle Ages, it is now gone except in some places in Asia and Latin America.

  In the Eastern Mediterranean pagan world (Greco-Semitic), no worship was done without sacrifice. The gods did not accept cheap talk. It was all about revealed preferences. Also, burnt offerings were precisely burnt so no human would consume them. Actually, not quite: the high priest got his share; priesthood was quite a lucrative position since in the pre-Christian, Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean, the offices of high priests were often auctioned off.

  Physical sacrifice even applied to the Temple of Jerusalem. And even to later Jews, or early Christians, the followers of Pauline Christianity. Hebrews 9:22: Et omnia paene in sanguine mundantur secundum legem et sine sanguinis fusione non fit remissio. “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”

  But Christianity ended up removing the idea of such sacrifice under the notion that Christ sacrificed himself for others. But if you visit a Catholic or Orthodox church on Sunday service, you will see a simulacrum. It has wine representing blood, which, at the close of the ceremony is flushed in the piscina (the drain). Exactly as in the Maaloula altar.

  Christianity used the personality of the Christ for the simulacrum; he sacrificed himself for us.

  At the Last Supper, on the night when He was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of His Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries until He should come again. —Sacrosanctum Concilium, 47

  Sacrifice was ended by making it metaphorical:

  I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. —Romans 12:1

  As for Judaism, the same progression took place: after the destruction of the Second Temple in the first century A.D., animal sacrifices ended. Before that, the parable of Isaac and Abraham marks the notion of progressive departure from human sacrifice by the Abrahamic sects—as well as an insistence of skin in the game. But actual animal sacrifice continued for a while—though under different terms. God tested Abraham’s faith with an asymmetric gift: sacrifice your son for me—it was not as with other situations of just giving the gods part of your yield in return for future benefits and improved harvests, as with common gift-giving, with tacit reciprocal expectations. It was the mother of all unconditional gifts to God. It was not a transaction, the transaction to end all transactions. About a millennia later, Christians had their last transaction.

  The philosopher Moshe Halbertal holds that, post the simulacrum of Isaac, dealings with the Lord became a reciprocal gift-giving affair. But why did animal sacrifice continue for a while?

  Canaanite habits die hard. Maimonides explains why God did not proscribe immediately the then-common practice of animal sacrifice: the reason is that “to obey such a commandment would have been contrary to the nature of man, who generally cleaves to that to which he is used”; instead he “transferred to His service that which had served as a worship of created beings and of things imaginary and unreal.” So animal sacrifice continued—largely voluntary—but, and this is the mark of Abrahamic religion, not the worship of animals, or the propitiation of deities through bribery. The latter practice even extended to the bribery of other tribes and others’ gods, as continued to be practiced in Arabia until the sixth century. Then a United Nations of sorts, a communal marketplace for both goods, foreign relations, and various bilateral worship, took place in Mecca.

  Love without sacrifice is theft (Procrustes). This applies to any form of love, particularly the love of God.

  THE EVIDENCE

  To summarize, in a Judeo-Christian place of worship, the focal point, where the priest stands, symbolizes skin in the game. The notion of belief without sacrifice, which is tangible proof, is new in history.

  The strength of a creed did not rest on “evidence” of the powers of its gods, but evidence of the skin in the game on the part of its worshippers.

  * Taraktu’l k´alqa ṫarran fi hawaka, ayatamtul xiyala likay araka /Falaw qataxani fil ḣubbi irban, lama malil fu’ada(ou) ila siwaka/faḱuth ma ṡưta ya mawlaya minni, ana lkurbanu wajjahani nidaka. But, once again, this may be apocryphal.

  It is dangerous to be a Pope, but you get good medical attention—Talk is just talk—Religion manages rituals

  After Pope John Paul II was shot in 1981, he was rushed to the emergency room of the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic, where he met a collection of some of the most skilled doctors—modern doctors—Italy could produce, in contrast with the neighboring public hospital with lower-quality care. The Gemelli clinic later became the preferred destination for the pontiff at the first sign of a health problem.

  At no point during the emergency period did the drivers of the ambulance consider taking John Paul the Second to a chapel for a prayer, or some equivalent form of intercession with the Lord, to give the sacred first right of refusal for the treatment. And not one of his successors seemed to have considered giving precedence to dealing with the Lord with the hope of some miraculous intervention in place of the trappings of modern medicine.

  This is not to say that the bishops, cardinals, priests, and mere laypeople didn’t pray and ask the Lord for help, nor that they believed that prayers weren’t subsequently answered, given the remarkable recovery of the saintly man. But it remains that nobody in the Vatican seems to ever take chances by going first to the Lord, subsequently to the doctor, and, what is even more surprising, nobody seems to see a conflict with such inversion of the logical sequence. In fact the opposite course of action would have been considered madness. It would be in opposition to the tenets of the Cat
holic church, as it would be considered voluntary death, which is banned.

  Note that the putative predecessors of the pope, the various Roman emperors, had a similar policy of seeking treatment first, and having recourse to theology after, although some of their treatments were packaged as delivered by the deities, such as the Greek god Asclepius or the weaker Roman equivalent Vediovis.

  Now try to imagine a powerful head of an “atheist” sect, equivalent to the pope in rank, suffering a similar health exigency. He would have arrived at Gemelli (not some second-rate hospital in Latium) at the same time as John Paul. He would have had a similar-looking crowd of “atheist” well-wishers come to give him something called “hope” (or “wishes” for a good recovery) in their very atheistic language, with some self-consistent narrative about what they would like or “wish” to happen to their prominent man. The atheists would have been less colorfully dressed; their vocabulary would have been a bit less ornamental as well, but their actions would have been nearly identical.