Willing and Eager Subjects in Training

Obama recently cautioned a group of graduating college kids that some of the arguments flowing to them via their "iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations" don't "rank all that high on the truth meter" and are threatening our democracy. One would hope that someone with even a little bit of healthy skepticism about the words spouted by popular figures, elected or not, would at least scratch their head about those statements, and wonder why the first president elected via Facebook "likes" and re-tweets would be calling out their high-tech gadgets and The Internets. Sadly, it looks like the poisonous mix of public, progressive education and a vacuous, charismatic Dear Leader onto which they can project their hopes and dreams has resulted in the perfect generation of young subjects for Obama. From a disturbing story on NPR this morning, "Opposite Of Radical: Today's Youth Trust Uncle Sam,"

A generation ago, young people vowed never to trust anyone over 30. But as it turns out, those under 30 today are actually more trusting of the government of all age groups, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. "As of now, I trust the government," says Brittany Tucker, a poli-sci major at Northeastern University in Boston. "I feel like they are trying to do what's best for us and their constituents."

The nearly unquestioning optimism and trust practically gushes from the kids the reporter interviewed, no matter the slight qualifiers they give. Think of Obama giving a commencement speech in which he openly attacks free speech, and know that this is the mindset of the kids in the audience:

Like so many of her peers, Tucker was inspired to get into politics by the campaign of President Obama.

"It gives you hope, and that hope turns into trust in the government, because you believe that things can change — or like good things can happen," Tucker says.

Analysts say that "Obama-love" may be what's propping up young people's trust. Most under-30s supported Obama in 2008 and still do today.

It must be noted that the reporter, Tovia Smith, states that only 32% of under-30s answered the survey this way, but that is still a significant percentage. Smith also points out that "[p]olls going back to 1958 show that trust always begins to head south sometime after age 30." As people grow up and see how much is taken out of each paycheck, their attitude toward government changes. And yet, Smith and others speculate that "this generation may be different." They don't give a compelling reason why, but I have a theory. Progressive education, an inability to think in fundamental principles, and a lack of any understanding of individual rights has left these kids defenseless when presented with thinly disguised bullshit from someone with a pretty face and soothing voice. They don't just like the Hope 'n Change pablum, they believe it. They accept it on faith -- secular or religious -- because they neither respect nor know how to employ reason. And Obama and his lackeys know this, and use it to full advantage. In fact, they count on it. They are grooming the next generation of willing and eager subjects, and it's working quite well.

Kleist and Kant: The Destructive Nature of Anti-Reason Philosophy

A popular and gripping characterization in literature is that of the bright flame that tragically dies out too soon. The promise of youth—creativity, passion, innovation—is painfully, brutally crushed, and the path such destruction takes through the ideas, actions, and influences of the character make for dramatic fiction.

The sketch Ian Brunskill provides of the Enlightenment-era author Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) suggests that his was a real-life version of this tragic arc. Brunskill’s review of a collection of Kleist’s works is a fascinating account of that story. As a measure of how extraordinary Kleist’s life was, he notes that scholars have long been confounded by Kleist’s short life and career, and the violence of his death.

A century ago, a distinguished Austrian scholar observed that Heinrich von Kleist was "the most difficult problem in literary history" and that the more we learned about him, the more of a problem he became. That state of affairs has not changed.

Kleist's short and mostly unhappy life was a muddle of contradictions. His small dramatic oeuvre ranges disconcertingly wide, from comedy of manners to domestic tragedy, from social realism to gothic fantasy. His prose, of which Peter Wortsman has here collected and translated a welcome new selection, is stranger and more unsettling still. Romantics, Expressionists and Existentialists have all claimed him as an inspiration. Kafka called him a "blood-brother." But Kleist belongs to no literary school and remains, as Thomas Mann observed, in a class uniquely his own. Outside the German-speaking lands, he is all too little read.

While Brunskill and others see Kleist’s work and life as a “difficult problem,” we shall see that it is not such a mystery after all. Ayn Rand held that ideas drive the course of human history, and also that ideas—those both explicitly and implicitly held—guide individual men’s lives. What happens when one of the most profound and fundamental philosophical battles in history is waged not only in the halls of academia, but in the mind of one young man?

Kleist’s Cultural and Philosophical Milieu

Kleist grew up during the zenith of the Enlightenment, the era when man was throwing off the shackles of mysticism and tyranny and exploring what reason and freedom could provide for this life on earth. To his great misfortune, however, he also lived in the time and region that would become the seat of the Counter-Enlightenment. As philosopher Stephen Hicks writes in Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (pp. 24-27):

The era from 1780 to 1815 is one of the defining periods of the modern era. During those thirty-five years, Anglo-American culture and German culture split decisively from each other, one following a broadly Enlightenment program, the other a Counter-Enlightenment one.

While the French experimented with English Enlightenment thought before succumbing to Rousseau and the terror of the French Revolution, “[m]any Germans, however, had been suspicious of the Enlightenment long before the French Revolution. . . most were deeply troubled by its implications for religion, morality, and politics.” Their response was growing hostility to the Enlightenment. This was the culture in which Kleist grew up.

Brunskill echoes this idea in his review as it played out for Kleist himself. Brunskill briefly describes Kleist’s promise and the change that came over him after exposure to the first and greatest of the Counter-Enlightenment thinkers:

Kleist in his youth had espoused with enthusiasm all the optimism of the Enlightenment. Reason would conquer all; happiness would come with experience and understanding. In March 1801, however, by his own account, he seems to have encountered the thought of Immanuel Kant (it is not clear what precisely he read), and his world fell apart. By testing the nature and limits of human knowledge, Kant had sought primarily to establish the possibility of a meaningful metaphysics. To Kleist, however, it was much grimmer than that: Kant had shown, he believed, that empirical knowledge was unreliable, reason illusory, truth unattainable and life quite meaningless. "My sole and highest goal has vanished," he wrote. "Now I have none."

This encounter with Kant’s ideas, and the terrible transformation it caused in Kleist, has been termed his “Kant-Krise” or “Kant Crisis.” This was the internal clash of Enlightenment thought and its antithesis, and Kleist’s attempt to make sense of his world again. Significantly, most modern thinkers believe Kleist’s interpretation of Kant is severely mistaken, at best. Recall that the accepted wisdom is that Kant was an Enlightenment thinker and defender of reason. Brunskill says that Kleist’s reading of Kant “was an extreme overreaction, not to mention a misreading of Kant's philosophy, but Kleist was like that.”

“[I]f, in Kleist's hysterical misconception of Kant's critical philosophy, truth is no longer even theoretically possible, then a literature arising out of this conclusion would point in both directions toward a void,” is one of the ways author Robert Norton describes the situation, in a review of James Phillips’ The Equivocation of Reason: Kleist Reading Kant for the University of Notre Dame’s Philosophical Reviews. “For Phillips, Kleist's works enact his realization that understanding in any conventional meaning of the word is no longer possible.”

Brunskill and Norton hold that Kleist got Kant wrong, but they both agree that the impact of Kleist’s understanding had a profound impact on his work, and imply that it ultimately led to his destruction. As Brunskill says:

Through it all [his troubles, trials, and adventures] Kleist wrote, though to no very wide acclaim: essays, anecdotes, shorts stories, plays. Then, on Nov. 21, 1811, at around four in the afternoon, on a small hill by the shore of the Wannsee lake just outside Berlin, having first shot dead a woman called Henrietta Vogel, who was the wife of an acquaintance and who in the subsequent autopsy would be found to have been suffering from incurable cancer, he placed a pistol in his mouth and killed himself. He was 34.

Kleist was young, bright, and full of promise, and brimming with Enlightenment optimism. In reading the works of Immanuel Kant, Kleist believed that the foundation of his worldview had evaporated in a cloud of internally consistent and impossible to refute arguments, “that empirical knowledge was unreliable, reason illusory, truth unattainable,” and to Kleist, the result was that he saw life as being “quite meaningless.”

That Kleist’s interpretation had a profoundly negative impact on his mind is not at issue, as we have his own words to confirm it. But was his interpretation correct? Was this a tragic misreading of Kant, or did he grasp earlier than most the logical implications of Kant’s work, and the tragedy was that he couldn’t think his way out of it?

Kleist as Prophet of Postmodernism?

Kleist thought that Kant’s ideas had cast him adrift in an unknowable sea, slashing his moorings to an objective reality he used to think it was possible to know, and this apparently led to his ultimate self-destruction; it seems he simply could not live in that new unknowable world. Though as mentioned before, Kant is generally seen to be a part of the Enlightenment, not counter to it, and as a defender of reason. Here again we must turn to Stephen Hicks and his excellent book, Explaining Postmodernism, where he says, (p. 28)

Kant is sometimes considered to be an advocate of reason. Kant was in favor of science, it is argued. He emphasized the importance of rational consistency in ethics. He posited regulative principles of reason to guide our thinking, even our thinking about religion. . . Thus, the argument runs, Kant should be placed in the pantheon of Enlightenment greats. That is a mistake.

The fundamental question of reason is its relationship to reality. Is reason capable of knowing reality—or is it not?. . . This is the question that divides philosophers into pro- and anti-reason camps, this is the question that divides the rational gnostics and the skeptics, and this was Kant’s question in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant was crystal clear about his answer. Reality—real, noumenal reality—is forever closed off to reason, and reason is limited to awareness and understanding of its own subjective products.

As Hicks later notes, this is both a crucial and controversial interpretation. It is outside the scope of this essay to delve more deeply into the arguments in favor of this position, so instead I will simply include one more passage from Chapter 2 on Kant and the Counter-Enlightenment and suggest that you read it and judge for yourself.

In the history of philosophy, Kant marks a fundamental shift from objectivity as the standard to subjectivity as the standard.

Wait a minute, a defender of Kant may reply. Kant was hardly opposed to reason. After all, he favored rational consistency and he believed in universal principles. So what is anti-reason about that? The answer is that more fundamental to reason than consistency and universality is a connection to reality. Any thinker who concludes that in principle reason cannot know reality is not fundamentally an advocate of reason. That Kant was in favor of consistency and universality is of derivative and ultimately inconsequential significance. Consistency with no connection to reality is a game based on subjective rules. If the rules of the game have nothing to do with reality, then why should everyone play by the same rules? These were precisely the implications the postmodernists were to draw eventually.

Based on the limited evidence presented, it seems that Kleist grasped these implications quickly and deeply, and it shook him to the core. "My sole and highest goal has vanished. Now I have none."

Kant the All-Destroyer

Untethered from reality as he thought he was, Kleist’s life became a mostly unhappy “muddle of contradictions,” and of his writings Brunskill says:

The universe inhabited by the characters in his works is bleak and bizarre. . . In his essay "On the Theater of Marionettes," an ironic, fictionalized dialogue, Kleist considers Man's fall from Eden and asks whether human self-consciousness is less a blessing than a curse. The characters in his works, particularly in his extraordinary short stories, try to make sense of a senseless world, to behave rationally in the face of madness, to act with purpose while at the mercy of cruel chance.

. . .Fate, for the lovers in "The Earthquake in Chile," is utterly malign. Religious faith, for the iconoclasts in "Saint Cecilia or the Power of Music," amounts to murderous bigotry. Political principle, amid the racial strife of the Haitian revolution in "The Betrothal in Santo Domingo," is a cloak for primal violence. Recounting these horrors, Kleist does not moralize or philosophize. He does not even try to explain.

In Norton’s review of Phillips, we see an evaluation that supports my points, from two thinkers who are nevertheless sympathetic to Kant’s ideas (prior to the passage below, Norton writes, “Phillips has many highly original and thought-provoking takes on ostensibly familiar Kantian topics.”):

The consequence, as Phillips describes it, is a terrible erosion of the real world, the realm of positivity, into complete relativity, or contingency. . . In this way, Phillips wants to show that the terror Kleist experienced when confronted by the critical philosophy was entirely warranted: Kant's elevation of Reason necessarily entailed the derogation of the world. This is also where the two writers meet, or as Phillips puts it: "Kant and Kleist together pursue a work of destruction". But whereas Kant destroys the world for the sake of philosophy, Kleist takes the fragmented pieces that no longer cohere as the signs of a kind of negative truth. For Kleist, error becomes the supreme, indeed sole principle.

Hicks explains the philosophical implications of what Kant did (p. 42):

Kant’s contemporary Moses Mendelssohn was thus prescient in identifying Kant as “the all-destroyer.” Kant did not take all of the steps down to postmodernism, but he did take the decisive one. Of the five major features of Enlightenment reason—objectivity, competence, autonomy, universality, and being an individual faculty—Kant rejects objectivity. Once reason is so severed from reality, the rest is details—details that are worked out over the next two centuries. By the time we get to the postmodernist account, reason is seen not only as subjective, but also as incompetent, highly contingent, relative, and collective. Between Kant and the postmodernists comes the successive abandonment of the rest of reason’s features.

Could this philosophical path to postmodernism give us insight into the inner turmoil experienced by Kleist? Based on his fiction as described by Brunskill, it appears that Kleist explored most of the key philosophical themes comprising the abandonment of reason in pursuit of postmodernism.

And ultimately, in a bizarre episode, he shot a woman and then himself, ending his brief life. To me, this reads like the eulogy of a man of reason who became unhinged by the adoption of tragically contradictory premises. In a way, it reminds me of a real-life variation on the internal philosophical and psychological struggles of Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and the self-destruction of virtuous promise when exposed to the horror of malevolent ideas, as exemplified by Ayn Rand’s character of Cheryl Taggart in Atlas Shrugged.

The impact of ideas reverberates throughout history, but also in the minds of individual men. Good ideas, objectivity, reason, further men’s lives and allow them to reach new heights of creativity and productivity. Destructive ideas have the opposite effect. In most men, the good and bad ideas mix in an unexamined mishmash, and the benevolence of others and the security of modern industrial society allow them to evade the consequences while carrying on their lives. But as shown by the following passage from Nietzsche, some men are deeper and more profound thinkers than that, and the ideas they hold have more of an impact, for good or for worse.

The . . . danger is to despair of truth. This danger confronts every thinker who begins from Kant's philosophy, assuming that he is a vigorous and whole human being in his suffering and aspiration and not merely a clacking thinking- or calculating-machine.... As soon as Kant would begin to exert a popular influence, we should find it reflected in the form of a gnawing and crumbling skepticism and relativism; and only among the most active and noble spirits, who have never been able to endure doubt, you would find in its place that upheaval and despair of all truth which Heinrich von Kleist, for example, experienced as an effect of Kant's philosophy. "Not long ago," he once writes in his moving manner, "I became acquainted with Kant's philosophy; and now I must tell you of a thought in it, inasmuch as I cannot fear that it will upset you as profoundly and painfully as me. We cannot decide whether that which we call truth is really truth or whether it merely appears that way to us. If the latter is right, then the truth we gather here comes to nothing after our death; and every aspiration to acquire a possession which will follow us even into the grave is futile. If the point of this idea does not penetrate your heart, do not smile at another human being who feels wounded by it in his holiest depths. My only, my highest aim has sunk, and I have none left."

The end of Nietzsche’s quotation of Kleist, “My only, my highest aim has sunk, and I have none left,” appears to be a slightly different translation of the quote used by Brunskill, and obliquely referred to by Phillips. The absence in their accounts of the of crucial context of Kleist’s words, and of Nietzsche’s agreement and support, is now glaring. Nietzsche said, in effect, “No wonder the poor boy self-destructed.”

As dramatic and tragic as Kleist’s life and death are, it is instructive to move back for a moment from the individual to the historical, and note that the destruction of Kleist by the ideas of Kant is a sad and sadly accurate allegory on the state of Western civilization. “Once reason is so severed from reality, the rest is details,” whether it is in the mind of one poor man, or the course of an entire culture.

The state of our culture now bears striking similarities to the “muddle of contradictions” in Kleist’s life as the last vestiges of Enlightenment thought in America tear themselves apart at the seams. We are living Kleist’s life, writ large across the tableau of Western civilization.

Kleist was unable to resolve the contradictions between Kant’s philosophy and his own love of reason and the world—or worse, he accepted Kant’s ideas wholly—and it destroyed him. The culture itself is in the midst of the same battle, but fortunately for us, the philosophical answer that was unavailable to Kleist is ours for the taking. Ayn Rand’s ideas, and specifically in this context her epistemological discoveries, re-engage and expand the battle for reason, bringing it back to its proper place as the faculty for knowing objective reality. It is idle speculation to wonder if such ideas could have saved Kleist—though my guess is that they certainly could have given him a way to escape the trap he was in—but it is clear that if an Enlightenment culture is to be reclaimed and reinvigorated with reason, Rand’s ideas will be a key to the salvation that never came for Kleist.

Human Ingenuity: The Real Renewable Resource

A recent advertising campaign by the natural gas industry lobby, America's Natural Gas Alliance, states (paraphrasing), "we have a 100 year supply of natural gas and it's growing all the time," and that "we can't revitalize our economy by buying overseas oil," and that "natural gas is twice as clean as coal," and is thus much "greener."

As different sectors of the energy industry try to compete in today's hyper-regulated non-market, this pandering to both environmentalism and mercantilism ("energy independence" is the new "buy American!") is becoming a common strategy. It's an unfortunate, pragmatic, but also understandable reaction to a market that gets less free with every session of Congress and every presidential term.

The crushing weight of governmental regulation isn't the only thing industry is reacting against. As the government dedicates millions of redistributed dollars to "renewable" energy and "green jobs", thus denying legitimate, voluntary investment in the best available opportunities, it's not surprising to see real businesses respond to the distorted market by trying to offer options that try to take advantage of the situation. Producers still need to respond to demand in order to survive and profit, even if government distorts the demand beyond all reason.

An industry that raised the standard of living in not just the United States but in the whole world by a nearly immeasurable margin -- the petroleum industry -- has been demonized by the environmental lobby for decades, and attacked on all sides by government regulation and "reinvestment." And instead of developing a vibrant "green economy," such interference has only inflated energy prices, stifled real innovation, and wasted billions of dollars. Recall that Jimmy Carter tried to birth the solar power industry and its continued failure even during supportive later administrations cannot be dismissed as a partisan issue, or one which simply needs more taxpayer money thrown at it. Decades of government support for renewable energy has gotten us nowhere. [As a side note, if you happen to disagree and think that the oil industry is only an exploiter of the poor and of the environment, may I suggest some required reading?]

Assuming for the moment that we really do need "energy independence" and "green energy," and considering that government involvement has not solved these "problems," what are the alternatives? There just so happens to be a socio-economic system that has been proven throughout history to be perfect for handling just such quandaries.

Capitalism unleashes the political and economic possibilities of the best within humanity. All of the creative, positive, progressive aspects of human activity are fostered -- not oppressed -- by the socio-political framework of capitalism, which means the system that fully and consistently protects individual rights in all areas of human interaction, leaving men free to produce, to solve problems, and to make enormous sums of money in the process. Nearly every modern convenience and life-sustaining technology that we take for granted today is ultimately the product of men who were free, at least in part, to use their minds, to innovate, and to produce.

On the other hand, nearly every seemingly unsolvable socio-economic problem we face today can be traced to government interference. In the energy sphere, government distorts the market by restricting free inquiry and pushing an environmentalist agenda. Using redistributed dollars, government actively promotes one type of solution while regulating others out of existence. Individual rights and the freedom of supply and demand are ignored as irrelevant, while government directs private industry toward supposed socially- and environmentally-friendly goals that continually fail to deliver real return on investment (even the pseudo-investment of "public" dollars). Solar cells, windmills, etc., are subsidized again and again, despite the fact that the market is never there, and the desired innovation never comes.

But it is certainly a fact that there is only so much petroleum on the Earth, and at some point, someday, it could run out. What this should say to a free people is that there is a potential market there for someone ingenious enough to capture it, when the time is right. Is so-called renewable energy the place to look? Who knows? But it certainly isn't the government who knows.

Let us look at renewable resources themselves for a minute. Admittedly, wind is wind, and sun is sun; these things are "renewable" in that they will continue to be available in essentially their current forms until the Earth ceases to exist. But nothing about this means that they will necessarily be economically useful right now, or will benefit human life in the same way that petroleum has. They certainly may, someday, but only on their own timeline, as determined by the individual efforts of creative men, the needs they face, and the values they want to gain.

Was sunlight a useful energy source a few million years ago in the same way we think of energy now? Obviously not. What about wind? This is even more absurd. Wind was more of an enemy -- feeding wildfires while killing cooking fires, chilling bodies, blowing away seeds and arrows -- than it was a useful resource, though it was as plentiful then as it is now. The sun and the wind thus share something fundamental with any other resource. Imagine early Homo sapiens stumbling into a pit filled with a black, viscous, smelly liquid. What good was it to him?

Oil, just like sun and wind, is simply an obstacle until and unless the human mind reshapes it to its own purposes. Obviously, the human mind, reason, and ingenuity are the only things that can transform inanimate matter into life-sustaining values.

Human ingenuity, not wind, not sun, is the only truly renewable resource. Without it, nothing in nature would be transformed to further human life. Your car, your clothes, your food -- none of these things are naturally occurring. If all we can do is take what we get, then we are but hunter-gatherers without tools or any remnants of cognition to help us along. But because humans are rational animals, we can identify the materials in our environment and mold them to suit us.

Be it stones or soft metals or iron or oil or electricity or fusion -- or the sun -- the human mind is the inexhaustible resource that makes all others possible. It is time for the government to recognize this alternative energy source, and to unleash it fully upon the world by getting the hell out of our way.

A Blind, Indifferent Juggernaut

As Independence Day approaches, and talk of the Boston Tea Party event and OCON heats up, I've been particularly enjoying the fact that I'm reading Ed Cline's Sparrowhawk again. If you ever need motivation and inspiration to step back and truly appreciate the meaning of July 4th, Sparrowhawk is the place you should go. I just started Book Six: War, and the foreword to this volume struck me as particularly timely.

The engine of tyranny is a blind, indifferent juggernaut, insensible to reason, justice and equity, and so necessarily inimical to them. It matters not the good intentions of the hand that launches it into the affairs of men. Once started, it moves almost of its own volition, corrupting, consuming and destroying everything in its path. It is a fundamentally nihilistic phenomenon. Its power is both centripetal and centrifugal, on one hand drawing its potency from that which it can corrupt; on the other, crushing or flinging aside the incorruptible.

The juggernaut of Parliamentary supremacy collided with the American colonies' incorruptible sense of liberty, which could be neither crushed nor flung aside. The result was a spectacular explosion: the American Revolution. That explosion was neither necessary nor foreordained. The colonies could have submitted to that supremacy, and existed for a time in a haze of semi-legality, occasional concession, and dependent prosperity. But British-Americans valued their liberty and were willing to claim it whole, come what may. Therefore, the clash between them and the legislative authority of Parliament could be postponed but never resolved. The colonials would not allow their claim to unabridged liberty to be corrupted. In the course of that political transfiguration, they became Americans.

We are seeing the war engine of tyranny chewing up what is left of our liberties on a daily basis now. Doug Reich just called it a "clumsy but swift campaign" straight out of Sun Tzu's Art of War.

Whereas the juggernaut of tyranny ran up against "the American colonies' incorruptible sense of liberty" two hundred and thirty years ago, it is now finding a relatively compliant and subservient American populace. The Tea Parties offer a spark of the fire that once raged in the colonies, but the question remains whether it is too little, too late, or too isolated in a swampland of irrationality to ignite an "incorruptible sense of liberty" in the minds of Americans today. Are there enough true Americans left, namely, those who understand and value unabridged liberty? (This is, and always will be, the fundamental definition of "American.")

Billy Beck has this to say about what is left of the American sense of life:

The spirit of this place that was not born of the slave's obesience [sic] will require this government to bare its fangs. I still believe that. The ways in which and the singular souls from which Americans select their values are not yet so beaten to any alien molds so well that they will peaceably stand for the conformations that this government will eventually require and demand -- not "ask".

The colonials refused to submit, and the Parliamentary juggernaut bared its fangs. Anyone who thinks our government wouldn't do the same is evading reality and the lessons of history. Such is the nature of any government that rules, because if you have rulers, you have people being ruled, and that means by force.

Beck goes on to say that things will likely have to get much worse before the breaking point is reached. I agree. But the "conformations that this government will eventually require and demand" don't seem that far off anymore. The campaign being waged against liberty is both very clumsy and shockingly swift -- the frightening prospect of a juggernaut traveling at 100 mph.

When thinking about the world I'll be leaving for my children, I used to think that they would be long gone and their great-great-grandchildren would be living their lives before this country might be unrecognizable as a bastion of liberty (at least more so than it is now), and that there was still plenty of time to reverse that course. Events of the past year have me reevaluating that assessment.

I haven't given up on the possibility of a rebirth of reason and a just government in my or my children's lifetimes, and will continue to strive for it and support others who do the same. Working to realize my values has benefits even when the odds seem poor. Perhaps one of the few bright spots in recognizing the nature of tyranny, and how it is at work today, is that history shows it can be stopped.


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Update: (06/23/09) Revised closing paragraph.

The President's Delusional History Lesson

President Obama's speech in Cairo contained a little history lesson... one that may surprise those who actually know their history. He said:

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam... that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. ...

Islam? Islam carried the light of learning through centuries? The same "religion of peace" that violently persecuted those thinkers in the years prior to 1000AD who tried to adopt and teach Aristotelian philosophy? It was Islam, not a few Arabs drawing upon Greek philosophy, that is responsible for birthing the Enlightenment?

I strongly recommend that you head over to The Charlotte Capitalist blog and read an excellent and detailed historical account, drawn from multiple sources, that rips apart the President's despicable distortion of history. I'm sure his words played well with his target audience, stroking their fragile egos as they try to evade the fact that the only intellectual progress their culture made in all of history was due to ancient Greek philosophy. But he performs a grave disservice, and as The Charlotte Capitalist said, "It is a disgrace because it attacks not only the true tool of human progress (reason), but it attacks the philosophical and historical roots of the country of which he is president."

The Government Killed My Jet Pack

An article on CNN.com seeks to address Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled. After seeing a dazzling potential future at the '64 World's Fair,

Forty years later, we're still waiting for those congestion-free highways -- along with the jet pack, the paperless office and all those "Star Trek"-like gadgets that were supposed to make 21st-century life so easy.

The author, John Blake, makes some interesting observations, such as, well, some of those futuristic gadgets are already here. He mentions things like jet packs and flying cars that already exist but aren't commercially viable, but I contend that PCs and cell phones and the Internet would all qualify.

Still, he points to the fact that our highways are still jammed, and that people are becoming disillusioned with what technology can promise the future. He notes dystopian movies like Blade Runner where "technology creates more problems than it solves," and Battlestar Galactica where "human beings abandon their faith in technology's ability to improve the future. They destroy their fancy machines and start again as simple hunter-gatherers."

I don't think our culture's disillusionment is coming from a loss of "faith" in technology to "save us" but instead the wholesale abandonment of reason and the ever-increasing power of the state over our lives. The loss of reason and the increase of the state go hand in hand. We are losing our confidence in our individual ability to command our own lives, and instead are turning to government to "save us." Government, in turn, is crushing the productive output of what is left of capitalism.

Let's looks at traffic congestion. The article is right. It shouldn't be an issue. But rather than a technological problem, it is a problem of a lack of property rights and liberty. A traffic jam is a concrete example of a shortage. Demand for driving room outpaces supply. And why is this the case?

Traffic jams are a direct result of a government monopoly of the roadways. If capitalists (road builders, auto makers, etc.) were left free to find solutions to the problems, traffic jams would disappear. Technology alone wouldn't help. Imagine adding flying cars to the current mix... in our mixed economy, they'd have to be regulated of course--EVERYTHING has to be regulated, right? Or else we're left with soulless profiteers preying upon the weak-minded and everything goes to hell!---which means the FAA would get involved. There's already a shortage of air traffic controllers. Need I go on with this example? Same goes with jet packs. They would be personal transportation, but what would you want to bet that the government would rule that people would have to land and take off in special "jet pack ports?" Who will want to drive their jet pack to a government-approved launch pad, fly to their destination, and then be stuck at the landing pad with a jet pack and no way to get where they're going (without added expense)? Not to mention all the licensing, government mandated training, excise taxes, etc., all stifling the market before it even exists.

My point in all of this is that the reason we aren't witnessing amazing technological change in all areas of life is because of government interference. The computer world exploded and continues to (for now) because regulators haven't quite caught up with it yet. When they do, it will slow greatly.

Technology isn't the problem and it isn't the solution. It's not the cause, but the effect. Blake treats technology as some sort of disembodied phenomenon, apart from the humans who create it. But to do so ignores that technology doesn't just appear... it must be created by individual minds, left free to think and create.

The real cause of human progress -- whether embodied in technological advances or otherwise -- is freedom. Freedom to innovate, to produce, to solve problems and make astounding amounts of money doing it. When the country abandons its infatuation with state control and the government is confined to protecting individual rights, we'll see the kinds of mind-blowing changes the optimistic futurists of 100 years ago dreamed of.

Farming in Greenland

A new feature-length documentary has been made that confronts anthropogenic global warming alarmism head on. According to the website and trailer for the film, Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria examines and debunks the claims made by Al Gore's fake-umentary and those of prominent environmentalists like Ed Begley Jr. and James Hansen of NASA.

The trailer has a surprisingly pro-capitalist message, and hopefully it is carried throughout the film. The Irish filmmakers, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, have said that the "... theme is how environmentalism seems to harm the poorest people in the poorest places on the planet." This is certainly true, because as the green movement seeks to destroy our industrial society, those hurt first will be those with the fewest resources. For me, the key to the value of this movie will be if the filmmakers realize that the solution to this problem -- the impact on the most vulnerable populations by environmentalist policy and ideology -- is capitalism and the life-sustaining qualities of industrialization.

Based on the trailer, I'm optimistic that they "get it." If they recognize that human life is the standard of value, the thing that needs to be protected, and that capitalism is the tool to accomplish it then this movie could be great.

Here are some quick quotes that really jumped out at me:

"A lot of environmental activists still have not come to accept that the humans are a part of the environment." -- voiceover from one of the contributors

"You're comparing bugs with people! You'd rather save the bugs and lose the people." -- An African woman who lost her son to malaria, talking about the ban on DDT.

Perusing the website, the list of contributors is interesting -- from scientists and media to average Americans and Africans being impacted by environmental policy, with some enviro-alarmists thrown in for contrast -- and provides select quotes from the movie in addition to biographical information for each person. A professor from the University of Virginia named Fred Singer was quoted as saying the following:

The 20th Century is certainly not the warmest in 1,000 years. It was much warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today. There was agriculture in Greenland and they were growing wine grapes in England!, in Yorkshire.

Here's hoping that the film is as good as it looks and that enough money can be raised for a full theatrical release in the United States.

[HT: HBL]

Bombarded by the Arbitrary

Recently, Gus discussed an interesting story about a parrot that was able to string together the sounds that, to human ears, made up its address. He observes that "this episode reminds me of a discussion of the epistemological status of the arbitrary, in which Leonard Peikoff likens arbitrary pronouncements to the squawkings of a bird."

While this doesn't directly relate to the following story, I think there might be some tie-in. Recently, I learned of a memoir by a woman who has a near-perfect recollection of everything that has happened to her for the last 34 years. Jill Price's book is called "The Woman Who Can't Forget," and the review of it in Newsweek is quite fascinating.

Essentially, Price can recall nearly every mundane, non-essential thing she has experienced. Give her a random date from 20 years ago, and she can recall what color socks she wore, and if it was humid that day.

In and of itself, this doesn't seem like it would be debilitating, except that she apparently can't stop the memories. In fact, she has what she describes as a movie of seemingly random memories playing in her mind at all times, that she must actively ignore in order to function. She said in an interview, "Well, like I'm sitting here talking to you but I also have a running movie of endless memories that just are constantly flowing through my head, free flowing. So it's not anything that is connected to one other thing. It's just constant, you know, memories throughout my life. It's like watching a home video." In essence, she is constantly bombarded by the arbitrary. From Gus' link to the Ayn Rand Lexicon:

An arbitrary claim has no cognitive status whatever. According to Objectivism, such a claim is not to be regarded as true or as false. If it is arbitrary, it is entitled to no epistemological assessment at all; it is simply to be dismissed as though it hadn’t come up . . . The truth is established by reference to a body of evidence and within a context; the false is pronounced false because it contradicts the evidence. The arbitrary, however, has no relation to evidence, facts, or context. It is the human equivalent of [noises produced by] a parrot . . . sounds without any tie to reality, without content or significance.

Her memories are not arbitrary themselves. They did actually happen. But as a steady and random stream with little or no bearing on her immediate perceptions or thoughts, they become arbitrary (assuming that they don't actually represent the subconscious.)

My first thought upon hearing her story was that I wondered if she leads a truly concrete-bound existence. Can she form abstract concepts like most people? Can she collect facts, strip away non-essentials and then generalize? Or is she irrevocably tied to the the perceptual level, battling the flood of random memories, trying to keep her head above the torrent? Based on what I read, that does not appear to be the case, and she lives and functions rather well.

It's such a bizarre situation that it's difficult for me to imagine having to deal with it. Sure, sometimes I would like to have a better recollection of certain situations, but think of how much perceptual data you "throw away" on a daily basis because it simply isn't needed. It isn't useful information, it doesn't add value to your life or help you reach greater levels of understanding on any topic. The fact that you ate beets for dinner three years, six months, and five days ago is so irrelevant as to be absurd. Now imagine not being able to forget it, and then imagine that and every other mundane memory bombarding you, every waking minute of your life.

With this, I think the final paragraph of the Newsweek review is rather illuminating, both for the observations the reviewer makes, and the conclusions he draws (and doesn't draw) from them:

But the sobering thing about Price's book is how banal most of her memories are. The days go by, lunch follows breakfast, 10th grade turns inexorably into 11th... Her life was not without excitement... or drama of a conventional sort: her parents separate and get back together; her mother survives a tumor... No one should gainsay her feelings, but knowing what was playing on the TV during these events doesn't add much to our understanding of them, or of her. I hate to admit it, but confronted with a memoir that is guaranteed to be completely accurate, I can't help thinking that, with the same material, a writer with a little imagination could have written a much better book. (emphasis added)

It's interesting to ponder whether the very fact that Price can't stop the flood of arbitrary memory, and can't forget the detailed mundanities of daily life that the rest of us happily let go of, makes it impossible for her to write a memoir with "a little imagination."

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Also see Glenn Beck's interview with her.

The Wonders of Modern Medicine

Sometimes a small thing makes me sit back for a second and ponder just how wonderful it is to be alive in this day and age. This past Saturday, my 4-year-old daughter A. developed a fever, but other than that seemed fine. On Sunday she was worse, and my wife noticed some telltale white spots on one of her tonsils.

We got an emergency visit at her pediatrician's office at 10am, and she was examined by a nurse practitioner. The nurse did a rapid strep test, and the result was positive (just barely). She prescribed an antibiotic which we picked up from the drug store at 11:30, and by the evening, A.'s fever was gone, her throat no longer hurt, and she was back to her spunky precocious self.

In less than a day -- on a Sunday, no less -- an infection was accurately diagnosed and treated, and my daughter's life was back to normal, but for the twice daily spoonfuls of pink medicine (luckily, her favorite color). This was my first encounter with the rapid strep test, and I just shook my head in wonder at how amazing it is that such a thing exists. I remember getting strep as a child and waiting two days for the cultures to come back. I believe the pediatrician just gave me antibiotics right away based on his judgment and the look of my throat, but the confirmation of the diagnosis was 48hrs away. On Sunday, it took 5 minutes.

Penicillin was discovered just 80 years ago, and before that, something that now seems run-of-the-mill, like a case of strep throat, could be dire. A Group A strep infection can be serious in some cases if left untreated, leading to heart valve, kidney, liver and joint problems from a post-infection autoimmune response. Now, not only do we have antibiotics to attack the infection, we have a relatively inexpensive 5 minute-long test that gives doctors a higher level of certainty in their diagnosis while the patient is still in the room, and it can be acted upon immediately.

Consider this a tip of my hat to the scientists, doctors and entrepreneurs who make things like this possible.

Yaron Brook at the Ford Hall Forum: A Review

I attended Dr. Yaron Brook's talk, Woodstock’s Legacy: The Rise of Environmentalism and the Religious Right, last night at the Ford Hall Forum. For a detailed account of the content of the speech, I recommend reading SB's post over at One Reality. Rather than duplicate SB's work, I'll instead give you my overall impressions of the talk including details that really struck a chord.

First things first, I have lived in the Boston area for over 13 years, and had never set foot in the Old South Meeting House. What an amazing building. While I later learned that the British gutted the interior and used it to practice jumping up on their horses during the revolution -- precisely because the building was seen as a symbol of liberty -- it didn't diminish the historical significance and gravity of the situation. I thought it fitting that we were listening to one of our nation's leading proponents of a philosophy of reason while sitting in a building where Samuel Adams had once given fiery speeches to angry Bostonians.

Dr. Brook spoke for roughly 50 minutes. He recalled the themes of Ayn Rand's 1969 Ford Hall speech that contrasted the brutal emotionalism of Woodstock, represented by Dionysus, and the celebration of reason that was the Apollo 11 launch, fittingly represented by Apollo. He then proceeded to analyze how these themes have morphed in American culture in the past 30 years, pointing to the two new predominant movements that now represent Dionysian emotionalism: Evangelical Christianity and environmentalism.

The recent historical roots of environmentalism are easily traced back to the New Left of the 60's, and it doesn't take much to grasp the chain of ideas connecting the hippies to today's greens. What I thought was really interesting was Dr. Brook's identification of the roots of the popularity of Evangelical Christianity.

Despite the upwelling of anti-reason culture and thought in the 60's, the overall American sense of life was still tied to the ideas of the founders. Whether the Average Joe -- one who went to church on Sunday as a social outlet, drove a Buick and played baseball -- could defend it or not, his default outlook on life was one rooted in individual rights, reason and freedom. The blatant irrationality and emotionalism of the 60's scared the pants off of him, even if he could only refer to his sense of life (i.e. his own emotions) to understand why. In the backlash, Richard Nixon was elected, and even though Carter came next, he was elected only by swearing on a stack of Bibles that we was a God-fearing centrist.

It was at this point, when Average Joe needed to turn to some real foundation for protection against the left, that his once casual, social view of the church changed. When Dr. Brook made this identification, I suddenly thought "A HA! That's where this all came from!" In searching for some defense against the left, Americans turned in droves to a fundamentalist version of Christianity. The Evangelical churches preyed upon the cultural emotionalism of the times and drew the people in. So Dr. Brook made the point that, in turning away from the Dionysian nature of the hippies, they adopted yet another version of Dionysian emotionalism. As both sides evolved, it became the collectivist, environmentalist left vs. the evangelical right.

The threat this poses should be obvious. Now, rather than a battle between Reason and Emotion, the two key movements widely seen as "polar opposites" in American culture and politics are simply two sides of the same rotten whim-worshiping coin. While the advocates of reason can still rely on some implicit support from what remains of the American sense of life, making some free market advances here, stopping some intrusive regulation there, reason itself is now being attacked from both sides.

It was then that Dr. Brook took one step further, and detailed how the sides are now joining forces, united in the fight to "save the earth." This is a formidable problem, and a dire development. With these two movements unified, attacking reason, science, and individual rights from all sides, bringing about a rebirth of reason in America is going to be an uphill battle.

As SB mentioned in his post, the talk ended on a surprisingly positive note, considering the bleak picture that was painted. The positivity wasn't in the form of a baseless optimism, but instead was a call to action. Dr. Brook stated that what is needed now is an Apollo-like mission, but in the realm of philosophy, and he encouraged all thinking people to take on the bad ideas of the day, whether it be letters to the editor, blogging, speaking engagements, or simply standing up and saying "I don't think global warming is a problem, based on the evidence." In a funny exchange in the Q&A section, he said (paraphrasing), "Many people have never heard someone question global warming before. They can't believe it!" Just planting that seed, that someone will stand up and question the "revealed truth" of something like that, can bear fruit later.

One other really interesting bit happened near the very end of the Q&A. An older gentleman stood up and said, basically "I've been coming to these talks for 30 years, and I'm saddened to see how few people there are in the hall tonight. What has happened?" It was a valid question, because I remember when the Forum was hosted at Northeastern in the mid-90's and there were many hundreds of people in attendance.

Dr. Brook laughed and said "Well, for one thing, I'm not Ayn Rand." The audience laughed, but then he went on. Again, to paraphrase, he said "Think about when she gave her lecture in 1969. She could fill a 1,500 person hall. People would travel across the country for the Ford Hall Forum, because if you wanted to hear an Objectivist speak, that was it. In contrast, look at where we are now. This is my third talk in the Boston area this week, and I'll give two more in the coming days. Universities across the country regularly host Objectivist speakers, and in California we have at least one lecture a month. We're planning a new center in Washington D.C." and he went on and on, describing the many opportunities people now have to hear these ideas. Dr. Brook is on TV many times a month, and is published in Forbes magazine regularly. The key, he said, is that we are laying the foundations for a philosophy of reason and individual rights to be considered as a viable and expected alternative to the widely held ideas of the day. "You won't be able to turn on a news program without those ideas being put forth."

Brook and Pipes at Harvard: A Review

What a great event. To recap, the title was The Threat of Totalitarian Islam. The panelists, Drs. Yaron Brook and Daniel Pipes, were well-spoken and compelling, the audience was engaged and civil, and big, controversial ideas were discussed as if it was perfectly normal for intelligent people to engage in a reasoned exchange of ideas. (would that it were not such a surprise!)

As I mentioned yesterday, I was concerned that the event would be marred by disruptions. It wasn't. From what I observed, the Harvard Objectivist Club did a good job of setting up the event, security was there (three beefy campus policemen in uniform), and the moderator did an admirable job of setting the civil tone and then enforcing the "one succinct question" rule.

The audience was surprisingly positive and receptive to the ideas presented by both panelists. It was apparent that Pipes was the more well known to the audience, but I heard many positive comments after the meeting. One in particular sticks in my mind, where someone said "Brook was quite impassioned, wasn't he? With reason and individualism..." and it was said in a positive, not sarcastic tone.

The event itself was different than I expected. The format was 5 minutes each from Dr. Brook and Dr. Pipes to lay the foundation of the ideas they advocated, and then questions from the floor. I must admit that when I heard that the majority of the event would be audience questions -- which means that the event would be shaped largely by the level of rationality and relevance of random people's questions -- I was wary of whether I'd get anything out of it at all. But with few exceptions, the questioners raised interesting points and Brook and Pipes had ample time to develop cogent arguments.

I didn't take notes, so my recollection may not be entirely accurate here, and therefore I'm not going to try and recount the individual questions and answers. At least three Muslims asked questions, and though one went on for some time before the moderator and members of the audience called out for him to get to his question, I wouldn't call it a disruption. Many questions centered on Israel, and both Pipes and Brooks called upon a wealth of historical information to counter common misperceptions about the creation of Israel, and the idea of nationalism in the Middle East versus the Islamist notion of a caliphate. One questioner raised the topic of recent Saudi contributions to Harvard and other universities ($20M each) and Pipes made a fascinating point about the fact that this minuscule amount of money, compared to the overall Saudi cash outlay designed to spread Wahhabism ($5B per year, est.), actually does little for the three universities that received it. He posited that it has a greater impact on the rest of academia, sending the message "If you play by the rules, and don't hire certain personnel or take certain positions, then you too could get a hefty check."

Dr. Brook effectively and piercingly exposed the underlying and implicit ideas behind many of the questions, and presented a clear argument in favor of identifying and confronting the Islamist threat, and in defending our way of life. After just over an hour and roughly 10 questions that focused on the threat of totalitarian Islam and our response to it, someone asked a much needed question that hopefully helped the audience understand why Dr. Brook was making the points that he was.

The questioner said something along the lines of "We've been talking about the threats, but perhaps we could turn it around to a positive side. Would you describe what it is we're fighting for, what uniquely American values we need to protect, and how they are different than other cultures?" As soon as he asked this, I realized that this was crucial to providing the necessary context for others in the audience to really "get it", and I was very glad he asked it.

This gave Dr. Brook the opportunity to extol the virtues of Western civilization, the ideas of individual rights and the political system that protects them, and the superiority of that system over all other cultures. As he said that, I heard scoffs from some sections of the audience, because of course "how can anyone judge one culture to be superior?" But this didn't dissuade him, and in fact he pressed the issue, tracing the values and prosperity of America all the way back to the philosophy of Aristotle and the identification of reason as man's basic tool of survival, and then outlining the other times in history when a philosophy of reason made it possible for cultures to make great advances.

Regarding the experience of being at the event, it was very interesting and I think I got a lot out of it. I am more looking forward to tomorrow's Ford Hall Forum talk, however. While I enjoyed the panel discussion, I didn't learn a significant amount. Rather than hearing new ideas presented in a new way, it was more like watching a political debate (though in this case, ideas were actually discussed, rather than evaded). You know all the answers, and the interest factor is in "how is he going to handle this question?" It's closer to entertainment. Again, that's not a bad thing in itself, and it's likely a good way to disseminate ideas to a wider audience. But for me, I'd rather hear a long detailed talk about a specific issue by an intellectual who has something new to say. So I'll wait until tomorrow at the Old South Meeting House, and hear Dr. Brook speak on Woodstock's Legacy: The Rise of Environmentalism and the Religious Right.

Fall of Western Civilization? A Lesson from the Romans

While doing some maintenance on my blog the other day, I happened to notice a trend in the topics on which I post. It started me thinking about something, and since then I have been going back and forth about which of the Big Two "-isms" is the greatest threat to Western civilization in general, and America in particular. To me, the Big Two are:

• Radical environmentalism
• Islamism/radical Islam/jihad/totalitarian Islam/Islamofascism (Note: I'm not sure if there is one, all encompassing term for this, or if they are generally interchangeable. I think they are not fully interchangeable, but I don't know which is most appropriate.)

Because both are very real and are impacting my day-to-day life -- mostly indirectly through the government policies crudely designed to address them -- I don't think I'm just wasting my time trying to decide which is the more imminent threat. While I recognize that my contributions in combating either one are currently limited, I do think it's worthwhile to pursue this line of thought. What kicked this all off, you ask?

The Roman Example
I bring this up because I read a particularly cogent passage in Burgess Laughlin's Aristotle Adventure today that made me stop and think for awhile. This book is "a guide to the Greek, Arabic, and Latin scholars who transmitted Aristotle's logic to the Renaissance." To set the context of the passage, I'm currently reading about what he terms the "Latin-Christian branch" of scholars, one of three such branches that tortuously transmitted the works of Aristotle to the future. At this point in the book, the last of the Roman scholars/philosophers has died, the Roman empire is collapsing, and the Dark Ages are looming. Quoting two brief paragraphs from the beginning of ch. 23 of Laughlin's book:

The disintegration of the Roman Empire proceeded unevenly. Roads fell into disrepair, piracy and brigandage increased, long-distance trade shrank, random brutality replaced rule by law, and schools of higher learning disappeared--but not everywhere at the same time. Of the former Roman provinces, Gaul [roughly, Western Europe, primarily what is now France --ed] disintegrated first, c. 375; then Spain, c. 410; Britain, c. 425; Italy, c. 570; Greece, c. 580; and finally Africa, c. 660.

In all cases, the immediate cause of the final disintegration was invasion by barbarians, that is, brutal illiterates; and in all cases, the victims greatly outnumbered the attackers but still lost. Why? Because military weakness had followed cultural disintegration, which had followed the gradual disappearance of a philosophy of reason (in however dilute a form) as the foundation of Roman culture.

After a thorough reading of this, I started thinking about parallels to America's situation today, and the thought I had already given to environmentalism and Islamism. I wonder if the same type of total disintegration could happen in modern times as the Roman fall described above?

We are certainly not at risk of military weakness right now, and our culture is still more tied to reason than any other. But are the signs there for a future fall? If so, how close is it, and what can be done to turn the tide? These questions often flood my mind when I start down this line of thinking. Thankfully, many capable minds are dedicated to the task of turning the tide, so I won't dwell on that here.

Regarding my question of "could this happen in modern times?", I realize that's a rather silly one because the answer is obviously "yes!" I'm sure all empires felt invincible at certain points, and later felt that "we may be declining, but we're too big to fail", and later they collapsed. That is the way history has worked for thousands of years and nothing fundamental has changed.

It's important to note that maintaining "empire" for empire's sake is worthless. What we're talking about here is creating and maintaining a world we want to live in. The one fundamental change that could turn this historical cycle around is the acceptance of a fully consistent political philosophy respecting individual rights -- capitalism -- grounded by all the necessary foundations as outlined in Objectivism. To put it glibly, that's the one thing we haven't tried yet, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that it would work. It is also the only proper system, but that topic is too big to address here.

Getting back on track, because American civilization is a mix of reason and unreason, it is vulnerable to the same rise/fall cycle as past empires. So we return to the Big Two major threats.

The Big Two
Radical environmentalism and its nature as a near religious movement -- picking up idealistic, fanatical "converts" and going on crusades -- while taking on the guise of real science and thus infecting the minds of otherwise generally reasonable people, has the capacity to do immense damage. From the direct and dire economic impacts of environmental regulation to the package of terrible anti-life ideas that underlies the movement -- statism, collectivism, altruism, etc. -- radical environmentalism (now combined with Evangelical Christianity) has the potential to wreak havoc.

Assuming for the sake of argument (leaving the basic premises of the movement aside for now) that the "looming environmental catastrophe" is a complete fiction, then the environmental movement is essentially convincing us to slowly kill ourselves for no reason.

Islamism is a different type of threat, one with a militant enemy targeting us, one with violent conquest as the goal. In order for them to succeed, the fundamental impotence of their ideas requires that we enable them to succeed by evading the nature of the threat, accepting cultural relativism and the like, and essentially letting the Islamist movement fester until it reaches a breaking point.

To put it rather bluntly, assuming (I hope wrongly) that the West is determined to fall, we have two ways to go. The environmentalist way has us taking the dagger to our own flesh, pricking ourselves slowly, randomly until we either die of infection or bleed to death. The Islamist way has us using our technology and intelligence to make a really nice new sword, polishing it, handing it to the Islamists, and then guiltily putting our heads on the chopping block.

In the worst case, both could be happening at the same time. And I do think that is what is happening.

The Deeper Threat
Laughlin's characterization of the fall of Roman civilization helped me to conclude that it isn't an either/or between environmentalism and Islamism. The key is the "disappearance of a philosophy of reason" represented by both threats, and by our inability or unwillingness to counter them.

What this means is that in order to win the intellectual battle and thus save our way of life as it could and should be, it must be fought on two main fronts. The obvious front is that we must counter the major external threats of environmentalism, Islamism, and all related ideologies, movements and moralities that the anti-reason philosophies support. But it would be possible to win those battles and lose the war.

The tragically mixed and confused country of America could stall or cripple Islamism long enough for it to collapse like communism did. The climate could move toward a much colder cycle, making much of the environmentalist argument absurd enough to lose its mass appeal. But what then? Of course a new militant religion could spring up. Might we in 300 years see suicide bombing Scientologists? Environmentalists could turn on a dime and start sloganeering "Stop Global Cooling!"

Thus, if we don't at the same time open another front to build up our "philosophical defenses" and adopt a fully consistent philosophy of reason in this country, we are still vulnerable to the next ideology, or a mutation of the current ones. Only this will enable us to counter further threats and an otherwise inevitable fall. And thus, we return to the organizations, publications and individuals who have already entered the fray, working "to promote the principles of reason, rational self-interest, individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism to the widest possible audience." (From About ARI on the Ayn Rand Institute website)

When pessimism temporarily takes hold, I see the undeniable signs of statist/collectivist/environmentalist influences leading to this: "Roads fell into disrepair, piracy and brigandage increased, long-distance trade shrank, random brutality replaced rule by law, and schools of higher learning disappeared..." And with that, it seems that "invasion by barbarians, that is, brutal illiterates" would not be far behind.

It's hard for me to square how much of that is melodrama and how much is reasonable concern based on evidence. Amid the bad news, there are certainly positive signs. The key then is to fully understand the nature of the pervasive wrong ideas in the world but not be swamped by them, while training focus on positive changes without despairing at the enormity of the task. Sounds easy, right?

Book Review: The Baroque Cycle

Neal Stephenson's trilogy, The Baroque Cycle, is a must read if you are interested in any of the following: history, The Enlightenment, science, philosophy, reason, how ideas shape world events, the birth of capitalism, pirates, battles, or love stories. Yes, this isn't so much a book review as a trilogy review, but the books can't really be separated.

Stephenson is perhaps best known for his "cyberpunk" science fiction work, most prominently Snow Crash (1992). The Cryptonomicon (1999) was a break from the pure sci-fi realm, and was a brilliant integration of the themes of pre-Internet bubble high-tech entrepreneurship, cryptography, and WWII history. Yes, the book really did span from WWII to the late 90's, and it worked.

However, The Baroque Cycle is unlike anything else he has written, in theme, scope, and depth. It's not just a work of historical fiction, but a celebration of reason and ideas, and the impact both had on the world. First, let's look at the history.

The books follow three primary fictional characters as they weave in and out the massive scientific, philosophical, economic and political changes of the period from 1680 to 1713, and the real world people who shaped the events. As a quick refresher, here is a short list of some of the events from that period in history, all of which are integral to the novels:

• The failed 1683 siege of Vienna by the Ottomans
• Protestant revolution and Oliver Cromwell
• The Restoration
• The Glorious Revolution in England (overthrow of James II and the Catholics)
• 30 Years War
• War of Spanish Succession
• The rise of the Hapsburgs
• Principia Mathematica and the philosophical battles between Newton and Leibniz
• The emigration of Protestants from England to the American colonies
• The Spanish Inquisition

The first character we meet is Daniel Waterhouse, an eminent Natural Philosopher, member of the recently established Royal Society, and close friend of Isaac Newton. The second main character is Jack Shaftoe, an English vagabond who by chance takes up with the Polish army at the siege of Vienna, meets and kills a Janissary (Ottoman warrior), and in the process rescues the third character, a young slave girl from the northern British Isles, Eliza.

Through the course of the novels, these fictional characters interact with all sorts of famous historical figures, from Newton and Leibniz to Kings (James II, William III, Louis XIV), Queens, Electors, a young Ben Franklin, Peter the Great and John Locke, just to name a few. The reader follows them on travels throughout Europe, the Middle East, India, the Americas, and Japan. There are thrilling naval and ground battles, political intrigues, and sword fights.

This is just the backdrop, however. The primary focus of the novels is to showcase the enormous changes in the "system of the world" as Stephenson put it, and these changes were wrought by ideas.

Through Daniel Waterhouse, we see the battle of ideas between reason and mysticism, science and religion, at the start of the Enlightenment. We see the political changes in England, the fight for representative government and religious freedom.

We watch as Eliza rises to become a brilliant, self-interested and rational capitalist, playing and creating the early stock markets, all the while orbiting in the nobility around Louis XIV. As a former Turkish slave, we see her use her money, influence and intelligence to battle slavery and attack the Asiento trade.

Through Jack Shaftoe's travels and adventures, we explore the state of the rest of the world and see the stark contrast between the brilliant energy and progress of England and the backward mysticism and barbarism of the Spanish colonies, India, and southeast Asia. We see Jack struggle with understanding the economic changes in the world as the feudal systems are replaced by markets, banks, complex investments and production of wealth.

All of these threads are woven together in a great heroic story, and through it we witness an amazing period in history as old systems of government, economy and science are turned on their heads, and the stage is set for the birth of a new nation in the Americas. The books end in 1713, but they present the rebirth of reason, progress of representative government, and nascent ideas of individual rights that were exported from England and were the bedrock of American thought.

Stephenson portrays these ideas with a great sense of life and expert skill. The books aren't without some philosophical problems, but they are minor. Overall, they make up a brilliant work of art, and you will be glad to have read them.

If you intend to buy the books...
On Amazon, you will notice that there appear to be many more than just three books in the series. This is because after they were initially released, Stephenson split them into sections, roughly three per original book, and sold as smaller volumes. I recommend buying the original three, however. Their titles are:

• Quicksilver (Vol. 1)
• The Confusion (Vol. 2)
• The System of the World (Vol. 3)

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Update: Make sure to read my review of Ed Cline's Sparrowhawk series. If you would be interested in an amazing historical fiction portrayal of the American Revolution that rivals (and I think betters) the quality and scope of The Baroque Cycle, you'll want to read this review and then the books.

TV Worth Watching

After reading LB's post about the John Adams miniseries on HBO, I decided to watch it. Man, am I glad I did!

What a great series, so far. I've only seen through the 3rd episode, but it has been consistently good, if not great. What a wonderful change of pace to see ideas and reason presented in a clearminded, heroic light on the screen. And the story of the Founders' fight against tyrrany is absolutely thrilling.

If you have HBO, I strongly recommend you watch this. If not, hopefully it will be out on DVD for christmas.

Incidentally, this is how I spent my Earth Hour. I thought it was fitting.

A Righteous Anger

I am angry. Yes, given the state of the world, this is an unfortunately common state of being. But current circumstances have incited a particularly strong sense of it.

I'm not surprised that Google has taken this stand. In fact, I would have been surprised at a principled defense of capitalsim and individual rights. My anger rises not from Google's support for Earth Hour, but for the fact that a supposed paragon of the free market has betrayed its foundation so completely, and so obviously.

It is to be expected that Google would side with this movement. It is blasé. Boring.

And that is what causes the intense anger. Why is it taken as given that the most productive, the most innovative, will side with those who see the extinguishing of light as the goal?

However, I have hope. Frankly, it is dim hope, but hope nonetheless. Men and women of like mind are taking a stand, and speaking out against the patent irrationality of this position. They are speaking out in favor of human life and human achievement, in favor of reason and productivity and human happiness.

In support of this ideal, and in support of science, objectivity, and reason, take a stand in the next few days and send in your endorsement of the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change. Don't take my word for it. Read the Declaration and decide for yourself whether you support its ideas and aims.

I know it's a small step. I know that signing your name to what amounts to a petition seems very small. However, it is something, and I think that it is worth doing. I have read the Manhattan Declaration and support it. If you do too, follow the instructions and email your endorsement. I understand the deadline for endorsements is noon, April 1, 2008. It's an interesting experiment with laudable goals. If it can make some waves, or poke some holes in the IPCC, it will have accomplished much.

Now, therefore, we recommend –

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008

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Others who are fighting the absurdity of Earth Hour:
Productivity Hour
ManHour 2008
Wyatt's Torch

Economist refutes rationality, proves own stupidity

Thank you Boston Globe for providing an endless stream of things to get annoyed about. This time, the Globe profiled an MIT 'behavioral economist' named Dan Ariely, who is hawking a book claiming that humans are consistently and predictably irrational. Thus the title of his book, "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions."

He starts off with a bang, saying "I don't think people are stupid - just human," of course implying that to be human is to be irrational. To be fair, the idea of behavioral economics sounds at least somewhat interesting, in that they are trying to make mathematical models correspond better to reality by challenging the long held assumption that the "economic agents" in the model will always act rationally.

Ariely, apparently in support of this approach, uses experiments to prove that people are mostly irrational in their daily choices. The problem is, these experiments are so flawed that I have no idea how anyone could find them compelling. Here's one:

In one experiment, ...to test the power of "free," he and two colleagues set up a table in an MIT cafeteria. They offered normally high-priced Lindt chocolate truffles for 15 cents and ordinary Hershey kisses for a penny. Customers had to pick one or the other, not both. Seventy-three percent of the customers saw a good deal and went for the truffles. But when the prices were cut to 14 cents for the truffles and free for the kisses, 69 percent of customers went for the kisses, even though the truffles were an even better deal.

This supposedly proves that people are completely irrational because they passed up a 14 cent Lindt truffle. The problem with this is that it completely ignores the "pain-in-the-ass factor". Yes, I just coined a new behavioral economics catchphrase. Imagine you're walking through a cafeteria and pass a table where two guys are selling cheap chocolates. You want some chocolate, you have some change, so you might as well get a truffle for a trifle since you're already going to reach into your purse or pocket for the coins.

The next day, you pass the same table, and the prices are lower. In fact, the ho-hum Hershey's Kiss is free. I know that if I were in that situation and perhaps was in a hurry, or didn't feel like searching for pennies to make up the 14 cents, or break a dollar and be left with annoying change and another useless penny that I'd just throw away, I'd just take the free Kiss and walk away. Even though I like truffles better.

Does that prove I'm irrational? Or does it show that the "experiment" is incredibly poorly designed, and only highlights that there are many other facets to the decision-making process than Ariely seems to understand?

According to the article, Ariely also peppers his book with examples from his own life.

He tells of considering a sporty Audi vs. a Honda minivan. He chose the Audi because it came with three years of "free" oil changes. Later he computed the value of the oil changes: $150, or about 0.5 percent of the purchase price. Because he and his wife have two children, the minivan made much more sense, but "free" was irresistible.

Ariely chose an Audi, which probably cost $40,000, over the practical choice of a $30,000 Honda mini-van that was much better for his family, because of free oil changes? Seriously? That is so absurd that there are only two possible explanations:

1. Ariely truly is a complete moron, and a perfect example of the "consistently irrational economic actor" he believes predominates in our society. He doesn't take into account his family's needs or finances, and instead is lured into an irrational decision by $150 worth of free oil changes because he somehow thinks it's a better deal. Or....
2. Ariely is a snake oil salesman.

After reading the article and taking a look at the website for his book (which I won't link to here because he doesn't deserve the publicity), I think the answer is yes to both.

In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't read his book. It's even possible that the Globe's characterization of his experiments is superficial and doesn't describe experimental controls that appear to be missing. But I'd be surprised if that was the case. Every indication is that Ariely is either a charlatan, an incompetent, or both, and is trying his damnedest to propagate the repugnant notion that human beings are inescapably, completely irrational, and all we can do is to try and trick ourselves into making good decisions, in spite or our natures.

As a conclusion, I'll let Ariely's own words speak for themselves:

How has all this affected Ariely's own decision-making? He says he tries to be alert to early-warning signs of irrational behaviors and have a plan to avert them. Examples: ... "I have learned to avoid things that are 'free.' I have learned the importance of taking decisions out of my hands, like the decision to save. I don't want to have to think every month about how much money to put toward my retirement."

As Ariely speaks, new experiments and optimistic ideas tumble out of him, like water from a fountain. "It's amazing, the little secrets of life that make us a little better," he said. "Like dieting, for example. If only we got rid of elevators. . . ." [emphasis added]