Essential Short Reads:
When people are asked about things they have read which have "stuck with them" or influenced their worldview, they are typically asked about Books. However, short pieces of writing can also be highly influential in our lives. What follows is a list of some of the speeches, editorials, essays, or other short pieces of writing that have either deeply affected my worldview on a variety of religious, political, or philosophical questions, or that I just find generally fascinating. Agree or disagree, they are also all examples of great writing:
1. Screwtape Proposes a Toast. C.S. Lewis.
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/screwtape-proposes-a-toast-SEP.pdf
I could add just about anything C.S. Lewis has ever written to this list of my personal favorite short pieces of writing: Each separate chapter (except the incomprehensible one about the trinity) of Mere Christianity, many of the sermons found in the Weight of Glory, each chapter of the Screwtape Letters. But this particular piece of his writing is perhaps more quintessential than any of them. Written many years after the original publication of the Screwtape Letters, but now almost always added as a final chapter to modern editions, this is C.S. Lewis's masterful and essential take-down of the worst features of the modern world, including especially the way in which it exalts "equality" by making sure no one is allowed to excel.
2. Fundamental Premises of Our Faith (Harvard Law School Mormonism 101 Lecture).
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/fundamental-premises-of-our-faith-talk-given-by-elder-dallin-h-oaks-at-harvard-law-school
Dallin H. Oaks, February 2010. A few years ago, Harvard Law School’s LDS students began a tradition of hosting a Mormonism 101 seminar each year, in which they would ask a prominent Latter-day Saint (typically a legal professional) to give a brief overview of Latter-day Saint beliefs to the student body. Oaks used the occasion to do something more important than simply explain the basics of Mormonism. He eloquently advocated for a worldview which admits of more than one type of truth, explaining that just as there are material truths which we can glean through scientific reason and observation, there are also equally valid spiritual and metaphysical truths we can obtain through revelation, thus reconciling the best ideals and traditions of both Christianity and the Enlightenment, and challenging the modern notion that those worldviews are necessarily mutually incompatible.
3. The Handwriting on the Wall. George Weigel. Essay. Spring 2012.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-handwriting-on-the-wall
Like a modern-day G.K. Chesterton, Catholic political and religious thinker George Weigel reminds us that the political liberties enjoyed in the west are only sustainable if biblical Judeo-Christian religion remains at the center of our cultural heritage. Absolutely essential reading in so many ways, but worth the price of admission primarily for its incredibly useful explanation of Western Civilization as an amalgam of the ideals of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. Lose any leg of that stool, and the West will fall.
4. The Challenge to Become. Dallin H. Oaks. Conference Address. General Conference October 2000.
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2000/10/the-challenge-to-become?lang=eng
This is a talk that I feel should be an annual lesson in Latter-day Saint congregations. What we do matters, not only in and of itself, but because of what it makes us.
See also:
"Knowing, Doing, Being" by Arthur Bassett: https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/049-59-63.pdf ,
"Created in the Image of God" by David Seeley: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=2093
5. Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died. Forbes ASAP 1996. Magazine Article. Tom Wolfe (Reprinted, with some revisions, in Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up, Picador 2001.)
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/Wolfe-Sorry-But-Your-Soul-Just-Died.php
Tom Wolfe describes the modern neuroscientists’ new version of Calvinism, the theory that everything we think, say, and do, is genetically predetermined by millions of years of evolutionary psychology, and involves no free will. Then, he describes the truly frightening social consequences likely to ensue from the societal adoption of this view. I refuse to believe, as a matter of common sense and experience, the scientific theories he describes. But I definitely believe his predictions for what will become of our society (Nietzsche’s phrase, “the total eclipse of all values” cubed) as its intellectual elites all come to believe that we are programmed and predestined to behave in certain ways, and that humans have no free will, thereby undermining the foundation and underpinnings for a criminal justice system (or, indeed, any laws), moral judgment, right and wrong, or a goal-driven life.
As a Latter-day Saint, I believe, passionately, in agency, and I also passionately believe that Satan wants to take it away from us, or, failing that, make us stop believing in it. That religious ages found a reason to believe in “predestination” and now a scientific age is finding a reason to believe in the same thing, seems to me to verify my supposition.
6. The Human Beast. Tom Wolfe. National Endowment for the Humanities, 2006 Jefferson Lecture.
http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/tom-wolfe-lecture
Wolfe explains how language differentiates us from animals and grounds our religious nature, and how human pride and status envy are keys to understanding everything.
7. Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments. Jeffrey R. Holland. BYU Devotional Address. January 12 1988.
http://www.familylifeeducation.org/gilliland/procgroup/Souls.htm
Someday, when the Prophet Mormon of our dispensation gathers and abridges the history of the Latter-day Saints into the Book of Joseph Smith, or whatever they will call it, there are certain sermons which are so vital that they will simply have to be included, for the same reason that Jacob or King Benjamin’s sermons to their people were included in Mormon’s abridgement of Nephite history in the Book of Mormon. This talk, delivered when Jeffrey R. Holland was President of BYU, will be one of those sermons. A beautiful explanation of the reasons for the law of chastity.
8. Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn on the Lights? Orson Scott Card. Editorial. Rhinoceros Times, October 20, 2008.
http://www.linearpublishing.com/orsonscottcard.html
In the 1700s and 1800s most newspapers had a distinctive political ideology. During the administrations of George Washington and John Adams, there were Federalist papers sponsored by Alexander Hamilton, and Republican papers sponsored by Thomas Jefferson. In the 1850s, everyone knew which papers were abolitionist, which were more moderately conservative Republican, and which were pro-slavery Democratic. In the 20th Century, Manhattan-D.C. Beltway elites began to dominate the entire media narrative, as broadcasting made nationwide newscasts available, and the newscasts took their cues for the leading stories of the day from the New York Times and a handful of other papers. In lieu of open partisanship, 20th Century media purported to be providing "objective" news. But, in fact, the mainstream media's attitudes and politics were decidedly one-sided and narrow, originally based on the viewpoints of a small group of leading newspaper writers for a handful of major Eastern papers, whose views were watered down and regurgitated on the network news broadcasts. The culture of what those reporters believed soon became the uniform newsroom culture, with a uniform political belief system to which everyone who wanted to get ahead in a newsroom needed to hew. Everything from story selection to story spin took a decidedly left-wing course, but all in the guise of supposedly accurate and fair and objective reporting. We may be getting back to an age where everyone will, again, know the political views of a diverse number of journalism providers (MSNBC vs. Fox, for example). But in the meantime, the mainstream news media continues to fail miserably in its fourth estate mission as truthteller to the American public, instead playing the role of a referee with money on the game who will make sure the calls all go "the right" team's way (which is to say, the left team's way). Card's editorial is just one example of a howl of protest against the mainstream media's corruption, targeting just one major example of that corruption. But it serves as an example of any number of editorials which could have been written as to hundreds of thousands of such examples over the course of the past 100 years, as the mainstream media continues to print all the news that's fit to advance its own agenda, and that of the most leftward leaning members of the Democratic Party.
9. Carbon Chastity. Charles Krauthammer. Washington Post Op-ed. May 30, 2008.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052903266.html
Charles Krauthammer, a self-described “Global-warming agnostic”, explains how environmentalism saved the left just as all of its former raison d’etre was being discarded on the ash heap of history’s failed ideas. No longer will the left try to regulate every aspect of our lives in the name of social justice. Now they will regulate, tax, control, ration our access to sustenance and otherwise save us from ourselves, while simultaneously impoverishing us with sky-high power prices, in the name of saving the planet. Knowing the rule that tyrants who are ruling over us for our own good are the most despotic and unrelenting tyrants of all, God help us.
Key takeaways: “For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism). Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history. Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself. Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect.”
10. The Curious Appeal of Roman Catholicism for Certain Latter-day Saint Intellectuals. Valerie M. Hudson, Square Two, Volume 4 No. 2, 2011.
http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleHudsonAppeal.html
Valerie Hudson was one of my favorite undergraduate professors when I majored in International Relations at BYU. As I am myself a devoted fan of many Catholic writers, such as Robert George and G. K. Chesterton, I recognize the temptation she observes here, and so this article was a helpful corrective. But its true importance has very little to do with Catholicism. Indeed, the article is poorly titled, for its true purpose and its true importance do not lie in its critique of Catholicism, but in its very feminist defense of Mormonism, and in its celebration of the true appreciation for womanhood which can be found within Mormonism.
11. The Course of Human Events. David McCullough. National Endowment for the Humanities, 2003 Jefferson Lecture.
http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/david-mccullough-lecture
McCullough uses the founders’ lives and ideals as a springboard for a passionate defense of the importance and intrinsic value of education.
12. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Commencement Address.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
Solzhenitsyn understands what's wrong with communism. But he understands what's wrong with the post-modern West as well. A society that lacks moral values will always fail. Probably not what Harvard was hoping to hear when they invited him to speak. But certainly what they needed to hear.
13. Reason, Faith, and the Things of Eternity. Bruce C. Hafen.
This is an excellent address on balancing a life of the mind with a life of faith.
http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/20/2/S00003-5176a39643f053Hafen.pdf
Another useful, but more ambiguous, Hafen classic, which I hesitate to link to, given the strong and sometimes adverse reactions I have seen to it can be found here, in Hafen's speech on dealing with ambiguity in life and the law:
http://www.jrcls.org/publications/clark_memo/sections/s11/CM_S11_Hafen.pdf
This 2010 address to Law Students at BYU is an update on a 1979 BYU Devotional address (Love is Not Blind) and Ensign Article (On Dealing with Uncertainty) by the same author. I have a love-hate relationship with this piece of writing. I have learned not to share it with others, as it easily offends. And there are parts of it that really bother me. Nevertheless, I have found it to be essential in understanding some of the different personalities in the Church, and the methods by which different Church members respond to information or events which discomfit their testimony or loyalty. Hafen discusses the three levels of response to ambiguity: (level 1) optimistic, naíve, and wearing rose-colored glasses, their faith is likely to be shaken by any unpleasant information beyond their ability to filter and screen; (level 2) profoundly aware of the gap between what is real and what is ideal, they are too likely to shake their own faith with their deep and abiding skepticism; (level 3) aware of the gap between the way things are and the way they ought to be, but nevertheless able to retain a faith in the ideal and to reach for the same without giving way to cynicism. An extremely handy but itself sometimes ambiguous tool for those trying to navigate through a life of faith.
14. Can the Ruler Truly Be a Servant. Robert George 2012 Sir John Graham Lecture. One of the most essential and important things I've ever read about the U.S. Constitution, containing volumes of wisdom in a few vital pages, is the second chapter in Robert George's book, Conscience and Its Enemies, entitled "The Limits of Constitutional Limits." This whole volume has become more and more important to me, as I keep returning to it, again and again, since I first completed it. A variation on this chapter was given by George in this speech, which can be found here, and which is one of the best things I've ever read on its subject:
http://www.maxim.org.nz/site/DefaultSite/filesystem/documents/events/JGL%20Monograph%202012%20Robert_George_web.pdf
And as long as we're discussing the Constitution, Rex E. Lee's Devotional address on "The Constitution and the Restoration" is also a hard-to-beat must read for Latter-day Saints:
http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=687&view=1
15. A Long Obedience, by David Brooks:
Being an Aristotelian in nature, I reject extremes, having learned Aristotle's maxims on the virtues consisting of the mean between an excess and a deficiency. So, despite my conservative political beliefs, I occasionally find myself railing against libertarianism. This moving editorial is a good piece of artillery in such moments:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/opinion/a-long-obedience.html?_r=0
Although I often disagree with Brooks' brand of conservatism, I find that when he hits it (mainly on nonpolitical, human nature, topics) he hits it out of the park. Here's another by Brooks that I really enjoyed, on the nature of genius, and the 10,000 hour rule also mentioned by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01brooks.html
(I don't know that I completely buy into all of the implications which some have drawn from the 10,000 hour rule, but I do believe in its most fundamental premise: that if you want to get good at something, few things are more important than spending lots and lots of time doing that something.)
16. Orson Scott Card's Film Review of Pleasantville.
One of the reasons America lost the culture war, and we must all now live our lives surrounded by filth, obscenity, vulgarity, criminal activity, thuggery, zombie-countenanced teenagers addled by hours of screentime, and the other signs of the swiftly flushing toilet which is modern American society, is that not enough people learned the critical thinking skills necessary to argue against modern day liberal visual propaganda. Here's an example of what such critical thinking could have looked like, had my generation been given the ability to learn it and exercise it:
http://www.hatrack.com/cgi-bin/print_friendly.cgi?page=/osc/reviews/reviews98/movies_worst.shtml
17. Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless
How totalitarian societies, and other groups based on ideological purity, enforce conformity by conscripting their own members as cogs in the system. Absolutely fascinating. And the Greengrocer's story has so many, many, parallels, in 21st Century America, which like 20th Century Poland, is increasingly a left-wing society which brooks no dissent.
http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=2_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTML
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Readings on the Big Question
There is one big question that everyone but the least curious will grapple with eventually: What is the purpose of life? Or, even more fundamentally, is there a purpose to life? How and why did I come to exist, and how and why did this earth on which I stand, and the cosmos that surrounds it, come to exist? Or is there a why? Does any of it have any point? Millions of words in thousands of books having been written on this subject, one might think that there is an infinite variety of opinions on the answer to these questions. But in fact, getting right down to the bottom of everything you'll ever read on this issue, all of the answers ultimately seem to come down to only two camps.
In what we might call the materialist camp, there are those who say that everything that exists came into being as a result of pure natural coincidence and happenstance. Each result has an undesigned and unintended natural prior cause, back through the evolution of a variety of species, the formation of the earth, and on back towards the great unprovoked beginning of all big banged things. And, there being no purposer, there is no purpose. If this is true, then, logically, certain other concepts must also be true. There can be, for example, no objective morality, nothing which is, objectively, good or bad, moral or immoral, if the universe exists for no reason. (When someone points this out to an atheist, they will often respond by missing the point. Christopher Hitchens, before his death, could give quite a speech on how offensive it was to suggest that he had to believe in a supernatural deity to know right from wrong. But this isn't the point. There are probably many atheists who are good people just as there are probably many religious people who are evil. The point is more fundamental: if there is no supernatural deity who created us for any greater purpose, if we just happen to exist, in the same way that a leaf may happen to fall in a forest, and with no greater cosmic significance, then there is, objectively speaking, no right and wrong.) If, as Shakespeare has Macbeth say, life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, then, as Shakespeare has Hamlet say: there is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so. We live in a world in which this fundamental and underlying belief system has become fairly pervasive, and it should therefore not surprise us that we increasingly live in a society which demands the right to determine for itself what is and is not moral. If there is no higher moral authority to turn to, then it makes perfect sense for every society, and indeed each individual, to decide on their own what is and is not moral, what is and is not objectively true, the question ultimately being purely subjective.
In the other camp, what might be called the supernatural or divine purpose camp, there are those who believe that the earth on which we stand, the cosmos that surrounds it, and each of us who find ourselves upon this sphere were created, by a creator, for a purpose. This point of view, likewise, leads to certain logical conclusions. If there is a God, who created us for some divine purpose, then there must be such a thing as objective morality, and objective truth, and our lives must have some objective purpose. Or, as Doctrine and Covenants 93:30 indicates: "All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence." This worldview suggests that we have a duty to determine what is objectively true and moral and to act in accordance with those truths. If someone claims to be a Prophet, with messages from God about true morality, or if some book claims to be the writings of such Prophets, including the revealed truths they have received, we have a duty to try to determine whether we believe and have faith that these claims are true, and, if so, to live, to the best of our ability, in accordance therewith. If there is a God, communicating his objective truths to us through revelation to Prophets, and if those revelations promise that we can know the truth of that which is revealed through prayer and personal inspiration from supernatural divinity into our own hearts, we have a duty to put such claims to those tests which have allegedly been divinely provided.
I personally find the materialist view to be more difficult to believe in, and to require, in a certain sense, greater "faith" in unlikely ideas, than the spiritual view. Reading about the big bang and the nature of time and space in a book like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, for example, makes my head spin in ways that a sermon on Heavenly Father's Plan of Happiness never does. There is, for example, this great logical fallacy in the materialist view: that modern man has been able to glean the great truths of that view, via an instrument, the human brain, which has just happened to come into existence, but which may, therefore, be completely inadequate to the purpose, having not been "designed" to perform any such function (or, indeed, any function). Alfred North Whitehead pointed this out, that we have no basis to believe in the reasoning of our brains unless we first presuppose that those brains are more powerful than we can explain through purely natural processes. Ironically, if we believe our minds were given to us through divine providence, then it becomes easier to credit their ability to glean scientific truths through reason. As C.S. Lewis put it, "One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific picture] . . . . the whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears. Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula or the remotest part obeys the thought laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory--in other words, unless Reason is an absolute--all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based." C.S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry", in The Weight of Glory And Other Addresses (Harper Collins e-books, 1949, Adobe Digital Edition May 2009) page 140.
Like Lewis, I hold to the spiritual, rather than the materialistic view of the cause and purpose of the world and my existence upon it. I also feel that the prevalence of the materialistic view in the modern world is the root cause of almost every trend currently destroying civilization.
It should therefore not be surprising that I am a huge fan of C.S. Lewis's book, The Abolition of Man, and believe it is one of the best pieces of writing to come out of the 20th Century. It is a book to be read, and re-read. It is not only an argument against the deconstructionist views of Macbeth and Hamlet, but a warning and a prophecy against the world their materialist views would lead us to. It appears, unfortunatley, to be working better as prophecy than warning.
Among other great contributions to the argument for a spiritual explanation for our existence, The Abolition of Man points out the prevalance of an underlying "way" or "tao" or fundamental agreement about morality that seems to exist within all societies. While there are plenty of arguments for why this morality has come to exist among us (in the materialistic view, it is said to have provided certain primitive societies with evolutionary survival advantages), none of them ring as true to me as simply this: we know that certain behavior is right and wrong, because certain behavior is objectively, right and wrong, and this knowledge has been placed within us, by design.
This is not however the main thesis of the Abolition of Man (or even one of its theses, though reading the book certainly brings up these kinds of thoughts). Its main thesis has to do with the way in which a certain point of view, a reductionist materialistic point of view which teaches that there is no objective truth or beauty, or reason to be moved by a waterfall or a great piece of poetry, is destroying our souls. I could explain more. But it's a short book, and it should be read.
In what we might call the materialist camp, there are those who say that everything that exists came into being as a result of pure natural coincidence and happenstance. Each result has an undesigned and unintended natural prior cause, back through the evolution of a variety of species, the formation of the earth, and on back towards the great unprovoked beginning of all big banged things. And, there being no purposer, there is no purpose. If this is true, then, logically, certain other concepts must also be true. There can be, for example, no objective morality, nothing which is, objectively, good or bad, moral or immoral, if the universe exists for no reason. (When someone points this out to an atheist, they will often respond by missing the point. Christopher Hitchens, before his death, could give quite a speech on how offensive it was to suggest that he had to believe in a supernatural deity to know right from wrong. But this isn't the point. There are probably many atheists who are good people just as there are probably many religious people who are evil. The point is more fundamental: if there is no supernatural deity who created us for any greater purpose, if we just happen to exist, in the same way that a leaf may happen to fall in a forest, and with no greater cosmic significance, then there is, objectively speaking, no right and wrong.) If, as Shakespeare has Macbeth say, life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, then, as Shakespeare has Hamlet say: there is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so. We live in a world in which this fundamental and underlying belief system has become fairly pervasive, and it should therefore not surprise us that we increasingly live in a society which demands the right to determine for itself what is and is not moral. If there is no higher moral authority to turn to, then it makes perfect sense for every society, and indeed each individual, to decide on their own what is and is not moral, what is and is not objectively true, the question ultimately being purely subjective.
In the other camp, what might be called the supernatural or divine purpose camp, there are those who believe that the earth on which we stand, the cosmos that surrounds it, and each of us who find ourselves upon this sphere were created, by a creator, for a purpose. This point of view, likewise, leads to certain logical conclusions. If there is a God, who created us for some divine purpose, then there must be such a thing as objective morality, and objective truth, and our lives must have some objective purpose. Or, as Doctrine and Covenants 93:30 indicates: "All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence." This worldview suggests that we have a duty to determine what is objectively true and moral and to act in accordance with those truths. If someone claims to be a Prophet, with messages from God about true morality, or if some book claims to be the writings of such Prophets, including the revealed truths they have received, we have a duty to try to determine whether we believe and have faith that these claims are true, and, if so, to live, to the best of our ability, in accordance therewith. If there is a God, communicating his objective truths to us through revelation to Prophets, and if those revelations promise that we can know the truth of that which is revealed through prayer and personal inspiration from supernatural divinity into our own hearts, we have a duty to put such claims to those tests which have allegedly been divinely provided.
I personally find the materialist view to be more difficult to believe in, and to require, in a certain sense, greater "faith" in unlikely ideas, than the spiritual view. Reading about the big bang and the nature of time and space in a book like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, for example, makes my head spin in ways that a sermon on Heavenly Father's Plan of Happiness never does. There is, for example, this great logical fallacy in the materialist view: that modern man has been able to glean the great truths of that view, via an instrument, the human brain, which has just happened to come into existence, but which may, therefore, be completely inadequate to the purpose, having not been "designed" to perform any such function (or, indeed, any function). Alfred North Whitehead pointed this out, that we have no basis to believe in the reasoning of our brains unless we first presuppose that those brains are more powerful than we can explain through purely natural processes. Ironically, if we believe our minds were given to us through divine providence, then it becomes easier to credit their ability to glean scientific truths through reason. As C.S. Lewis put it, "One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific picture] . . . . the whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears. Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula or the remotest part obeys the thought laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory--in other words, unless Reason is an absolute--all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based." C.S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry", in The Weight of Glory And Other Addresses (Harper Collins e-books, 1949, Adobe Digital Edition May 2009) page 140.
Like Lewis, I hold to the spiritual, rather than the materialistic view of the cause and purpose of the world and my existence upon it. I also feel that the prevalence of the materialistic view in the modern world is the root cause of almost every trend currently destroying civilization.
It should therefore not be surprising that I am a huge fan of C.S. Lewis's book, The Abolition of Man, and believe it is one of the best pieces of writing to come out of the 20th Century. It is a book to be read, and re-read. It is not only an argument against the deconstructionist views of Macbeth and Hamlet, but a warning and a prophecy against the world their materialist views would lead us to. It appears, unfortunatley, to be working better as prophecy than warning.
This is not however the main thesis of the Abolition of Man (or even one of its theses, though reading the book certainly brings up these kinds of thoughts). Its main thesis has to do with the way in which a certain point of view, a reductionist materialistic point of view which teaches that there is no objective truth or beauty, or reason to be moved by a waterfall or a great piece of poetry, is destroying our souls. I could explain more. But it's a short book, and it should be read.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
I've got Sowell, or, Why I am a Conservative
In which I attempt to explain my politics, in the form of a letter to my children.
Dearly beloved:
Dearly beloved:
I have tried to resist the temptation to hit you over the head with my political beliefs, and have hoped to let you develop your own opinions about the world. But a man ought to explain his politics to his children at some point in his life, and this seems like as good a time as any to write mine down, in the hopes that maybe someday you will read this. I am a conservative, and I am not (in the modern sense of the word) a liberal. (When I use the term "liberal" in these thoughts, I do not mean to speak pejoratively of everyone who holds left-of-center political opinions. My ire is primarily directed against liberals in places of power: politicians, journalists, and intellectuals. I have many good friends who are Democrats. We don't talk about politics.) There are many reasons why I am a conservative. This letter explains some of them.
One reason is because of something that happened to me when I was 18.
During my Senior Year of High School, I was ambivalent about politics, confused enough by the left wing propaganda which had been spouted down upon me from my instructors that I hadn't bothered to vote in the Presidential Election of 1984, the first election in which I had been old enough to cast a ballot. Yes, it's true, to my everlasting shame, I missed out on my one and only chance to vote for Ronald Reagan, the man who won the Cold War. What's that Simon and Garfunkle song about the camera? "When I think of all the crap I learned in High School, dee-dee-doo-bee-do-be-do, it's a wonder I can think at aaaaallll." Reagan, it turned out, didn't need my support, winning re-election 49 States to 1, in what was obviously a very different Country than we have today. I had, you must understand, been taught to fear that re-electing Ronald Reagan would lead to a worldwide nuclear holocaust and the end of all life as we know it, just as you are taught that electing a Republican President will lead to a global warming holocaust that will cause the end of all life as we know it.
This is an important point, so let me pause in my narrative to make this digression. If you find yourself speaking to someone who presents himself as either Al Gore or THE SAVIOR OF ALL HUMANITY (and those terms can be used interchangeably), who wants you to live in constant fear and convince you that you must ACT to AVERT the GREAT CRISIS of your time by giving your money (in the form of money) and your freedom (in the form of both money and power, but mostly money) to THE RIGHT THINKING PEOPLE IN THE GOVERNMENT, or in other words by voting for Democrats, you are, by definition, speaking to a modern liberal. The great CRISIS, which requires that the government be given more power, you will find, is always changing. In my life there's been the imminent worldwide famine crisis, which would be created by the imminent overpopulation crisis (which we could only avert by losing all of our religious beliefs, subsidizing abortion, and buying Paul Ehrlich books), the imminent worldwide gas and energy shortage (which we could only avert by allowing Jimmy Carter to tell us how fast to drive), the imminent lack of landfill space, the imminent invasion of the Ford Pinto (against which only Ralph Nader could protect us), the imminent arrival of nuclear winter, the imminent arrival of a heterosexual AIDS epidemic (which we could only avert by teaching Kindergarteners about the evils of abstinence education), the imminent death of all children due to allegedly skyrocketing handgun deaths among minors, the imminent arrival of killer bees, the imminent arrival of genetically modified high fructose corn syrup, etc., all of which could only be averted if we voted against Republicans. And now, of course, your generation has been bequeathed the mother of all CRISES, the CRISIS OF CRISES, the CRISIS which will, in your lifetimes, give liberal politicians their raison d'etre: the imminent arrival of global cooling/global warming/climate change, which can only be averted by (1) large and irrevocable transfers of power and wealth to the Democratic party, (2) transferring all of America's manufacturing and oil drilling capability to our economic competitors in other parts of the world, (3) shutting down economically efficient coal-burning energy production facilities, in favor of far more expensive and less efficient "Green Energy" power plants, thereby impoverishing, through sky-high energy bills, anyone who lives in a place that requires air-conditioning in the summer or heat in the winter; (4) "stimulus" spending in the form of government transfers of money to fly-by-night "Green Energy" businesses who happen to be top Obama campaign contributors, (5) the establishment of a liberal one-party State, like they have in Mexico and California, (6) providing Sandra Fluke and Bill Clinton with free birth control for the rest of their natural lives, and, finally, (7) the revocation of all Constitutional provisions which might prevent items (1) through (6). Oh how I pity you. End of first digression.
During my Senior Year of High School, I was ambivalent about politics, confused enough by the left wing propaganda which had been spouted down upon me from my instructors that I hadn't bothered to vote in the Presidential Election of 1984, the first election in which I had been old enough to cast a ballot. Yes, it's true, to my everlasting shame, I missed out on my one and only chance to vote for Ronald Reagan, the man who won the Cold War. What's that Simon and Garfunkle song about the camera? "When I think of all the crap I learned in High School, dee-dee-doo-bee-do-be-do, it's a wonder I can think at aaaaallll." Reagan, it turned out, didn't need my support, winning re-election 49 States to 1, in what was obviously a very different Country than we have today. I had, you must understand, been taught to fear that re-electing Ronald Reagan would lead to a worldwide nuclear holocaust and the end of all life as we know it, just as you are taught that electing a Republican President will lead to a global warming holocaust that will cause the end of all life as we know it.
This is an important point, so let me pause in my narrative to make this digression. If you find yourself speaking to someone who presents himself as either Al Gore or THE SAVIOR OF ALL HUMANITY (and those terms can be used interchangeably), who wants you to live in constant fear and convince you that you must ACT to AVERT the GREAT CRISIS of your time by giving your money (in the form of money) and your freedom (in the form of both money and power, but mostly money) to THE RIGHT THINKING PEOPLE IN THE GOVERNMENT, or in other words by voting for Democrats, you are, by definition, speaking to a modern liberal. The great CRISIS, which requires that the government be given more power, you will find, is always changing. In my life there's been the imminent worldwide famine crisis, which would be created by the imminent overpopulation crisis (which we could only avert by losing all of our religious beliefs, subsidizing abortion, and buying Paul Ehrlich books), the imminent worldwide gas and energy shortage (which we could only avert by allowing Jimmy Carter to tell us how fast to drive), the imminent lack of landfill space, the imminent invasion of the Ford Pinto (against which only Ralph Nader could protect us), the imminent arrival of nuclear winter, the imminent arrival of a heterosexual AIDS epidemic (which we could only avert by teaching Kindergarteners about the evils of abstinence education), the imminent death of all children due to allegedly skyrocketing handgun deaths among minors, the imminent arrival of killer bees, the imminent arrival of genetically modified high fructose corn syrup, etc., all of which could only be averted if we voted against Republicans. And now, of course, your generation has been bequeathed the mother of all CRISES, the CRISIS OF CRISES, the CRISIS which will, in your lifetimes, give liberal politicians their raison d'etre: the imminent arrival of global cooling/global warming/climate change, which can only be averted by (1) large and irrevocable transfers of power and wealth to the Democratic party, (2) transferring all of America's manufacturing and oil drilling capability to our economic competitors in other parts of the world, (3) shutting down economically efficient coal-burning energy production facilities, in favor of far more expensive and less efficient "Green Energy" power plants, thereby impoverishing, through sky-high energy bills, anyone who lives in a place that requires air-conditioning in the summer or heat in the winter; (4) "stimulus" spending in the form of government transfers of money to fly-by-night "Green Energy" businesses who happen to be top Obama campaign contributors, (5) the establishment of a liberal one-party State, like they have in Mexico and California, (6) providing Sandra Fluke and Bill Clinton with free birth control for the rest of their natural lives, and, finally, (7) the revocation of all Constitutional provisions which might prevent items (1) through (6). Oh how I pity you. End of first digression.
A few months after that missed election, the summer after I graduated, I had the chance to go to Europe with my parents. One day during our travels we got on a bus in West Berlin and passed through Checkpoint Charlie, to go from one side of the Berlin Wall to the other, and tour the worker's paradise of communist East Berlin. While parked at Checkpoint Charlie, a large East German woman in a military uniform (who appeared very much as every James Bond film I had ever seen had conditioned me to assume a large East German woman in a military uniform should appear) got on the bus and looked through all of our baggage to ensure we were not bringing any "contraband" into East Berlin. Contraband would include western newspapers, books, or magazines. Apparently, in East Berlin, you weren't allowed to read any material which might not be approved by the government. We toured through East Berlin, a city from which no one could escape into West Berlin without finding a way through the Wall which kept them all imprisoned. Where West Berlin had been a thriving and busy metropolis, there seemed to be few people on the streets of East Berlin, and fewer cars, which didn't look very well made. I didn't know anything about economics at the time. I'd never heard of the book Wealth and Poverty or the names Milton Friedman and F.A Hayek, but it seemed pretty clear to me from a few hours looking out the Bus window onto East Berlin, after a morning in the busy western part of the City, that this socialism thing led to pretty drab architecture and no one apparently having any reason to be outdoors. We toured some very nice museums with artifacts from ancient Babylon, and ate at a cafe that was allowed to take West German money. We then got back on the bus and went back through Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin.
Here's where I thought things got interesting. Before leaving, we were given a brochure that discussed how wonderful life was in East Germany. The government guaranteed, this brochure said, that everyone had a job, free health care, guaranteed food, etc. No one, the brochure said, had anything to worry about in The German Democratic Republic. That phrase about not having anything to worry about is what has always stuck in the back of my mind. I remember my father making a caustic remark that what he loved about America was that he did have so much to worry about. I felt like I'd just been given a brochure for Satan's plan in the premortal existence: no freedom, no worries. The obvious question that was not answered, or even addressed, by the brochure was, if life in East Germany was so good, then why did the people have to be walled off from the Western world to prevent their escape, as though they were in prison (where, it might be noted, the inmates are also guaranteed free food and health care)? But what really interested me, and left a lasting impression on my 18 year old brain, was this: as we crossed back through Checkpoint Charlie, no one from West Berlin got on the bus to take the brochure away from us, as illicit "contraband." In the West, for all its problems, there was freedom of thought, even freedom to read about ideas that were directed at destroying, fomenting revolution in, and destroying, the West. Ever since that day I have gotten a little bit nervous when some politician promises me freedom from worry or some free government benefit, in exchange for my vote. I fear such security comes with a Wall. Also, I have ever since that day had an adverse reaction to the word "free" especially when spoken by a government official or a would-be government official. I don't buy it. I think of the word "free" spoken by a politician the way Inigo Montoya thinks of Vizzini's use of the word "inconceivable": "You keep on using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means." And so, that day, something clicked in me, which eventually made me a conservative, and not a liberal. I'm sure I didn't put the idea into those words exactly at that point, but something lodged in my brain and festered to produce the conservative I later became.
This is also when I began to doubt the mental capacity of socialists. I had to wonder: Is the government of this nation really so stupid as to not understand the impression that is made by going through this exercise, of making sure we don't have any western literature with us to smuggle into the East, but then giving us Eastern literature no one will take away from us on the other side of the wall? Are they really so stupid that they do not understand that that experience is going to leave a much longer-lasting impression on us than what's written in their silly brochure? Yes. Apparently. Socialists really are just that stupid. And therefore should not be allowed to govern.
(There being, thanks to the President my High School Government and U.S. History teachers dissuaded me from voting for, no more Berlin Wall to drive through today, it is now much more difficult to experience a similar youthful epiphany. Nevertheless, reading the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of the Brothers Karamazov, or comparing the current economic conditions of majority-Democrat California and majority-Republican Texas during any given year can lead you down essentially the same path.)
This is also when I began to doubt the mental capacity of socialists. I had to wonder: Is the government of this nation really so stupid as to not understand the impression that is made by going through this exercise, of making sure we don't have any western literature with us to smuggle into the East, but then giving us Eastern literature no one will take away from us on the other side of the wall? Are they really so stupid that they do not understand that that experience is going to leave a much longer-lasting impression on us than what's written in their silly brochure? Yes. Apparently. Socialists really are just that stupid. And therefore should not be allowed to govern.
(There being, thanks to the President my High School Government and U.S. History teachers dissuaded me from voting for, no more Berlin Wall to drive through today, it is now much more difficult to experience a similar youthful epiphany. Nevertheless, reading the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of the Brothers Karamazov, or comparing the current economic conditions of majority-Democrat California and majority-Republican Texas during any given year can lead you down essentially the same path.)
But there are many other reasons why I'm a conservative: my own personal pushback against a news and entertainment media whose unfairness annoys me to no end (if we had a truly objective press in this Country, half my motivation for voting would disappear); my belief that, where tensions exist between liberty and equality, liberty is the more important value; my respect for the rule of law as opposed to the rule of raw political power; and perhaps as important as any: my love for the writings of Thomas Sowell, one of my favorite political writers of all time. For my money, Thomas Sowell's best book is A Conflict of Visions.
In this book, Sowell tries to explain why the same people always seem to be on the same side of various ideological divides over issues which seemingly have nothing in common. What does gun control, for example, have to do with the proper role of the judiciary, and why can you often predict how someone will come down on one of these issues, based on their position on the other? According to Sowell, there are competing views ("visions") held by different people in society, about the underlying facts of human nature, and the human condition. These underlying visions determine people's reactions to a variety of issues, which seemingly have no commonality, and allow us to predict their political preferences.
Conservatives, argues Sowell, have a constrained and pessimistic view of humanity and its potential in this mortal sphere (the "tragic vision"). They recognize that scarcity exists such that no political or economic choice can be exercised in a vacuum, but that all choices require a trade-off. They see human beings as selfish, greedy, and aggressive, and likely to respond only to incentives which personally benefit themselves. This mindset produces certain political responses. Conservatives are skeptical of the idea that giving power to government will allow that government to create a better and more utopian society, fearing instead that (i) the human beings who are given such power will inevitably abuse it, based on the inherent evil of human nature, and (ii) utopia is not possible on this earth in any event, such that attempts to forcibly move society in an allegedly utopian direction will lead to unintended adverse consequences. (You want more equality, then get ready to take away individual rights.) Conservatives also have a constrained view of the amount of knowledge that one human being, or small group of human beings, can have to make decisions for an entire society. They therefore believe that power should be diffused, for example through individual decisions taking place throughout the market, rather than concentrated in the hands of a small number of persons trying to direct a command economy. Similarly, a small group of judges are more likely to get things wrong than a large group of people making democratic decisions, such that a Judge's role should be limited to deciding particular cases and controversies within the parameters of laws established democratically based on objective criteria that will apply as uniformly as possible, rather than making sweeping societal changes from the bench.
This view of human nature also leads conservatives to be wary of innovation, no not technological innovation, we like our iPhones just fine, but innovation in fundamental societal institutions, such as the family, or the meaning of marriage. Again, the idea here is to trust in the wisdom of the many, as represented by the hard-won wisdom of generations past, rather than the innovative ideas of some vanguard few. A perfect example of this "constrained" or "tragic vision" is found in this quote from historian Will Durant, as quoted by Sowell: "Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history."
This view of human nature also leads conservatives to be wary of innovation, no not technological innovation, we like our iPhones just fine, but innovation in fundamental societal institutions, such as the family, or the meaning of marriage. Again, the idea here is to trust in the wisdom of the many, as represented by the hard-won wisdom of generations past, rather than the innovative ideas of some vanguard few. A perfect example of this "constrained" or "tragic vision" is found in this quote from historian Will Durant, as quoted by Sowell: "Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history."
Liberals, argues Sowell, have a more optimistic and expansive vision of human nature and the human condition (the "vision of the anointed"). Thus, for example, a classic liberal response to war prevention is to argue for unilateral disarmament, in the optimistic view that a nation's enemies will respond in kind if only all the goodhearted people of the world will start the ball rolling. The thought that military weakness might provoke an enemy is much more likely to occur to a person with a tragic vision of human nature than with the more optimistic vision of a liberal. What's more, the liberal believes that one human being, or small group of persons, if expert in a particular field, may be able to make sweeping decisions for an entire society, which will benefit that society, since, under this expansive view of human nature, it is possible for one individual or a small group of individuals (the anointed experts) to be sufficiently wise and expert enough to make such decisions, if only given enough power to do so, with potentially beneficent consequences, and little likelihood of unintended adverse consequences. The liberal tendency to discount tradition is therefore perfectly in keeping with the liberal tendency to approve of an activist judiciary overturning democratically created laws. In both cases, it is the wisdom of the few, expert and anointed, that is being favored over the wisdom of the many. In lieu of Durant's view on the wisdom of tradition, liberals are moved by the words of the serpent in George Bernard Shaw's play Back to Methuselah which Robert Kennedy made his catchphrase: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why'? I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not'?"
Just recently, while watching the PBS Newshour, I heard two opposing views of how to bring down healthcare costs which was a microcosm of these two worldviews: one conservative expert (whose name I don't remember) arguing for the need to deregulate the field and allow market competitive forces to bring down costs, with the liberal expert (the New York Times' Paul Krugman, who really should have auditioned for Grima Wormtongue in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films) decrying the conservative faith in the "magic" of the markets and arguing for the need for an expert panel to be appointed to oversee certain health care determinations. That the "magic" of the market had beaten the command economies of the 20th century every time did not keep Krugman from a disdainful liberal sneer at anyone who would trust the diffuse economic decisions made through the market.
This leads me to my second digression, on the nature of the "disdainful liberal sneer." The disdainful sneer is, of course, the fallback position of every liberal who does not want to bother to articulate a coherent response to a conservative position. Liberals are not to be blamed for needing this fallback position. Because 98.7% of High School Government and History teachers, University professors, journalists, and the reigning elite of the news and entertainment media are all liberal, it is possible (without even trying) to live one's entire life without ever being exposed to a conservative idea as actually articulated by a conservative, rather than as caricatured and straw-manned by a liberal. (See, for example, The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, in which he expresses his astonishment, as a well educated adult, when he, for the first time, picked up a book of conservative philosphy and discovered that there were actually coherent ideas in there.) It would, by contrast, be impossible for a conservative to live his or her entire life without ever being exposed to a liberal idea, because those ideas are so pervasive in the culture that surrounds us. Thus, conservatives, of necessity, are required to think through and learn to articulate a defense for their political beliefs, which liberals are simply never required to learn how to do (like squirrels who live near a well-travelled national park trail, and thus never learn to forage).
Because of this, when a liberal is actually confronted with a conservative who is capable of articulating their positions in a manner which does not conform to the caricature, the liberal (having no training for such an event) is incapable of responding, and will at first, albeit momentarily, look on with disbelief, and then resort to the disdainful sneer. A perfect example of this may be found by reviewing the 2012 Presidential Debates. Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are extremely intelligent human beings, and if they had both taken the other's ideas seriously enough to form a response, the first debate might have led to some enlightening discussion. But, clearly, only one of the candidates had felt the need to bother to do this. Therefore, in the first debate, which everyone on all sides of the political aisle unanimously agreed was a clear Romney victory, Obama started to get this sort of stunned look on his face, as though he could not believe that an actual human being had shown up to debate him, and that this human being bore no resemblance to the cartoon character which Obama's palace guard in the press had spent the past several months creating. Watching the subsequent debates on television, it was immediately clear that team Biden and Obama had spent at least as much of their preparation time practicing their sneers and guffaws as they had memorizing dishonest talking points.
Every generation of liberals is given a charismatic spokesperson or two who teaches liberals that they do not need to be able to articulate any basis for their political philosophy, if they simply know the right moment to sneer. For your generation, this role is being filled, quite well and admirably, by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But they are only the latest in a long line of such elite tutors to the liberal masses. C.S. Lewis described their schtick perfectly decades before they were born, in the Screwtape Letters, in which his Satanic character Screwtape explained the Stewart/Colbert sneer as follows: "But flippancy is [from the devil's point of view] the best [form of humour] of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subect is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy bulds up around a man the finest armour-plating against [God] that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers [as Satan would see them] inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it." Id. End of digression.
This leads me to my second digression, on the nature of the "disdainful liberal sneer." The disdainful sneer is, of course, the fallback position of every liberal who does not want to bother to articulate a coherent response to a conservative position. Liberals are not to be blamed for needing this fallback position. Because 98.7% of High School Government and History teachers, University professors, journalists, and the reigning elite of the news and entertainment media are all liberal, it is possible (without even trying) to live one's entire life without ever being exposed to a conservative idea as actually articulated by a conservative, rather than as caricatured and straw-manned by a liberal. (See, for example, The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, in which he expresses his astonishment, as a well educated adult, when he, for the first time, picked up a book of conservative philosphy and discovered that there were actually coherent ideas in there.) It would, by contrast, be impossible for a conservative to live his or her entire life without ever being exposed to a liberal idea, because those ideas are so pervasive in the culture that surrounds us. Thus, conservatives, of necessity, are required to think through and learn to articulate a defense for their political beliefs, which liberals are simply never required to learn how to do (like squirrels who live near a well-travelled national park trail, and thus never learn to forage).
Because of this, when a liberal is actually confronted with a conservative who is capable of articulating their positions in a manner which does not conform to the caricature, the liberal (having no training for such an event) is incapable of responding, and will at first, albeit momentarily, look on with disbelief, and then resort to the disdainful sneer. A perfect example of this may be found by reviewing the 2012 Presidential Debates. Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are extremely intelligent human beings, and if they had both taken the other's ideas seriously enough to form a response, the first debate might have led to some enlightening discussion. But, clearly, only one of the candidates had felt the need to bother to do this. Therefore, in the first debate, which everyone on all sides of the political aisle unanimously agreed was a clear Romney victory, Obama started to get this sort of stunned look on his face, as though he could not believe that an actual human being had shown up to debate him, and that this human being bore no resemblance to the cartoon character which Obama's palace guard in the press had spent the past several months creating. Watching the subsequent debates on television, it was immediately clear that team Biden and Obama had spent at least as much of their preparation time practicing their sneers and guffaws as they had memorizing dishonest talking points.
Every generation of liberals is given a charismatic spokesperson or two who teaches liberals that they do not need to be able to articulate any basis for their political philosophy, if they simply know the right moment to sneer. For your generation, this role is being filled, quite well and admirably, by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But they are only the latest in a long line of such elite tutors to the liberal masses. C.S. Lewis described their schtick perfectly decades before they were born, in the Screwtape Letters, in which his Satanic character Screwtape explained the Stewart/Colbert sneer as follows: "But flippancy is [from the devil's point of view] the best [form of humour] of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subect is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy bulds up around a man the finest armour-plating against [God] that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers [as Satan would see them] inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it." Id. End of digression.
The American Revolution was led by people who believed in the tragic vision. The Federalist Papers are full of pessimistic comments about human nature, the human condition, and the potential abuses of concentrated power. Shortly after winning the Revolutionary War, our founders, realizing they needed a more powerful central government than that provided under the Articles of Confederation, nevertheless placed systemic separations of power within that stronger government which would prevent too much power from being concentrated into too few hands, and which would, it was hoped, harness human nature's natural selfishness into checks and balances against any one branch of government growing too strong (as the holders of one branch of government would selfishly fight against encroachments by the other). Our founders also created a free market economic system which allowed economic decisions to be diffused broadly across society, rather than a command economy controlled by anointed elites.
The French Revolution was, by contrast, pursued by those with a vision of the anointed. As Sowell points out, Condorcet, one of the architects of the French Revolution, criticized America's Constitution, because its checks and balances would prevent the government from obtaining enough power to do what it needed to do to remake society. (Condorcet may have had a change of heart shortly before he died in jail as a political prisoner of the more powerful kind of government the French revolutionaries espoused, but we'll never know.) The communist revolutions of the 20th century were also based on an expansionist vision of the anointed, as Stalin, Pol Pot, and others, took up the power necessary to remake their respective societies into new Utopias, in the process killing millions of their own citizens and affirming that the tragic vision of human nature, while less appealing than the vision of the anointed, has the advantage of actually being accurate.
I just finished another Sowell book. Intellectuals and Society is Sowell's attempt, in one volume, to trace how the liberal vision of the anointed, taken up by the intelligentsia and reigning supreme in academia, journalism, the media, and the courts, has adversely influenced virtually all aspects of 20th Century American life, from military policy to family structure and everything in between. It is a 416 page wail of protest against some of the stupider ideas that impacted the last 100 years of our history. It is not, in my opinion, as good a book as A Conflict of Visions, if you prefer depth to breadth, but if you are only going to read one Sowell book, and want a basic overview of his main theories and their application to various political and historical events of Sowell's lifetime, this is the book to read. It will be, I fear, endlessly applicable to the 21st Century in which you, my children, will live.
So here then, is my political philosophy:
The rule of law not of men.
Hobbes and Locke not Rousseau and Robespierre.
The American revolution not the French.
The Minutemen not the Jacobins.
Adam Smith not Karl Marx.
The invisible hand not the supervision of the elites.
Free markets not command economies.
Checks, balances and separation of powers not unfettered bureaucratic power.
The text of the Constitution not the political opinions of the judiciary.
Liberty not dictatorship.
Equal opportunities, not equalized outcomes.
Rights defined as what the government cannot do to you, not rights defined as what the government must give to you.
The dispersion of economic and political power not its concentration.
Reverence for the divine not the political cult of personality.
A government wealthy and powerful enough to protect against foreign enemies and domestic criminals, provide a physical and legal infrastructure for free market economic activity, and protect against business monopolies and externalities, but not powerful enough to attempt utopia.
Family structures that put the needs of children, not the wants of adults, first.
Education which teaches children knowledge and how to think, not ideology and what to think.
The promotion of greater personal responsibility, not the celebration of increasing personal license.
Your Dad,
November 2012
I just finished another Sowell book. Intellectuals and Society is Sowell's attempt, in one volume, to trace how the liberal vision of the anointed, taken up by the intelligentsia and reigning supreme in academia, journalism, the media, and the courts, has adversely influenced virtually all aspects of 20th Century American life, from military policy to family structure and everything in between. It is a 416 page wail of protest against some of the stupider ideas that impacted the last 100 years of our history. It is not, in my opinion, as good a book as A Conflict of Visions, if you prefer depth to breadth, but if you are only going to read one Sowell book, and want a basic overview of his main theories and their application to various political and historical events of Sowell's lifetime, this is the book to read. It will be, I fear, endlessly applicable to the 21st Century in which you, my children, will live.
So here then, is my political philosophy:
The rule of law not of men.
Hobbes and Locke not Rousseau and Robespierre.
The American revolution not the French.
The Minutemen not the Jacobins.
Adam Smith not Karl Marx.
The invisible hand not the supervision of the elites.
Free markets not command economies.
Checks, balances and separation of powers not unfettered bureaucratic power.
The text of the Constitution not the political opinions of the judiciary.
Liberty not dictatorship.
Equal opportunities, not equalized outcomes.
Rights defined as what the government cannot do to you, not rights defined as what the government must give to you.
The dispersion of economic and political power not its concentration.
Reverence for the divine not the political cult of personality.
A government wealthy and powerful enough to protect against foreign enemies and domestic criminals, provide a physical and legal infrastructure for free market economic activity, and protect against business monopolies and externalities, but not powerful enough to attempt utopia.
Family structures that put the needs of children, not the wants of adults, first.
Education which teaches children knowledge and how to think, not ideology and what to think.
The promotion of greater personal responsibility, not the celebration of increasing personal license.
Your Dad,
November 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto
The pilgrims on the Mayflower weren't the only Europeans to colonize America. This book tells the story of the Dutch Immigrants who made New Amsterdam, now New York, right from the start, a multi-cultural center of commerce, full of fast-talking rights-minded citizens. Though much of this story is only recently unearthed, based on an ongoing translation, still underway, of 12,000 pages of records of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, it should still be on the shortlist of essential books for anyone who wants to understand U.S. History. For your money, you'll be introduced to some new founding fathers, like Adriaen van der Donck, and learn the origin of cookies. What could be more American than that?
Saturday, September 1, 2012
John Adams by David McCullough
"If we look into history, we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings and spreading their influence, until the whole globe is subjected to their ways. When they have reached the summit of grandeur, some minute and unsuspected cause commonly affects their ruin, and the empire of the world is transferred to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant village, inhabited only by a few abandoned ruffians, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous height, and excelled in arts and arms all the nations that preceded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think should have established it in supreme dominion) by removing all danger, suffered it to sink into debauchery, and made it at length an easy prey to Barbarians.
England immediately upon this began to increase . . . in power and magnificence, and is now the greatest nation upon the globe.
Soon after the Reformation a few people came over into the new world for conscience sake. Perhaps this (apparently) trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. It looks likely to me. For if we can remove the turbulent Gallics, our people according to exactest computations, will in another century, become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we have (I must say) all the naval stores of the nation in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas, and then the united force of all Europe, will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us."
A young and remarkably prescient John Adams, foretelling events in which he would later play a leading part, as quoted in David McCullough, John Adams (Simon & Schuster 2001), pp. 39-40.
I recently re-read this, one of my favorite books of all time.
Before McCullough's biography, John Adams had not been treated well by most historians, who, highlighting his envy and vanity, typically cast him as a sort of grubby Nixon to Jefferson's elegant JFK.
But McCullough is a generous biographer, who comes to genuinely like his subjects, and has a talent for seeing them the way they saw themselves. Therefore, he gives us a John Adams who is cast in the best possible light. Adams' adherence to principle, as in his defense of the British soldiers charged with the "Boston Massacre," is highlighted, together with his historic role in the Second Continental Congress, where he took upon himself the role of chief advocate for and political architect of the vote for independence. And the importance of his later achievements, in negotiating a loan from Holland for the new American republic, and, as our second President, midwifing our first navy and keeping the young United States out of a needless war with France, when short term political calculations would have suggested a different course, are also emphasized.
When describing the episodes which have done the most damage to Adams' historic reputation (his inability to follow Franklin's example in dealing with the French with a light touch, his much-mocked arguments for high-sounding titles for the President, his signing of the alien and sedition acts) McCullough bends over backwards to give us the context of the times, and the experiences which would have caused Adams to react as he did, so that even these events are seen through a friendly eye, as one might tell of the poor business decisions of a nevertheless beloved uncle.
"Now to what higher object, to what greater character, can any mortal aspire than to be possessed of all this knowledge, well digested and ready at command, to assist the feeble and friendless, to discountenance the haughty and lawless, to procure redress to wrongs, the advancement of right, to assert and maintin liberty and virtue, to discourage and abolish tyranny and vice?" John Adams on being a lawyer, p. 53.
But most of all, McCullough makes us love Adams, despite whatever his faults may have been, by repeatedly quoting the virtues, values, and noble sentiments in which Adams believed, as expressed in Adams' voluminous writings. The remarkable relationship he had with Abigail and their incredible correspondence during their many years apart, his support for public education in the constitution of Massachussets which he single-handedly wrote, and his love of learning and reading as expressed in his letters to his children, his writings explaining his abhorrence of slavery, his accurate foresight on the likely outcome of the French Revolution, and his post-Presidential correspondence with Jefferson, as they finally tried to explain themselves to one another, before both dying on the same day, the 50th anniversary of July 4, 1776, are all here. And reading so many of Adams' own words on his political and social and religious and educational beliefs, it is impossible not to admire him. Indeed, his words are so uplifting, that reading this book becomes, itself, like reading the scriptures, an uplifting exercise: true chicken soup for the soul.
This is a great book that every American should read. As McCullough has said, we are extremely lucky, as a nation, in knowing so many details about when and how our country began, and we cannot possibly know too much about our founders.
"If [the] empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and all morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained? The doctrine of human equality is founded entirely in the Christian doctrine that we are all children of the same Father, all accountable to Him for our conduct to one another, all equally bound to respect each other's self love." John Adams on religion (p. 619.)
(The HBO mini-series purportedly based on this book is extremely well done and fascinating. But it must be said that it gives us McCullough's Adams only in the first two (and best) episodes, then reverts to a much more negative portrait, keeping with how Adams has typically been treated, in its later episodes. Maybe that's inevitable, given that its harder to "show" written words, Adams' best quality, rather than actions, where he stumbled. Or maybe that's because the producers had their own historic beliefs and agenda, or just wanted to give Paul Giamatti a chance to chew scenery by showing Adams descending into various personality disorders. In any event, the truth about who the real John Adams was is probably somewhere between the movie and the book. But I like the book better, and choose to believe in and admire that version of the man.)
This famous painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, which hangs in the Rotunda of the Capitol, depicts a signing ceremony which never actually took place. The faces though, are thought to be highly accurate, as the artist spent many years tracking down and doing sketches of the signers. The five men in the Center of the Portrait are Adams' "Committee" for drawing up the document, including Adams, Franklin, and of course Jefferson, who, according to Adams' account, was asked by Adams to draw up the first draft because he, unlike Adams, was popular and well-liked, was a better writer than Adams, and was from the largest colony, Virgina, which ought to be seen as at the center of this business. Adams' advocacy for independence in the Second Continental Congress caused him to be dubbed "the Voice" of independence, with Jefferson called its "Pen." Remarkably, both men would die on the same day: the 50th anniversary of July 4, 1776.
“I never delighted much in contemplating commas and colons, or in spelling or measuring syllables; but now . . . if I attempt to look at these little objects, I find my imagination, in spite of all my exertions, roaming in the Milky Way, among the nebulae, those mighty orbs, and stupendous orbits of suns, planets, satellites, and comets, which compose the incomprehensible universe; and if I do not sink into nothing in my own estimation, I feel an irresistible impulse to fall on my knees, in adoration of the power that moves, the wisdom that directs, and the benevolence that sanctifies this wonderful whole.” The elderly John Adams, as quoted in, David McCullough, John Adams (Simon & Schuster 2001), p. 630.
Completed (second time) September 1, 2012.
Rating: 10 out of 10.
England immediately upon this began to increase . . . in power and magnificence, and is now the greatest nation upon the globe.
Soon after the Reformation a few people came over into the new world for conscience sake. Perhaps this (apparently) trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. It looks likely to me. For if we can remove the turbulent Gallics, our people according to exactest computations, will in another century, become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we have (I must say) all the naval stores of the nation in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas, and then the united force of all Europe, will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us."
A young and remarkably prescient John Adams, foretelling events in which he would later play a leading part, as quoted in David McCullough, John Adams (Simon & Schuster 2001), pp. 39-40.
I recently re-read this, one of my favorite books of all time.
Before McCullough's biography, John Adams had not been treated well by most historians, who, highlighting his envy and vanity, typically cast him as a sort of grubby Nixon to Jefferson's elegant JFK.
But McCullough is a generous biographer, who comes to genuinely like his subjects, and has a talent for seeing them the way they saw themselves. Therefore, he gives us a John Adams who is cast in the best possible light. Adams' adherence to principle, as in his defense of the British soldiers charged with the "Boston Massacre," is highlighted, together with his historic role in the Second Continental Congress, where he took upon himself the role of chief advocate for and political architect of the vote for independence. And the importance of his later achievements, in negotiating a loan from Holland for the new American republic, and, as our second President, midwifing our first navy and keeping the young United States out of a needless war with France, when short term political calculations would have suggested a different course, are also emphasized.
When describing the episodes which have done the most damage to Adams' historic reputation (his inability to follow Franklin's example in dealing with the French with a light touch, his much-mocked arguments for high-sounding titles for the President, his signing of the alien and sedition acts) McCullough bends over backwards to give us the context of the times, and the experiences which would have caused Adams to react as he did, so that even these events are seen through a friendly eye, as one might tell of the poor business decisions of a nevertheless beloved uncle.
"Now to what higher object, to what greater character, can any mortal aspire than to be possessed of all this knowledge, well digested and ready at command, to assist the feeble and friendless, to discountenance the haughty and lawless, to procure redress to wrongs, the advancement of right, to assert and maintin liberty and virtue, to discourage and abolish tyranny and vice?" John Adams on being a lawyer, p. 53.
But most of all, McCullough makes us love Adams, despite whatever his faults may have been, by repeatedly quoting the virtues, values, and noble sentiments in which Adams believed, as expressed in Adams' voluminous writings. The remarkable relationship he had with Abigail and their incredible correspondence during their many years apart, his support for public education in the constitution of Massachussets which he single-handedly wrote, and his love of learning and reading as expressed in his letters to his children, his writings explaining his abhorrence of slavery, his accurate foresight on the likely outcome of the French Revolution, and his post-Presidential correspondence with Jefferson, as they finally tried to explain themselves to one another, before both dying on the same day, the 50th anniversary of July 4, 1776, are all here. And reading so many of Adams' own words on his political and social and religious and educational beliefs, it is impossible not to admire him. Indeed, his words are so uplifting, that reading this book becomes, itself, like reading the scriptures, an uplifting exercise: true chicken soup for the soul.
This is a great book that every American should read. As McCullough has said, we are extremely lucky, as a nation, in knowing so many details about when and how our country began, and we cannot possibly know too much about our founders.
"If [the] empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and all morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained? The doctrine of human equality is founded entirely in the Christian doctrine that we are all children of the same Father, all accountable to Him for our conduct to one another, all equally bound to respect each other's self love." John Adams on religion (p. 619.)
(The HBO mini-series purportedly based on this book is extremely well done and fascinating. But it must be said that it gives us McCullough's Adams only in the first two (and best) episodes, then reverts to a much more negative portrait, keeping with how Adams has typically been treated, in its later episodes. Maybe that's inevitable, given that its harder to "show" written words, Adams' best quality, rather than actions, where he stumbled. Or maybe that's because the producers had their own historic beliefs and agenda, or just wanted to give Paul Giamatti a chance to chew scenery by showing Adams descending into various personality disorders. In any event, the truth about who the real John Adams was is probably somewhere between the movie and the book. But I like the book better, and choose to believe in and admire that version of the man.)
This famous painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, which hangs in the Rotunda of the Capitol, depicts a signing ceremony which never actually took place. The faces though, are thought to be highly accurate, as the artist spent many years tracking down and doing sketches of the signers. The five men in the Center of the Portrait are Adams' "Committee" for drawing up the document, including Adams, Franklin, and of course Jefferson, who, according to Adams' account, was asked by Adams to draw up the first draft because he, unlike Adams, was popular and well-liked, was a better writer than Adams, and was from the largest colony, Virgina, which ought to be seen as at the center of this business. Adams' advocacy for independence in the Second Continental Congress caused him to be dubbed "the Voice" of independence, with Jefferson called its "Pen." Remarkably, both men would die on the same day: the 50th anniversary of July 4, 1776.
“I never delighted much in contemplating commas and colons, or in spelling or measuring syllables; but now . . . if I attempt to look at these little objects, I find my imagination, in spite of all my exertions, roaming in the Milky Way, among the nebulae, those mighty orbs, and stupendous orbits of suns, planets, satellites, and comets, which compose the incomprehensible universe; and if I do not sink into nothing in my own estimation, I feel an irresistible impulse to fall on my knees, in adoration of the power that moves, the wisdom that directs, and the benevolence that sanctifies this wonderful whole.” The elderly John Adams, as quoted in, David McCullough, John Adams (Simon & Schuster 2001), p. 630.
Completed (second time) September 1, 2012.
Rating: 10 out of 10.
Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
Subtitled "A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President" this is Candice Millard's portrait of the assasination and slow and painful death (caused as much by the treatment as the bullet) of President James Garfield. A fascinating snapshot of a forgotten period in American history, with interesting vignettes of such famous luminaries as Alexander Graham Bell, and an important moral: medicine can kill you.
When considering the long line of mediocrities who ruled the United States from the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the 20th Century, it's extremely sad to learn what a remarkable man James Garfield was, and to contemplate what a great President and force for good he likely would have been. At a time when the nation needed an effective advocate for more racial equality and civil service reform (to end the corrupt spoils system and the reign of machine politicians) the brilliant and self-made Garfield was ready to champion both causes before he was, unfortunately, gunned down by a madman early in his administration. Well worth the read.
Completed May 25, 2012
Rating 7.5 out of 10.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
The Count of Monte Cristo
Some classic books are still in print more than a century after being written because they have great moral themes (Les Miserables, say). Others, because they are full of symbolism in need of decoding, thus giving high school English teachers and college literature professors a justification for their existence as they assign books which will allow the instructor to show his or her chops in the role of literary priest mediating between the text and its readers (Moby Dick comes to mind).
The Count of Monte Cristo, by contrast, is still in print because it's just a really great, page-turning, potboiler of a read. There is no great moral message here (it is, after all, a soap opera revenge fantasy) and if there was any symbolism I was too busy being entertained by the story to pick up on it. What an incredibly fun book. Yes, it's very long and drags a little in the middle, and yes, it's hard to believe the young innocent Edmond at the beginning of the book has any relationship at all to the Sherlock Holmes/Moriarty/James Bond/James Bond villain/Dracula/Tony Stark figure that is the Count of Monte Cristo. Doesn't matter. The book works as pure entertainment and it's one of my new favorite fictions. It would be great if someone would create a min-series of this. The Jim Cavaziel movie just didn't do the lengthy plot any kind of justice. (The Robin Buss translation is the one to read.)
Completed: August 2, 2012
Rating: 9/10.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt
"A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life." John Stuart Mill (as quoted by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind).
"Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conuest, through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that makes cooperation impossible." Bertrand Russell (as quoted by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind).
This book attempts to explain the moral psychology which motivates liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Haidt claims to be a former liberal whose studies of different political philosophies eventually turned him into a moderate. Certain of his asides, however, reveal that he's still largely liberal at heart. (For a conservative like myself, there is something extremely humorous but bittersweet about Haidt's descriptions of his astonished reactions to his first readings in conservative philosophy, which he had managed to arrive at well-educated adulthood without ever being exposed to from an actual conservative writer. It certainly reinforces the common conservative complaint that liberalism has so taken over the universities and the media that it is possible for liberals to live their lives simply and completely unaware of what conservatives believe, beyond the standard liberal caricatures of those beliefs.) As such, this book can be seen as a mostly liberal writer's take on much of the same territory covered in conservative Thomas Sowell's book, A Conflict of Visions.
Haidt's focus, unlike Sowell's, however, isn't on differing visions of how the world works, as the source of different political philosophies. Rather, Haidt's focus is on the underlying moral intuitions (think of what, intuitively, makes you angry, or disgusted, or feel a sense of reverence) which compel us to see the world a certain way. According to Haidt, these emotional intuitions (the elephant) come first, and the arguments and reasoning we come up with to justify those feelings (the rider on the elephant), come second, as post hoc justifications. Liberals' intuitions are largely based on caring and fairness. Conservatives rely on these moral intuitions as well, but also rely on additional moral intuitions which liberals often reject: loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty.
Haidt is a gifted writer and this engaging book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in politics and the culture wars, from either side of the aisle. I never felt I was reading a polemic, and felt my own moral feelings and political beliefs from my side of the aisle were, for the most part, fairly represented. As an explanation for differing political viewpoints, this could be, for many readers, a paradigm-shifting book, that can enlighten every political story we read.
I do have two criticisms: I didn't care for Haidt's treatment of religion, and, as a person of faith, found his football game metaphor offensive. I also didn't care for how much of the book was spent discussing how humans evolved to develop the moral intuitions Haidt examines. On these questions (of how things came to be), Haidt's arguments are not nearly as convincing as his descriptions of the much more interesting and relevant descriptions of how things are. As Haidt himself notes, "theories are cheap. Anyone can invent one. Progress happens when theories are tested, supported, and corrected by empirical evidence." The problem with Haidt's theories of evolutionary psychology is that they are only theories, or more properly just hypotheses, which, absent a time machine or a million year long lab experiment are untestable and therefore pat and unhelpful. Nevertheless, this book was otherwise completely worth the read.
Completed: 2012
Rating: 9/10
"Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conuest, through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that makes cooperation impossible." Bertrand Russell (as quoted by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind).
This book attempts to explain the moral psychology which motivates liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Haidt claims to be a former liberal whose studies of different political philosophies eventually turned him into a moderate. Certain of his asides, however, reveal that he's still largely liberal at heart. (For a conservative like myself, there is something extremely humorous but bittersweet about Haidt's descriptions of his astonished reactions to his first readings in conservative philosophy, which he had managed to arrive at well-educated adulthood without ever being exposed to from an actual conservative writer. It certainly reinforces the common conservative complaint that liberalism has so taken over the universities and the media that it is possible for liberals to live their lives simply and completely unaware of what conservatives believe, beyond the standard liberal caricatures of those beliefs.) As such, this book can be seen as a mostly liberal writer's take on much of the same territory covered in conservative Thomas Sowell's book, A Conflict of Visions.
Haidt's focus, unlike Sowell's, however, isn't on differing visions of how the world works, as the source of different political philosophies. Rather, Haidt's focus is on the underlying moral intuitions (think of what, intuitively, makes you angry, or disgusted, or feel a sense of reverence) which compel us to see the world a certain way. According to Haidt, these emotional intuitions (the elephant) come first, and the arguments and reasoning we come up with to justify those feelings (the rider on the elephant), come second, as post hoc justifications. Liberals' intuitions are largely based on caring and fairness. Conservatives rely on these moral intuitions as well, but also rely on additional moral intuitions which liberals often reject: loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty.
Haidt is a gifted writer and this engaging book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in politics and the culture wars, from either side of the aisle. I never felt I was reading a polemic, and felt my own moral feelings and political beliefs from my side of the aisle were, for the most part, fairly represented. As an explanation for differing political viewpoints, this could be, for many readers, a paradigm-shifting book, that can enlighten every political story we read.
I do have two criticisms: I didn't care for Haidt's treatment of religion, and, as a person of faith, found his football game metaphor offensive. I also didn't care for how much of the book was spent discussing how humans evolved to develop the moral intuitions Haidt examines. On these questions (of how things came to be), Haidt's arguments are not nearly as convincing as his descriptions of the much more interesting and relevant descriptions of how things are. As Haidt himself notes, "theories are cheap. Anyone can invent one. Progress happens when theories are tested, supported, and corrected by empirical evidence." The problem with Haidt's theories of evolutionary psychology is that they are only theories, or more properly just hypotheses, which, absent a time machine or a million year long lab experiment are untestable and therefore pat and unhelpful. Nevertheless, this book was otherwise completely worth the read.
Completed: 2012
Rating: 9/10
Monday, May 28, 2012
Civilization, The West and the Rest, by Niall Ferguson
According to Ferguson, Western Civilization prospered due to its six "killer apps": namely, competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism, and work. What's more, the cold war was won because the Soviet Union was incapable of making a decent pair of blue jeans. I'm not sure if I completely buy all of this, but, like most books willing to tackle big subjects and macro-questions, it is fun and fascinating reading.
Completed: May 2012
Rating: 7/10
Completed: May 2012
Rating: 7/10
The Storm of War, by Andrew Roberts
"The real reason why Hitler lost the Second World War was exactly the same one that caused him to unleash it in the first place: he was a Nazi." (That may be the best final sentence in any book I've ever read.) It was, in short, the shortcomings of Nazi ideology which led to Hitler's stupidest decisions of the War. These would include Hitler's belief that his soldiers were racially superior to the slavic foes they would face in the East, and the anti-semitism which led his nation's brightest Jewish scientists to defect to and assist the West during the conflict.
I've always wondered about the central paradox of WWII. In fighting to free Western Europe from a totalitarian dictatorship, why did we ally with another totalitarian dictatorship, and allow that dictatorship to take over Eastern Europe? This book's anglo-centric, and therefore euro-centric, view of the war went a long way to helping me understand the whys and the wherefores that led to that particular outcome. The Soviets suffered 90% of the Allied casualties, and inflicted the vast majority of the casualties suffered by the Germans, during the war. In short, the Allied Nations couldn't have won WWII without Hitler forcing the Soviets' involvement by launching a premature and ill-fated invasion of that nation, whose citizens suffered terribly under Nazi siege, and whose soldiers would ultimately avenge that suffering in terrible acts of retribution against the women of East Berlin. (Plenty of war crimes to go around in this, at times, extremely depressing read.) At the end of WWII, who would have wanted to suffer the same fate the Germans had just suffered by launching a war against the Russian empire? Better to contain and hold them at bay as best we could for another 60 years of cold war.
This was an amazing book about a subject that we can never do enough to understand: the costliest and bloodiest conflict in all of human history.
Completed: 2012
Rating: 8/10
I've always wondered about the central paradox of WWII. In fighting to free Western Europe from a totalitarian dictatorship, why did we ally with another totalitarian dictatorship, and allow that dictatorship to take over Eastern Europe? This book's anglo-centric, and therefore euro-centric, view of the war went a long way to helping me understand the whys and the wherefores that led to that particular outcome. The Soviets suffered 90% of the Allied casualties, and inflicted the vast majority of the casualties suffered by the Germans, during the war. In short, the Allied Nations couldn't have won WWII without Hitler forcing the Soviets' involvement by launching a premature and ill-fated invasion of that nation, whose citizens suffered terribly under Nazi siege, and whose soldiers would ultimately avenge that suffering in terrible acts of retribution against the women of East Berlin. (Plenty of war crimes to go around in this, at times, extremely depressing read.) At the end of WWII, who would have wanted to suffer the same fate the Germans had just suffered by launching a war against the Russian empire? Better to contain and hold them at bay as best we could for another 60 years of cold war.
This was an amazing book about a subject that we can never do enough to understand: the costliest and bloodiest conflict in all of human history.
Completed: 2012
Rating: 8/10
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Coming Apart, by Charles Murray
"When you get down to it, it is not acceptable in the new upper class to use derogatory labels for anyone, with three exceptions: people with differing political views, fundamentalist Christians, and rural working-class whites." Charles Murray, Coming Apart
A fascinating but nevertheless sad and disheartening look at the many ways in which Americans of different social, economic, and educational classes have "come apart" from each other, and from the traditions of earlier generations, in their adherence to the values that traditionally kept us together, namely marriage, honesty (or, for statistical purposes at least, lack of criminality), industry, and religion. Must reading to understand the modern world, including things I'd rather not have lived to see. A book about class, a book about values, a book about the virtues of snobs and the vices of the lower classes, as well as the vices of snobs and the virtues of the lower classes. A book about religion and education and marriage. A book about social bubbles, geographic and social, and their consequences. Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating.
After being accused of racism for his book The Bell Curve, it is rather unbelievable that Murray would give this book the subtitle that he does ("The State of White America"). But his point is that we cannot assume ethnic minorities are skewing the statistics on crime, illegitimacy, and other modern social pathologies. We can look solely at whites and see the same trends, at least among a certain socioeconomic class, and at the end of the book, when he brings in the statistics for the nation as a whole, including minorities, there's no real difference. These have become, in other words, issues of class and education more so than issues of race.
But the best parts of the book are when Murray addresses deeper philosophical issues than the current differences between American classes, and explains why the four virtues he espouses are central to living a satisfying life. As in:
“Once you start to think through the kinds of accomplishments that . . . lead people to reach old age satisfied with who they have been and what they have done, you will find (I propose) that the accomplishments you have in mind have three things in common. First, the source of satisfaction involves something important. We can get pleasure from trivial things, but pleasure is different from deep satisfaction. Second, the source of satisfaction has involved effort, probably over an extended period of time. . . . Third, some level of personal responsibility for the outcome is essential . . . . You have to be able to say, ‘if it hadn’t been for me, this good thing wouldn’t have come about as it did.’ There aren’t many activities in life that satisfy the three requirements of importance, effort, and responsibility. Having been a good parent qualifies. Being part of a good marriage qualifies. Having done your job well qualifies. Having been a faithful adherent of one of the great religions qualifies. Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours qualifies. But what else?
Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the domains through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life--achieve happiness--the answer is that there are just four: family, vocation, community, and faith . . . . It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four domains, nor do I array them in a hierarchy. I merely assert that these four are all there are. The stuff of life occurs within those four domains."Charles Murray, Coming Apart
"Responsibility for the consequences of actions is not the price of freedom, but one of its rewards. Knowing that we have responsibility for the consequences of our actions is a major part of what makes life worth living." Charles Murray, Coming Apart
Completed March 13, 2012
Rating: 9/10.
A fascinating but nevertheless sad and disheartening look at the many ways in which Americans of different social, economic, and educational classes have "come apart" from each other, and from the traditions of earlier generations, in their adherence to the values that traditionally kept us together, namely marriage, honesty (or, for statistical purposes at least, lack of criminality), industry, and religion. Must reading to understand the modern world, including things I'd rather not have lived to see. A book about class, a book about values, a book about the virtues of snobs and the vices of the lower classes, as well as the vices of snobs and the virtues of the lower classes. A book about religion and education and marriage. A book about social bubbles, geographic and social, and their consequences. Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating.
After being accused of racism for his book The Bell Curve, it is rather unbelievable that Murray would give this book the subtitle that he does ("The State of White America"). But his point is that we cannot assume ethnic minorities are skewing the statistics on crime, illegitimacy, and other modern social pathologies. We can look solely at whites and see the same trends, at least among a certain socioeconomic class, and at the end of the book, when he brings in the statistics for the nation as a whole, including minorities, there's no real difference. These have become, in other words, issues of class and education more so than issues of race.
But the best parts of the book are when Murray addresses deeper philosophical issues than the current differences between American classes, and explains why the four virtues he espouses are central to living a satisfying life. As in:
“Once you start to think through the kinds of accomplishments that . . . lead people to reach old age satisfied with who they have been and what they have done, you will find (I propose) that the accomplishments you have in mind have three things in common. First, the source of satisfaction involves something important. We can get pleasure from trivial things, but pleasure is different from deep satisfaction. Second, the source of satisfaction has involved effort, probably over an extended period of time. . . . Third, some level of personal responsibility for the outcome is essential . . . . You have to be able to say, ‘if it hadn’t been for me, this good thing wouldn’t have come about as it did.’ There aren’t many activities in life that satisfy the three requirements of importance, effort, and responsibility. Having been a good parent qualifies. Being part of a good marriage qualifies. Having done your job well qualifies. Having been a faithful adherent of one of the great religions qualifies. Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours qualifies. But what else?
Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the domains through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life--achieve happiness--the answer is that there are just four: family, vocation, community, and faith . . . . It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four domains, nor do I array them in a hierarchy. I merely assert that these four are all there are. The stuff of life occurs within those four domains."Charles Murray, Coming Apart
"Responsibility for the consequences of actions is not the price of freedom, but one of its rewards. Knowing that we have responsibility for the consequences of our actions is a major part of what makes life worth living." Charles Murray, Coming Apart
Completed March 13, 2012
Rating: 9/10.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
The Warden and Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope
These are fairly enjoyable books. But the lightness of their plot, and the ultimate insignificance of the events described, even to those living through them, explains why Trollope doesn't have the modern popularity of say, Dickens or Austen. Still, if you want to know why Europeans ultimately gave up on religion, books like these can go a long way to explaining it. Religion in 19th century England, if these books are any guide, seems to have been more about sinecures, societal heirarchies, and nice architecture, than about Christian love, service, or least of all, doctrine.
Completed: 2011
Rating: 6/10
The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope
It's a shame more people don't read Trollope. If he were as popular as Dickens then the character of Melmont, from this book, would be better known. And being able to call someone a "Melmont" and have people know what you are talking about (a person who is only treated with respect because he is rich, despite being vulgar, uncouth, and having come by his riches in untoward ways) would be extremely helpful cultural shorthand.
It's also a shame that, in the real world, the Melmonts don't always get their comeuppance. But when it happens in a novel it's an enjoyable read, especially when you have Timothy West narrating it to you on an audible.com audiobook. Listening to a great British-accented voice read 19th century British literature is like drinking hot chocolate by a warm fire on a snowy day. Awesome.
Completed: 2011
Rating: 7/10
It's also a shame that, in the real world, the Melmonts don't always get their comeuppance. But when it happens in a novel it's an enjoyable read, especially when you have Timothy West narrating it to you on an audible.com audiobook. Listening to a great British-accented voice read 19th century British literature is like drinking hot chocolate by a warm fire on a snowy day. Awesome.
Completed: 2011
Rating: 7/10
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)