Thoughts for the Day: Friday 6 August 2021

2020 publication

 

Developmental Politics

Steve McIntosh

With the justifying authority of God’s natural law increasingly absent, modernists needed a new way to ground their notions of justice and morality in something higher—something more worthy than self-interest alone.

The Gardens of Democracy

Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer

True citizenship is about treating even the most trivial choice as a chance to shape your society and be a leader.

Ages of Discord

Peter Turchin

[The chief] causes of sociopolitical instability (in order of importance) are (1) elite overproduction leading to intraelite competition and conflict, (2) popular immiseration, resulting from falling living standards, and (3) the fiscal crisis of the state.

The Soul of the World

Roger Scruton

If there is anything that could be called progress in the religious history of mankind, it resides in the gradual preference for the self over the other as the primary sacrificial victim. It is precisely in this that the Christian religion rests its moral claim.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

What distinguished these international laws from domestic laws, however, was that enforcement was voluntary, dependent on the consent of the parties to the agreements and not some sovereign authority beyond the individual nation-states. Governments accepted international treaties and agreements because it was in their interest to do so, and while a coalition of nations might try to compel agreement from a recalcitrant country through sanctions, boycotts, and the like, where a question of national interest was at stake no government was likely to yield short of war.

Collingwood's The Idea of History

Peter Johnson

[T]he actions which are the subject matter of history are past actions and so the historian’s problem is how to breathe life into a past which is now dead.

An Essay on Metaphysics

R. G. Collingwood

I can think of no way by which statements of possibility can be rendered acceptable to positivists; and I think this is because they belong to an element in science which positivism ignores and by implication denies.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Anyone who allowed him his premise of the omnipotence of nature but then did not draw the logical conclusion that called for the “eradication” of all who were not “viable” or were “alien to the community”—anyone with such scruples belonged among those weaklings or blockheads who “denying the force of logic, shrank back from saying B and C after they had said A.” There were of course, both within the party and outside it, weaklings of this sort with their moral scruples, just as there were idiots who translated into practice the “totally mad plan” of zeppelins, even though “nature had not provided a single bird with a balloon.”

Asking a Favor for a Special Someone

The Blue Marble: our spaceship needs repairs. Now! 

I'm asking for a friend. Actually, our mother. Mother Earth. She's in very bad health now and in need of help. Pronto! We, her children, need to act on her behalf. Oh, she'll survive even if we continue to sit on our hands. But we won't.

So here's my ask: please write your Senator along the lines of the following. This is not the answer to climate change. It's an answer, but it could get the ball rolling in the right direction.

And thanks, on behalf of "Mom."

Dear Senator X:

I understand that the Senate is now in a position to decide whether to adopt a carbon fee and dividend program. I urge you to enthusiastically support this legislation.

We all expect to pay for the costs of sewers, garbage collection, and dump fees as a part of running our household while trying to maintain a safe and livable environment. We now know that we can’t afford (to put it mildly) to continue dumping excess carbon into our atmosphere. That’s why we need to put a price on carbon. A price will allow consumers to know the cost of carbon in the products and services they buy. They can then compare and purchase more carbon efficient (and thus cheaper) alternatives. Businesses that are more carbon-efficient (including American businesses selling abroad) will rightfully gain an advantage as a reward for their ingenuity and investment.

But the important corollary to a price on carbon is that the funds collected will be regularly paid to the American people as a dividend. (The funds will not go to fund the government, and thus the price isn’t a “tax.”) These regularly payable dividends would be divided equally among the American people. This scheme would favor low and moderate income individuals and families. The wealthiest among us, who also are by far the largest consumers of carbon (and therefore dump much more carbon into the atmosphere) would suffer a net deficit. But they’ll adjust.

A carbon border adjustment—to make sure that imports have a carbon price upon them—is another key component of this plan.

This program would be a major step forward in the transition to a low-carbon future. We need to do this now, because, as you no doubt know, the clock is running out on us. Also, you should note that this scheme has a broad range of support, from the Citizens Climate Lobby (where I heard first about this proposal) to the Climate Leadership Council, which includes a number of business organizations, corporations, non-profits, and prominent Republicans (James Baker III is currently at the forefront). And, best of all, there’s significant popular support for such a plan.

Thank you for your consideration. I will look forward to writing you to thank you for your active support and vote of this measure.

Thoughts for the Day: 5 August 2021

 

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

As early as The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes had been battling economic problems that were not principally matters of physical resource constraints. The greatest threats to harvest yields were not a lack of labor, fertilizer, or rainfall but insufficient investment and the mismanagement of money and credit.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

[John Kenneth] Galbraith knew he was exactly the kind of man the McCarthyists hated most—not an outright Soviet collaborator but an idealist with a grand vision of progress who hoped to use economic reforms to break down social distinctions of rank and privilege.

The Constitution of Knowledge

Jonathan Rauch

“Just a reminder, Theaetetus,” I tell my student friend. “When we support the Constitution of Knowledge with our heads and our hearts—with reverence and reason, as Lincoln prescribed—and when others do the same, its enemies are not ten feet tall. We are.”

Science and the Modern World

Alfred North Whitehead

Just as sense-perception seems to give knowledge of what lies beyond individuality, so action seems to issue in an instinct for self-transcendence.

Between Past and Future

Hannah Arendt

On the first page of The Human Condition Arendt speaks of launching a man-made object into space as an “event, second in importance to no other, not even to the splitting of the atom.” The reaction, “curiously enough,” was not “awe” at man’s achievement but “relief” that “the first ‘step toward escape from men’s imprisonment to the earth’” had been taken. [From the Introduction by Jerome Kohn.]

Metabolical

Robert H. Lustig

The field of modern dietetics was borne out of two concepts, both of which turned out to be false. The first is the idea that a “calorie is a calorie,” which was espoused by the Atwater system, developed by agriculturist Wilbur Olin Atwater in 1916. His claim to fame was that he standardized how much heat energy (i.e., how many kilocalories, or kcal) three specific macronutrients would liberate when burned in a bomb calorimeter (a device that measures heat release of organic substances), and he calculated the ratios, which computes the number of kcal in a given food by its protein (4 kcal/gm), carbohydrate (4 kcal/gm), and fat (9 kcal/gm) content. As fat was the most calorie-dense, Atwater thought it was the most egregious in terms of weight gain.

The New Leviathan

R. G. Collingwood

36. 89. Civilization is the process in a community by which the various members assert themselves as will: severally as individual will, corporately as social will (the two being inseparable, 21. 1 seqq.).

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

Erwin Schrödinger spelled out the profound implication: “Mind has erected the objective world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff.”

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

Epicurus saw religion not merely as false but as a fraud perpetrated by the priestly class for their own benefit.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

But exclusive emphasis on the One had gone beyond the point of attributing underlying order to the Many and had ended by subordinating the Many to the One, preparing for Parmenides’ annihilation of it. Heraclitus sought to rectify this situation by restoring balance between the One and the Many...

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Steven Pinker

The decline of violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence, and often the attitudes are in the lead.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Critics, Hans Morgenthau among them, were quick to point out the flaw in Kissinger’s reasoning [about the use of tactical nuclear weapons]: there was a bright line between nonnuclear war and nuclear war but no such line between tactical nuclear war and strategic nuclear war. Once the bombs started falling, there was no clear stopping point. Any use of a nuclear weapon, however limited, risked inexorable escalation and universal annihilation.

Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 4 August 2021

 

The Gardens of Democracy

Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer

Conventional wisdom conflates self-interest and selfishness. It makes sense to be self-interested in the long run. It does not make sense to be reflexively selfish in every transaction. And that, unfortunately, is what market fundamentalism and libertarian politics promote: a brand of selfishness that is profoundly against our actual interest.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Yaneer Bar-Yam, the American complexity theorist . . . argues that the level of complexity of modern human society has recently overtaken the complexity of any one person belonging to it . . . . But our individual complexity, as we’ve seen above, serves an important function: it helps us adapt to changes in our circumstances, because it gives us a wider repertoire of responses to those changes.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

“The first thing people must grasp, . . . is that we must view Earth’s systems as a functioning whole. We must learn what makes them tick as a whole, not merely the mechanisms of their component parts.”

Tao Te Ching

Lao Tzu

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. Thus the    Master is available to all people and doesn’t reject anyone. He is ready to use all situations and doesn’t waste anything. This is called embodying the light. What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher? What is a bad man but a good man’s job? If you don’t understand this, you will get lost, however intelligent you are. It is the great secret.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

“We used to believe that modern capitalism was capable, not merely of maintaining the existing standards of life, but of leading us gradually into an economic paradise where we should be comparatively free from economic cares. Now we doubt whether the business man is leading us to a destination far better than our present place. Regarded as a means he is tolerable; regarded as an end he is not so satisfactory.”41 Keynes could not stomach the Soviet experiment. But neither could he tolerate the cultural stagnation he found when he returned to Britain. His country was addicted to an era that had ended a dozen years earlier, incapable of embracing the present.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

To this new neglect of economic factors on the part of those who make politics must be added the new over-emphasis on power. Mr. Gross takes Russia’s arguments against a possibly non-democratic federation at their face value and solemnly reassures her of the longing of the peoples concerned for truly democratic and peaceful institutions. He completely overlooks what, after all, is obvious, namely, that Russia being a big Power wants nothing so much as to become an even bigger Power.

Philosophical Intimations

James Hillman

If anything, the depth psychology of soul-making, as I have been formulating it, is a via negativa. No ontology. No metaphysics. No cosmology. A knight errant, always off at a tilt, iconoclastic. Archetypal Psychology’s main claim to positivity has been its paradoxical insistence on allowing the shadows to be lit by their own light — hence the long encounters with pathologizing: the underworld, depression, suicide, senex, and the pathologies of the puer.

The Constitution of Knowledge

Jonathan Rauch

Accountability. Being wrong is undesirable, but it is also inevitable. We want people to feel safe making mistakes; otherwise they will not venture new hypotheses.

Metabolical

Robert H. Lustig

Chronic disease is mitochondrial dysfunction, and mitochondrial dysfunction is chronic disease. They are one and the same.

The Idea of Nature

R. G. Collingwood

In any machine structure is one thing, function another; for a machine has to be constructed before it can be set in motion.

Collingwood's The Idea of History

Peter Johnson

The historical re-enactment of past thought which is essential to history proper depends on inferences drawn from present evidence.

Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 3 August 2021

 

The Science of Conjecture

James Franklin

This is a history of rational methods of dealing with uncertainty. It treats, therefore, methods devised in law, science, commerce, philosophy, and logic to get at the truth in all cases in which certainty is not attainable.

The Science of Conjecture

James Franklin

Chinese law thereafter [Confucious] changed little until the impact of Western forms of thought in the nineteenth century. Confession was regarded as almost always necessary, and torture was ordered when guilt was already certain and clear but the accused refused to confess. Early Portuguese visitors to China found torture routinely used on suspects against whom there was the least evidence and on witnesses who disagreed with one another. There was no space in Chinese law for a legal profession, and hence for any formal science of law, and so for a forum for discussion of legal questions like the strength of evidence.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

“Even if someone should happen to be almost right, he could never be sure, for dokos is upon all things.” The Greek word dokos means “seeming” as opposed to really being: The One is; the Many merely seem to be. This doctrine is substantially the same as the Hindu doctrine of ma-ya- [maya], which similarly holds that since only the One is real, the Many must be a kind of seeming. This is the point where Xenophanes has seemed to some Western thinkers to have contradicted himself.

The Case for Keto

Gary Taubes

Just as the evidence has inexorably accumulated over the years supporting the observation that LCHF/ketogenic diets make us healthier, the evidence supporting the idea that saturated fat is deadly and that we should all eat low-fat diets has been fading, despite the best efforts of the orthodoxy to prop it up. The more research that’s been done, the less compelling it becomes. This is always a bad sign in science and a persuasive reason to believe that a theory or a belief is simply wrong. Outside mathematics, it’s impossible to prove anything definitively one way or the other. Evidence always exists to support reasonable hypotheses (and even some unreasonable ones), because studies will always be done that get the wrong answer or that are interpreted incorrectly. That’s why I suggest we follow the trends.

Personal Knowledge

Michael Polanyi

The Viennese-born Karl Popper rejected the legitimacy of empirical verification as the right way to establish scientific hypothesis and theory. Instead, despite the Duhem-Quine thesis and other objections, Popper insisted on the criterion of falsifiability, or the necessity for a hypothesis to withstand tests that could decisively disprove it, as a basis for theory choice. Further, Popper argued that falsifiability is the best criterion for demarcating true science from pseudoscience. [From the Forward by Mary Jo Nye.]

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Arendt further distinguished totalitarianism from pragmatism. “Totalitarianism is distinguished from pragmatism in that it no longer believes that reality as such can teach anything and, consequently, has lost the earlier Marxist respect for facts. Pragmatism, even in the Leninist version, still assumes with the tradition of occidental thought that reality reveals truth to man, although it asserts that not contemplation, but action is the proper truth-revealing attitude.… Pragmatism always assumes the validity of experience and ‘acts’ accordingly; totalitarianism assumes only the validity of the law of a moving History or Nature. Whoever acts in accordance with this law no longer needs particular experiences.” [From a note by Jerome Kohn.]

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

For was not American politics liberal at birth and democratic soon after? As we are seeing, that is at best a half-truth. American conservatism was strong from the beginning. It was liberal in some ways, not in others. American conservatives, to schematize, were economically laissez-faire but dubious about the liberal faith in open-ended progress. They did not believe in equality, doubted people’s capacity for self-government, and opposed direct, unfiltered democracy. In religious terms, American conservatism tended to an Augustinian, not a Pelagian, view of humankind as flawed and, in this world, unredeemable.