Chapter Twenty: Claude Frédric Bastiat

“In the economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause—it is seen. The others unfold in succession—they are not seen: it is well for us if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference—the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.”

There should be a reading list for citizenship. It could not be required, for that would simply be more coercion. You cannot force people to learn if they do not want to, and they will not want to if they do not see the connection between the information and their lives. In this country we feel that citizenship was established permanently at the time of the Revolutionary War. Perhaps we appreciate our forefathers’ efforts, at least on the Fourth of July, although most likely we just make a lot of noise and simulate the drama with rockets and red glare. But Benjamin Franklin cautioned that while they gave us a republic we would have to keep it. That means it is not permanent, and keeping it requires more than setting off a few firecrackers.

Chris, a medical student, recently attended some of our PTSD groups. We talked about citizenship. He feels his responsibility lies in focusing on what he can control, which is to become the best Emergency Medicine physician he can be. He intends to work hard, be fiscally responsible, donate to charity, and trust that our government officials will effectively handle their responsibilities. He is the perfect citizen for the ideal society, or the perfect citizen for our society, from the government’s perspective. But our society is far from ideal and our government far from responsible.

Government is the social instrument of force, legal and necessary, but problematic. The difficulty is always how to control the controllers. There is no answer to this other than calling on the citizenry. Ultimate control in a society always goes to the highest level of determination in the largest number of people. (will + number = choice) Failing either factor, power goes to the head of the police or militia, and power always corrupts. Today the Patriot Act shreds the Constitution, enabling the fox to guard the hen house. Martial law is a phone call away and always in the name of national defense. If you object, since martial law is always invoked in a war against something, you can be charged with treason.

I used to think that treason was the second worst crime possible, after crimes against humanity. Perhaps I need to rethink this, since we are currently fighting four wars that never seem to end (Afghanistan, Iraq, drugs, and terror). The war against terror is to defend our liberty, but we surrender our liberty in order to fight the war. Why bother if we are just going to give it away? And the suspension of our liberty is not temporary because a war on terror can never end. It is a war against a disposition, something which may never happen and can never be eliminated. Worse, our declared war breeds its own opposition. Can it get more misguided than this?

Citizenship is a full-time job, perhaps our most important. It is not enough to simply focus on personal responsibilities. Society will not run itself without oversight, and that cannot come from government. It is they who must be overseen. Power corrupts and always attempts to consolidate itself. That is just the way it is. The only control comes from the moral and ethical fiber of the citizenry, and that needs to be exercised daily. Our forefathers earned themselves a republic, which we must now also earn by constraining government power, which means leaning against it. Do you see where this goes? It leads to work, from all of us, all the time. Einstein noted, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." Congress perhaps sets the pace here.

The problem for Chris and those who neglect their citizenship responsibilities is that if society sinks everyone goes down with it. There may be a few lifeboats, but people will be fighting over them and everyone else will be in the water. Chris will get by because he is young and will have a service he can exchange for other provisions. But what if he has retired or cannot work? He may have planed for such contingencies but counted on government to safeguard the currency. Chris works, saves, provides for rainy days or golden years and stores his provisions in dollar denominated assets? He can hold his ground, but the ground can give way; the dollar can collapse. Then all his assets are gone, and he is in a bread line with everyone else. That is how societies collapse. That is how all societies collapse. They reach for the moon and knock over their medium of exchange. You better know how to handle that contingency or you will be part of the solution causing the problem.

So I offer a reading list as a place to start. We gravitate to those with whom we share our wishes or perspectives. If I make a list of readings for citizenship it will differ from that of Barrack Obama or one from George Bush, if George has read enough books to make a list. And if you read today on economics, most of it is Keynesian in nature, which from an Austrian perspective is worse than illiteracy. My list will reflect me, which is probably a good thing. I say this because this material touches something in me more than just my thinking. It inspires me. I can think of nothing more important. If I did not love the works, and the authors, I could never have read all this material. Bastiat alone is 1000 pages, and I break from him with 420 pages of Hocking. If this was all just data, twenty pages would be too much. But I have books waiting in line to be read. I take that as confirmation from the physical world. My list might be errant, but it will be grounded in something, perhaps my quarks, bosons, and muons.

Whoever offers you such a list is either handing you a part of himself or trying to sell you a bridge in Arizona. I am not aware of owning an agenda that needs to remain private. I think the world is going to hell, that we have the capacity to understand why, and the capability to take action to see it does not happen. It is within our power to avoid disaster, although perhaps not within our will. I am worried about the polar bears, the wolves, and the whales. This is not a “We Are The World” song to sing until we like each other. It is more an injunction to get off our lazy asses and do something that meets the requirements of worthy actions people take we they try to accomplish something of value. We can do this. But it will not just happen.

So my motives are pretty clear, and my expectations are not that we become something more than human—perhaps just less arrogant and inhumane. In previous chapters we stitched together a theory of human behavior. It is not bad, but now we need to figure out how to steer our dispositions into mutually beneficial ventures with others. That is no secret either. It is not conceptually difficult. People have understood cooperation in some ways forever and systematically for several hundred years. But embracing new principles is never easy, let alone implementing them. Nor is that everything, for we still fall short of Utopia. The cup for all of us on this planet is only half full. We all die. That part seems pretty empty. Perhaps we should be happy that we lived, but most of us are upset that it is not forever. But should we feel entitled to eternity? Would we never sign on for seventy years if that was all being offered? Our existence might be eternal, but if it is, empirical evidence does not suggest that we can do anything to earn it. Life appears largely gratuitous. Yet everyone seems to desire it. So let’s give some credit for our existence to something other than humanity, which might not at this point even know what side it is on.

It is hard to see why we should be entitled to anything. But we can be thankful for a lot. Notice that thankfullness can only be directed at purpose. Blind luck deserves no thanks, as it makes no effort at all. Blind is a metaphor for indifferent. Let's face it. Our lives are largely dependent on forces outside our purview. Perhaps we should give these forces some credit and not presume that we know better than the Universe. Frankly, I do not see how we will make it without faith in something larger than ourselves. Human beings cannot last longer than five minutes without aerobic metabolism. We need something more dependable than that; not religious dogma, but faith that there is something, somehow, somewhere. More to the point, today, before we try to fix something (i.e. liberty) let's make sure it is broken. Providence need not be stupid. We need not be smart. And certainly Providence gets a bigger picture than we attain, dragging along as we do our little oxygen tanks.

So I offer a list. There is no substitute for reading the originals. These authors write to be understood, and we are talking about your life here. This is the most important thing you will ever do. It deserves more than Cliff Notes. This is your life major, not the minor you earned at Stanford of the University of Hard Knocks. And this is now; that was then. It is cool that history repeats because it gives us a chance to get it right. I shall offer you some Cliff notes and interpretations of the originals to get you started. I can hardly stop myself anymore.

There is no particular order for the list yet; it kind of comes together on its own. But here are the authors: Bastiat, Hocking, Mises, Hazlitt, Hayek, Griffin, Becker, Spinoza, and Locke. They wrote a lot, and there are several books from most, but that is not too many names, or books. We can do this. And while metaphysics is more difficult than economics and ethics, we can get by there with only Searle and Chalmers, and maybe we do not even need Chalmers. (Be relieved.)

Study for me in medical school reduced to a simple principle: master the essence and address the infrequent only as needed. This lesson was learned in gross anatomy, where Gray’s Anatomy is the gold standard but impossible, while Woodburne is less comprehensive but sufficient. Better to be a master of Woodburne than a novice of Gray. This list resembles Woodburne. These guys will get you up to the point where you feel your opinion matters. You can take it from there. Hopefully my introduction will provide assistance.

For now let’s begin with Bastiat. Like Hazlitt, he is a great read. And he makes the difficult seem easy. People who really understand the material can do that. They personalize it with frequent examples, metaphors, and analogies. This chapter starts with a quote that will look familiar if you have read the Hazlitt chapter. I knew Bastiat was the person who coined the Baker’s Window story, but did not realize how completely he had spelled out the consequences. Hazlitt simply brought it into current vernacular one hundred years later.

Bastiat was born in Bayonne, France in 1801 and orphaned at age nine—for reasons I could not find, in the English literature at least. He was taken in by his grandfather and inherited the farm at age twenty-three. He grew up during the Napoleonic Wars, during which time there was considerable governmental intervention in economic affairs. He started writing late and died early. Bastiat's first significant work was published in 1844 and he died in 1850 of tuberculosis. The Mises Institute has divided his work into two volumes, the first at 430 pages on basic economic issues and the second volume, 604 pages, on Economic Harmonies. Some say Harmonies, written during his terminal illness, was unfinished. I did not notice any change in his style in this work but was impressed with his ability to press on even as he lost his ability to breathe. I intend to follow him along, comment on his work, and introduce you to his style. This is not Frederick Nietzsche, who tried to take over the world; this is a good person who tried to improve it. Vive la France!

Let’s start with his quote above. It is familiar, but the lesson is never ending. We focus on the immediate and fail to foresee the delayed. It is human nature. He is not talking about back then. He is talking about always, like now. Pick a program; they all work the same. How about the 99-ers . These are the people who get unemployment for almost two years (99 weeks). Good for them. Bad for everyone else. Government does not want a lot of people in the streets blocking traffic. So, being philanthropic, the bureaucrats decide those who lose their jobs should not lose their income. And we as citizens should embrace their concerns and compensate for life’s misfortunes. They are out of work. Quite frankly their jobs have moved overseas, never to come back. The United States is no longer competitive in the world and while that is capitalism, it is not supposed to work against us. We are supposed to always come out the winners. So, for example, we can no longer make toasters in the USA for the price anyone-else-in-the-world can now make them. The toaster workers are toast.

Capitalism is supposed to work like that. Capitalism makes everyone wealthier, everyone in the system, but not all are winners and not all shall have prizes. Life has consequences. If someone comes along and builds a better, or cheaper, or quicker toaster then “they will come.” That is how it is supposed to work. There is a period when those who have lost the competition have to find something new. This cannot be avoided, like change occuring upon graduating high school. One does not just take a fifth year. And the capital that employed the USA toaster worker does not disappear. It can seek something competitive and begin a new business. If government is systematically interfering it can make all companies internationally non-competitive and any new business is likely to be in lower paying service fields. But toasters are gone, like televisions, cameras, DVDs, and almost all other manufacturing in the United States today. In capitalism it is change or charity for those out of work. In socialism, however, everyone goes down together. Misery loves company?

Society can either face change or fight it. There is always work available, just not always people willing to take it. And when one can sit around for two years and get paid anyway, so much the better for them. So that is what they do. They exhaust their unemployment, overdose on leisure, and wait for the next handout. They will eventually have to move down the food chain. Manufacturing is finished here. So with the two years unemployment government delays the need to adjust to reality. The unemployed will still have to do it, just not this year.

And how does government pay for this? Uncle Sam is not a rich uncle. Uncle Sam does not even exist. What does exist is the authority to take from Peter and give to Paul. Government can tax those working to pay for those sitting home. If you can figure out some way to make that acceptable to everyone then write Obama because no one has been able to make mandatory charity enjoyable. The unemployed live on the labor of those still working. You can see how this goes if it continues. Since people prefer leisure to effort, the seesaw will tip to leisure. Production will go down, unemployment up, and eventually the fulcrum breaks. Then we can all sit home gathering unemployment from no one at all.

But you say taxes have not gone up to pay for this. True, but debt has. There are two ways other than taxes for government can pay people to stay at home; they can borrow or steal. Both are legal, since government can write the laws to make it so. If they borrow they push responsibility onto our children. The amount is now something like $400,000 that a newborn owes the world at birth in our country. He or she is supposed to pay that through taxes. Obviously that is never going to happen, which is another way of saying that the United States is bankrupt. A country realizes the same financial constraints as an individual family. Principle and interest is not suspended simply because the amount is greater; the world keeps spinning. Debt must settled. If a family realized that the interest on their debt was more than they earned each year, they could not pretend solvency. But a country apparently can. We are. The numbers are there. So are the nukes. Perhaps that is why people are inclined to smile and turn away when we simply roll over old debt into new. I am not sure the American Empire is seeing many smiles anymore.

But wait. We do not have to default; we can defraud. We can print money. Actually, money today is created by computer entries in central banks. But it is fiat money by any name. Is this a free lunch? No, it is simply deceptive. Fraud is usually better than force because people do not see it. The magic trick here hinges on the difference between money and purchasing power. A dollar is a dollar. That never changes. But what a dollar can be exchanged for changes every day. Is it still a dollar when what is buys is half what it bought yesterday? Yes, by the logic of language we still keep the monetary unit constant while adjusting the prices of goods for which it is exchanged. The dollar remains the same but the cost of wheat, oil, and sunscreen goes up. This is simply another way of saying the value of the dollar goes down. It could be said that the dollar is now fifty cents. and the products would then keep their same prices. We just choose the convention of keeping the dollar as the constant. (This is not relativity theory but it is quite close to the image of two people passing space, both thinking that the other is moving past them when in fact it could be the other way around.) Is there an ultimate truth? Relative to a fixed point in space there is, and relative to moral truth there is also. Moral truth says that the dollar changes value. And it is interesting that aquarter that one paid for gasoline in 1964 will still buy a gallon worth of gasoline today if you measure it by the silver content of the coin rather than the nominal value of the monetary unit (dollar). Fiat money is the source of all illicit government strength because it is so difficult to understand.

Beg, borrow, or steal, some human beings still pays for the two year vacations of the Toaster Workers. Effort comes from somewhere to provide the supplies necessary for their leisure. Food is necessary, mortgage/rent, and I need not go on here. People have the idea that government somehow taps a fountain of wealth. There is nothing government ever gives to one person that it does not first take from another. Always, and forever.

So more work is piled on the employed to pay for those who are not. Someone has to decide that is a great idea, and others have to administer the plan, who then will also need to be supported. The money taken from those working can no longer be spent on other items. Someone sells less shirts because taxpayers have less money to buy them. If the funds are borrowed rather than taxed, then payment is deferred but interest costs rise. At the present time something like 20% of all our taxes go to pay interest on the national debt. This only keeps getting worse. Forget about paying off the principal. The United States has never paid off the principle of any money it ever borrowed. It just rolls them over into new debt. All we have ever paid on this debt is the interest. One can always pretend that principle will be repaid, but there is a name for it when interest costs alone can no longer be met. It’s called bankruptcy. And it’s in our rear view mirror.

Dragons we can see are easier to confront than those we do not. We do not see inflation. For one thing, there is nothing to see, it is a concept. You can look at the check sent in by the taxpayer, but where do you see the inflation. It lies in the total supply and velocity of the money, and that is everywhere and thus no where. It is conceptual. And the government knows this. They do not call it money printing. They call it quantitative easing. And they do not measure it by the money supply but rather by the consumer price index. All of this serves to hide the fact that through inflation the government debases the currency. This means prices rise. They steal value from every dollar that you own, while leaving the paper itself intact. First it destroys the national charcter. Then it will destroy the nation. There is no free lunch. Just an ever increasing cost of lunch—to someone.

We are not even near the end of the long term problems here because every consequence in turn becomes a cause. We are in the stage of losing our currency, our capacity, and our character. Do you see why people fail to notice? It is gradual, delayed, abstract, and conceptual rather than visual. Also it is relentless and toxic. Society will die from paper cuts. And few care to see the truth. People prefer the dream. Naysayers are never well compensated. If you seek social success or political office, offer promises rather than solutions. What is the final result of the 99-week plan? Toaster workers get a two year vacation at everyone else’s expense; and government gets to dress up as Santa Claus.

Stimulus benefits are all the rage today. France had them in 1850 but we have perfected the art. Bastiat was not impressed then and would be horrified today. The value of a government program should rest on the value of the service that it renders, never the added claim that it provides jobs.

Here is Bastiat on the issue:

Have you never chanced to hear it said: “There is no better investment than (government spending). Only see what a number of families it maintains, and consider how it reacts upon industry: it is an inexhaustible stream, it is life itself.”
The advantages which officials advocate are those that are seen. The benefit that accrues to the dispensers is still that which is seen. This blinds all eyes.
But the disadvantages which the taxpayers have to bear are those that are not seen. And the injury that results from it to the providers is still that which is not seen, although this ought to be self-evident.

When an official spends for his own account an extra hundred sous, it implies that a taxpayer spends for his account a hundred sous less. But the expense of the official is seen, because the act is performed, while that of the taxpayer is not seen, because, alas! He is prevented from performing it.

You compare the nation, perhaps, to a parched tract of land, and the tax to a fertilizing rain. So be it. But you ought also to ask yourself where are the sources of this rain and whether it is not the tax itself which draws away the moisture from the ground and dries it up?
Again, you ought to ask yourself whether it is possible that the soil can receive as much of this precious water by rain as it loses by evaporation?
When John Q. Citizen gives a hundred sous to a government officer for a really useful service, it is exactly the same as when he gives a hundred sous to a shoemaker for a pair of shoes.
But when John Q Citizen gives a hundred sous to a government officer, and receives nothing for them unless it be annoyances, he might as well give them to a thief. It is nonsense to say that the Government officer will spend these hundred sous to the great profit of national labor; the thief would do the same; and so would John Q. Citizen, if he had not been stopped on the road by the extra-legal parasite, nor by the lawful sponger.

Let us accustom ourselves, then, to avoid judging of things by what is seen only, but to judge of them by that which is not seen.


Here are some more samplings of his words on variations of his basic theme:

On the arts:

Our adversaries consider that an activity which is neither aided by supplies, nor regulated by government, is an activity destroyed. We think just the contrary. Their faith is in the legislator, not in mankind; ours is in mankind, not in the legislator.

am, I confess, one of those who think that choice and impulse ought to come from below and not from above, from the citizen and not from the legislator; and the opposite doctrine appears to me to tend to the destruction of liberty and human dignity.

Public works:

Then you will understand that a public enterprise is a coin with two sides. Upon one is engraved a laborer at work, with this device, that which is seen; on the other is a laborer out of work, with the device, that which is not seen.

Protectionism:

It is true, the crown-piece, thus directed by law into Mr. Protectionist’s strong-box, is advantageous to him and to those whose labor it would encourage; and if the Act had caused the pot of gold to descent from the moon, these good effects would not have been counterbalanced by any corresponding evils. Unfortunately, the mysterious gold does not come from the moon, but from the pocket of a blacksmith, or a nail-smith, or a cartwright, or a farrier, or a laborer, or a shipwright; in a word, from John Q. Citizen, who gives it now without receiving a grain more of iron than when he was paying ten francs. Thus, we can see at a glance that this very much alters the state of the case; for it is very evident that Mr. Protectionist’s profit is compensated by John Q. Citizen’s losses and all that Mr. Protectionist can do with the pot of gold, for the encouragement of national labor, John Q. Citizen might have done himself. The stone has only been thrown upon one part of the lake, because the law has prevented it from being thrown upon another.

Therefore, that which is not seen supersedes that which is seen, and at this point there remains, as the residue of the operation, a piece of injustice, and, sad to say, a piece of injustice perpetrated by the law!

Credit:

But, in point of fact, no one borrows money for the sake of the money itself; money is only the medium by which to obtain possession of products. Now, it is impossible in any country to transmit from one person to another more products than that country contains.

Foreign occupation:

It is not the object of this treatise to criticize the intrinsic merit of the public expenditure as applied to Algeria, but I cannot withhold a general observation. It is that the presumption is always unfavorable to collective expenses by way of tax. Why? For this reason: First, justice always suffers from it in some degree. Since John Q. Citizen had labored to gain his money, in the hope of receiving a gratification from it, it is to be regretted that the exchequer should interpose, and take from John Q. Citizen this gratification, to bestow it upon another. Certainly, it behooves the exchequer, or those who regulate him, to give good reasons for this. It has been shown that the State gives a very provoking one, when it says, “With this money I shall employ workmen;” for John Q. Citizen (as soon as he sees it) will be sure to answer, “It is all very fine, but with this money I might employ them myself”.

Right to work:

He says to it, “You must give me work, and more than that, lucrative work. I have foolishly fixed upon a trade by which I lose ten percent. If you impose a tax of twenty francs upon my countrymen, and give it to me, I shall be a gainer instead of a loser. Now, profit is my right; you owe it to me.” Now any society that would listen to this sophist, burden itself with taxes to satisfy him, and not perceive that the loss to which any trade is exposed is no loess a loss when others are forced to make up for it—such a society, I say, would deserve the burden inflict upon it.

Thus we learn by the numerous subjects that I have treated, that to be ignorant of political economy is to allow ourselves to be dazzled by the immediate effect of a phenomenon; to be acquainted with it is to embrace in thought and in forethought the whole compass of effects.
I might subject a host of other questions to the same test, but I shrink from the monotony of a constantly uniform demonstration, and I conclude by applying to political economy what Chateaubriand says of history:

“There are”, he says, two consequences in history; an immediate one, which is instantly recognized, and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; the former are the results of our own limited wisdom, the latter those of that wisdom which endures. The providential event appears after the human event. God rises up behind men. Deny, if you will, the supreme counsel; disown its action; dispute about words; designate, by the term, force of circumstances, or reason, what the vulgar call Providence; but look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it, if it was not established at first upon morality and justice."


We have a government program for everything now. It is not based on morality and justice, but rather on politics and finance. We borrow money from China to give to Pakistan, but we have no way of ever paying China back and we annoy Pakistan with our arrogance. Mortgage rates are at all-time lows so people can get houses who cannot afford them and the government can expand the money supply. Follow out the exercise of the things not seen and watch where it leads, which includes the death of capital formation in favor of consumption and the elimination of private mortgages. Everyone does not have a right to a house. Everyone has a right to work for one. But arrogance masquerades as charity in a socialistic society, and socialism promises everything to everyone, which is now our system. The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend. We are almost there. But not to worry. There are more ripples after debt and we can print our way out. Glory, glory, halleluiah.

There is no right or wrong, any more than there is a right or wrong best motion picture. This is an issue of value and value is entirely subjective. But here are the options. Pick which you want and live with it. The two do not mix; it is one or the other. Liberty and the free market offers energy, intensity, and zest for life. It also gives security but only if you provide it. Responsibility is yours, as are consequences as well. This is the grab for the gusto. Socialism promises security, albeit contingent on the beneficence of the state. It also delegates responsibility, obviates self-reflection, moderates shame, and increases leisure--but at the price of boredom. This is the safe (if you luck out), but dull choice. Liberty makes life brighter and provides abundance. Socialism promises more upside but delivers more downside. You will have to fight to keep the free market. You will have to fight to get rid of socialism. That should tell you something.

Correspondence, August 19, 2010

Bill,

All right. Let’s get down to business. In “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, “life” is redundant. One might as well say, “air, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. If there is no life, then there is no capacity to pursue liberty and happiness. Having said that, I concede that we cannot just ignore the concept of living. What is our right, however, is to defend ourselves. And we cannot simply delegate that to government because frequently government is the problem. So I offer a new triumvirate of rights: The right to defend ourselves, expect justice, and to pursue and maintain property. I am sorry about the adjustments, but these basic principles apparently do not come down from mountains on stones, and it is possible for those living today to improve on the works of our forefathers.

Thanks for the death song, but like the weather, my focus changes daily. Death does not seem central this day. It is related. Death concentrates effort. But my effort appears concentrated on determining the basic purpose of life. We cannot ask anyone for that answer, but we can surmise. We can look about and see what seems most prevalent. I like the analogy of an acorn. The acorn seems to need to form a tree. We seem to need to have a purpose. We conceptualize and try to reach goals. While that might get corrupted and we can grasp for noxious goals, it appears that people, like acorns, are destined to become what they can become. We create, largely ourselves.

Let’s sharpen this a bit. Acorns become; they become trees. We create; fences and computers, but also our identities. We are acorns with purpose. Our liberty is to become what we can become, although that is not a passive process like the acorn, but an active one, like perhaps a higher power. We are "artists" and our purpose is to create art (broadly speaking), but in the process we also produce ourselves--individual people with names, dispositions, and if successful, with style. Contrary to politically correct, art is not arbitrary like contemporary education where all are winners and all shall have prizes. Art gains its leverage by sharing a connection with providence. Delusions and self-centered fantasies are not art. They are delusions and self-centered fantasies—narcissistic scribbling. Art finds its beauty in its symmetry with providence, with its connection to the materials provided by whomever or whatever created the universe. That higher power defines art, not us. Thank God, Spirituality, or Providence for that!

So my focus today is on what might be my purpose. As best I see it, it appears to be a responsibility to elucidate my personal truth on what we are, how we got here, and where can we go. And while I understand that few are likely to care about this project, that fact does not abrogate my responsibility. To the degree that people go in dangerous directions simply because they do not understand the terrain, it becomes someone's responsibility to chart the landscape. We do not err simply because of ignorance, but ignorance is the easiest mistake to correct. The problem is, however, that while you can lead people to solutions (assuming you are correct), you cannot make them drink.

I am not a Door’s fan. There seems to be nothing I can do about that. I listened to The End and only wished it would. I saw it on Youtube and James appeared to be stoned. He started riots, embraced aggression, and ended up killing himself at the magic age of twenty-seven. I find nothing to admire there and do not feel that even angelic talent would redeem these shortcomings. And I do not resonate with his talent. Gloria seems like a meeting that never quite comes about. Probably just as well for Gloria.

Morrison strikes me as more of a problem than a solution. He seems to be just another messiah who feels he intuits superiority and intends to force everybody to his position. Nothing new there. One could look through all of his videos and find little if any humility.

Taking a general view of lives, mine included, I sometimes wonder about my parents. Constitutionally I appear to be an agreeable person. I have always cared about animals, the underdog, and until recent years simply stood aside for anyone who cared to pass. That is nice, I guess, although it has its problems. A little Morrison might have been good for me. Is my dispositon to be unabtrusive genetic? Am I like either of my parents in this way or does it come from being a "castaway"? I will never know. Not that it appears to matter much, but the questions never go away. Over the years you could color me light gray, and that is probably okay.

But here comes the paradox. While I now have misgivings about swatting flies, I aspire to be effecient with my guns should they become necessary. I do more than aspire. I train weekly and while I am slow, and the target is stationary, it never gets away. (Wyatt Earp said, “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”) If the bad guy presents himself to me pinned on a clothesline at 21 feet, he is gone. I have gotten quite into this right to defend life, liberty, and property stuff, along with its corollary of not counting on the state to help. My capacity to function here, any constitutional congeniality aside, appears to correlate with the degree to which I understand the world. If the bad guys (state sponsoreed or otherwise) act, and I can see where the next six moves go, then it becomes impossible to wait through the next 3-4 moves while the situation collapses and response becomes impossible. Forewarned is forearmed. That might become my motto. I should engrave it on my next 9 mm, which might arrive tomorrow.

There is quite a contrast to the song I am linking here and Morrison's, The End. The people in the video are my kind of people. I like everyone of them. They all see themselves as limited, and what is cool, they make attempts to improve. There is no narcissism there. I would like to live in such a community. But one thing is likely missing, which by addressing could form a significant purpose. What might be missing is their lack of ability to stop bad guys from plundering the town. They probably need to coordinate their defense (against government and gangs) and practice it regularly, as well as understand history, economy and government. ("Those who expect to be ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.--Thomas Jefferson) Individually they would fall to the Clantons or the Obamas shooting up the town. But together they stand.

Here is the video. It is pretty different from The Doors, but such is nature of value.

YouTube - Kasey Chambers - Not Pretty Enough (Video)

Bob

Progress & Reflection

The reading marathon continues. It’s cool. I like hanging out with these guys. I like these guys. But these are merely conversations, and at some point one wants to get back on the field. The issue is not so much conceptual as metabolic. The reading needs to become a part of me, not something I simply reference. One can parrot the economic giants and shout hear, hear! But that is offering generic when people deserve authentic.

We can understand the social system that mankind needs to embrace if it wishes to survive. It is pretty simple. But it is not intuitive. And it has two sides. Ignorance (not stupidity) gets in the way. People simply do not know, and before they know they have to care. Then the second side of the system presents limits, which never goes over well. Again, there is no free lunch, and, worse, eventually no lunch at all.

The social structure needs to be based on liberty, justice, and property. With liberty we are free to live our lives as we choose. Justice gives us a society not structured to favor anyone, thus offering equality in opportunity and equality before the law. Property means the product of our labor belongs to us. In this system one is free to live his life any way he sees fit as long as he does not interfere with others doing the same. Government is responsible only to preserve liberty and justice. Perhaps they can run the parks. That is it. How simple can it get?

Notice that we cannot consider our fundamental rights to be life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty, justice, and property work better. There are problems with Jefferson’s choice on our essential principles. For one, the term “life” is redundant, since liberty and happiness presume it. If it is not presumed, then who is supposed to be pursuing happiness and enjoying liberty? This would not be a list of inalienable rights but rather a death warrant. Also, justice is an essential component of a free system which Jefferson simply ignores. Perhaps having hundreds of slaves clouded his judgement on that issue. Finally, happiness can exclude liberty. Happiness is entirely subjective. One might find happiness in dependency, which then defeats liberty.

The French also had problems with their revolutionary rhetoric: “Libertè, egalitè, and fraternitè”. Liberty is cool, but “equality” tends to confuse opportunity with results. And “fraternity” is beyond bad. Fraternity meant altruism. People, under moral censure, were to cease interest in their own affairs and think only of others. Halleluiah! Every person a Saint! But we are not built that way, which is a good thing because liberty is impossible without responsibility and responsibility is impossible without observation, involvement, and reflection in and of our own behavior. Not attending to ourselves we would be driving off cliffs to help people along the roads. And they would be jumping after us to help us help them help us. Tampering with the major driving force of human nature (the will to survive) is like taking out the engine of a car to see if it becomes more fuel efficient. Self-interest was denigrated and altruism idealized, with the whole effort reinforced by bayonets. Perhaps that is why the French had such trouble with their revolutions. To paraphrase Jefferson, “People who expect to replace I with Thee, expect was never was and never will be.”

John Locke originally started this trinity with liberty, equality, and property. People got on him about property as they always do about those who have the foresight to accumulate capital. Perhaps coercion and corrupt money have given property a bad name, although some people actually earn their resources. The problem is that liberty loses its value if one is begging for food. Still, Jefferson changed property to happiness, which in addition to being subjective, fails to inspire.

Nevertheless, the necessary social system is clear. It has to be free-market individualism. Everything else voids liberty and equality. Society has had a long history of flirtations with this system--it is hardly new on the planet. After all, how hard is it to think that a person might manage his own life? But individualism never lasts. People always demand more and seek someone or something else to assume the responsibility component of liberty. Perhaps philosophy of mind can help us here. Not that we have learned so much in the last century about what mind is, but we know what it is not. It is not independent. We do not hover above ourselves in non-space, secure in conceptual Kevlar bubbles. We are simply ourselves, mind and body joined together in action, subject to cause and capable of purpose.

And natural cause will trump human purpose. We do not create anything. We rearrange things. One of those things is us. How do we push against cause when we ourselves are caused? We can sail about the world whereever we want, but it always requires energy and always is on H2O. We are not the captains of our ships. We go down with them. Perhaps that takes the fun out of liberty, justice, and property. Maybe we have work to do in this area. At some point in a teleological system we run up against final cause. Something has to bring everything into being. We play with that Something's equipment. We also are that Something's equipment. We might do well to accept what is offered. Protesting just keeps us out of the game. Finally, if there is no final cause then there is no meaning--unless we supply it ourselves. Even the Marines cannot do that. At that point our job becomes worse than impossible--faith ceases to exist.

I was being rhetorical about whether we might have work to do in the area of mind. Of course we do. And the first issue to concider is expectation. We cannot control cause, but we are entirely responsible for our expectations. Expecting too much ruins things by causing us to hold out for more, thus keeping us from involvement. We have leverage with our expectations since we create them. Work there might allow us to appreciate what we now ignore. Liberty, justice, and property is pretty good. We would be idiots to not revisit this from the perspective of existential limits.

We live in a world of relativity. Satisfaction is relative. It depends upon expectations. At age sixteen we hope to play basketball for Duke. At sixty we are happy just to play. It is not the absolute we receive that determines satisfaction. What matters is what we receive relative to our expectations. As a trivial example, if your car is promised on Tuesday and you do not get it until Thursday you are disturbed. If it is promised Friday but you get it Thursday you are happy. Same day, different expectations. We have leverage there; and we can generalize.

But then, will our mental capabilities be sufficient to meet our expectations?

Correspondence

A friend suggested that I post some ideas present in our correspondence. Chapters in my book are on hold for necessary reading, but thoughts continue and some might be useful. I am editing out parts here specific to the relationship but will include my personal thoughts and general issues. If this works, I might continue this approach during the reading marathon.

July 15, 2010

Bill,

I have perhaps morphed into a new stage. I no longer follow my stocks or the market, at least at this point. The more I read, and that is mainly what I do, the more certain I become that absolutely every thing we do economically and internationally is precisely wrong. So if I know the ending it makes little sense to watch the show. This might change, but at this point I think disaster has to happen. I can read about it in retrospect.

We should get a currency collapse. Everything can lose value but it is always measured against a ruler, which is the monetary system (dollar). Now we will see what happens when the ruler warps. We will pay twice as much and take home half the goods. And the government will blame everyone except themselves. They are the agents, but then we are the dupes.

Actually, my feelings on this are becoming less forgiving. Where I used to see ignorance I now see stupidity, where there might have been courage, I see tyranny. I hate what we have become, although there seems to be no nation following any sane course. Some people might not be as arrogant and aggressive as we are. Perhaps Sweden.

I think the dollar will collapse, but measured against other currencies it may not appear to be falling. Against gold it should be a disaster. I like gold but so will the government and they will simply take it by bayonet. Silver works, they probably will not confiscate it, and it has the wonderful potential of possibly being off the radar. But you can't carry much in your pockets.

I can no longer watch Obama. I never thought he would do a good job. He smiles and cheers. He has no conception of economics. I suspect many of his courses had to do with socialism. We could have a nuclear explosion in Houston, and a smile would still be on his face. Perhaps it is surgically implanted.

So in general I am worried about everything. I see us doing nothing right. My only comfort is that one can even gain some familiarity with the recognition that humanity moves about directed by delusions. Few escape it. Frèdèric Bastiat is one who did, and I am spending quality time with him. He died in 1849, but time is becoming more collapsed. I happened to note that my life has spanned about one-third the duration of our republic. That makes 1849 look almost like yesterday. He understood it all back then. Few have caught on since. And we shall reap the harvest of our ignorance. "Would you care for some gravel on your delusions?”

Perhaps writing works at well as talking. And for certain we can more comfortably pick the time and place when writing.


Bob



July 20, 2010

Bill,

Age has inverted me. In high school the only thing that mattered to me was sports. I cared little or nothing about academics, although did not go so far as to feign ignorance in order to be cool. But I defined myself by my physical capabilities, probably well into my fifties.

I am restricted today to the conceptual. Yes, I frequently visit the shooting range and can set seven rounds from my Sig 239 on a quarter at twenty-one feet, but during an insurrection I will not be running to catch any buses or climbing any stairs, and a gun is only useful when all else has failed.

So today one of my, essentially private, endeavors is to support the physical. I suppose surgery is always an option, although I hate it for its lack of self-determination. But all hope is not yet lost for rehabilitation. I have no doubt that losing one fourth of my body weight would enhance my mobility. And it is probably crunch time--tomorrow will simply be too late. I really do not want to face Armageddon on a walker. So the major task each day now is to restrict calories. So far, so good, but this might be one of my innumerable six month agri-plans that never materialize. Then again, the country has never been walking off a cliff before.

This is all predicated on my view of the world. I do not question my perspective. More to the point, I have trouble fathoming the stupidity of everyone else. We are the Roadrunner and simply have not looked down yet.

So the reading continues. "I know, therefore I choose" is my motto. I was perhaps born to write this book and can even picture myself on the gallows saying give me liberty or give me death, unrepentant. Thus my inability to cut the grass or walk the dogs does not destroy my life. The urgency increases. Obama acts consistent with Keynesian theory, which means there is a method to his madness, but madness it remains. One would have to be a total idiot to not see the wishful thinking that inspired Keynes. If humanity was constructed differently and all our leaders were inspired saints, then Keynes could endure; but pigs can’t fly and altruism needs more than politically correct exhortations to make it show up for work.

We will crash. As stated before, I do not check anymore. I am too busy getting ready and can read about it in the after-action reports. Knowledge appears to be our key asset and liberty our goal. I cannot work any harder to get all my ducks informed, choosing for themselves, and marching in tight formation.

We bought the house in Troy. It is perfect for the animals, but that is why we selected it. Troy is not far from ground zero, but more removed than O’Fallon. It suffices as an intermediate safety zone, but much more practical than our property in New London because the dwellings are complete. My focus now, however, is more about the logic leading our country down this disastrous path, and trying to separate real from fantasy probably gives me more advantage than just moving farther into the country. The physical matters but physical it is mostly effort. It is like defense. You just do it. The conceptual, however, is offense. It is more elusive and can quite test my mental capacity. One does not get fatigued reading, but tension can become wearing, occurring because success remains uncertain. I may fail to grasp what the great ones say, although that has not happened yet. More likely I might not be able to internalize it and make it a natural part of me, which is not so great either.

Whatever the plan, I notice most now an increasing sense of urgency. It is not quite time to panic, but this has long since ceased to be a walk in the park.

Bob

Preface

This book is going up on the blog as it is written, not in its final order. Hence the Preface comes here. This is probably a good thing.

Preface—
We are in part a product of our experience, which both informs and constrains us. We cannot escape this, and the harder we try the less free we become. This is true both individually and as a society. Our personal experience remains with us always, although organized not as a videotape, but as a narrative hung on our ideas of causality. The experience of society, as far as we know, is not passed on automatically, as happens with DNA. It apparently must be transmitted as information, and it too falls together on the basis of belief systems operative when the experience occurred. Social memory is constructed, not recorded. And it is transmitted via tradition. No one reads us quotations from the past as we are growing up. They impart the condensed version of that experience through their actions. By their deeds we know the past.

We are also, obviously, constructed of something, although no one seems to understand just what. We appear to be physical, mental, and perhaps spiritual beings. Neither is necessarily certain. People can explain the physical on the basis of mental and mental on the basis of physical, and most often they presume more than one component. Most of us today are dualists, followers of Descartes, who conceived of us as both mental and physical beings, somehow interrelated.

And then we are moving forward as societies and can understand to a degree that this happens on the basis of systems. Marxism sees it as all a result of the technology we employ. Sociologists make analogies to Darwin’s natural selection. But we function only in a society and the nature of the society determines the parameters of how we live. There are two (perhaps three) social choices: individualism, collectivism, and maybe theism (the question being whether theism is simply a form of collectivism). Unfortunately, people tend not toward dialogue on these systems. More often they are inclined to exterminate those not sharing their view. The crusades were conflicts about theology. The World Wars of the twentieth century, which somehow suddenly seem like ancient history, pitted socialism against capitalism. We had better get this right because our capacity individually is restrained by society, and our function individually will determine the fate of the planet. William Hocking, one of my favorite philosophers, feels that the doctrine of mutual nuclear destruction gives humanity a pause in its headlong rush to jump off a cliff. He thinks this respite is our last chance.

This book then is an attempt to help save the planet. The odds of success are long, although criticism will come not so much about improbability as about arrogance. But new ideas are never formed by committee. Individuals somewhere always think them up. So I am willing to risk the charge of arrogance, even impudence, on the chance that something in this book might prove useful. That, of course, is not certain, but for certain the solution will not be the product of a presidential commission. Government is about coercion, not creativity, thus we can expect interference rather than assistance from that quarter. And we appear to have run out of stone tablets. That leaves only us.

Hocking said that one does not ask if something is possible. One asks if it needs to be done and whether the finger of responsibility points in his/her direction. Of course this needs to be done, and somehow a finger seems to be pointing at me.

There need not be a conflict with a higher power here. In fact, I do not believe our task is possible without a belief in something greater than us. Without a God we have no fixed position. There is then no final cause, no absolute truth, and hence no meaning. Also, without a God we start to act like one ourselves, and in the process transform earth into hell. Yet we canot simply sit back and trust in a higher power. To do so would be to presume we are merely spectators, void of purpose and responsibility. That would be a waste of a perfectly good design. There is no conflict between “praising the Lord and passing the ammunition”. So let’s do it.

Chapter 19: Truth & Consequences

“It is the theory that decides what can be observed.” —Albert Einstein


Seeing survival as the primary motivation in human existence is not new with Mises. Spinoza considered it dominant in the mid seventeenth century. Ernest Becker saw death as the “worm at the center of the apple” a few decades ago. Mises placed human action at the center of what we would call a self and nicely avoids the insoluble dilemma of mind/body interaction with his focus on purpose. Mises considered himself a theoretical dualist, which I take to mean that he employed both mental and physical concepts together but did not postulate independent hypothetical forces as well. He is a monist, although with mental realizing a fundamentally different function while grafting on the physical.

That alone makes his system closer to reality, but the issue that strikes me as most original and compelling is his inversion of cause and effect on the etiology of positive social emotions. It changes the way we play the game. Carts and horses are rearranged everywhere. It is useful to see this in examples. For this purpose and my own benefit, I shall use myself as someone for whom this inversion offered a path to salvation:

As stated earlier in this book I was purchased and raised by people with whom I had no biological or legal connection. For $250 it must be admitted they got a good deal in most ways. I stayed out of trouble, did well in school, played sports year round, got along with everyone, and almost supported myself financially since age twelve. But all was not well in the land of secrets. I could do what I willed but not will what I willed. For example, I could go somewhere with Stanley Andersen and never enjoy it, yet go anywhere with Uncle Frank and be thrilled. That never changed, no matter how I felt about it, although, to be honest, it only mattered to me in that I was rarely with Frank.

No matter what I did the Andersens never seemed satisfied. Some ethereal substance of human compassion seemed to be missing. I could connect with animals, and people in various contexts, but at home we were almost autistic, and the responsibility for that deficit defaulted to me. No one looked at context. The problem was soul, mine. Doing what I willed was not good enough. I should also be able to feel what they expected. But nothing ever changed. I liked being with Frank and did not like being with Stanley. That was simply fact.

So what to do? I imagined there must be ducks in multiple dimensions (agencies) that really cool people somehow all get in a row. Mind, body, and soul presented the leading contenders for fields of agency in those days, although soul might be more neatly tucked into mental today. Apparently all three of these areas mattered, and it appeared that I could only function in one. I could hit a baseball, solve geometry problems, and save money but apparently not radiate the warmth of human kindness. Soul and mental needed work, as I ranked near the bottom on everything that could not be weighed or measured.

There were no books for those deficient in human compassion, so I worked with what was available. Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale were popular then, and positive thinking was the dominant technique. So in addition to keeping one's shoulder closed, and taking outside pitches to the opposite field, you had to think in a prescribed way about hitting also. A home run with every swing! Should one just ignore realistic possibilities, or perhaps in good taste mentally feign limitatons? I don’t know, but I did hear that “winners never quit and quitters never win”;” laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone”; “positive thinking is better than negative nothing”, and so on almost forever. We would run out of printer ink before we run out of aphorisms.

Just reciting this stuff makes me sick. I hated it then, and I hate it now. Perhaps I have no talent for blind optimism. I scored poorly in pretend and trying harder simply illustrated my ineptitude. Perhaps I simply did not know how, although there is no limit to how much one can expend (waste) in trying. Then again, it might just be a stupid idea, and I could somehow see the mistakes. The Marines say they do the difficult immediately, but the impossible takes a little longer. But that Emperor has no uniform. Maybe the Marines should be issued a dictionary with each field manual. "Impossible" should be impossible to misinterpret.

I cannot say that I spent long, lonely periods shouting injunctions at myself, so maybe I did not give it enough effort. But one can say that about any project and waste a lifetme trying to square the circle. Yet I did construct the idea that there was a big world of mental action, and perhaps even a place for a soul, in which I got the lowest grades in class. Maybe it would be best for me simply to try to compensate. Someone involved with me might never feel the radiation of love and caring, but I could make sure the bills got paid and the grass was cut, as might a competent domestic. I was defective, no matter how many batters I could strike out, how high my test scores, or how well I pretended to enjoy artificial.

Pavlov was more prominent then than now. He conditioned responses in dogs so perhaps that is how people work. If something happens often enough you begin to expect it. That expectation might act to insure it happening. A virtuous circle could develop. Coaches say winning is a habit. So just win, Baby, and eventually it will become automatic. But you cannot fix a problem that is not there with an action that would not work if it was. The bottom line became that no matter what I tried and how hard I worked nothing changed. Everyone else in the world seemed to have been born with something not present in me. I was the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz. If I was going to be artificial, the Terminator would have been my preference. At least I could have been enthusiastic about that, in my limited way.

But you know how this stuff goes. You start down a path. It gets thicker and darker. Nothing works, the feelings become intolerable, so you just shut down. You look away, pretend nothing happened, and file it subconsciously as something to address later. It goes nowhere, and the judgment does not change, but that elephant gets locked in the garage. Good luck there.

We had a definite emotional deficiency in my family. I assumed it was due to me, perhaps because I was an only child. Children with siblings learn to share. They come to like giving away half their Twinkies or letting someone borrow their glove, bat, bicycle, or car. To me that usually seemed like an imposition, but then everyone else had been conditioned to love it, just like embryos hung upside down in Brave New World loved to work upside down when they grew up. I could struggle with it but saw little gain. As a child I resembled a congenial puppy who was house trained and barked at intruders. But I did not wag my tail very much, and perhaps a poodle would have been a better choice.

Now consider Mises’ formulation. Feelings are not endogenous. They do not stem from operant conditioning or hormonal stimulation of the milk of human kindness. Compassion is not the result of faking it until you make it, whereupon it transforms into donations and Peace Corps service. The flow goes the other way. Love is not bestowed, it is collected. People get affection for each other because they realize that through cooperation they mutually benefit. It is a win/win situation with a huge dynamic upside, which does not go unnoticed. This is cool in that the process does not happen without awareness and is logically intrinsic to purpose. We can will what we do, and what we do results in what we feel. Love is not a sensation we observe in ourselves. It is an awareness, a mental/physical correlate of cooperative action. This is redemption for me. It is something I can grasp. No messing around with souls and mental agents. Let’s play ball.

The world does not see it as just described, but that is quite my point. The world sees love flowing from soul, self, or pheromones out from the person onto others. The others have nothing to do with it except as triggers, like light or movement. I think that demeans relationships. People explain love as if contained in the individual. Is the loved one irrelevant other than as a stimulus? Does the relationship contribute nothing to the feelings? Fortunately, we do not simply react as light sensors when someone passes by. We can just say no to pheromones. We can choose.

It makes little sense to me that the loved one would be so incidental, but this was not apparently my strong suit. I, for example, have no reaction to incidents like the earthquake in Haiti or famine in Somalia. I am bothered by the animals caught in such situations but not the people. I don't presume a connection, quite the opposite. I could be stereotyped as the typical capitalist, and hence seen as having cheated and lied my way to my twenty acres. I owe it all to the vast numbers of others who I swindled along the way. Whatever the mechanism I expect that somehow their crisis will become my responsibility. I was never big about sharing my cookies when I was young and have little interest in giving away my acres today. I pay at the office every two weeks and paid all my early years for the fact that the Andersens could not have their own children. Losing supplies does not make one prosper. Spinoza says that is experienced as displeasure. So does Mises. So do I. Altruism does not work, has never worked, and will never work. What we get is self-interest that under the division of labor brings benefits to everyone. We appreciate that, and call it love and all the good feelngs that go with it. But that is all there is. There is no self-sacrifice except for those who want to save the world, and the only sacrifice they refer to is that done by someone else.

We felt nothing in the Andersen family because there was nothing. It was not a deficiency in me. It was a deficiency in the relationship. There was no honest sharing of responsibilities. We did cooperate in maintaining the yard and locking the doors, but the idea of pooling our resources in addressing the critical issues of existence never occurred. They lied about the basics, and I lied about my response. That is not sharing. That is pretending. I do well in any relationship with reciprocity. All the feelings are there then, at least from my perspective. So the relationship is there also. The other and I cooperate on something that matters to both, and as a result all the affects of human compassion exist in that relationship. But these situations do not generalize to abstract humanity. I do not like humanity in general. I like individuals with whom I share life on this planet. But I don’t owe them anything nor they me. We just travel this life together and are both the better for it. And the love comes from that, not from some endocrine gland at the base of the brain. It exists in the relationship, as it should, because it is not caused. It is lived, together.

There is no way to measure the milk of human kindness. It does not come in milliliters or ounces. It is a metaphor that does what metaphors do—present abstractions as concrete. The abstraction is the relationship between the people. The love does not exist there. It is something we feel because of what we do there. But like all cause and effect relationships, we define it by the cause, and the cause here is both people acting together, not two individuals acting apart. There are differences in the degree that people love, but it can not be measured with an instrument. It is measured by the degree of interdependency involved in dealing with life issues as a team. One does not sit on the couch managing the remote, eating Cheetos, and feeling the love. One might remember a love, but that love was not borne eating Cheetos and emoting. It came from shared efforts to address the issues life presents us. The more you block out the world, the less you feel, the less you love. The more you experience of the world, its pleasure and its pain, and the more you cooperate with others to deal with the problems, the more you love and experience the positive emotions. The State can take away the product of those shared efforts and give them to whoever they dictate as more deserving. But they can never create or delete the love. In the end that is all that really matters. And along the way it is what makes life worthwhile.

As another example, Karla works at the animal shelter, when she feels like it. Sometimes she does not show up. The dogs do not leave, which means someone else has to work her shift. Karla does the minimum, never anything extra and does not manifest any intrinsic interest in the animals. Those that care for the animals make this their life. Those who work for the money do not find the pay satisfactory. Yet Karla says she loves the dogs as much as anyone else. Can she make that claim? Is that information only available from her private perspective? Perhaps, if love emanates from within, but if it is a product of the relationship then she cannot love them as much as the regulars. Love is a product of appreciating the cooperative support in ensuring survival. The dogs give the regulars purpose and they give the dogs hope. Both benefit and you can see that in the wagging tails and the staff smiles. Karla gets paid. When she is there the dogs get fed, like in prison. They share space ten hours a week and nothing more. Feelings are a part of that, and the feeling that fits here is indifference. My guess is that Karla shares indifference at more places than the kennel.

Also, a National Guard advertisement has a young, sturdy lad say that his priorities are “country, community, and family”. The ad is well done, the people are all well chosen and I can see the intended audience trying to emulate the guardsman. If it was me as I existtoday but being the intended age I would say he has those three priorities in inverse order. And I would have to realize that my concept of family is ideosyncratic in that dogs have a prominent if not priority spot in my sense of family. But if was me as I was at age eighteen my reaction would have been to try to copy him which would have prompted a need to shore up my love for country. How does one do that? I guess as a youth one could rely on idealism and the capacity to cast others in a way that invites cooperation. If not that then perhaps you just fake it untill you make it. “Constant repetition carries conviction”, says a positive thinking quote. But what might have sounded like duty when I was young sounds like brain washing today.

The point here is that there is nothing to work on that would bring a person and country together unless they share the same ideology and a project to support it. There is no way to gain affection for the country while lying on the couch eating Nachos. And there is no way to share ideologies if you do not. Repetition then simply brings irritation.

Finally, Hillary Clinton was talking about an Arab country and said they are going to have to develop a more positive attitude about the United States. Apparently they are supposed to do that on their own. I have no idea how. Neither does Hillary.

The bottom line is that we do not love and therefore get involved. We get involved and therefore love. That is such a better way. We can control what we do and through our actions what we feel. It does not work the other way around. There is no free lunch. The price of love is experience. The price of experience is loss. No loss, no love. We did not design this system. But we have to live in it.

Chapter 18: The Competition

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." --Mahatma Gandhi

Psychoanalytic theory is another view of human behavior. Sigmund Freud was a frustrated neurologist who, following the fashion of his time, tried to explain human behavior through Newtonian Physics. Everything in that system is mass and motion. His implicit model of the human mind was a reflex arc. The energy was electromagnetic. People were electronic circuits that generated instinctual energy and attempted to discharge it into the world. The system worked towards a reduction in energy, the process of which was somehow experienced as pleasurable (perhaps by another neural circuit). If this energy was not discharged it could be short circuited into other areas and produce neurotic symptoms. Therapy and health resided in removing these blocks so the energy could flow freely through. It was essentially a “just do it” philosophy, although with a hedge. He allowed for something called sublimation that could magically turn a sexual drive into a Mona Lisa or aggression into plowshares. He needed an out because people do not always get healthy by running around just doing it; instead, perhaps just as often, they get sued.

Freud succeeded in offering a model of man as machine, the problem being precisely that. Man became cause only, no purpose, and if everything is caused and determined then how does he change? There is no entrance into the system because that effort itself has to be caused, and so on all the way down. This leads to the following type of problem:

Waitress: “Would you care to order?”
Customer: “No thank you. I am a determinist so I am going to just sit here and see what happens.”
Waitress: “Hmm, perhaps I will just wait to see if I come back.”

Or course this would apply to Freud’s therapeutic endeavors as well. The people had left the room; only machines remained.

It gets worse. People understood the restriction scientific reductionism set for human experience. It ruled it off limits. So they snuck the patient in through the back door by hypothesizing that somewhere in the patient’s head there existed a conflict free ego that could assume human responsibilities. The conflict free entity in the therapist’s head could talk to his counterpart in the patient’s head, perhaps while the two of them observed the dialogue. Essentially the therapist could do nothing (since everything was determined) while pretending otherwise, and then charge for it. Just like the Federal Reserve.

We are more than instinctual drives and discharge channels. We act, we choose, we have purpose. We are not machines. Nor are we machines with little people in our heads pulling little levers. We are people who act, which means we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We think, choose, and act in concert. This only appears magical if one does not realize it is all simply part of the same thing, action.

There are more, perhaps many more theories, although I do not claim to be an expert on this topic. Frankly, I find most of them tedious to read, like government manuals. Operant conditioning pairs behavior with a response, while classical conditioning pairs an antecedent condition with a response (Pavlov). Again, the problem they have is that no one is at home. The theorist simply operates on a physical level assembling happy little habits like a Swiss watchmaker. Their writing chronicles an empty space where the mental is void of people and the physical is void of matter. Not much to root for there.

Cognitive interpretations see mental as an energy source. This implies a metaphysical dualism. This is the position to which most people default. Religion says that the thought is as bad as the action. Philosophers say a man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes. And coaches say that winners never quit and quitters never win. Mental is seen as an instigator and potential equalizer, a possible fusion/fission reaction. But anyone can see that thought is different than action, so the concern must be that thought can inexorably lead to action. Yet it has no means to do so and is not even fueled by its own energy—it simply plugs into the physical.

If you find yourself thinking excessively about cookies in the cabinet that does not mean that the thoughts will somehow drag you into the kitchen. Rather it indicates you have a desire looking for a means. So deal with the desire. Targeting the thought is the wrong appoach. It has no authority; you cause the action. And you control it better with alternatives than injunctions. The choice should not be an abstract one about cookies or not, but a specific one between these cookies and these jeans. Do not expect a few platitudes to hold back desire. Intellect is no match for emotion. Control is your job. Choosing is how you do it. Do it right; compare apples to apples. Then decide.

There are of course theological views of human behavior. People should know where they stand on them. It is not possible for us to avoid considering ultimate purpose. And it appears to me that people who do not have a God tend to act like one. But other than from a faith based position we do not seem to have any idea what might help us to prosper in any world except ours. Personally, I choose to believe in a higher power, but apparently what will be will be regardless of what we do about it. So it seems reasonable to make the most of this life and let God handle the next one. That is, unless your faith tells you otherwise. But then be careful not to step all over the principles that seem to help us in this world.

Then there are instinct theories, but as we have said that does not help much. The term instinct is simply a name we give to something we do not understand. It is an attempt to bridge thought and action. Emotions are hybrids as well, although they are more than just hypotheses. Affect is thought en route to action. But feelings are not agents, so we cannot build a theory of human behavior on them.

Yet we need to consider them. Feelings are evidence-based information. Emotions are hybrid creatures, part mental and part physical. They could potentially be measured, meaning some endorphin or neurotransmitter could be correlated with an experience. They underscore sensory experience and help us make sure we do not miss that which is important. It is impossible to cry about something that does not matter or enjoy something you do not like. The practical point is to keep your feelings and use them, rather than deny or distort them. Behavior, not feeling, is our area of responsibility. Emotions are just signs.

The metaphysically critical issue is whether emotion can usurp authority or does authority remain with the person. A bet could be made here, the truth of which can be assessed in consequences. I am axiomatically saying that the individual at all times in all situations remains in charge of the action, which means that "losing control" involves choosing to do so. A person never gets swept away by emotion. Instead, he or she chooses to act emotionally, the consequences of which might be disastrous or the fact of which may violate important ethical principles. But the claim is not that our choices are always good, just that we always make them. Sometimes a choice explodes, but no one makes us do it, and emotion does not cause it. The buck stops with us, at times raining down in pieces on a very dumb move.

It is irrelevant how strong an emotion becomes internal to the individual. By itself it can never storm the Bastille. Control is entirely defined by when an action enters the external chain of causality, and that is always a matter of choice. This is an all or nothing issue like pulling a trigger or trading a stock—you either do it or you don’t. Of course emotions can run right through ideas. Resolutions rarely last through the day. But the caveat about fighting desire with desire remains. When an affect is opposed by a comparably energized alternative, any action, no matter how intense, can easily be seen as a choice, and there is always a valid way of evening up the sides. It remains to the individual how he presents to himself the possible exchange, i.e. 1) read about the monetary system versus no one else is, or 2) read about the monetary system versus someone has to. Such a choice probably most often takes the abstract form of free lunch versus responsibility, but while desire is never subtle, responsibility might need representation. The case for it needs to be presented in high definition accompanied by a musical soundtrack. Honor is not hard to maintain when consequences of dishonor are clearly laid out. And we control the media. The more we care, which means the more we have committed and the better we present the alternative to impulse, the more we hold fast to our principles.

We are in good company here. This was Spinoza’s approach to emotions. He was the one who called the positive ones those that support our existence and the negatives ones those that oppose it. And he saw emotions simply as facts about the nature of our experience. There is much to sort out about them, and that is what makes us human. But suppressing emotion is like sticking one's head in the sand. Not much down there is going to help us.

Spinoza’s term for our responsibility in handling emotion was to find the “adequate” response. Keep the emotion; figure out what to do about the situation. Anger will not eat you up, but losing it might get you killed. Anger provides motivation. The same is true for love, which is a feeling that may not last untill death do you part, but which is something, and better supervised than left wandering around at night on its own. Keep your affects until you have decided what to do with them. They will not bother your T cells. Emotions both guide and energize us. Do not leave home without them.

Action defines us. Thoughts can spin around forever and never leave our heads. Emotions are unborn actions, but they can grow. Thoughts can be left alone, while emotions might need light supervision. Choice, however, is a full time job. Choice defines what we are and what we become. We are purpose, a small bit of autonomy in a world of causality. Perhaps this connects us to a higher power, and if so, then all the more reason to get it right. It is what we do.

Chapter 17. Magic Carpet Ride

“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.”—Albert Einstein


As physical science reduces matter to smaller components to gain understanding, so does behavior science reduce complex to simple. A symphony goes from the combined effort of the orchestra to the coincident efforts of individuals, to a composite of means designed to produce variety of goals all intended to remove uneasiness in order to increase survival. The boson, today’s smallest physical particle, is analogous to the conceptual wish to stay alive, which is the basic element in the mental world. From that concept, with the addition of means, ingenuity, talent, and energy we reach the limits of the possibilities of individual action.

But it does not stop there. Individuals form groups. Not only can people tie their own shoes as individuals, they can buy shoes as consumers, create shoes as producers, or trade shoes as speculators. They can create pictures of shoes, send those pictures to anywhere in the world in less than a second or to Mars in less than three minutes. You get the picture. None of that could be done by our furry ancestors.

Most of what we do is a product of society. On our own we barely survive, if at all. What causes us to group together? Here is where Mises leaves economics and enters into the general theory of human behavior. He has an explanation for how man forms societies, which if correct makes him Darwin of the mind. His explanation is logical, encompassing, and while conceptually sophisticated, is accessible to common sense.

Mankind has always appreciated the importance of society. It was likely first understood as the work of God. All societies had a religion, in which God’s rules were typically passed on through prophets, visions, or kings to the masses who were then to obey. There are possible natural causes as well, such as instincts, genetics, nationality, social evolution, or geography. And order can come through leaders, idealized or feared, most of whom feel they can intuit truth through special powers. Marx comes to mind. Society then can occur from natural causes or can be molded or pounded into shape by an idealized or coercise leader enforcing his superior values on the essentially incompetent population. This is where it becomes necessary to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Stalin had to break more than a few. Emperors and tyrants seldom have misgivings about “collateral damage”. Unfortunately, whether worshiped or simply feared, a centralized leadership will always end up breaking eggs. Power corrupts.

There are two common aspects of these various theories: 1) the nature of its action occurs outside our purview, and 2) the element, if natural, has a direct effect in itself--i.e. not mediated through reason. We do not directly see instincts, genetics, nationality or place of origin. And as Mises shows, these various elements tend to contradict themselves as they dance around the idea that the tie is conceptual, specifically, ideological. For example, Dominicans do not view themselves as Haitians although their soil is contiguous, and children separated from their families at birth do not intuit a connection with their estranged families.

Mises hypothesizes that social bonds are a product of the division of labor. People feel a connection to other people because they appreciate (consciously or preconsciously) that their ability to function and survive is exponentially increased through cooperation via the division of labor. If everyone, for example, only could mow lawns, few would get their lawns cut. No one would build the mowers, produce the fuel, distribute supplies, or keep away intruders. Without division of labor everyone would be spending their time hunting, gathering, or plundering. It was that way in the land of yore. There were not many people, and their yards were probably unkempt.

The division of labor is as close as we will ever get to something for nothing. It exponentially increases our capacity to survive. It provides the motive for an ever more complex society. Conceptually it has the common sense simplicity of Darwin’s natural selection and yet the functional capacity to explain whole societies. It is that big of a deal and accomplishes the complete theory of society with one turn of the card. It has everything one would want in a theoretical system: efficacy, simplicity, and intuitiveness.

Previous hypotheses about the nature of human sociability did not include a mental component. Action theory does; it is a combination of mental which determines a means and physical which brings it about. There is little we do that does not involve mind and body acting in synergy. It is not likely that the most critical element in our survival and the most gratifying part of our life experience happens outside of awareness. Also, Occam’s razor directs us to not include more than we need in our theories. Less is better. This favor’s Mises’ theory. Our appreciation of the power of the division of labor does it all: God does not have to get involved; a dictator does not have to break eggs; and people do not have to change their nature. We only need what is already there—people who act in their own interest and appreciate the power of social cooperation (plus a government that stays out of their way). How simple is that. How elegant. And even better, it is probably correct.

The logical consequences of this theory inverts a cause and effect relationship in social interaction. Social feelings, the positive ones that essentially make life worth living, are not the cause of social relationships; they are the result of them. We feel love for others not because some force flows out through us, but rather because an awareness comes to us. Those feelings are the emotional component of an appreciation that through an experience of working together we more efficiently improve our capacity to survive. They are the result of cooperation, not the cause of it. The term "wingman" popped into my head in this context and its function is relevant here:

“The idea behind the wingman is to add the element of mutual support to aerial combat. A wingman makes the flight both offensively and defensively more capable by increasing fire power, situational awareness, attacking an enemy threatening a comrade, and most importantly the ability to employ more dynamic tactics.”

The pilots like each other because they fly together. They do not fly together because they like each other.

I like our theory so far. We try to survive. We take action to improve our ability to do that. The division of labor geometrically improves our capacity to do so and our awareness of this leverage results in the reduction of uneasiness and increase in satisfaction which forms the basis of all social cooperation. It is also the source of all the positive emotions that makes life worthwhile. And it all happens merely by the nature of the system and the logic that it follows. No supernatural force is necessary. No coercive control is demanded. And we can leave our basic nature just as it is. Society happens for the same reason water flows downhill.