Razib Khan One-stop-shopping for all of my content

1,500 years ago the Justinian the Great had some grand ambitions once he became ruler of the only Roman Empire left. They called him the “Last Roman.” He was the last East Roman (Byzantine) Emperor who grew up speaking Latin as his native language. He was the last Emperor whose vision reflected the polity of the ancient world.

Many things happened during Justinian’s long reign, from the attempt to reconquer the West (partly successful), to an unsuccessful project to unify the Christian factions of the East. But perhaps his biggest success was the Hagia Sophia. Justinian’s theological efforts were forgotten, most of the West was lost in less than two centuries, and for many modern Westerners Byzantium is the “forgotten empire.” But the Hagia Sophia stands in its complete physical form even down to the present.

It is his immortality. Great building projects echo down through the centuries and allow us to grasp a filament of the past, and perpetuate cultural memory in ways that even text cannot.

I have not been to Istanbul. But I have been to Rome, and it’s incredible that buildings such as the Pantheon come down to the present from deep antiquity. In the case of the Pantheon, Parthenon, and Hagia Sophia, the fact that they were used for religious purposes explains why they were left intact. Holiness is a vest of protection (many ancient buildings were mined in Rome for their marble in the medieval period). The Pantheon was turned into a church in the 7th century. The Parthenon was both a church and a mosque. And the Hagia Sophia similarly has been both a church and a mosque.

And today it is at the center of a worldwide controversy about the Turkish government’s proposal to open it up to Islamic worship again, as opposed to what it is today, a historical museum. I do not have well thought out opinions on this issue. Rather, it reemphasizes to me the salience of ideas, and “irrational” ideas at that, in shaping the course of human affairs.

A few years ago Jared Rubin’s Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not convinced me that ideology does matter in relation to religion, despite the excesses of Max Webber and his modern-day acolytes. Joe Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous convinced me even more (his views differ somewhat from Rubin’s, but they are of a piece). But, I think we need to be subtle about this. These views and ideologies are impactful over the long term and on the margin, resulting in systematic differences, but they are harder to discern in the proximate sense, where “rational” behavior is still dominant.

What I’m getting at can be illustrated by the opportunistic behavior of Amalfi, aligning with Muslim corsairs against their rivals, or France with the Ottoman Empire against the Habsburgs. In any particular interaction ideology is not predictive. Rational interest matters. But on the margin, ideological affinities and identities shift civilizations and histories over the long term. The French alliance with the Ottomans always caused issues and major blowback during episodes such as during the Second Siege of Vienna.

When you see Muslims across the world expressing solidarity with the Turkish government, you see the power of ideology and its role in identity signaling. When you see Hindus in India expressing solidarity with Orthodox Christians, and Greece and Russia, you see the role of ideological affiliations and alliances redounding in surprising ways. Operationally it means little, but it illustrates the ideological affinities which may play a role over the long term in shaping cultures and civilizations.

The conversion of the Indian Ocean trading network to Islam after 1000 A.D. is an example of this, as Muslims across the world shared common norms and religious laws, as well as affinities. Once everyone became Muslim then proximate rational considerations became overwhelming, as well as ethnic identities. But this does not negate the role of religion in fostering common identities which might be trans-national.

Secular people, who nominally lack these religious identities, too often reduce everything to material and rational considerations. I myself have done this. But to look at history, and you see that people do irrational things motivated not by self-interest, but their vision of what humans are, and bonds of fellowship and brotherhood which transcend optimization of individual utility. To understand humans we must understand and remember this.