The Despair

clipped from www.nysun.com Capitalism requires careers that are open to talent: successful investment banks need to be run by the best brains rather than the best pedigrees. At the same time, capitalism produces social change. Competition leads companies to invest in new technologies. Great social cataclysms like the industrial and information revolutions change the way people live. Some cultures, some societies, tolerate this kind of diversity and upheaval better than others. Jewish society, with a culture shaped by millennia of exile, encountered capitalist modernity with the ability to maintain a sense of identity and continuity in the face of change and has generally adapted well to the new conditions. Wasps, with cultural roots in a form of Protestant Christianity that is individualistic and future-oriented, have also managed to negotiate the challenges of liberal modernity relatively smoothly. the "Anglo-Judaic" synthesis remains the despair of our enemies.