Actually, you bring up the persecution of the Jews, and this reminds me of a Jewish tradition, the Kol Nidre. It’s a ritual performed on the night before Yom Kippur. The congregation absolves themselves of all vows performed over the past year that...aren’t supposed to count...although there’s some controversy over what exactly that means.
The story I learned in synagogue was that it was developed by the Spanish Jews, who were forced to swear their allegiance to Christianity. They came up with Kol Nidre as a way of establishing a societal norm that these oaths didn’t count, so that they could swear as many of them as they wanted without losing their honor or integrity.
I have since learned that this is an oversimplification of the origin of Kol Nidre and that it probably didn’t have much to do with the Spanish Inquisition at all. However, it reminds me a bit of some of the concepts I discussed in the Applied Picoeconomics article. Swearing an oath is important because it provides a way to tie your present action to your future actions—sort of like saying “You can trust me when I take an oath, because if I betrayed you now, no one would ever trust me again when I took an oath, and this would cause me severe negative consequences, therefore it is in my own self-interest to follow this oath.” This is why the oaths I discussed in Applied Picoeconomics all had some loopholes, so that if it was necessary to break the oath because of extreme conditions, I could break the oath with my honor intact.
Kol Nidre was (at least in the probably false story about it I learned) a way for the Jews to break an oath and keep their honor intact, at least among other Jews—who were probably the relevant community to them. I could break an oath to the King of Spain on Monday, and then make an oath to my business partner Moishe on Tuesday, and Moishe could have complete confidence that I would keep my oath to him, because the only reason I broke my oath to the King of Spain was that I was permitted to do so under Kol Nidre, which would not excuse my breaking of the oath to Moishe.
This expectation that it wasn’t important to keep oaths to the Spanish Crown helped the Jewish community survive with both their integrity and their religion, which the Spanish Crown probably thought was impossible. Creating a similar norm that it’s okay to praise Iran when you get captured by them would have the same effect, at least in a fully rational community.
Ironically, this sort of thing was what got many of them in trouble with the Inquisition in the first place. The Church has no authority over non-Christians, and the Inquisition’s only real concern was heresy, so Jews were entirely out of their jurisdiction unless they claimed to be Christians (In which case they would almost certainly commit heresy when questioned).
Of course, these rules didn’t hold up that well in the Spanish Inquisition in particular.
Actually, you bring up the persecution of the Jews, and this reminds me of a Jewish tradition, the Kol Nidre. It’s a ritual performed on the night before Yom Kippur. The congregation absolves themselves of all vows performed over the past year that...aren’t supposed to count...although there’s some controversy over what exactly that means.
The story I learned in synagogue was that it was developed by the Spanish Jews, who were forced to swear their allegiance to Christianity. They came up with Kol Nidre as a way of establishing a societal norm that these oaths didn’t count, so that they could swear as many of them as they wanted without losing their honor or integrity.
I have since learned that this is an oversimplification of the origin of Kol Nidre and that it probably didn’t have much to do with the Spanish Inquisition at all. However, it reminds me a bit of some of the concepts I discussed in the Applied Picoeconomics article. Swearing an oath is important because it provides a way to tie your present action to your future actions—sort of like saying “You can trust me when I take an oath, because if I betrayed you now, no one would ever trust me again when I took an oath, and this would cause me severe negative consequences, therefore it is in my own self-interest to follow this oath.” This is why the oaths I discussed in Applied Picoeconomics all had some loopholes, so that if it was necessary to break the oath because of extreme conditions, I could break the oath with my honor intact.
Kol Nidre was (at least in the probably false story about it I learned) a way for the Jews to break an oath and keep their honor intact, at least among other Jews—who were probably the relevant community to them. I could break an oath to the King of Spain on Monday, and then make an oath to my business partner Moishe on Tuesday, and Moishe could have complete confidence that I would keep my oath to him, because the only reason I broke my oath to the King of Spain was that I was permitted to do so under Kol Nidre, which would not excuse my breaking of the oath to Moishe.
This expectation that it wasn’t important to keep oaths to the Spanish Crown helped the Jewish community survive with both their integrity and their religion, which the Spanish Crown probably thought was impossible. Creating a similar norm that it’s okay to praise Iran when you get captured by them would have the same effect, at least in a fully rational community.
Ironically, this sort of thing was what got many of them in trouble with the Inquisition in the first place. The Church has no authority over non-Christians, and the Inquisition’s only real concern was heresy, so Jews were entirely out of their jurisdiction unless they claimed to be Christians (In which case they would almost certainly commit heresy when questioned).
Of course, these rules didn’t hold up that well in the Spanish Inquisition in particular.