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Philosophy on Two Feet
Ayn Rand famously boiled down her philosophy to four ideas, ideas that she could relate while standing on one foot. I admire her concision if not her philosophy. Each of her four ideas has a few problems. Below I take each of her points. I offer a not-quite-as-concise counter-statement, and then offer an even less concise elaboration of my alternative.
Metaphysics: objective reality.
Yes, reality contains objective elements. But isn't it odd that Rand says nothing of subjects in her metaphysical statement? After all, metaphysics is about Being, no? Human being (a fancy way of saying each of our lives ) is about subjectivity, to a large degree.
Doubters have trouble doubting themselves or the fact that they arrange their thoughts and memories with concepts using words (and to some extent, picture and numbers). To start with doubt entails not a Cartesian primacy of the subject or a deity, but a primacy of the semiotic. Interestingly, we find in semiotics (the theory of signs and signification) that objectivity and subjectivity are built into the very nature of significance. Further, doubts about the external world — something Rand was trying to dash with her bravado of objective reality — cannot be total, and, willy nilly, we proceed on animal faith and a range of probabilities that in some painfully obvious cases allows us to approach the grail of certainty, if without ever quite drinking of the cup.
Epistemology: reason.
But how does this reason work . . . and what is it, exactly?
We find ourselves growing up in this world, accumulating and discarding beliefs for a variety of reasons. A cultivated inquisitiveness and an honest commitment to public testing, added to a careful use of words and concepts (in the form of normative semiotics, or logic), make up the bulk of ideas in reason, thus establishing a standard upon which to entertain, accept, and dismiss beliefs. Truthful people always assume that truth is an objective function of propositions, and not merely an expression of opinion. In some meaningful but not blunt way, truth is outside of us, and provides a standard to aim towards; nevertheless, we often fail to attain it. Those who most loudly proclaim that they have attained truth in any one matter are often wrong. Wise people admit that even their most cherished notions are likely to be wrong in part if not in total; fallibilism is the most respectable philosophic attitude.
Ethics: rational self-interest.
Why not rational other-interest, too? We do have interests in others, and shouldn't those interests be rational? And what is rational, as it applies to values?
Excellence in living requires balance. The idea of harmony is central: harmony amongst one's own many passions, and harmony with others' passions and touted interests. Each person possesses talents, drives, and requirements, but limitations also. Recognition of the positive and negative is the beginning of virtue; balancing of drives with repulsions, along with one's own desires and others' desires, is unavoidable. But don't let the idea of balance stop at moderation ; as Herbert Spencer noted, proportion, not simple moderation, is the key. A sense of proportion requires that we balance not only internal drives against each other, but all against the countervailing forces one faces outside ourselves. One must ration one's attention and concern, not over-extending oneself on one passion at the expense of others, and adjusting one's behavior according to external circumstance; this is the chief notion behind rationality in values. Further, conflicts among individuals must find some position of compromise, as well as a means to execute mutual gains. Cooperation is key to human civilization, as is the non-cooperation that allows one to stand one's ground and not cave in to mobbish power-plays. There are three self-directed cardinal virtues: temperance, prudence, and wisdom. There are three other-regarding cardinal virtues: empathy, justice, and truthfulness. Most people have, by their inherited natures, an easy grasp on several of these. But I've never met anyone that didn't have to work at one, at the very least, and all at some time or another.
Politics: laissez-faire capitalism.
Capitalism is usually seen as an economic system, not a political one. To answer the question what is the ideal politics? with laissez-faire capitalism implies that one wishes to abolish politics, which seems utopian.
The ideal compromise between individuals' competing demands, passions, and interests is an equal limit on initiatory coercion; that is, liberty. The political structure that has so far best promoted this is a constitutionally limited republic, though other forms of government may prove more useful in securing liberty in the future. The basic features of a free society must include a rule of law, limited government, extensive private property rights and rights to contract, and a propensity on the part of the bulk of society to forego gains at the expense of others.
Designations | July 2, 2004 | Wirkman Virkkala | ThinkingMatters
The whys of wonderment
Sometimes the dunderheadedness of Thomas Sowell astounds me. It astounds me not because dunderheadness in general astounds me, but because — on some subjects, like Say's Law or the economics of race — he's very astute. It's mainly on politics that his dunderheadedness comes to the fore. I sometimes even wish he would give up writing columns, and write more books to compensate.
In a recent set of columns — entitled Ever wonder why? — he ponders for the umpteenth time why so many intelligent Americans hate America. In the second of these columns he puts it this way:
Movie-maker Michael Moore is going around the world saying that the United States is a crappy country and its people stupid — while his movie Fahrenheit 911 [sic] is being praised to the skies in the press and among the intelligentsia, as it puts its anti-American message on the screen.
What is there about America that sets off such venom — among Americans, of all people? One answer might be to look at the kinds of countries praised, defended, or understood by the intelligentsia.
Well, such a look might supply an answer, I suppose. But would it supply the correct one? Why not just look at the content of Mr. Moore's movie, and see what his complaints are?
- A man becomes president after an election is
rigged in the state run by his brother.
- The Supreme Court, voting on partisan lines, made sure the election in that swing state was not recounted (according to state law), thus ensuring that the questionable man in question became president.
- No senator of either party would stand up and challenge that alleged rigging.
- The new president speaks and acts rather foolishly, without any great command of facts or even the English language (in other words, he appears to be a slacker).
- That president, prior to his political career, had made his living in a heavily regulated industry, and seems to have had a lot of help from a lot of people to become
a success — including the sale of stock at just the right moment to rake in lots of bucks, and then screw over the average investor of the business he ran.
- Some of that help came from foreign sources — the Bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia — sources that he seems beholden too, even after one member of that family attacked America on 9/11/01.
- Rather than act as Commander in Chief and send American forces in full force to find the man most likely responsible for arranging the attack on America, this president sent in only small forces to the country in question. The wanted terrorist was not found. (But hey, the government was toppled, and a gas pipeline deal went through.)
- This president instead lied through his teeth to get support from Congress and the American people to conquer the nation of a family enemy who had no substantial link to the attack of 9/11.
... and these are just for starters. There are a lot of things wrong with Moore's flick. It is sub-intellectual. No case against imperialism is made. The long history of America's botched interventions in the mid-East are as glossed over in this movie as they are in your average Bush administration special pleading. The latter half indecently focuses on the bereavements of one Flint mother. Not enough is made of the deliberate pattern of lying in the Bush administration. No distinction is made between crony capitalist shenanigans and free market principles. I could go on and on.
But still, the movie makes more sense about current American political life than you'll find in the average Sowell column.
Why might Americans feel shame (if not outright hatred) for their country? Because the nation is run by crony-capitalist cheats masquerading as free-market republicans. Because the nation's government lords its super-power status over other nations, brazenly lying to legal representatives from other countries so that it can go ahead and overturn another government. Because the apparent imperialist advances overseas are reflected in substantial imperial policies at home, as the presidency becomes less and less accountable, and all major criticisms of it are considered (by, say, Thomas Sowell) as partisan and unpatriotic.
The Republicans have increased domestic as well as foreign spending. The Bush administration lied to Congress so it could increase the level of government handouts regarding health care (the drug prescription bill, remember?). The fact that the Bush administration worked hand-in-hand with drug companies on the bill does not make the legislation free market ; it makes it just another form of fascism, where the state and its favored organizations solidify their dominant positions in society.
These are reasons enough to hate Bush and the GOP, and regard their supporters with varying degrees of suspicion. Fools or knaves?
Fools, for the most part. I mean, the folly of Thomas Sowell, not seeing that the people he supports are making it easy for Marxists and other nut ball socialists to reject — with an alarming degree of acuity — the American government as fascistic !
And once again it is American leaders who are making the connection between bourgeois freedom and political fascism seem solid. It isn't solid, it's only apparent; but the fact that crony capitalists and deceitful warmongers yammer on and on about freedom, and that people who should know better, like Sowell, add their cheers — well, that's rather dispiriting, if you ask me.
Do you ever wonder why people like Sowell buy into the lies of people like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush? I do.
Designations | July 9, 2004 | Wirkman Virkkala | ThinkingMatters
I clicked 'I don't care'
Well, I was sick for over a week, and, still weak, I may still qualify as ill. But I'm back to messing about on the Web again.
Reading, mostly. I found a new site — well, a site new to me: Capitol Hill Blue — and, after reading an interesting article, noticed the survey form regarding Howard Stern (see right). I had to click at random, because none of the options given me expressed my values. I was sent to a DineOutFreeToday.com page, an offer for a free meal that would, I figured, if acted upon, increase unwanted email. I quickly browsed away.
My question is, who in his right mind would think that the three questions given on that survey adequately exhausted our real values? I don't think much of Stern, but I don't want him off the air. My preferred answer to the question Should Howard Stern be thrown off the air? would be, then,
No, he's a pig.
Of course, his piggishness is irrelevant to being allowed on the air. Frankly, I have not one even small desire to censor any kind of speech on the air, including speech far more disgusting than Stern's. Censorship takes a different kind of mind than I posseess. When I'm offended by something on the radio, I turn the channel, not run, whining, to the government.
Designations | July 17, 2004 | Wirkman Virkkala
The Sportive Nature of the State
In legislation, there's no umpire. For everything but the laws they pass, the legislators regulate themselves. There are only the players, the backers, and the fans. The fans are supposed to cheer and fly pennants, but most, seeing the way the players play the fans, turn to cleaner, more wholesome entertainment. You know, like professional football, hockey, or cockfighting.
Paul Jacob has something to say on this, today, on Townhall.com. As my readers know, I know little about sports. But the ludic nature of modern politics, that's something I do follow. Jacob, an advocate of term limits, follows it closer. Somebody has to.
Oh, the upshot? Politicians tend to be whiners when not winners, and they often cheat to win. Some sport.
Designations | July 18, 2004 | Wirkman Virkkala
In the Soup
Caxton has just published a new edition of Garet Garrett's classic, The People's Pottage. In part because Americans are borderline illiterate, and because even the bulk of the evangelicals are actually post-Christian, the title has been changed. It now reads Ex America: The 50th Anniversary of the People's Pottage.
I suppose I should explain. Pottage is soup. Its most famous use as a word is in the King James Version of the book of Genesis, where Esau sells his birthright for a mess of pottage. He was hungry, you see, and his brother Jacob had tricked him.
In similar fashion, during the Great Depression, Americans sold their birthright, freedom, for something they hungered for, too. As Garrett saw it, security and empire made up the mess Americans had gained. We've been in the soup since.
His book is made up of a preface and three pamphlets, each published separately as the events unfolded. In 1938's The Revolution Was, Garrett argues that the American government had so radically changed that those who fear a future revolution must be regarded as clueless: the revolution had happened already. 1951's Ex America takes on the income tax and inflationary monetary policy and the philosophies they imply; further, it explains the philosophy of limited government that these policies themselves destroy. 1952's The Rise of Empire makes the clear case that America's foreign policy had ceased to be republican, and had turned over completely to empire.
Garrett's style is eloquent and poetic. Its tone matches precisely the seriousness of his theme. But to modern ears it may seem a bit old-fashioned, as out-of-date as the notions he idealized, like a republic, and liberty, and honest dealing.
Bruce Ramsey, who has in recent years edited two anthologies of Garrett's journalistic writing — Salvos Against the New Deal and Defend America First, both published by Caxton — provides the new edition's introduction. Ramsey's style is concise and journalistic; the information he provides is useful and accurate . . . and fascinating. I had not realized, for instance, that Garrett was once shot; Ramsey's account of Garrett standing up to robbers reveals something about Garrett's level of courage.
The People's Pottage — er, Ex America — is one of the great pamphlets in American history. Readers of Gore Vidal's pamphleteering efforts should, at the very least, give the book a try. Garrett is surprisingly close to Vidal, politically, though he was of the Old Right, and Vidal hails from the populist Left. Further, I suspect that many of Vidal's fans would agree: Garrett's book is far greater than Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Dreaming War, books a bit too haphazard in construction to qualify as classics-in-the-making.
But more important than style or classics-status are the ideas the books contain. Of these? Well, before you critize, read.
Designations | July 19, 2004 | Wirkman Virkkala | ThinkingMatters
Dream Mathematics
We often talk about dream logic, that peculiar quality to dreams where we accept as normal and rational a hop-skip-and-a-jump metaphysics, where things follow from another in a fashion far more chaotic than in Waking Life.
But when do we talk about Dream Mathematics? Apropos of that neglected subject, let me relate this morning's dream:
I was at the local store, at the counter chatting with David D., a vocal local yokel my older brother's age. And, zipping east about 25 feet above the highway in front of the store was a flying saucer. We hurried outside to follow its course, and another flew by, banking at the curve by the Burkhalter place, zipping along at a fast pace for cars, but not fast (one would think) for a space ship. And then a third; flying saucers come in threes, apparently. They were red and black saucers, rounded disks with black on the trim and dark red, blood red, in the bulbous center.
Immediately following these harbingers was a flying V-shaped wedge, all metallic. In front of us, by the graveyard, it swooped up, spiralling, to descend upon the hill immediately north, where my office is located.
David immediately began climbing up the hill, to investigate. But he soon came down with an older gentleman, a Mexican wearing a baseball cap. At the counter to the store he explained. They'll be back for me on October 22nd, he said matter-of-factly. I've three months' leave.
What'll you do with your time? I asked.
Well, do laundry; read some comics. He was relaxed. Nothing odd here. Nothing special to see, other than what now appeared out the store window: It was a beautiful day, the skies were clear and a warm summer breeze gently waved the tall grass on the hill, the trees all around. The flying wedge did not reappear, had obviously taken another path out of the area. The gentleman — who spoke excellent American, without noticeable accent — was pleased to be off work.
What interests me about this dream, other than its goofy poetry and the sheer beauty of the UFOs, was the math embedded in it. Not the embedded pun (was the Mexican an alien? ), but the math.
If someone had asked me, after I woke up, what day it was, I would have said Thursday ; but I wouldn't necessarily have known the date. I'd probably have looked at my digital watch. In fact, that's exactly what I did when I woke up. July 22, showed my Casio. And I counted on my fingers to see what three months from now would be. October 22.
But in my dream the math was a given, embedded in the dialogue of the story.
So I'm better at math unconsciously than I am consciously.
Oh, and my bet is that saucers are used mainly as scouts, to fly ahead of the manned spacecraft. FYI.
Designations | July 22, 2004 | Wirkman Virkkala | ThinkingMatters
Nocturne in glass and concrete
Portland, Oregon, is still my favorite city. It's not because of the climate — it's too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer (Seattle is better) — but because of the parks, Powell's Books, and the architecture.
One of my favorite examples of architecture is the Bank of California building, downtown. It's really within the mainstream of skyscraper technology, from mid-century, but that's OK. There's just something about it. I like the coloring of the concrete, even!
But it's especially enchanting towards dusk. Even nearly dark, it's lovely. Impressive. Sublime?
This picture is from a month ago. There's nothing special about it, except that you can see the skyscraper through the trees. It's better in — I was going to say the flesh, but I guess I should say
in the stone.
There are several other, even more arresting buildings in Portland. Here's one such:
But the Bank of California building, that's still special.
Designations | July 25, 2004 | Wirkman Virkkala
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